House Progress

  As I mentioned in my previous post, my parents arrived in the evening on Christmas. We are so excited to have them here, but unfortunately this visit isn't a fun vacation. They came down to help us with our house. Before they got here, we were able to clean out most of the junk, remove carpet, clean one bathroom, and clean the stairway, hallway and most of the downstairs walls. We went over the day after Christmas and unloaded their supplies. That afternoon my parents finished cleaning the walls in the bedrooms.
  Since their arrival my WONDERFUL, AMAZING and AWESOME parents have done more on the house in 3 days than we would have been able to do in probably a week!! It's hard to get much done when you have 4 kids in tow, one of which needs two naps a day and Daniel has to be to work at 4pm. Not to mention the fact that it's almost a 30 minute trip between our apartment and our house, so running back and forth wastes a LOT of time. Anyway, we are VERY, VERY grateful to my mom and dad and all the work they have done. We will never be able to thank them enough!!!!!
  In the past 3 days this has been accomplished at the house: floors cleaned and KILLZed, baseboards removed, wall holes mudded, door trim removed when needed and repaired when needed, blinds removed and some cleaned, all bedrooms painted, hallway and stairway painted, family room painted, master bathroom cleaned, ceilings painted and kitchen walls/doors/cabinet doors cleaned. Upstairs, the light fixtures need to be replaced, doors need to be painted, blinds need to be cleaned and rehung and bathrooms need to be painted. Downstairs we still need to paint the kitchen/dining room (unless they did that after we left tonight), clean kitchen counters and inside of cabinets, clean out vents and air returns REALLY well, do floors in the kitchen/dining room, paint laundry room and paint the living room. We have ordered carpet and it will be installed within 7 business days. Things are coming together nicely, and it already looks like a totally different house! Here are some pictures of the progress so far:

This is the room at the top of the stairs, which will eventually be Erik's room. He wanted green, so we chose this lighter green that will work for either a boy or girl, baby or older kid. I love how it turned out!

This is Lily's room, that used to have clouds around the top. The clouds weren't just painted on, they were almost like plaster or something. We tried chipping them off and sanding them. Nothing took them completely off, so we just sanded as best as we could and painted over them. You can still see them a bit, but we will figure out a way to disguise them more.

This is the hallway at the top of the stairs, looking into the master bedroom. We painted our room, the upstairs hallway, stairway and entire downstairs the same color: soft suede. I absolutely LOVE how it looks. It's a very warm color, which is exactly what I wanted.

My dad and uncle painted the hallway and stairway. They used the long roller to paint as far onto the two-story high living room walls as they could reach. We are renting scaffolding to paint the rest of the upper living room walls.

Looking into the master bedroom with the closet door back in the left corner.

Standing in the master bedroom, looking toward the bathroom.

Looking toward the master closet, with the hallway to the left of the door against the wall.

This is Erik and Drew's room. This is the room that was bright yellow with the tractors around the top. Drew kept saying he wanted a blue room, so we found one that wasn't too dark and had a bit of gray in it. Although, if he would have had his way it would have been a bright, royal blue. :)

Looking out into the hallway from the boys' room. That's the door to the master bedroom in the hallway.

Looking into the family room.

Dad got the yucky job no one else wanted: edging along ceilings and trim along windows, sills, etc.

The stairs look 100 times better without the carpet! Alex loves climbing up and down because he can hold on to the spindles. It's great! In the background you can see the kids have been "living" in the living room while we work.

As I mentioned before, my parents have been LIFE-SAVERS! My aunt and uncle have helped as well! We have to be out of our apartment by January 22 and we haven't even started packing yet! We were waiting until we had somewhere to take boxes so they weren't just stacked in our living room. We also have to clean the apartment. Don't forget that baby girl is due January 29! I guess now it's time to start taking bets as to whether or not we'll be in the house before she decides to join our family!!