House Makeover, Before and After

House Makeover, Before and After

The Padres bought a house. The first time we went to see it, the previous owners still hadn’t quite moved out, and it was a perfect pit of chaos and grime. The floors looked like they hadn’t been washed in months, if not years, the walls were painted garish, uneven colors, and the smell was unpleasant at best.

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They must have loved color, because the entry was blue, the kitchen red, the bedrooms chocolate brown, purple, and hot pink with a black closet, and the bathrooms baby blue and lavender.

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Now, I love color as much as (probably more than) the next person, but I prefer my painting to be done neatly and not in misshapen streaks, with patches up onto the popcorn ceiling. Also, hot pink and chocolate brown? Not so much.

We had our work cut out for us.

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The first step was tearing down. This is the fun part, where you can quickly see the progress. The Padres didn’t need four bedrooms, but did need a big living room for all of us, so we tore down the walls for the first bedroom, making it part of the living area.

The cupboards came out, many layers of linoleum were scraped up, and wood paneling came down.

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Finally the work was mostly done, and moving day came. There were still a few details to finish such as crown molding (as you’ll see in the pictures), but the house was definitely livable. With the muscular team of workers pictured below, everything was quickly hauled over and cleaned and arranged.

The kitchen has granite countertops and so many drawers I’m perfectly green with envy. It also has two pantries, the perfect size for tucking yourself into along with a friend for a “pantry talk”.

The dining room corner has big windows, and room enough to spread the table to its max, making space for all the vicious scrabble players and puzzlers in my family. (If you don’t think scrabble can be vicious, you’ve never played with Philip.)

There’s also a third bedroom which isn’t pictured, that serves as a guest room/storage.

We collected there for Thanksgiving, promptly filling the house with kids and food and crumbs and music and chaos. It was wonderful.

Just when we thought it couldn’t be nicer, Micah came around the corner holding his phone up. “Everybody say ‘Hi’ to Philip,” he said. “He’d love to be here today.” As we all waved vigorously at the camera, suddenly Philip appeared right beside it, fresh from Honduras, when we thought we wouldn’t see him for several more months. Our jaws dropped. There may have been screams and tears. Philip likes to say the floor was so wet with tears he fell and broke his hip.

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It was the best Thanksgiving ever.

Now that I’ve properly chased down that bunny trail, let me get back on subject and show you a few before and after pictures, so you can see the magnitude of the transformation. Here we have the kitchen…

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The master bathroom…

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One of the bedrooms…

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And the living room.

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Didn’t the Padres do a lovely job? It’s wonderful to have them living in a bright and roomy place again, and I look forward to many Sunday evenings there with vats of popcorn and wild Scrabble games.

 

P.S. This is the 100th post on Striped Pineapple. Isn’t that exciting?

8 thoughts on “House Makeover, Before and After

  1. Wow! A year after you wrote this, I finally saw your parents house! It’s beautiful! And yes, I could live in there with all those kitchen cupboards!

  2. This is incredible!!!! I love this transformation. The kitchen in particular has me all . It’s beautiful.
    Also, I like that we get a peek into your family weekend. I like you people. Phillip surprising you guys still makes me so so happy.

  3. One of my favorite posts of yours in a long time. Partially because I enjoy remodeling so much, partially because I like all the people in the pictures so much and partially because I’ve been wanting to see pictures of the kitchen I had a small part in choosing. And “vats of popcorn” got me like .

  4. It is all so very, very lovely! I *need* a wild Scrabble game with Philip, and I can’t ever read about his surprising you all without tears. Can’t wait to visit again!

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