Home Improvements

The house we bought this year was purchased by the first owners in January of 2006 and we bought it from then in April of 2008. It had been on the market since at least October of 2007 (that's the earliest MLS listing our realtor could find for the house), and we believe the owners moved to Florida when they put it on the market. We think it took so long to sell the house because of the price (by the time we made our offer, they had dropped the price $22,000) and choices the previous owners made about paint, carpeting, etc. Also the pictures they used for the MLS listing were terrible and did not convey anything positive about the house. We only looked at our house after seeing almost all the others for sale in the same neighborhood and not liking them but loving the neighborhood. And we were desperate to find something - our house had already sold and our closing date was approaching.

We have done a lot of basic remodeling since we've moved in. One of the biggest changes we made was painting the entire downstairs, the stairwell, and the upstairs hallway. The best way to describe the color choices for downstairs made by the previous owners is rainbow sherbet. The dining room and office were a light green, the bar was a salmon color, and the rest of the downstairs was a yellowish peach color. And the previous owners chose to use a glossy paint that reflected a lot of light. We decided to cover all that up with a neutral flat paint called "River Sand". We also had the stairwell and the upstairs hallway painted this color. We ended up getting a painter to do all of this because it was just too daunting of a project for us to handle. Plus we have nine foot ceilings downstairs which are difficult to get to the top of with just a step stool. Here's a before and after picture from the front door that kind of shows the difference the paint makes.

Before:


After:


Another major change we made was replacing all the berber carpeting. The previous owners put berber in the family room, on the stairs, and in the upstairs hallway. All the bedrooms however have plush carpeting and they just butted the two types of carpet up to one another with nothing between them. It looked pretty ridiculous. We had the berber in the family room and upstairs hallway replaced with the same hardwood that is everywhere else downstairs (other than the kitchen which is tiled). We had the stairs recarpeted with the same carpet that is in all the bedrooms. We really wanted hardwood stairs but went with carpet since they are safer. Here are some before and after pictures.

Before:



After:



Some of the other changes we've made are:

- Replacing all the blinds with 2" faux wood.
- Adding ceiling fans to the family room and two bedrooms.
- Painting the master bedroom and bathroom and the nursery.
- Removing contact paper from every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen, bathrooms, and garage.
- Replacing the leaking kitchen sink piping.
- Replacing the kitchen faucet.
- Installing new locks on all the doors.
- Adding a garage storage / organization system.
- Fencing in the backyard.
- Staining the deck.
- Cleaning up all the beds, replacing one with grass, and adding a new one around the maple tree.
- Putting rocks under the deck.
- Moving and adding sprinklers to our irrigation system.

No wonder we've been so busy the last 6 months! Just buying everything for and setting up the nursery was a lot of work.