Last fall my husband did a super crazy thing and posted our house, which we'd only lived in for two months, on a rental website for weekend games or other short term rentals. He figured we'd just vacate and go see the grandparents for the weekend, making a little money while we were away.
Translation: Let's do all the work on our house that would usually take us approximately 6 years in like 6 weeks. Well, we didn't get it all done, but we scrambled to get the necessities, like, well, a bed for our room (our mattress was on the floor) and a working coffee maker and lots of towels.
I was full of anxiety. For many reasons. Namely, all the work and then relinquishing of control of my home to strangers. But it went well. We made some money. We did it again last spring for graduation weekend. They left us a nice note telling us what a blessing it was to spend time together (multiple families had stayed here) and how grateful they were.
So I was in. This past weekend we rented our house for the first time this football season and we've got two more scheduled in October. Friday we were down to the wire. We needed to be out by 3 p.m. but we finished everything and I had just a few minutes to take a few shots of the house all cleaned up and free of the mess of our life. The photos are in a word, terrible, considering I photograph interiors professionally, but I was pressed for time and dead on my feet. Sorry to make excuses but I can't help it.
For fun I dug up the photographs I took of this house before we even put an offer on it. We were here in May of 2011 checking it out and I snapped some quick shots that day too. So here are some fun before and after shots.
This is the family room that I decorated after buying these couches on craig's list. Starting with chartreuse couches is not my normal place to begin but it is a favorite room.
This summer I painted the atrocity that was the kitchen...I didn't even want to come and look at this house because of the yellow and green outdated nastiness of it all. But I'm actually pretty outdated and nasty most of the time so I guess somewhere in my heart I loved the house anyway.
This was the dining room. On the other side of this wall is the kitchen. We took out this wall. Unfortunately this is the best photo I have of the wall before we took it out. A big thanks goes to my dad and brothers in law who reinforced the load bearing wall with a beam last summer. (We took it out before we moved in.)
I was very preoccupied with the ugliness of the kitchen. I took lots of close ups of the cabinets. Here are some more after shots for those of you who care... There is much more to be done such as additional painting and molding but whatever...
And lastly, to keep it real, this is a closet off the laundry room that I claimed as my mom space. I keep all my school supplies in it and it's been great. This is what it looked like before we moved in and also what it looked like Sunday afternoon when we got home and I needed something in there...
I keep it as clean and organized as possible, but for the rental, we put a lock on the door and use it to throw all our clutter and last minute junk inside. Laundry baskets, the dollhouse, other large toys, etc. Your daily mess has to go somewhere!
When I took the before pictures (above) in May when we were thinking about this house I came back home and took this photo of Juliet and her brothers on the same day. When I see photos like this I get that achy feeling in my chest. Jimmy said it best the other day when he asked me if I ever feel like I love them so much it hurts. Yes, yes, and yes.
1 comment:
Love love love! We need to visit each other's houses more often. Yup.
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