Homeward Bound

Well Blogfans, in case you haven't heard the news, Jared bought a house that (now) looks like this:

It's unfortunate that it's so difficult to photograph entire rooms, because these pictures hardly convey the amount of work that has been (and will continue to be) going on in this house. There are too many projects to put in one post, but I'll start with one that was a major concern: the sloping cement floor.

We pulled up carpet, padding, tack boards and trim, scraped adhesive, and convinced one of the brilliant operations employees from the zoo to come measure the uneven spots with a laser level

Then Jared ground down the exposed cement and built up twenty little mounds to mark how far up each low spot on the floor had to be raised. Our savior from the zoo, plus my mechanically-gifted brother-in-law and an extremely generous friend of Jared's spent several hours mixing, pouring and smoothing what turned out to be over 4,000 pounds of cement!

There aren't any good "after" photos yet because the room, even though it is now carpeted and full of furniture, isn't really set up. We aren't quite to the "after" stage yet.

Another project that was rather time-sensitive was the hall bathroom, which needed to be in working order for us to live in the house, since it would become our primary bathroom. It started out looking rather shabby, with some strange safari wallpaper border, a lazy paint job (they didn't paint near the door trim and also neglected to paint near or around the mirror).

Additionally, Jared found that the caulking in the shower was...insufficient. Unless you really want a removable soap dish. And rotten drywall.

After some intensive scraping with a putty knife, (and some help from Jared's hard-working mother!) we eventually removed all of the hideous wallpaper as well as the caulk. The joints in my hands did not thank me. Here is the room with the new paint job, soap dish and complete re-caulking:

Okay, so the photos don't look like we're transforming the house quite the way I FEEL like we're transforming the house, but they're all I've got. Trust me, we're working hard.