taychellewis Hello friends and family!
As many of you know, Taylor and I just bought a home in Greenville. We closed on July 28 and our apartment lease ends on August 31, so we knew we had a month to make some updates. As we all have been told or have experienced ourselves, it’s a lot easier to renovate when you aren’t living in it!
So, here’s a list of what we planned to do to the house:
- Scrape popcorn ceiling in master bedroom
- Paint all walls
- Remove wallpaper in kitchen and dining room
- Remove column in between living room and dining room
- Install recessed lighting in kitchen, remove fluorescent and chandelier lighting
- Install wood floors throughout downstairs
- Install wood and carpet upstairs
- Replace counter tops in kitchen and all bathrooms
- Install tile backsplash in kitchen
- Paint vanities in bathrooms
- Paint kitchen cabinets
- Install IKEA wall-mounted storage to master closet
- Paint staircase
- Replace lighting all over house
- Replace fans all over house
- Replace outdoor carpet on screened in porch
- Replace blinds
- Other miscellaneous things that seem small compared to the rest of this list
All the while staying married. (Just kidding. But actually.) As you can see, we are in for a heck of a lot of work.
Thankfully, I married a very handy man who already has knowledge with some things we’d planned to do and is more than willing to learn how to do the rest. We would be spending a LOT of money on having people do things for us if this wasn’t the case. We knew going in that counter tops, removing a column, installing recessed lighting and painting the tall walls in our living room would all be things we would outsource. The rest we planned to do ourselves, and most of that has gone pretty smoothly!
Here’s a list of what we’ve accomplished so far in the 1.5 weeks we’ve been working on it:
- Decided not to scrape the popcorn ceiling (thank goodness, I was dreading it)
- Had the column removed in between the living and dining room
- Installed recessed lighting in the kitchen
- Removed all flooring to prepare for new floors
- Installed new white quartz coutertops in kitchen and master bath, and granite in guest bath
- Installed IKEA storage in master closet
- Replaced most lighting fixtures and two out of 4 fans
- Prepared the kitchen cabinets for painting (first coat of primer starts today!)
- Had the talls walls painted in our living room and foyer
- Started removing wallpaper, realized there were two layers, quit trying and are still looking at the mess I’ve made on the wall. Not sure what to do with that quite yet.
So we’ve been busy, and we’re tired, but are still very excited to see the final product. Taylor’s dad came up last weekend and was a huge help with plumbing and lighting and the master closet. It’s all getting there! Take a look at some of the photos so far.
A lot of Taylor’s work so far has been preparing the floors to be laid, which involved not only pulling up the old flooring, but removing all the little staples that were exposed and prying up the tack strips around the rooms where there was carpet. Not a fun job. I watched while enjoying some cold Kool-Aid. That was delicious.
We’ve also met our neighbors across the street, Marilyn and Pete, who brought us some delicious pineapple-orange-sweet-tea and some banana chocolate chip cookies. I think I want to adopt them as an additional pair of grandparents. We might not be so lucky with our next door neighbor… she appears to have some very spoiled, little white yappy dogs. It’d be a shame is something happened to shut them up one day.
Anyway, we’ll post more updates soon. Wish us luck!
