Saturday, April 05, 2008

A Few Before and Afters



We've put in some long hours. Here are just a few before and after shots. This bathroom had a huge hole in the wall that had to be fixed. We now have a new place for our duckies. (There's a story behind the tons of duckies we collected in MN. John helped a large promotion for several years in Willmar to raise money for the local United Way doing a duck derby. We now have a collection of duckies that makes a cute bathroom motif.)

This is the master bathroom. We had to replace the floorboards due to rot and mold. Looks a lot better now.Here's the kitchen after we replaced the ceiling, floor, and painted. There was water damage on the ceiling and a bad repair job to try and hide it. We put back the original lighting in all the rooms but we will slowly replace them as we're able to. The kitchen island and refrigerator were bought off of Craig's list and picked up by Tracy and his handy horse trailer.



This is the dining room. A little paint goes a long way in improving the look. We painted over the wallpaper on the bottom with Kilz. There was a very fowl odor in this room left by a cat marking it's territory. We bleached and painted over the floor with Kilz to get rid of the smell.


Although this picture doesn't look so bad, this is our biggest dilemma right now. The floor is bowed in the middle which caused the tile to be broken beyond repair. We tore it out only to find bigger problems lurking beneath. We've been advised to rip it down even more to see if it's a joist problem or a major house settling problem. For now, this is the look we will have. Carpet and linoleum scraps covering the floorboards.

6 comments:

Rachel said...

Thank the Lord for Craig's List! I really hope and pray that your floor problem is merely cosmetic. Are there any other problems of that sort anywhere else in the house?

Great Job Nielsens! (And anyone else who was able to help them) The afters look GREAT!

John and Cheryl Nielsen said...

Hi Rachel! We had many flooring issues where the boards were actually sticking up and had to either be removed or nailed and glued down. It's been an interesting adventure.

Anonymous said...

You are doing good job!!!

When can we visit? :-)

Kameron & Teresa Kuehl said...

Congrats on the house and a place to call "home."

Looks great! It's amazing what a little bit of paint can do...not to mention all the other work put into it. ;)

John and Cheryl Nielsen said...

Stop in whenever you want. You are always welcome. As a matter of fact, come over tomorrow (Tuesday) night if you would like to be in on the spiritual cleansing of the house.

Anonymous said...

Looks wonderful!! Enjoy your new home. Hope there is no major problems under the floor. Homeownership is always interesting isn't it?

Laurie & Rod