2008 - Beautiful Stair Case Rugs.

While shopping at JOANN one day in 2008, my mom and I stumbled upon a book that had a picture of a stair case with really cool rugs covering up the tops of the steps.  Of course, for the sake of making the project more interesting, the stairs had some really beautiful wood work on the edge of the stairs that I wish I could incorporate as well.  Sigh.  The real reason of this post was the idea of having something to cover up our beat up natural wood stairs.  They are simple to make and with all my mom's yarn that she had lying around, it was a fairly inexpensive rehab for my worn out stairs.

My mom agreed to work on the project with me and knocked five of the six stairs out for me.  She finished them and I got really excited about them and installed them on the steps.  I stapled them for extra security.  As you can see, the top stair is bare.  I didn't finish it.  Ever.  Several months later, my mom took the project home and finished the last stair.  I got about half way and didn't finish it.  I don't remember why I never did.  I think I messed the color pattern up and got upset about it and gave up on it.

As you can see, the second step is worn and ugly.  The first step is not any better.  I love how the rugs cover all that up and make it look so homey.  I put them all on in hopes that I would be inspired to get it together and finish my ONE rug.

Unfortunately, it sat under the television set waiting to be completed.  This was late 2008 before it made it to my mom's house to get finished.  Mid 2009 is before I finally installed it with the rest.  My mom ALSO made a larger one to fit the top step where the "All Things Grow With Love" rug (also made by my mom), but sits and waits (to this day) to be glued and now fixed after someone (dog or cat) chewed the yarn in one spot.

It is so funny seeing this picture as I sat on the couch taking it.  The living room doesn't even look like this anymore.  I just bought a new camera that day and was testing the quality.  Silly me.  Otherwise, I would have never taken this picture.  Number one, it's messy.  Number two, the subject is boring.  However, I do think it's a good visual of what the house looked like in 2008 and today so to speak, cluttered and messy.

2008 Repairs -- Our Bedroom

One of our main priorities before we moved into our new home was to get our ugly, splotchy grey bedroom in shape so we could have a good place to lay our head at night. It was small and quaint with lots of light and plenty of room for our queen sized bed.

This first picture was taken when we viewed the house for the first time.






My original 'worry' of this room would be the fact that the room had a stretched out carpet and a circle outlined in the paint where I feared a tree limb had crashed through the roof and into the wall. The previous owner had the roof patched up with different colored shingles from where a tree limb had fallen and damaged the roof. I digress as I will most likely every time I talk about the previous owner and their lack of ownership when it came to taking care of this house. Upon removal of their stuff, bed namely, was a huge crack that went from the corner of the window all the way down to the floor. It runs about two and half feet across. Just another unsightly reminder of our underlying foundation issue.

So, off to Lowe's we went to pick up a few supplies for fixing up our new bedroom. Paint, brushes, buckets, joint compound, painters tape, plastic sheeting, rollers, and misc. other supplies to get our new room back into shape. We left the carpet down while we worked and started with a good patch up of all the pin holes, cracks and gashes in the walls. Along with that, we covered all the outlets, ceiling, vents and switches with the blue tape.

After looking at the outline on the wall where I originally thought a tree limb had pushed through the wall, I discovered that they did a poor job of patching it up, had turned out to be where a head board used to be. The color of the walls was a mixture of light grey and dark grey speckled or sponged on all over it. Not very pretty. I wish I had a close up of how disgustingly, ugly it was.

While living in our apartment still, we came to the house after work to get what we could done before we had to make the final move over to official homeowners. We pretty much had two months to get everything transferred over and fixed to livable standards.

While the compound dried and looked awesome and smooth enough to paint, we hit up the trim in a light cream with two coats. The ceiling had its coat of paint and made it look nice and white, too. Then we used primer to cover all that depressing grey and patchwork we just made. The room had been transformed. We felt a sense of great accomplishment when we painted over that last bit of greyness. It was so beautiful.

In the meantime, my head board I purchased at Office Depot was sitting in the living room awaiting its base to be made. This head board was actually a really nice hutch that was sold separately from the matching computer desk. Another customer didn't need the hutch and someone had mentioned it would make a great head board in their bedroom, but never bought it, so I swept it up for real cheap and stuffed it into my tiny ION. I spent more money on the supplies to get the base built, but was impressed with my idea and grateful for my mom and dad's help on making it happen.

When we picked out colors for our room, it was a design element we wanted for our apartment we were moving out of. The theme was Asian based off of my brother's two photographs he took in Korea during his first visit. Other additions to this style was the two lights we purchased at Target and the four hanging origami crane decorations I made from some similar ones we saw at a local shop in Brookside. The back wall is a darker green and the three other walls are a calm lighter green accented with the creamy white trim. We bought two sample paint tins and I tested them out and was so happy with the colors.

I was eager to get to the house straight from work and get the things we needed done.

Next, the doors of the closet came off to be painted. I believe it took three coats. I should have sanded and primed them before using the nicer paint up. The same happened with the inside of the door to the room. We left the outside facing the hallway natural to go with the rest of the doors in the hallway.

The closet was no fun task either. It was dirty and dark inside there. We went with the darker green to use it up, as the one wall did not use much of the gallon at all. It makes it look bigger too.


Once we got all the paint its second coat throughout the room, we took off all the blue tape. The room was really looking pretty sharp. Our hard work was paying off.


Plug and vent covers were screwed back on and our cool new window shades installed.

Evan worked on replacing the switch on the fan to get it working.




My dad showed up for the fourth of July and helped us get some cleaning done around the house.







He also helped rip up the carpet and finish fixing that fan. We didn't know what we were doing.

Our handy new shop vac was really good at picking up our trash.

Later my Mom and Dad came back and helped fix up the head board base and lighting so the touch sensor would be reachable in bed.

Once I finished sanding and staining the base to match up with the head board, we installed it after we had moved our stuff in and started decorating.

~~VOILA!~~

June 2008 - Our Small Yellow House

Evan and I purchased our first house. Yay!

We've known each other since November 1999. Our first date was under the stars at Smithville Lake viewing the Leonids the night before my midterm freshmen art school final. Got married in Gatlinburg on top of an Appalachian Mountain in 2003.


This small house needs loads of work. Being that it needs loads of work, we got it for a decent price. I still, to this day, think we could of gone lower on the deal. Alas, Evan assures me we got a good deal. So I try not to 'worry' on such a thing. Lots of 'worrying' commenced once we bought the house.


The A/C unit was from the '70s. We replaced it in the fall of '09 after trying to keep it going. I think the repair guy kicked the condenser too hard and killed it. Whatever. I am glad we replaced the old thing. It was ugly and loud.
The roof was worn out and needing replacing. The inspector gave us an estimate of 2-3 years left on it. HA! It leaked that winter and we replaced it in the spring of '09.
The windows were old and some cracked. The main window in the living room cracked majorly the first winter and had it replaced the following fall of '09 along with our two bathroom windows after freezing from the poor insulation that gave way to drafty bursts of cold air while taking a shower at 4am in freezing temps in the middle of winter.

After moving in, we discovered a lot of new cracks and settlement throughout. We had a thorough inspection and even had the guys come back to double check on things before buying. However and knowingly, we still bought the house with such great foundation problems. *Sigh.* Ambition and hope drove us to keep going with this great deal we stumbled upon. The market was lacking with buyers with the failing economy and the incentive to get a $7500 interest free loan from the government to help with some costs on fixing up the house, we pushed on. (It was used to pay for our roof and windows. We will be paying it off for the next 15 years. Thanks Bush. If we waited another year, we could have gotten the $8000 new homeowners credit and not have to pay the government back. Lame.)

The water heater's thermocouple went out in February of '10 and we spent the night at a Holiday Inn up the road for Valentine's Day to get ourselves a hot shower and bought us a new one from Home Depot, whom had a local heating and cooling repair place come and install it. Evan tried his darnedest to get that thing going again. Would have worked too if the stupid replacement had the right type of screws. They screwed on the opposite from the way the Whirlpool one went on. After too many COLD showers in the dead of winter at 4 am, it was time to replace it.

The previous owner had paid for foundation repairs to have piers set up to hold up the house in the settling clay. (This clay proves a nuisance throughout our gardening woes as well. Gotta love the Midwest.) It cost her $15,000. The process destroyed all the landscaping around the west side of the house from the front door to the south side where the fire place is located. It was all a pile of dirt. My dad helped level out the dirt and make it slope away from the house so that the water draining from the house would seep back into the foundation and cause more problems. He did a good job. He got the grass mowed and trimmed with our electric mower and weed eater. Cleaned out our garage and helped tear out the carpet in our bedroom. Installed a garage door lifter and grilled some awesome hamburgers for us. He was a great dad.

Here's a bit of back history on why we were so eager to move into our small yellow house.

This house sits at the end of a no outlet street of which three other houses share and a small church that sits across with a small lot of land next to it. A right of way for power lines sits on the north side with the Ford assembly plant. (It is not viewable, but a little aromatic for my taste on days they are painting the F150s and Escapes. Those days are far and few in between. And it is a bit noisy, but I've grown to adjust to it with it being more of a white noise calmer.) The neighbor's house behind is set back a bit so it is not directly behind us, but more behind our neighbor next door to us on the south side. His house practically sits 30 feet away from ours. Our house is our first true bit of solitary after living in the art school's dorm rooms and the three apartments we've moved from. All every bit annoying and rambunctious with noisy people. Let alone being within ear shot of some stranger peeing like they just drank a gallon of water while you are trying to sleep. Blah. Not to mention the all the La guaracha sabrosona music blasting and vibrating the floor below you while you try to watch a movie or read a book. AHHHH! It drove me mad. I was ready to move. No holding back. This house spoke to me to move in and we made it a point to make that happen.

I had my doubts. I didn't want to move in after all the inspections and warnings from my dad. I didn't want to fall prey to the housing industry and be broke and fall into foreclosure. Evan assured me once again and said it was ours and we were meant to be here. So July 31, 2008, I turned in our keys to our apartment and the house was officially ours. That same day, Evan was laid off from his job.

Evan got a temporary job in the fall of '08 and was later laid off again in the spring of '09. During which his mom got really sick in December '08. Her cancer came back and her treatment for it knocked her off her feet so to speak. He spent a lot of traveling back and forth to Shreveport to help out which worked out for being out of a job as he spent a month in Shreveport taking care of her. She passed away on July 4th of '09. At the same, my dad got really sick with cancer as well and only after fighting it for a year, he passed away in March '10. I spent a lot of time helping out with him as my mom did her craft shows in the summer of '09. Our first three years have been rough after our initial move in.

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't all bad. We had good times in between all that sucky, crappy, terrible time. Evan's brother got married in Las Vegas in August of '08. His sister got married in May of '09. His mom was able to go to both. We had our camping trips, fishing, festivals, our cute puppy dogs, and best of all our family. There was and still is to this day, Flannigan's Right Hook. If it wasn't for their music. I don't know how I would have gotten through all the hardship.

Some how we survived. We persisted. We moved on.