We're starting to do some home improvement projects around the house. We rent from my in-laws. We knew the house needed updates, but we kept thinking we were going to buy a house and not be here long. Well, Austin was about 8 months old when we moved in and he's 5 now, so I think maybe we should start fixing this place up! We're probably going to be here awhile! The house is very roomy and has a lot of potential, but it's not in the best part of town. We've had our Ipods stolen (our fault, didn't lock our car doors) and there are just some strange looking characters that hang out around here. They found a dead body last year near us and then the next day a man was stabbed. I wanted to get out of here ASAP! It turned out the man who they found was probably drunk and something happened (hopefully naturally!) and the man who was stabbed, was stabbed by an angry girlfriend. It made me feel a little better. We decided recently that it's just time to face the facts and stay here. We could probably afford to buy a house but here we have a little more financial freedom. I really don't want to leave paycheck to paycheck. We're wanting to be one of those weird couples who pays cash for stuff! So far, we do okay but we want to do better. We'll stick around here for the time being.
The house needs paint (badly!), new carpet, baseboards in the kitchen (don't ask....), new tile in the bathrooms, and some work done on the back room. It also could use exterior paint and new doors. We're hoping one day soon we can have all that done. We have a baby coming this summer, so I'm not sure how much we'll get done but Brett is done with Men's Fraternity until the fall so hopefully he can spend some Sunday afternoons working. Maybe I can be faithful with blogging our progress and posting pictures! Brett was not excited at first about doing all the work, but I told him to think about how proud we will be when it's all over. He has been more excited since then. He works so hard for us and now we have a house to restore to it's original glory. I sure do love that man!
This weekend we started a few projects. He put new magnets on the kitchen cabinet doors. Whenever you turn the fan in the kitchen up move than low (which is pretty much anytime I turn the oven on), our cabinets will magically float open. He bought new magnets and replaced all the old ones and now they stay closed! We also undertook a huge thing we've been putting off; cleaning the grout in our kitchen ceramic tile. Whenever they put the ceramic tile down, they didn't have a chance to seal it. I'm 27 years old and have never really done any home improvement projects, so I didn't realized how bad the tile looked. Isn't the grout supposed to be black? ;) Well, turns out it's supposed to be white! Brett found some grout cleaner and started scrubbing away with a tiny brush. I sat on the floor next to him and wiped up the mess with a rag. We got half done on Saturday and finished yesterday after church. It is a very tedious process, but our floors look so great! After we finished that I mopped the floor really good. We let it dry while we were at church last night and then after the boys went to bed, Brett started spraying a sealer on it. Hopefully the sealer will work and we won't have to do that for a while! Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:
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The white is obviously been scrubbed and the black is what it looked like before.
Next weekend, we will be buying paint and getting ready to paint all the walls. The nursery will be first. Right now it's the boy's playroom. It will be the easiest room to paint because there is no furniture to move, just toys. Hopefully, Brett can start patching holes in the walls next weekend. Whenever we finish the nursery, we'll start the kitchen and then go from there. I'll try to post before and after pictures!
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