Cumberland--six weeks later

So this is the kitchen which had hidden water damage and had to be completely gutted, even the subfloor. It was kind of scary when the old one was ripped out and it was a big, dark hole.
Backsplash is tumbled marble subway tiles, Jenn-Air refrigerator and range. Farmhouse sink is from IKEA--great sink, but has potential to chip because it is porcelain/stonewear.
Front Living room. All this room needed was window treatments and paint on the walls and fireplace. This was the mustard yellow living room. Not a bad color for an accent, but definitely not a good choice for all four walls in a living room.

I wish I had taken before pics of the master bath, but I guess I was too scared to go in there and forgot to take pictures!! It was bad. Let's just leave it at that. The vanities are from IKEA, but I don't think they carry this particular style any longer, which is too bad because they are a classic style that can fit with lots of different decor styles. Tub is a pedestal tub that was a splurge, but totally worth it. It's a statement piece. The shower and floor are Travertine tile purchased on clearance at Home Depot. It would have been a splurge, but the tile was so cheap, it was actually a steal!

Cumberland Property

OK, so this house, is not the first house we remodeled, but let's start with it anyway because I've got easy access to before and after pics on my harddrive.

We bought this house sight unseen, which was probably a good thing because I don't think we would have bought it if we'd seen it first. It was a foreclosure and some friends of ours had toured it before it was "cleaned up" by the time we bought it. According to them, there was dog pee and cat pee/poop all over the floor, cabinets were hanging off of the wall by a single nail, and the carpet was completely stained and had water damage.

Why did we not see the house before we bought it? Well, we lived in Michigan and had finally sold our house up there after it was on the market for a year and a half (that story is another blog post). We had to be out of our house in a month and we knew we were coming back to Texas so my husband could start his own business. I, being a little less of a risk taker than my husband, found a couple of small, older houses that only needed minor cosmetic fixes. My husband, being a big risk taker, found this 3,600 square foot bad boy online and two days later, we had it under contract.

The remodel took 6 weeks and we lived there the.whole.time...and that included two days w/o plumbing. ---thanks to our friends that let us shower and wash clothes at their houses and use the toilets. Also, thanks to Lowes Home Improvement for letting us use their toilets early in the morning too.

These are the "before" pics. The house had been a rental house for years before the last owners were foreclosed on. There was writing all over the walls, each room was a crazy different color, and the floors were disgusting. The master bath was a total loss- the floor was rotted out and I think if you stayed longer than two minutes in it you could contract all sorts of communicable diseases.

Why not?

So, I've been kicking around the idea of starting a blog, and I didn't want to do one that consisted only of me talking about my kids and being a mom. Don't get me wrong, I love reading my friends' blogs that talk about that subject, it's just that I would get bored writing just about that. So, with that being said, I think this blog will cover things like our house remodels both past and future, decorating ideas/experiments, and family life on top of that. The family life part will probably be some of the most boring and some of the craziest stories in this blog.