The Living Room

As the living room was the most dramatic change I'll talk about it first. The first things to get tossed out were the curtains and the curtain rod. They hadn't been cleaned in years and were disgustingly full of dust and dirt. We ripped out the baseboards and tore up all the carpeting. My favourite thing to get rid of in this room was the 70's paneling that he had painted "Maple Leafs" blue. The paneling was glued over the drywall so it made quite the mess of the drywall. We tried peeling off all the glued parts but found it was more effective to sand down the glue so we could paint over it. We also had a glass window replaced from old yellow glass to clear glass. That made a huge difference in how bright the living room was. We also got rid of the drywall valances over the windows which has helped to open up the room. We installed new baseboards, painted the trim, and installed new light fixtures and plugs and switches....Gorgeous!

BEFORE

AFTER

A month and a half later

Wow, it's hard to believe that life is getting back to normal after the "renovation workout". The month of June was NUTS! I'm going to have to do a room-by-room replay to actually mention everything that we have done to the house to date.

The house has gone from being a Maple Leafs shrine to a wonderful place to live.The maple leafs memorabilia is GONE. It is all packed up and ready to send off to a few friends who want it. The walls have gone from tacky blue to tasteful green, the carpets are gone and we have installed laminate flooring. The light fixtures have been changed and the house is CLEAN. No more of his dog hair or yuckky bugs lying around. The house now smells nice and not like a wet dog. The animals and kids have adjusted well to the move. The dog and the kids LOVE their back yard and our back deck is a little piece of heaven. We can't wait to get the family room downstairs completed so the kids have a place to play and watch television without being underfoot.


Most of our things are unpacked now except for the stuff that will be going into the family room. Once that is done I vow to get rid of all the boxes and refuse to have any more items in boxes except for the usual seasonal items. We still have a ton of work to do but the house is shaping up beautifully. I'm proud to call it "our home".