Before Pictures of Our New House!

Ok Ok.. so I told you guys FOUR months ago that I would be blogging our progress with the house.... turns out, I lied. *insert shaming comment here* But brace yourselves... the length of this one post makes up for all the posts I have missed! :D

Fixing up a house is MUCH more time consuming than I originally thought it would be! And I expected it to be a lot! In my defense, taking classes and working full time also play a factor in how I've been spending my time.

I do have lots of pictures that I've taken along the way of what we have accomplished thus far. While taking these pictures I thought to myself, "Self, these pictures will be good for that blog post I'm going to put up next week." But as you all know, that never happened. So as part of my New Year's Resolution (lets hope it's not the standard type of resolution that is over in a week..), I have resolved to actually start blogging!


So without further adieu, here are those before pictures I promised you guys in September:
*Warning: These pictures are from the seller's listing and are HORRIBLE quality. Sorry in advance..

The backyard:

The front yard, complete with hideous pond:

 Entry way:

View of entry way and office from dining room:

Office:

Kitchen:

 Living room / dining room:

 

Guest Bathroom:

 Guest Bedroom:

Entertainment Room / Man Cave / One Day Nursery:

 Master Bedroom:

Master Bath:

 These are the pictures that were posted online by the previous owner when we were initially looking at the house. I know in these pictures the house looks like it is in excellent shape. That's what we thought to! And don't get me wrong, this house is a gem which is why we fell in love with it in the first place. It is only four years old, has great bone structure, is in a great neighborhood near my family, has a separate laundry room and has a unique layout which are a just a few of the things I was looking for. It is a three bedroom two bath, with an office as a bonus room and has a huge kitchen. 

Let me stop you there though. Here is the but, and it is a HUGE but.. the previous owners did not take very good care of this house. It is very obvious that they were short selling this home because they put no maintenance in this house whatsoever. The carpets were SOAKED in dog urine (it was brown carpet and you could see urine stains... thats all I'm saying). So if you had a smell-o-meter for these pictures, you would have already stopped reading. In addition to the smell, their dogs had scratched up parts of the carpet and some door moldings all the way to the concrete foundation, especially at the sliding glass door (they actually scratched pieces of the concrete out here!). For this reason, we decided to rip out the carpet and put in laminate flooring. Although this meant time and money, I was ok with this because laminate or hardwood flooring was on my wishlist anyway and J wasn't completely onboard with picking a house just because it had wood floors.. so this way everyone won! :) 

Among other things the previous owners didn't take care of / didn't care about:

-they left painter's tape around the doors from when they first painted 4 years ago... I mean c'mon. Lazy, right?

-all vents were covered in dog hair, and the bathroom vents had mold / nasty goo all over them

-both bathrooms and parts of the kitchen had mold growing along the sealant

-this house looked like it had NEVER had a deep clean

-the dishwasher was clogged with  food, hair, and God knows what else

-most sinks were clogged with hair and goo and had to be drain-oed

-the baseboards were stained yellow and the doors were dirty and dingy. We repainted all moldings and doors bright white!

-the walls were gouged, stained, and dirty. The walls in the entry way and front hall were poorly textured to the point where it looked like they just let paint drip down the wall and then wiped it around. We spent quite a while trying to sand this out. 

-they left trash and spoiled milk and raw meat (which was dripping blood on the concrete) in the trash can and left it in the hot garage. I opened the garage and it smelled like death. Best part? They left in in the garage on trash day. So it had to sit at my house for another week.

- They left all the dirt, trash, hair, hangers, ect that they didn't feel like cleaning up. The woman didnt even clean her hair off the bathroom counter before she left

Ok Ok I know at this point I'm venting. But every time I have ever moved, we have swept, mopped, vaccumed and tried to at least put in an hour or two to make the place liveable for the next person. Maybe I'm extra nice or maybe I just don't want anyone else to think that I'm gross, but I expected at least a little common decency from the previous owners. Nope. In addition to their nastiness, they took things they weren't supposed to. Like the bathroom mirror, security cameras that were attached to and wired into the house, ect. But since they did it while we were at closing, (they signed everything prior and weren't there) we technically had already signed off that we accepted the house in the condition it was currently in. 

 Where they ripped out the security cameras:

Also, before closing we asked if they were taking their old couch with them (the white sectional in the pictures). It was kinda beat up, had chew marks on the legs and the cushions were stained and tore from the dogs. But if they didn't want it or were willing to sell it we could totally have it reupholstered. They said they were taking it. The day we close we get to the house and it is siting on the curb along with lots of other trash and furniture. It had been pouring for 3 days. :\

 I was so angry, but I brought it in the garage anyway and took off all of the cushion covers. Thankfully it aired out without molding or mildewing! But no thanks to the sellers. So overall, I have no positive feelings towards the previous owners. The only thing they did to make me happy is to sell me this wonderful home.

Also, I know in these pictures the paint color doesn't look TOO terrible, but let me assure you that it is. The living room was a dark gross brown, and the kitchen and hallway were a shiny puke orange. The only room color I liked was the bedroom, but it didn't really go with our bedroom decor. So in addition to cleaning and putting in floors, we also painted. 

Here are the pictures that I took of the place a few days before we closed so you can see the blank slate we had to work with:

Entry way:

Kitchen:

 

Dining Room:

Living Room:

Laundry Room:

 -Note dried dog urine on the floor

Guest Room:

 Guest Bath:

-Note tiny mirror they put in place of the original modern big one.

Entertainment Room / Man Cave / Future Nursery:

Master Bedroom (Complete with my little angel!) :

Master Bath:

And my handsome hubby in the backyard:

The little cutie in my bedroom is my best friends daughter and I love her to pieces. She had a little meltdown right before these pictures and had been crying so ignore the red eyes. lol Once I convinced her that the world wasn't ending and bribed her with promises to let her help me take pictures of the house she said, "can you take a picture of me so I can see how pretty I am?"  OF COURSE I said yes. I mean, look at that face. And duh, she's right, she's beautiful. Now you all get to see that too! :)

I know that's a lot of information / pictures to process, so I 'm gonna stop here and just let everything sink in. I WILL be back in the next few days with a new post! I still have so much to show you guys!! In the mean time, I'm gonna go show this board and batten who's boss!! Tutorial to come!