Updated on October 14, 2013
Ripping Up Carpet
Besides being covered in wallpaper, our house was also covered in OLD, OLD carpet. Even green carpet.. GREEN carpet!
Josh was very eager to start ripping it up. In fact, I think that was one of the first things that he started doing once we got the keys.
What we found underneath confirmed our thought that this carpet was OLD.. every inch of padding found underneath was disintegrated. We couldn’t even lift it up to take out to the trash, we had to sweep it up and bag it up. We removed carpet from the dining room, living room, stairway, upstairs hall, 2 bedrooms and the master bedroom.
We were so pleased to find hardwood underneath the nasty carpet and padding. We later had some areas re-carpeted and others we had the wood refinished (more on that later!).
Needless to say, our trash pile was large that week!
Updated on October 14, 2013
The Word “Wallpaper” Makes Me Cringe
Josh and I never really gave it a second thought that our house was filled with wallpaper. We naively thought we’d have it all down the week between getting the keys and actually moving in. Let’s just say this wallpaper was really attached to its wall. Between the dining room, entryway, stairway, downstairs bath, upstairs bath, master bath, and a little in the basement, we had no idea how many hours of wallpaper removal we had in our future.
Fortunately hubs and I have THEE most amazing family. So many of our family members spent that ‘work week’ before we officially moved in tearing down wallpaper for us while we were at our jobs.
They were able to complete the dining room, entryway, stairway, and downstairs bath. WOW! We owe them.. But, it pretty much took ALL week and was a HUGE headache.. We even contemplated leaving all of the wallpaper and painting over it but in the end decided it would be best to just have it gone. Because of some drywall damage in the entryway and stairway we did have to hire someone to come patch and mud over all the imperfections in the walls.
We planned on getting new carpet, so we didn’t have to worry about protecting the carpet during the removal as seen below. Next post.. removing the old carpet!
Updated on October 14, 2013
Here We Go
Well.. I bit the bullet, jumped on in, took the plunge, whatever you want to call it. I finally decided it was time to start documenting our home adventures.
Just about one year ago, we closed on our first home, May 31st to be exact. We moved in on August 6th 2011, the day before our one year anniversary. That next morning we woke up on our mattress in the dining room desperate to find a box with some clothes that we could wear to church. It was a seriously amazing gift for our first anniversary. We pretty much spent our whole first year saving, stalking realtor.com, looking at houses with our realtor, and deciding what we really wanted for our first home.
When we walked in to what would be our house the first thing that popped into our mind was OLD. You know.. green carpet, yellow kitchen, pink bathroom. But looking past the old, it was clean, it was sturdy, and we fell in love. It was SO different than so many foreclosures that we had looked at. You could tell the owners loved their home and their pride in the home showed by the way they took care of it. We walked around visualizing what we could do to update the house and make it ours. We put in an offer, and God answered our prayers.. among multiple bidders we were the chosen ones!
We went in knowing that we had tons of updates ahead of us, but we could update it how we wanted! The condition of the house was exceptional, so we didn’t have to worry about putting money into those types of things.
So here’s to catching up on our first year in the house and continuing on in this journey of making our house our home!
And for your viewing pleasure, here’s Josh & I right after we picked up our keys walking into OUR house for the first time!
