I feel it is often the case that beginnings go unnoticed. One won’t even realize they are experiencing a beginning at the time. My remodeling story starts much that way. Even now looking back I have had somewhat of an internal argument with myself when deciding where this story starts. I think the most likely place it started was in our previous home. When we bought it the kids were 2 and 4. It was a 4 bedroom home and we planned to use one of those rooms as Chris’s office. That meant that if we had guests we would need to put them in one of the kids’ rooms. One of the non-master bedrooms was obviously the better choice. It was bigger and so could handle a bigger bed easier. Gray being the oldest was offered this room. Gray, being Gray, reasoned that if his room would be the guest room when people were in town meant he would have to give up his room sometimes. He was not on board with that and so said give the room to Clara. So Clara went from a crib to a queen sized bed with that move. A brand new bed meant brand new bedding. And brand new bedding did not go with the wall color in the room at all. So that led to us needing to paint her room. And needing to paint her room caused us to look closely at the ceiling. The ceiling had popcorn (as in the texture not the food) that was fairly large. The popcorn hung down low enough that I thought it would likely get in the way when trying to pain the top edge of the walls. Then Chris decided to shine! He looked up online how to remove popcorn from ceilings and then did it. Like seriously just learned watching a video and then did an amazing job. He did such an amazing job that before we knew it he was going room by room removing all the popcorn. As a side note popcorn removal is super, super dusty. I highly advise anyone who things about this to consider how much dust their family can handle in their homes. After each room our house would be ridiculously dusty for several weeks, even though Chris put up plastic to try to contain the dust. We did pay for someone to smooth the ceilings and paint in our living room/foyer/stairwell. That area was 2 stories tall and we didn’t think us paying to rent the scaffolding was worth it.
Other than the 2 stories area we painted all of the rooms as well. We finished up smoothing ceilings, painting the rooms, and had even painted the front doors and porch swing when a house 2 doors down from us went up for sale. I, being my nosey self, looked the house up online and was shocked by how much it was listed for. Our house was larger and I hadn’t thought we would be able to sell our home for that price. I reached out to a friend of mine who had recently become a realtor. She and a colleague came over to our home and told us what they would list our home for. They also told us what projects they would suggest doing to get the most money possible for our home. And then all of a sudden things were flying. We had our kitchen counters changed out to granite, replaced our original 1980s cooktop and vent hood, and in the master bathroom we had the carpet – yep carpet – removed and replaced with tile, and painted the vanity in there as well. We then quickly put our house on the market and it was under contract in a weekend! Chris and I were on a high. A few projects had really made our home look amazing.
– Leslie
But now we had to find a new home…
Front door before 
Kitchen entrance before 
Front porch swing before 
Front Door after 
Kitchen Entrance after 
Front Porch Swing after 
Master Vanity before – notice the carpet 
Master Vanity before 
Carpet in a bathroom is always a bad idea! 
I can’t believe we lived with it like this for 4 years! 
Master Vanity during – notice the tile – I didn’t seem to get a picture of the tile other than this 😦 
Kitchen with old countertops and original vent hood and cooktop 
This was behind the vent hood, since the new hood was going to be thinner I had to cover this up. 
Old shallow sink 
Old counters 
New counteres 
New deep undermount sink 
New vent hood and cooktop in the middle of install 
So very beautiful!
Coffee and Construction Dust 