My addiction to HGTV and the subsequent DIY overload

As if getting married and working on preparing my classroom wasn't keeping us busy enough, Caden and I dove head first into home remodel projects as soon as we got back from our honeymoon.

Clarification: I dove head first into home remodel projects and Caden had no choice in the matter. Looking back I may have been a bit ambitious, but guys...I'd been wanting to get my hands on these rooms since he bought the house and after years of watching HGTV I really thought I had a good handle on things. "Thought" being the opportune word.

I went into all of this with the best of intentions but projects have a way of snowballing, and well, I'm pretty sure I started an avalanche! Project #1 was going to be my porch. Now my porch had three types of wood paneling going on, painted/chipped dark brown wood work, gaps between the wall and ceiling, and no caulking around any of the windows, which rattled and let in every type of nasty creepy crawly bug and spider imaginable.

What I thought would take maybe a week turned into about a month, and I take total responsibility for that miscalculation. After removing all outlets and lights, we did our best to even out the walls the best we could (did I mention the previous owners thought it'd be a good idea to just overlap the paneling?) From there I jumped in with priming and painting the walls. Thankfully, my wonderful mother, mother-in-law and sisters came to help me one day! And so we ended up with this! 

Unfortunately, it was only after all the walls had been painted that I realized how much I despised the painted brown woodwork with the yellow...It honestly kept me up at night I disliked it so much :( 

So what's a girl to do? Well paint the woodwork white of course. And that is the difference between a week vs. a month long project folks. It would have been exponentially easier to have primed and painted the woodwork first but you live and learn... and develop a fair amount of patience in the process.

 

Now, before any work could be done on the porch I had to convince my lovely hubby how important it was (to me) that we take the carpet from our bedroom and put it in one of the downstairs bedrooms. There was nothing really wrong with our carpet except that it was hiding BEAUTIFUL wood floors! And I'm such a sucker for wood floors. I promised Caden if he helped me I'd buy him nice slippers to keep his feet warm this winter (cold wood floors were his main opposition to this whole idea).

Already planning next summers projects!
Get rid of the awful blue wall color

While all of that was going on I was also very excited to finally be finishing our office! I began that project last summer, but sort of hit a brick wall when it came to the rotten window and the floor with holes. Basically, after trying to rehab the old window Caden finally just replaced it for me. Let me tell you how amazing it is to have a window that isn't painted shut!!! (hint hint SO AMAZING!)

 

We discovered the walls were actually painted wallpaper on top of plaster, but that was only after patching the cracks and starting to prime so we just went with it. Nothing in this house really surprises us anymore. Since I'm pretty much only good at demo, mudding, and painting Caden did the hard stuff. He custom made a bookshelf to take the place of the window that faced the garage, fixed the ceiling and electrical and put in the new floor! And Voilà! We have a gorgeous new office/pantry!

Even though I got in a bit over my head with all of these projects I couldn't be happier to have them done in time for school to start! The endless days and nights of taping, painting, and priming were so worth it! And I'm so appreciative of the people who came to help me with my crazy ideas!

P.S. I feel that I should mention the day I finally finished with all of this Caden tore out the wood paneling downstairs and started framing up walls. ...And the remodeling continues! Check back for updates on that project!