My Parents House

This blog is really for my family who live out of state and want to see these pictures. The other 3 of you who might read this blog won't care. So you can skip it. I won't be offended.
 
When I was nine, I got a room in the basement of my house. I had been sharing with my 6 year old sister and my one year old sister upstairs. But my grandpas and parents worked really hard to finish the basement and create rooms for my brother and I. My room was all the fashion. It had 3 bright yellow walls and one wall had wallpaper of pink, yellow and blue flowers with green leaves. I loved it!

This is the only picture I can find in my room. This shows my lovely cat Pumpkin, my floral wallpaper and my matching bedspread that my Grandma Jamison made for me.

When I was in college over winter break, I took the wallpaper down and painted the walls an off-white color and put up a border.  I could not find a picture of that either. You didn't used to take pictures of every little thing in your life. Now I do and there are too many pictures.

Anyway- 20 something years later, this is what it looked like. It is still fine, but a little outdated.

Well, my parents are thinking about putting their house up for sale this spring. They are having  their upstairs painted. The basement was all painted a few years ago. But this room needed a little refresher.

We didn't take a proper "before" picture- but this is before we took the border down and painted. These shelves are normally FULL of books but we took them down to paint. We are readers in our family. We love it.

Anyway, the border came down in 45 seconds. Hallelujah! and we started painting. We went with white for the bookshelves, the trim and the closet doors, and a light grey for the walls.

This picture shows some of the grey paint and you can still see the "tan" color that was on the walls over by the plug. It looks yellow.

Tanner helped us. Oh, and I forgot to say that this was a birthday surprise for my mom. We did it while she was in Arizona meeting my new nephew Sammy.

Tanner did a great job. Joanna and I did not want pictures of us. Especially in our painting clothes.

And this is how it looked when she got home from her trip. Surprise! It will get new carpet too. But I liked my puke green carpet when I was nine. It was totally in style! 

So... update on the rest of the house. The upstairs bathroom was redone and updated. It was only 40 years old. It still looked great-  and blue.  So it got new tile

And a new counter. It looks fabulous.

This is the border that was in my parents bedroom. It is nice. But the whole house was getting painted, so it must come down.

It was terrible. Terrible, horrible, awful. It took hours to scrape off a three foot section. and the wall was very damaged. Yes we used the products sold in the hardware stores to loosen the glue. It did not work.  Finally we used HOT water and scrubbed it on. Lots of HOT water, and lots of scraping. That worked. It only took two hours or so to finish the last two walls.

Ok, the office never had a before picture. Or maybe my mom has one. I don't know. But this room was packed to the brim with stuff. It had all of the family pictures and family heirlooms. The closet had the bar taken out and shelves built in to stack boxes in it. On one wall were three large book shelves packed with books and photo albums. It had the old kitchen cabinets attached to the walls. That stored all the office supplies and stuff you accumulate over years of owning a house.  It had a heavy file cabinet with all the important papers that you gather throughout your life. AND it had the computer and stuff that goes along with that AND a sofa bed for when grand kids stayed over.

 This room alone took months for my parents to go through and pack up. These pictures are on one of the last days of getting the last things out.

You will have to zoom in to see the state of these walls. They needed a lot of repair before they could get painted. But they were behind bookshelves for years and we could not see it. This is probably 30 years of hanging lots of posters and pictures on the walls. At one time there was a shelving system on those walls, and kids are rough on stuff. I should know. I was a kid once ... and I have kids.

All that stuff made it out to the living areas.

 But it could not stay there forever because that room was getting painted too. So it all had to go into a shed, or our house for temp storage, given away, or sold.

 Jill's pink bedroom. Getting the stars off of the ceiling. They had probably been there for 20 years.

That was a pink room. Jill loved it when she lived there.

Getting the heavy sofa bed out of the office.

and down the stairs to a temporary location.

 Moving all the furniture to the middle of the room

 Taking down blinds, curtains, every picture, nail and everything off the walls.

My parents hired painters to come paint their whole upstairs. It is a good thing because it was enough work just to get ready for the painters. 

Day three of painting:

The walls were painted a light neutral grey with white trim. The walls actually look white until you see it next to the trim and then it looks grey.

The hallway

 The office

 The pink room

Carpet was taken out because there will be new carpet in those rooms and the room downstairs.

Painting was done and closets were finished. New doors and new rods and shelves

This weekend we went up to their house and got to see the new carpet.

"pink room"

office

 Downstairs room- new carpet.

Then we carried lots of furniture back to places where they should be. 

New office- it has a bed in it now to help buyers visualize it as a bedroom.

 The secretary looks great in here.

 "Pink" room with only one bed. It makes it look so much bigger.

 Closet!

I didn't get a picture of the Master with less furniture. But I will another time. In fact none of these pictures are very good. They are just meant to show you a little of how it looks at my parents house now. 

There is still a lot to do. But they will get there. Now all the stuff that has been put other random places will need to be put somewhere, but still keep the house looking ready to sell.I think they will put it up for sell at the end of March or into April.

New pictures coming when everything is done and ready to sell. If you know someone who wants an awesome house. Tell them to buy this one!