The beginning of remodeling our Indiana home

We moved into this home in June of 2012.  We almost immediately started changing small things.  We did a lot of cleaning those first few days.  The house didn't feel like home to us.  We cleaned in hopes that the place might smell better.  

I began taking down drapes/curtains.  On all of the upstairs windows, there were blinds, a "shear" curtain, and then a long heavy fabric curtain.  Because of the really tall pine trees around our house and perhaps the roof lines of the house in some areas and all these curtains, the house seemed very dark!!  I took down all the curtains and the dated hardware but left the blinds for now.

Boys bedroom before                                                                 Boys bedroom after

Guest bedroom before                                                               Guest bedroom after

                                                                                                                                                           Alex's bedroom before   
                                                                                                      Alex's room after

The 4 foot pile of old curtains, drapes, and valances.

Off to Goodwill they go!

We also took down a lot wallpaper, grids from windows, mirrors, light fixtures & ceiling fans.  We quickly realized that we needed some help.  The wallpaper was coming down in large pieces but the adhesive behind the wallpaper was not coming down so nicely.  I am in no way an interior designer and Chad enjoys tinkering with things around the house,  but, well, we needed help.

This ceiling fan was in the living room.  It didn't have a light on it.  We didn't love the brass or the wicker on the paddles.  We thought Chad could just switch it out.  We even bought a ceiling fan for this space, but it still sits in our basement, in the box.  See, once Chad took this fan down from the ceiling, he discovered that it was not attached to an electrical box.  There was just a loose wire he could pull in and out of the hole in the ceiling.  This didn't seem right.

This was the wallpaper in Andrew & Carson's room.  As I looked at these pictures, I noticed the date, July 4, 2012.  That is what we did on the 4th of July last year, we removed wallpaper from their room. (lame)

It was a family task.

Here is their room after the wallpaper was removed.  There was still a lot of adhesive but Chad worked hard one weekend to scrape it off.  Their room is still not painted, it is on the to do list for August.

We decided to have Alex's room and the guest room painted and carpet replaced.  I think the reason we started with these two rooms was because they were ready to be painted, no wallpaper issues.  Chad found a deal on Angie's list for a painting job and we went for it.  We had these rooms painted in September 2012. The upstairs woodwork was painted a cream color when we purchased the home.  Both of these rooms wall colors weren't bad, sort of an off white color.  But we thought some new paint and new carpet would make the rooms look better and smell better as well.

This is a picture of our guest room with the previous owners things.

Here is the guest room prior to painting.

(and the top of my little helpers head)

The guest room after painting.  It was painted two different shades of yellow on the same strip of paint swatch.  The baseboard, doors, window frames and chair rail were all painted white.  New carpet is a light tan color, Carolina Dunes to be exact.

Here is Alex's room with previous owners items.

(not sure why the drapes aren't up in this picture from the realty listing, they were pink)

Here is Alex's room prior to painting.

 (can you see my little helper? he sort of blends in somehow)

And Alex's room after painting.  The wall color is tan.  It sometimes has some pink tones to it, which I couldn't see in the tiny paint swatch.  We should have stuck with the tans we have used before and really liked, Nomadic Desert and Mocha.  The baseboard, doors, and window frame were again painted white.  Same color carpet as other room.   Chad scraped down the hanging textured ceilings in these two rooms and painted the ceilings and nice clean white.

I would like to have some photos of Alex hung in his room, just haven't done that yet.  And see that dresser? I would like that painted white (it is off white) and have new pulls added to the drawers.  We brought the train table up to his room when we started work on the main level this spring and needed to clear out the rooms.  Not sure if it will stay in his room or not.

These rooms look a lot better.  However, I wasn't completely happy with the wall colors we chose for either room and I wasn't sure about the carpet color after seeing it installed.  It is so hard for me to know what something is going to look like completed when you can only see a small swatch of something!  Again, we need to enlist some help!