A Few "Before" Pictures

It is always good to have a point of reference from which to see how far you have come. These are the bathroom "before":

These were taken before we bought the house, so all decorative accents are from the previous owners. The room is slightly odd-shaped, with one small section of wall that is set on a diagonal to the others, and the ceiling is quite high.

Brendan and the kids actually started the makeover project back in September, when they installed a new faucet, towel holder, and toilet paper holder. They are such good little helpers!

I hope to have my "after" pictures ready by the end of the weekend. Next up: the living room gets an overhaul. If you'll remember, it looks like this:

The wallpaper border has already come down, the thermostat has been moved (updated to programmable and removed from it's cage/lockbox), and remember, the decor belongs to the previous owners.

The fireplace has really pretty tile that we spent days scrubbing back to its former shine. We discovered the tile has a lot of light blue in it, so we're pulling the color for the living room from the tile.

The chair rail is not original and wasn't installed with supberb attention to detail: it was hung to high for any artwork to be displayed at the proper level for good viewing and the style of the trim itself does not blend well with the trim in the rest of the house. It feels like a belt cinched too tightly around the room's waist, if you can bend your imagination a little. I cannot wait to rip it out, repaint the walls, and polish the rich woodwork to a high gloss. Adding curtains and new light fixtures will really make it feel like the space we imagined when we first looked at the house.