Life in a Fixer-Upper! Living in a Perpetual Work in Progress...and Puppy Pictures

We bought this house almost 3 years ago. It's a rambler/ranch house, about 2400 square feet built in 1983. Although the house wasn't abused, it was horribly neglected. But, we could see it was a diamond in the rough. It sits on 4 acres and has a barn and chicken coop. We also bought the other 2 lots next to it giving us a total of 12.6 acres. Behind us, is a 4,000 acre plantation that is supposedly owned by Marguerite Williams, the maven of the Maybelline fortune. Ted Turner also has a plantation near by. It is gorgeous around here! We can only see one neighbor to one side, and the neighbors across the street. It really is a piece of heaven on earth. The other lots are undeveloped, and the lot directly adjoining us has a large pond that was filled with huge catfish, brim, etc. I'll spotlight our changing pond in a future post. With the drought, it's more a puddle now.

Here is what we have done in the past 3 years!

BEFORE: These pictures were taken when we first were interested in the house. All "before" pictures were how the house (inside and out) looked before we moved in.

AFTER: Dave re-painted the house-the shutters are now black; new roof too! Dave also replaced all of the windows.

BEFORE: The roof before -- it was totally shot!

AFTER: That's me on top placing the grate over the chimney. Having a fear of heights--believe me, I was more scared than I look. The house painting had not occured yet, as you can see the green shutters.

BEFORE: Believe it or not, we had a full-sized utility lamp in our backyard! It would shine right into our bedroom at night--ugh! We asked the city to move it to our driveway in front of the house and they did! The pole had been in a patch of cacti.

AFTER: The cacti stand alone, and no more light coming through our bedroom window! Our backyard looks so much better!

BEFORE: This is one of the spare bedrooms. They used it for sewing, etc. The wallpaper was all ducks! Note the green carpeting. We replaced all the carpeting throughout the house before we moved in.

AFTER: Our movie room--actually our exercise room. Maybe to some, it's not much of an improvement! :-)

BEFORE: Another spare bedroom. The wallpaper is a fern/tree motif that actually I remember one of my friends having in her room when we were teenagers. Agh! Stefanie, Danny, and I spent forever trying to get the get the paper off the wall. The wallpaper throughout the house was pasted directly to the wallboard that had never been primed, painted, or textured. It was a mess (and still is in areas we haven't redone yet).

AFTER: A new and improved guest room. If you stay with us, this will be your space. Note that I have expanded to color. The wall is a deep burgandy and turned out very nicely!

BEFORE: The 3/4 bath off the kitchen.

AFTER: In this country house, we thought an old bathroom would be fun. Dave built the tank box himself and designed the old-fashioned water closet. We are still looking for the right shower curtain and window covering (this bathroom is at the front of the house)

BEFORE: This is a bonus room that is kind of odd. It's probably supposed to be the dining room since it is off the kitchen, but it's huge and very long, which leaves plenty of room for more stuff.

AFTER: Well, you either love it or hate it---the colors are roasted pumpkin and homestead gold. I absolutely love the gold, the pumpkin ended up being way more orange than the color chip indicated, so it took longer for me to love. Now I love it. It's bold, warm, and rich. The room still isn't completely done. I need to re-cover the old dining room chairs, hang up pictures and a few other odds and ends. We definitely need a new lamp over the table, but we haven't found one we like yet.

The room has a 5 foot diameter table with six chairs (note that one holds up the puppy gate right now--you can see glowing puppy eyes too), a pool table, a piano, a grandfather clock, and some additional seating. The lamp over the pool table is kind of fun.

The room really isn't as dark as these pictures depict.

BEFORE: The kitchen was really scary. Under the table, the floor and supporting beam were rotten! It would "squish" when you'd walk on it. Dave and good friend Ron Davis (he actually sacrificed a week of his vacation time to help Dave with this project! Thanks Ron!) gutted this room and replaced the rotten beam (not a small feat). Don't you love the old linoleum?! Dave put all the old cabinets out in his workshop in the barn.

The grease on this stove/range combo had to have been 2 inches thick! It was disgusting! Poor Danny, it probably scraped the most off of it so he could pull it out. The house actually smelled better when everything was pulled out of this kitchen. There were dead mice under the trash compactor--yuck!

AFTER: I love how this kitchen turned out. The cabinets are hickory--I love the knots and variations in color. The floor is ceramic tile (Dave and Danny laid it) and the countertops are a deep green granite. These pictures were taken before we replaced the refrigerator with a black one. The walls are a putty and deep barn red/burgandy.

BEFORE: The chicken coop was pretty pitiful. The coop is attached to one of the stalls of the barn so that the chickens have a place to sleep and lay eggs. We have about 27 chickens now and get anywhere from 6-19 eggs/day. We give them away to church members and co-workers. There's nothing better than fresh eggs from our chickens! Since I know what my chickens eat, I know they are healthy.

AFTER: Dave spent several weekends building this new coop, and Danny helped. He built it around the old one, and then removed the old one as he fortified the new. The chickens seem to be happy.

BEFORE: The chicken laying boxes in the barn stall.

AFTER: New private cubbies for laying. The chickens seem happier with this configuration. Sometimes I'm greeted by an oak snake in a box. At first they really bothered me, but they are harmless and non-aggressive (for the most part). I still look closely before I collect eggs, but the snakes are keeping the mice in the barn down. The mice make the barn stink, so I actually prefer the snake(s) as long as I'm not surprised by them.

BEFORE: Dave had 17 tons of crushed rock brought in to apply to our driveway. He had fun, pushing it around.

But, it wasn't all fun. We all had to push around the rock around with shovels and racks. Danny did manage to get a chance to play with the rented equipment (and so did I!)

The AFTER pictures are in the fence pictures below:

BEFORE: The front fence

AFTER: Dave put up a white vinyl fence. The company threw in the arbor for free.

Have I bored you yet?

Here are the projects currently in progress (pictures to be posted later):

1) Extending the back porch

2) Our master bedroom (to be started soon)

3) The main/guest bathroom (to be started soon)

and projects yet to be completed in the future: ENDLESS!

Oh, yes, here are some puppy pictures: