Luckily, a few places didn't need too many changes:
Bathroom: new curtain rod with my college shower curtain (made from Waverly fabric by Mema Dean), rugs and an over-the-toilet medicine cabinet and some fresh paint on the walls and cabinets. Not to mention lots of cleaning and some more Rustoleum (my weapon of choice) on the existing hinges & knobs. Oh, and a new toilet.
Spare Bedroom & 1/2 Bath: Fresh paint, furniture from my college apartment, Lilly Pulitzer comforter and new carpet. The half bath in this room only needed a new toilet, paint, a new floor (the peel & stick tile again), an over-the-toilet cabinet and a little flair to the pedestal sink, which I made with fabric, ribbon and hot glue!
Man Cave: Josh's "man cave" (soon to be nursery) is full of his stuff (aka junk), an old recliner, his bar from his college apartment and a futon that we recovered from my parents' old house. His walls are decorated with sports, 3 Stooges and John Wayne memorabilia.
Outside: We just added new vinyl shutters and a fresh coat of paint on the doors & window trim in the front. In the back, we fenced in the big yard with a black chain-link fence, which I highly recommend. It doesn't stand out so much like the plain silver kind and SO much cheaper than wood or vinyl picket fences.
Sookie is such a ham, she couldn't stand for a pic to be taken without her in it
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Mammy and Papa Thad's den underwent the biggest transformation.
Papa burned his wood fireplace just about year-round. He had actually drawn the sap out of the wood paneling he'd burned the logs so hot.
Our painter took care of the walls for us, white-washing the dark paneling and also painting the ceiling white (it had yellowed over the years).
We then got to work on the fireplace.
Apparently, pretend-stone fireplaces were real cool in the 60s. Our hearth was an array of dark brown, pale yellow and weird gray tones, painted to look like aged stone. We knew immediately it needed to change.
We had the paint crew paint the bricks the same gray as our new counter-tops and we bought a white shelf to use as a mantle, which we had painted white.
Once again, we were lucky that my parents' new house had a fireplace that didn't need a tri-fold gate, so we got their old one to put in front of the ancient, non-working gas logs in our fireplace.
Yes that is my mother in a fabulous early 90s sweater with me in her lap :)
Chris and Josh put the same hard-wood laminate in the living room.
The living room is the ONLY room we really had to buy any furniture for.
We found a blue couch with yellow piping that fit perfectly and a white "Storytime" chair by Best Chairs that has a blue damask design. The chair is my favorite purchase. It was expensive, but oh so comfortable. We also bought a dark wood wicker chair from Pier 1 that I put a different color blue cushion in.
During an after-Christmas sale, Josh and I found a great Vizio flat screen that we thought we'd hang over the fireplace. We were disappointed when we discovered that the fireplace was too old and the chimney had lots of insulation inside to keep the room at a comfortable temperature. Luckily, the TV came with a stand so we found a black TV table to put it on.
For end tables, I used old tables of Mammy's, painting them back to match the TV table.
I also raided Papa's attic again and found a great side-table to put between the two doorways to the dining room that I put wedding pictures and such on underneath the wedding picture wall. I used the Rustoleum spray paint again to chance the table adornments from gold to silver.
Ross provided me with two blue frames and one yellow frame for our mantle and a giant picture with all the room colors. I put two of the colorful Pier1 rugs like we have in the kitchen in the room then finished it off with a wall of square mirrors and two sconces.
The room was completed with little odds and ends that belonged to Mammy. I sprayed her floor lamp silver and topped it with a white shade to put by the comfy chair, put her little ducks statue on the side table and stacked a few of her old books and one of her blue porcelain bowls in the TV table nook.
Since all of my budget for the living room was spent on furniture and the TV there was nothing left to replace the aged brown and gold ceiling fan. Luckily, it was a great Hunter fan so I just took it apart, painted the blades black to match the end tables and spray painted the base and fixtures with the Rustoleum paint. I added new globes for the lights and it looked as good as new.
I seriously don't know what I would have done with black paint, Rustoleum spray paint and good ole' fashioned elbow grease.
You know how you hear stories about people buying really old houses and finding all sorts of valuable antiques like door knobs worth $1 million?
This isn't one of those stories.
Mammy's house wasn't built in the early 1800s, it was built by my great uncle in the late 1950s (her old house, the Belmont house, now on NCWC's campus, WAS built in the mid 1900s though). So it was full of dated carpet, jars of pickles that had been pickling for about 20 years and other related items.
Josh and I started with the kitchen, where most of said yucky items were.
Mammy loved to cook, so her cabinets were coated with years of grease, smoke and other food-related things. We took one look at them and decided we'd need to hire a painter (to paint both the cabinets AND the disgusting fire place & wood paneling, which I'll discuss tomorrow).
WELL the painter took care of our the cabinets... but two days after he completed his painting, the cabinets started soaking up the paint. It was like they were eating it, or Mammy's spirit was protesting the new white color on her beloved brown cabinet doors. SO, I had to take each cabinet BACK OFF the wall and re-paint them myself.
Well, we couldn't put the old, terrible looking knobs & hinges back on our beautiful, newly painted cabinets. Here is the first hiccup we hit.
I didn't realize how crazy expensive knobs & hinges are, especially for 32 cabinets & drawers. So my friend Dana's husband suggested we just keep the old knobs and spray them with Rustoleum spray paint.
I did. And they looked great. Using the Nickel colored paint made the old knobs look antique-ish still but now they actually matched the rest of the house.
Second, we replaced the floors. Mammy had nasty carpet in her kitchen that was later replaced with cheap-o linoleum. So Josh and I ripped it up and replaced the floors ourselves with peel and stick tiles then put colorful Pier 1 rugs by the door and sink.
We also had to replace the disgusting yellow counter-tops. Did you know they don't even MAKE counter-tops that cup all the way up the walls anymore? Josh and I decided on a gray-ish colored Formica only to realize they would only come halfway up the walls under the cabinets leaving the old paneling exposed. So, once again I grabbed a paint brush and slapped some left-over blue paint from our other rooms on the existing paneling and TA-DA the kitchen is done.
We also replaced the appliances, left Mammy's old sink but put in a new faucet and recently added a kitchen island that used to be at my parents old house (I am going to paint the legs blue to match the walls under the cabinets soon).
Also in the kitchen, a new interior entrance to the existing laundry room. Instead of walking allll the way through the carport and around the corner with a heavy load of clothes, I can now just cut right through the kitchen. We had the old pantry knocked through and a platform with stairs going down into the laundry room installed. Then we just bought a white cabinet to put on the platform, since we lost a pantry in the process.
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