Before and After

This has been a fairly productive summer for improving things around the house. Although, there is still much to do!

This was in our laundry room around the ceiling . . .

Before:

Since it was done with a stencil I knew if I painted over it the shape would still show through, so I went and scraped all the edges of the the stars and primed them. Also notice all the storage: baby, Christmas and craft stuff.



Its hard to tell in these pictures, but this is the new paint. Its the same color as most of the rest of the house (that we already painted last summer, here, here, and here). It is a lighter color so the room doesn't feel so small.

And all the storage made its way into the new attic storage space.

After:

Then a couple weeks ago, while I was at Home Depot getting a few things to finish up decorating Zac's room (which probably won't be done for another month or so . . .) I decided I was going to get some light fixtures. We have been wanting to replace them since we moved in, and just kept putting it off. The dining room fixture was especially outdated (I couldn't thing of another word that wasn't so . . .rude).

Before:


After:

The best part about this is I surprised Jon! He didn't even know I was buying it. I installed it all by myself!! It took me about 2 hrs and a bit of stress praying that I had turned off the right breaker! He was so excited about it! And I am sure the best part for him was that he didn't have to install it! (Sorry about all the "!" it was just so awesome.)

Then I replaced the one over the kitchen. It had a dome on it, but I forgot to take a picture, so this is half way through



After:

This is a bigger fixture too, so it has another light bulb. The lighting is sooooo much better in these 2 rooms! Although the family room is still pretty bad . . .still trying to figure out what to do there. . .

Then I replace the one in the guest bathroom. I don't have a before pic of these either. But it was bad too!! This one was more tricky because the previous fixture was a large wooden rectangle. So I had to paint under the old fixture. And notice the stripes? That is different paint, same color, different sheen. And then the hole for the wiring was not centered so that was a trick to mount the fixture-but it all worked out. Again, I did this while Jon was at work and surprised him again. He was pretty impressed. It was something he was definitely NOT looking forward to having to do.

After:


Then I stained and water sealed the picnic table that my dad made for us when we moved in.

Before:


After:
It looks sooo much better!!

I did all those light fixtures and table in one week. I was on a roll and it felt so good to accomplish all that! And since it was "out of my realm" it felt even better!

Last weekend we did even more improvement . . .which I will include on a different post.