We decided to walk through anyway, mostly because we were fascinated someone would decorate their home in this way. As we walked through, I began to look past the fish decaled on the walls and the crazy colors. I began to envision a different home.
After all, this house was in a great location and it was listed at a very low price for the area. "I kind of like it," I whispered to Jason. He looked at me like I was insane. He thought I was kidding.
"I'm serious" I said. "I really like the layout. We could fix it up." Still, Jason was not convinced.
We discussed it later. Jason agreed that the layout and location were great but he said he didn't know how to do home renovations. "You can learn" I encouraged in typical Stephenie fashion.
And here we are three years later. When we tell people in town where we live, more than once we have heard people tell us they looked at the house when it was on the market. "You bought that?!" they say in disbelief. "That house was crazy and it smelled like cats." It's true. I can't blame them for thinking we are insane. We wouldn't allow anyone inside the house for the first month after we bought it -- NO ONE. Not our friends or even our parents. I remember Jason's father showing up unexpectedly one morning and Jason going OUTSIDE to talk to his dad because he didn't want him to see the house yet.
All three of us slept in one room while Jason busily tried to get the bedrooms up to livable standards. We had to rip out the wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs to get the cat smell out With much help from our dear friend Kelby, Jason has learned a ton about home renovations. He learned some electric, some plumbing, tiling, spackling, woodwork . . . the list goes on forever. I've helped along the way, but mostly with demolition. I'm good at that.
One day, Jason came home from work and I had ripped the 1970s backsplash off the walls. That was the beginning of us gutting the entire kitchen. I just come up with ideas and Jason makes them happen. Isn't he great? I am a lucky woman. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do! We still have a long way to go and there is already talk of selling this place and moving to the country.
I'm not giving up on getting that farmhouse and having some chickens!
As you can see, the previous owners of our house loved primary colors! Here are some before pictures of our sitting room:
Here is the room after we updated it. Jason did all of the work himself.
Jason opened up the staircase and put a banister in and new closet doors on the entry-closet.
And then I got a brilliant idea to stain all the wood black. It was a big debate and you can read about it here and here.
I won. :-)
The kitchen before Jason got his hands on it:
And here is the kitchen after:
The dining room before (yes there really is a different color on every wall!):
and after:
And the wonderful family room before in peach with more fish decaled on the walls (FYI - the only thing that should ever be peach is the fruit - never a good room color or clothing color choice!):
And the family room after:
And the upstairs bathroom before:
And after. . .
I love the shower with custom-cut glass and a stone-pebbled floor.
We hope you will join us on this journey of transforming this little cape into our forever-home.
