rants, raves, & randoms

Okay, here are those promised photos:

First, though, I have to begin by promising that I’ll post some more.  What I have isn’t terribly comprehensive, and I don’t feel like they totally do the place justice.  Still, I wanted to post at least something to give you an idea of what’s been goin’ on.

So, here are two good “before” shots of the kitchen:

Notice the garbage disposal and mop in the sink…those were still there when we moved in.  Most of the junk was gone by the time we moved in, but all of the “ickiness” was still there.  Here is what the kitchen looks like form those same spots now:

Here is a before shot of my son’s room:

And here is what it looks like now:

My daughter’s room, before:

After:

Here is a shot of the master bedroom the day after closing escrow:

Note the greasy-looking dude.  At the point when this picture was taken he was technically trespassing on our property, as he and all of that stuff should have been gone 24 hours earlier.

And here is the same corner a few hours ago:

This is the master bath vanity, before:

Master bath vanity, after:

This is a look down the hallway into the master bedroom:

Same spot, after:

The fireplace was about the most hideous-looking fireplace I’ve ever seen.  It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the beige-colored hearth-sort-of-thing is made of stucco, and not nice, smooth stucco, but really rough, exterior stucco.  Here it is, before:

After:

Here’s a before shot from the bottom of the stairs, looking toward said hideous fireplace:

After:

We replaced all of the flooring in the house.  Downstairs was carpeting in the living room, dining room, and bathroom (!), and tile in the kitchen and entry way.  Now, the entire bottom floor is laminate flooring.  Here is a shot of the tile coming up:

And here is a shot from the same place (try to ignore the baby toy right in the middle of the floor…why my wife didn’t move that before taking the picture, I don’t know…):

In a lot of ways these before/after shots don’t really do the transformation much justice.  It’s hard to really understand the level of filth that the house was under when we acquired it.  In order to be consistent, I tried to take photos that were of the, more-or-less, exact things in both the before and after shots, perhaps leaving you with the false impression that our the house is still a mess…I promise that it’s not…at least not at this exact moment.

Come and visit me and you’ll see! :)