World, meet house.

I guess we should start from the beginning. In 2004 I bought THIS:

I know what you are thinking.... "That's not so bad."  Oh, but wait! Here are some photos from when I toured the house. Please note these are NOT my furnishings! This is when the previous owner lived there.

No, it's not 1985.... it's 2004. I promise! But I'm not sure anyone else in this house knew that:

How about a dining room? Or.... a den? What in the world IS this room?

Grapes anyone?

This still makes me laugh. Here is the "master" bedroom:

Think that's bad? How about the "master" bath attached to it? (Oh yes, it gets worse!)

Kid's room. Can't really make fun of this one..... I mean, come on, it's a kid's room!  That door lead to the jack-and-jill bathroom, also known as the "master" bathroom. That's right, the master bathroom had a door into the kid's room! (Sneak peak into the future - it's not there anymore!)

 

How about the guest room? This might have been one of the least ugly rooms in the house when I bought it. But how about that light fixture, folks?

I saw a lot of potential here. (This photo was taken after I took possession and had the house professional CLEANED!)

Guest/Hallway bath. I have no words for that pink toilet. None. (And I am rarely speechless!)

Now that you have a good feel of what the upstairs looked like, I shall break your heart in telling you that I do not have any "before" photos of the basement. I know, I know! SHAME on me! If I remember correctly, the homeowner was there and hanging out downstairs, so we felt weird about snapping away while he sat there watching television. Let me just promise you that it was WORSE than the upstairs. We'll meet aspects of that in future posts.... but let me paint you a mental picture:  Crayola green carpet with about 30 year of DIRT on it in half the basement, and some kind of garage floor coating on the other half. (The house originally had a small basement and a two car garage - genius former owner made it a one car garage with a larger basement and apparently decided not to update the flooring.) Concrete smeared on the walls for "texture." Barn doors for the laundry room (painted sage green like the outside shutters, might I add). Oh, it was bad! (Shutters!)

And now that you know "the house" I think we can safely move on with this DIY journey together....