
Image Credit: CNN Money
As promised, here’s an update on our home improvements!
It’s hard to believe that I published the post titled Getting Personal #23: Home Ownership in June 2016. Our house has come a long, long way since then!
While planning this post, I quickly realized that I didn’t take a lot of “Before” photos!
I think I mentioned in a previous blog post that most of our house was carpeted, but we knew there was hardwood floor underneath. Lucky for us, the hardwood was in great shape. It had been protected by the carpet, in a way.
The week before we officially moved in, we hired a local man and his company to refinish the floors in the living room, all four bedrooms, and the hallway that connected the bedrooms. They were fabulous. They got the job done in four days, and the floors still look amazing more than a year later!
Bathrooms
We have two bathrooms upstairs, and one half-bath downstairs. We replaced two of the toilets last year, and all three match now. Eventually, we want to repaint them, and get the blue carpet out of the guest bathroom. For now, we’re happy all of the plumbing works!

We hardly did anything with the three bathrooms, at least for now. In two of them, we added these metal shelves. This is our guest bathroom – Stocked and ready for visitors!
Guest Room #1

There was wood paneling on the outer walls in three of the four bedrooms. When we took the paneling down, there were secret messages behind them! It was like a treasure hunt.

This bubblegum pink wall was in the bedroom across from our master suite. It took us almost a full day to get all the lattice-style wood off the wall and patch all the nail holes!

After we removed the blinds, the paneling, the wood, and the nails, this was before we painted it.

The room is a bit of a mess at the moment, but we want this to be our game room. We painted the walls with “Monorail Silver.”
Guest Room #2

This is the other guest room. The far wall had dark wood paneling. This was before we painted.

We have my futon in there now, but we eventually want to put our current queen size mattress in there, once we get our king size bed for our room. We painted the walls with “Monorail Silver.”

This was a project that we just finished. My parents found this chest of drawers on the street in their neighborhood. It was originally covered in black enamel paint. Al labored for a long time, stripping the paint and sanding it. After Al primed it. we picked a complimentary color to the walls, and Al did most of the work! The only other thing to do is to upgrade the hardware of the drawers.
Al’s Man Cave

The far wall also had wood paneling. This is before we painted Al’s man cave.

This is Al’s man cave now. He painted the walls with “Storm Cloud.”
Master Bedroom

This is part of our master bedroom – I took the photo while standing in the doorway. This room used to have red shag carpet!

This is our master suite at the moment – A little messy. We painted the walls with “Storm Cloud.” We’re hoping to get actual blinds for the windows this weekend!
Living Room

This was how we initially set up our living room. This room had pink / mauve carpet, white walls, and massive valances on brackets above the windows. We painted three walls “Reflection Gray,” and left the far wall white (We are going to make that one the accent wall).

This is our living room now. We moved the couch back a bit, added blinds to the windows, upgraded to an actual TV stand, moved Al’s nightstand upstairs, and added my end tables from my apartment. We want to get some curtains for the windows, and a larger area rug.
Laura Beth’s “Lady Lounge”

I only have a “Before” photo. I’m excited to turn this space into my office, my library, and put my American Girl dolls on display! We painted these walls with “Reflection Gray.” This space will start to be transformed tomorrow!
That’s all I have right now. Look for Part 2, coming soon!
What have you done to improve your home?
Until the next headline, Laura Beth 🙂
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You’re doing amazingly.
Thank you!
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