My collection...

We are both guilty of not cleaning out our pockets before putting our clothes in the hamper... This is the collection I am making of things I have found in the wash.

 

Just for fun...

I love these two silly people.

 

Still moving

I promise we have been busy, but we have been trying to balance with some fun as well.

 

I finished the first piece to my pantry yesterday. I plan to make a "U" shape around the back of the room with more shelving hutches like this. I have to say this was such a relief to have this done and have somewhere to store my dishes besides the dishwasher. (Did I mention I have been using the the hall linen closet as my pantry?) When I get more built or we put the cabinets back up in the kitchen, I will have a linen closet again.

 

 

Since my dishwasher has been my storage I have been hand washing all my dishes. I had two of the cutest helpers on Friday. And the floor got washed too. Two for one. :)

 

This fireplace is screaming use me! We are just waiting for it to get cold again now that we have cleaned it out.

 

The horrible popcorn ceiling has been removed and the ceiling is almost done being patched and mudded. A question I am still asking myself is why do people paint popcorn ceiling?! It makes it very time consuming to knock down. The goal this week is to have the kitchen area all textured. Wish me luck!

We finished tearing out some of the cabinets that will be reused in a different area. We also have a door for the pantry and the new spot for the refrigerator.

Pantry

My Dad always said, "If you do that, your name is going to be Mud" when I was going to do something bad. Well after these past few weeks I feel like my name could be Mud. We prepped all the walls with mud and sanded, then mudded, then sanded, then textured. A lot of Mud was happening here!

 This is the door that is no longer there, but do you see that stuff on the wall? Yup wall paper... My good friend will be very blessed. She helped me rip this stuff off, did I mention that we also redid the ceiling in the room? It had PAINTED popcorn... This is a room straight from the 80/90's. YUCK! That popcorn was very time consuming to get off and so was the wall paper.

Kitchen

Did you ever wonder what a lowered ceiling looked like on the inside?

 The dry wall is going up to make a level ceiling. I can't believe people functioned with a 7 foot ceiling. I about took the light out trying to get the mop out of the sink.

This is the wall that used to have the washer and dryer on it. My husband turned the water line around so the washinging machine could go on the other side. He also tapped into the cold water line so that we could use it for the refrigerator on the other side of the wall. (The house was built before refrigerators had water dispensers so there was not a water line for this).

The drywall is up and you can't notice all the hard work with the plumbing behind it. Also the frame for the pocket door is up and just needs the drywall placed on top of it.

Play hard, sleep hard

We had a week and a half that we really concentrated on moving. Between my husband and my schedules it was hard to find time. We also had to clean and prepare our old house for renters. We really found that we are blessed. My husband and his brother pulled some late nights moving truck loads, my parents and sister came and helped us move on a Saturday. And my Mom and sister surprised us and showed up on my sisters birthday to help us clean. We also had help from our home teacher and another member of our church with moving a few of the heavy things. All and all, we got it done. I will have to add pictures of our red neck ways with some of the items out front since there is not room with the remodeling for some big things.

We did get some time to play in. It actually rained in Las Vegas! It is so rare that when it happens you have to enjoy it. We took Evalyn out and ran around in it. We had a blast!

With all the moving and change of location Evalyn found anywhere comfortable to sleep.

Before we moved in we would go and work on the house here and there. I started having Evalyn take naps in her room to start getting used to a new room. The door knob hadn't been replaced yet which left a perfect spy hole for me.

Kitchen...

 

The kitchen needs quite a bit of overhauling. It's hard to see in the first picture but the ceiling drops one foot from the other room over the kitchen area, has fluorescent lighting and hanging cabinets. The way the kitchen cabinets are designed it really closes off the kitchen from the rest of the large room.

 

 

 

This is a VERY rough draft idea of what I want the kitchen to look like. I want to remove the the counter where the sink is and create an island and put the sink there with the dishwasher. We will take the ceiling up and add canned lighting.

 

In this picture you can see we have taken out all the upper cabinets to start working on the ceiling. It looks better and opens the room up already. I will work on the cabinets while my husband does the ceiling. (I definitely got the better end of that deal)

                                         Another view of the dropped ceiling and ugly light.

Pantry Updates

Well... No matter how much sweet talking I do, I am not going to be able to use the old door that I want for a pantry door. The door is to wide to use in the space we have. So it looks like my husband wins this one.

 

Again... I LOVE other peoples opinions and thoughts. When my Dad came over on Saturday he asked us if we board all the door ways off and leave this small opening for the pantry door how are you going to get the washer and dryer in and out.... WOW! We hadn't thought that through. It looks like we are going to install a pocket door to make sure we have the widest opening possible. We will have a few inches on the safe side for the washer and dryer to fit.

 

 My husband has re-routed the dryer line and opened up the space for the door to be put in. The washer box has been turned around into the pantry and we were able to tap into the water line for the refrigerator.

 

 

This was the original door way into the bedroom. Soon you will never know it was here.

 

Master Bedroom

The pictures are dark but you can see the progress. There was a door in the master bedroom leading to the back porch. The bedroom is quite small and I kept wondering how I was going to fit our bed (a California King) in this room and still be able to have a functioning door, plus I didn't like having so many doors to the outside. Eventually we want to add a master bedroom onto the house and turn this into another "kids" room. It finally dawned on me.... DUH! Put a window in. So we did.

My husband and his great brother worked ALL night one night and one of the things they did was put the window in... It looks great! I scraped the popcorn ceiling off, and my Dad helped re texture the ceiling Saturday. We just have to re texture the new dry wall and paint!

An outside looking in look. We have a lot of fixing to do on the outside.

E's room update

I love people's opinions... I had my Mom come over and help paint and she mentioned that the thin stripe would look cute in gray. Wow! I am such a copy cat that I hadn't thought about changing the color.

 

I decided to do the stripe in gray and I love it! Now I have another color to decorate with in her room too. I finished the flooring and added the baseboards, and painted her closet on Saturday. Now just touch ups and paint the trim around the door and window and Evalyn's room is ready to move in!

 

 

My Dream Pantry...

 Doesn't everyone dream of a big pantry that is well organized and easy to find things? Almost like a mini grocery store? I want to make it happen. The house is set up strange with two bedrooms on opposite sides of the house. Since I like the rooms close together we are turning the bedroom directly behind the kitchen into a pantry. (With hopes to add another room to the other side of the house one day) We took the door out that you see and are turning it into a complete wall.

                         Currently....                                                                       Inspiration....

 The washer and dryer are in the kitchen... Can we say 80's?! This is not ok with me. The wall behind the washer and dryer leads to the bedroom which will be the pantry/laundry room. (Eventually we want to build a separate laundry room, but for now this is the way it will be).

I think this has been my husband's favorite project so far... He had a lot of fun tearing the wall down.

 Tada! It now opens to the pantry room. Next we need to re-route the plumbing and electrical and then we will put a door in (I am hoping my husband will let me use the door we took out from the back and use it as a pantry door) and build the wall up flush with the wall you see.

 My husband really loves the doors with the frosted glass that say pantry on them. He doesn't usually have to many opinions on decorating so I want to do that for him. But then I saw this....

WOW! Isn't that gorgeous?! http://www.thriftydecorchick.com/ This site has GREAT house decorating ideas... How can I take off the back door to my house that is super cute and not use it like this for my pantry door? I have some sweet talking to do to see if I can convince him to change his mind.

Evalyn's Room

The room that I almost cried about leaving in our current home is my daughter's room. When I found out I was pregnant I began the search of ideas to decorate a room for a boy or girl. I had a hard time finding an idea for a boys room, so I was extremely excited when we found out we were having a girl. That same day we went and bought the paint and I went to work. I spent a lot of time making sure it was the way I wanted. I am not good with change and thought about doing her room exactly the same...



 I love the colors and the idea, but I had to find something new to do. This is what her new room looked like before I started my work.

 Yup you see that... Popcorn ceiling... Yuck!

 The flooring isn't finished. Closet doors falling off.

Yes, that is a deadbolt instead of a door knob... Not sure what this room was used for..

I had decided I was either going to paint the room all pink or paint it the same way. I started googling the paint colors I used in her first bedroom when I came across this blog that had used the same colors.

http://theellwoodavenuechronicles.blogspot.com/2012/04/scarletts-vintage-teacup-inspired.html


I fell in love! I wanted the same tea cup vintage feel for Evalyn's first room and that is why I chose the colors I did. This was a way to bring the old room into the new room with a new design. I also LOVE stripes!

So I started my work... I scraped the popcorn ceiling off and re-textured. It is a lot simpler than it sounds. I did it with no help from a man. :)

I have started the stripes. I wish I had made the light pink stripes a little wider now but I am not going to change it now. I still need to do the brighter pink thin stripes. I am also having trouble finding where the flooring was purchased so I can finish it.

 Here is a picture of Evalyn she loves to drink from a straw so I distracted her today with playing with a cup while I worked.

Securing things up

This is the back view of the house... There are three doors on the back of the house. We have a daughter that is 20 months that LOVES to play outside. Having three doors to the backyard didn't sit well with me, especially since we have a pool and need to put a gate up. So we are leaving just the french doors that lead to the backyard from the living room.

While the house was for sale someone decided to practice their BB gun shooting and shot the back window out on the door. We replaced the back french doors with nice new doors with the blinds in them. They are dual pane verses the single pane doors that were there. Now I can use the old doors to decorate...

  We also took the swamp cooler out and had to board up that whole too. I will add pictures of the new doors soon.

                                                                                          Isn't my husband cute?!

The beginning

Welcome to the beginning of The Ancient Home on Rome...

When my husband and I got married and moved in together we moved to a one bedroom apartment. There was a big problem with this. We each had 2 cars, after we had been married for a few months my husband also received a work vehicle. We were in trouble, where do you park 5 cars in an apartment complex. So we bought a house with a two car garage. This to presented a problem when we realized you couldn't park cars on our side of the street. The streets were so small that you could only park on one side and it wasn't our side. We also kept growing the collection of cars. We started parking cars down the street, at friends houses, parent's houses, out of state, where ever we could find a place.

We finally decided we were ready to move into a place that had enough space for all of our cars. We were so picky about all the qualifications for the home. My husbands list was a well, wood burning fire place, no less than a half acre, and a septic system. My qualifications for the house were to be fully built and livable (I had to add this one, you should have seen some of the half built homes my husband showed me), and a pool.

Living in Las Veags' crazy housing market it took us a little while to find what we were looking for. The house had been for sale for about a year when we found it. We realized we weren't quite ready yet to buy the house. Six months later the house was still for sale, several buyers had made offers then walked away. We decided to throw our hat into the ring and see what happened. It took another six months but we ended up buying the house that matched all of the things on our list.

Now starts the renovations. It was built in 1985 (for Las Vegas this is considered an "old home"), but has a lot of 1970's rooms and ideas mixed with 80's on the inside, like pony walls with the spindles from the ceiling, popcorn ceilings, and the hanging cabinets in the kitchen. It does meet my stadards of living but I can't live like this for long. So we begin our work.