chasing butterflies: July 2011

We sweated, we hammered, we mudded, textured, tiled, grouted, carpeted, painted, scrubbed, bleached, insulated, cleaned, and worked our little tooshies off, and finally- finally- moved into... a... barn. We've lived in our lovely hippy-pad for a bit over a month now, and we love it. Also, thank goodness we bought good air conditioning, or we would be in a puddle on the floor. But yes, the time has come to post before-and-after pictures... and explanations, so this could potentially get lengthy. FYI, the "before" ones were with my iPhone camera, the "after" were with my real camera (in case you wondered about the quality difference).

Allow me to first give you a wee bit of background on this place. Thirteen-ish years ago, my parents decided to build a house in the country (we hated living in "the city"). They bought 40 acres and planned to build a beautiful house. While building said beautiful house, they built a small red metal building to subside in until the house was finished. The "barn" was, as I said, made of metal, and had bare concrete floors and one big room and a bathroom, and one window air unit. There were chickens and other animals just outside, and, well, it wasn't the most pleasant summer of my life. It has since functioned mostly as my dad's workshop as well as an occasional animal residence and general mulit-purpose building. It has evolved since then, adding a few more walls, flooring, drop ceiling, and recessed lighting. And from the time we started remodeling, it took about two months to complete.

Let's start with the front door and go to the left from there.

There is a set of double doors here, but the right one is covered by a curtain. I used chalkboard paint to paint the left one. Not too expensive, works great so far. I can write great verses and stuff, or honey-do lists for Michael :P.

Living Room

before->

after->

Major Efforts in the Living Room:

Mudding and texturing walls, replacing air conditioning hole with glass for window, removing door, installing large window.

Here's a close-up of the wall texture.

It takes a lot of time to do a whole room of this. I mudded while Michael went behind and textured with a trowel.

I love my new window. And it was only like $40 dollars. You can see our portable air conditioning unit peeking out. It works wonders- 105 degrees outside and perfectly cool in here.

Laundry Closet

Major Efforts in Laundry Closet:

Building it. And putting on doors.

Kitchen (brace yourself, this one is especially major!)

This is the other side of the kitchen. I wish I had more before pics- just trust me, it didn't look pretty!

Here's a closer-up of the backsplash and counters. All of this stuff was leftover from my sis and bro-in-law's house, which was leftover from something his uncle built. My uncle was getting rid of this stovetop. Not bad for hand-me-down materials, huh?

Major Efforts in Kitchen:

Everything. Building cabinets, installing stove, tile backsplash, granite countertops, electrical work, new light over sink, texturing, painting, new handles and nobs. Everything. But oh the difference now!

And now to the last area of the main room (yes, this has all been one big room so far)...

Office/Music room

(Same "major efforts" as living room). The unused doors are covered with curtains.

Bathroom

Major Efforts in Bathroom:

Texturing, painting, installing new toilet, fixing tub, building closet for hot water heater, enclosing loose pipes/wires/whatever that was in the ceiling, adjusting vanity size, installing cabinets that were in kitchen, stenciling/painting cabinets.

Here's the texture I did- light coat of sheetrock mud, then paintbrush in circles on it.

Bedroom

Much tidier, no?

The other side. The closet is behind the curtain.

Major Efforts in Bedroom:

Building a new building to put all the workshop stuff in (Dad does the building, by the way), moving all the stuff, cleaning after all the stuff, cleaning more, carpeting, rewiring lights.

Same texture as in living room.