How do you Eat an Elephant?

This past week we have been making a little more progress.  The house is about 90% done, but I don't want to overwhelm you with too long of a post.  I haven't finished decorating all of the rooms yet.  I still have bits and pieces to add to make them complete, but here are some before and after pictures.



This is a before of Ashlyn's room.

   



This is the after. Her room was pretty simple compared to the rest. It already had a closet it just needed carpet and finished walls. We bought this bed at Ikea last year for Ashlyn in the discount pile for only $35. It was missing a few bolts but we were able to find some and I have loved it for her room. It reminds me of the bed I had when I was growing up.

Sorry this is so fuzzy, but this is the downstairs bathroom right as you enter the house from the side porch to the right. If you remember it had so much in it that you could barely walk.

This is the after. It ended up being a pretty large 1/2 bath, but we didn't see the sense in keeping a tub downstairs, where you would have to walk clear across the house to use, so this is what we ended up with.

All of my bathrooms except the guest bathroom are painted with this blue/green color. I loved it and I went a little crazy with it, but I think I can make them all look different with choosing different decorations. I found these pictures in the discount bin at family dollar, all for $9. Not bad, eh? In this bathroom I want to add dark red with some hints of green from out of these pictures. I am excited to be on the hunt for more good deals.

This is the before and after of the vanity. I ended up taking Danish Oil and rubbing it all over to darken and fill in scratches and imperfections. It ended up turning out better than I thought it would. The Danish Oil has a sealing agent in it and is much less smelly than polyurethane. It was also really easy and fast to apply.

 

These planters Travis and I made in a couple hours. They were super easy and I like the color of the railroad ties verses the ones that are oiled. The guy we got these from said they were used in old guard rails and they only cost us 1/2 of what the oiled ties would have. This project cost a total of $83.00 with plants and all. This past week in the yard we planted the front with grass seed and are planning to plant the back with sod sometime this coming week if all goes as planned.

 

 

This is the only before picture of the front of the house that I could find. I wish I would have taken more.

 

We ended up taking out the old planter boxes made of rock and cement and using the sidewalk as a barrier. In the near future we are going to add trim around all of the windows to make them pop a little. Right now the windows look pretty plain.
 

I would like to add something around the windows that looked similar to this but we will see what the boss says ;)

 This past week I received a phone call from my neighbor across the field. She explained that her daughter was getting married and they are going to have a reception in their backyard. She asked if we would be willing to work with them on mowing the our property out back. She knew someone with a tractor who could help us mow down the grass.  Her husband is the young men's leader in our church, so she knew where we could find some free labor. It sounded great to me! I even told her if she wanted we could take down the fence and let the guests park in the field since we had no use for the fence. She said that would be great. So we began working together and the field went from messy fence-strewn everywhere and tall grass/wheat kind of like this.

 The field now looks like this!  You can see a glimpse of the old farm house in the back. After talking with her we found a guy who will put his horses in the other fields to help clear that down so it can be mowed and then we will take all of the rest of the fence down.  As I was talking with her around the property and we looked at everything that needed to be done. She told us it has came a long ways and I said and it still has a long ways to go.  Then she mentioned, "How do you eat an elephant? Bit by bit." And that is what we are going to have to do.  This land is the real reason that we bought the property. This is where we would like to build our future home. (That's next years project, hopefully)