The Before and the After of it.

This is the view as you come into the house.  

There is nothing more satisfying than taking down a wall.  

This particular wall belonged to a small bedroom that is now the dining room.  It had the added effect of giving a view of the window as you walk into the front door.  

It is always refreshing to have light ahead.

The room with the according doors is now the master bedroom.  

The new dinning room and a shot of the hallway.

The before picture.

The hallway picture towards the kitchen.

The before picture.  Note the very small electrical box in this photo compared to the one above.  It is such a small detail but represents brand spanking new electrical throughout the house.  

The dining room again.  

The same view with wall in place.

 This is my favorite place in the house.  It is unlike me, but I would love to do dishes here.  

The before view.

I am still surprised when I walk down the hall and glimpse the tile.  

I keep saying the house is so pretty.  Maybe I shouldn't use the word, but it fits.

  

The bathroom after.

The bathroom before.

These fifties houses had a lot of build in storage.  There was a closet you could access from the hallway.  We did take that one out so we would have a bit more room for the loo.  

The little bedroom.

 The little bedroom before and during renovation.

    When spring came around, I was surprised by all of the beautiful flowers popping up.  You could tell Mary, the previous owner, spent quite a bit of time planning and working on the garden.  The amazing thing, these flowers hadn't been tended in a while, yet they were effortlessly blooming for us.  The house was enjoying an extensive, yet painful, spa visit and bringing us flowers to show it's appreciation.

At least that is how I choose to see it.

Look at dad work away while I am busy snapping pictures of the poppies.  Typical Melissa. 

Thank you to the Adams' family.  Thank you Scott and the boys.  Thank you to Claude, Annie, and Marilyn and the Blackburn grant.  Thank you to my mom.

Especially and a thousand times, thank you dad.

Whew.  We did it.

The Little Brick House's Basement

This is the "before" picture of the basement without some low hanging pipes that we already removed.  I will say that this is a short little room.  

We build a wall on one side so we could contain all of the plumbing for the kitchen. 

Here is the room with the wall removed so you can see into the crawl space.  

This is the door that dad replaced.  This is dad looking at the door he replaced.

The room all sealed up with drywall.  

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We finally finished the house except for a small bit of rain gutter that I thought could wait until after the family vacation to Grandma's and Grandpa's house.  Well, I was wrong.  Utah Valley was hit by a crazy rainstorm the day we left and the day the house was listed.  Yep,  the day the house listed.  Because I didn't put that last few pieces of rain gutter up, it flooded the basement.

So as we were enjoying beautiful Oregon I was trying to arrange for clean up, etc.  Of course dad made everything work out until I could get home.

Loved this shot of Slade photo bombing the family photo.  

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When we got back to reality, dad worked on a cement curb to keep the water flowing in the right direction.

I got the "opportunity" to learn how to re-install carpet.  I found out that you can't do it without a carpet stretcher.  I tried to do it without but realize, again, my dad is always right.... you have to use the right tools.  I have heard that a time or two.  

Now we wait until someone wants to make this house their home.