New Carpet!

We got new carpet in our master bedroom and closet with nice new clean white walls. It looks like a completely new room. The pictures don't do it justice.









I finally finished removing the wallpaper from our master bathroom a couple of weeks ago. The wallpaper was original to the house so the walls don't look too good underneath.

Hero and The Double Locks

To start off the story I need to give you a little background information. Jeff and I went to the store when we first moved into the house to buy new locks for the doors. When we got home we realized we had bought the wrong kind of locks. We had bought double locks where you have to use a key to lock and unlock the door if you are inside the house or outside the house. We didn’t want to have to go back out so we went ahead and installed them for the time being.

It had been a week since we moved into the house. The first weekend that we moved into the house Jeff and I would get up early in the morning to work on the house. The following week I worked 9 days straight because it was my turn to work the weekend. If you know me I LOVE to sleep in, so I was so happy when it was my first day off and I was able to sleep in. Jeff had to work that morning, so when he kissed me goodbye I was so happy to snuggle back into the covers and go to sleep. As I heard the front door shut as Jeff was leaving, Hero (our chocolate lab), who was sleeping in the bedroom with me, ran to the front door. A couple of minutes go by and I hear Hero sort of rush into the bedroom. I’m cracking my eyes open when I see her sort of squatting and walking with a yellow stream following her all the way to the rug that she sleeps on in the bedroom. As I scream, “Noooooooo” and start hoping by some miracle that I’ve somehow scared the stream of urine flowing from her body and then realize it’s worked, I jump out of my nice warm bed (well, warm air mattress) to open the back door for her to finish her business. As I get to the bedroom door and into the hallway my feet meet the nice wet trail from the front door to the bedroom that Hero has left.

I get to the back door only to find of course that it is locked because yes, I need a key to unlock the door from the inside. I don’t see my keys anywhere and I look at Hero and she has that, “you better hurry because I don’t know how long I can hold on” type of look. I run to the front door hoping that by some struck of luck that this might be the first time Jeff forgot to lock the door before he left for work. No such luck. I’m locked inside my house with no way out. I’m searching for the keys and contemplating opening one of the living room windows, removing the screen and shoving Hero out the window when I find the keys under a pile of papers. I finally get the door open and get Hero outside only for her to wander around the yard smelling the grass because by now her bladder is empty. As I’m walking back into the house shaking my head, I’m actually for once grateful for the ugly white tile on the floors and that there is not wet yellow carpet to clean up.



Hero is getting up their in age and just like an old woman, she likes her daily routine. When I get home from work she starts jumping up and down like a bunny rabbit with her floppy ears bouncing, because she knows that I’m the one to feed her at night. At this point in our move Jeff had been the only one to let Hero out and give her food in the mornings. I’m not sure if Hero thought on this particular day that since Jeff had left the house and he hadn’t performed her morning routine with her that she wasn’t going to be able to go the bathroom or what but just for reassurance, this really isn’t a usual occurrence for her.

Note to self: BUY NEW LOCKS!

~Liz

Paint, Popcorn Ceilings and Wallpaper

We moved into the house at the end of October. We were so excited to finally get into the house and start working! Jeff slowly moved boxes into the house for a few days when we finished packing a few boxes, until the weekend when men from our ward came to the apartment to help move all the furniture and remaining items in the moving van. The first couple of days before and after we moved into the house we primed all the walls, scraped the ceiling to remove the popcorn texture and cleaned. We decided to put up the air mattress in one of the spare bedrooms downstairs and set up there until we can finish the master bedroom, as we've made it one of the first rooms to tackle.

Goodbye green living room/dining room!!









When I first saw Hero with her new white stripe I asked Jeff what happened and he replied with, “she ran into the brush". Hmmmmm



The best way we found to remove popcorn ceilings is by wetting it first before scraping. When we did this in the master bedroom we didn't put down any plastic on the ground since we were going to remove the carpet anyways due to it's horrendous condition (picture: no where to run where you might not be standing in a large round stain). When wetting the ceiling it dampened the carpet and made all the smells in the carpet come out (one thing the carpet had going for it was that there had been no smell). We had to remove the carpet immediately due it stinking up the house.

The master bedroom













I have now dubbed myself “Queen of Wallpaper Removal”. It started out at a slow pace getting the wallpaper off the bathroom walls but I picked up a process of removal and things sped up towards the end.

Words of wallpaper wisdom: Fabric softener, scraper, water and a spray pump and you are golden. I bought the spray pump at Home Depot for $15 and it is the best $15 I’ve ever spent (I also used it to dampen the popcorn ceilings before scraping them). I now reference this spray pump as “my baby”, as I had to argue with Jeff for about 15 minutes at the Home Depot about getting it. He did not have faith in the spray pump.

Master bathroom





We didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the vaulted ceiling, so Jeff built some scaffolding in the living room to reach the top. Very inventive! I didn't get a chance to get a picture while he was up there but it looked a little scary. I'm sure he'll be up there again so I'll snap a picture and post it at a later date.



Jeff scraping the living room ceilings.



Scraping popcorn ceilings is a messy job.



It's hard to see in this picture until you click on the picture to get an enhaced view but you can see how much nicer the ceilings look without the popcorn.

The House

Our first pictures of the house! These pictures were taken before we closed so they still have the previous owners furniture in the home.

Front of the house



Living Room



View from the living room



Backyard



Downstairs bathroom



Master bedroom



Master bathroom







The staircase with the disappearing carpet



Spare Bedroom #1




Spare bedroom #2



Dinning room/eat in kitchen



Kitchen