We did it! Here's our virtual tour.

Our house officially goes on the market this weekend. We've owned this home for four years and have put a lot of work in maintaining and updating it, so it's well-cared for! We've replaced all of the flooring in the whole house, replaced all of the bathroom sinks & vanities, replaced all the lighting, freshly painted all the walls, and replaced a number of appliances (furnace, refrigerator, and washer & dryer).

It's in a beautiful location, right on the Bear Creek Open Space with easy access to the Bear Creek Trail (just walk down the block, and you're there!). We have great neighbors, and our HOA takes good care of maintenance and updates, too (our exterior is actually being repainted this week!). They handle all the yard work, including watering, mowing, and shoveling. Whew!

Lakewood is just west of Denver. This home is in Jefferson County, which is nicknamed the "Gateway to the Rocky Mountains." We're a short drive (or bike ride!) away from Bear Creek Lake State Park. We're just a 15 minute drive from Red Rocks Amphitheater & Park and Mount Falcon State Park, and we're less than half an hour's drive from Lookout Mountain Park and Lair 'O the Bear State Park! This house is perfect for a nature lover and someone who wants quick access to the state's beautiful parks and mountains.

You can check out the virtual tour of the house here:

http://tours.tourfactory.com/tours/tour.asp?t=1005184

If you're in the market, then please stop by the open house this Saturday & Sunday afternoon. You'll find more details in the virtual tour I linked above.

Thanks for checking it out!

Home Improvement: Living Room

Here is our finished living room.

Almost everything in this room has been replaced since we moved in nearly four years ago. The front door was really old and rotten, and parts were held together with packing tape! We replaced it a couple of years ago, a generous gift from Andrew's parents. I painted the room a natural green color called "Witch Hazel." We pulled out all of the old, icky carpeting from this room, and Andrew and my parents replaced it with laminate wood flooring. The floor was a housewarming gift from my parents, so we really lucked out in some of these expenses. My mom helped me install new baseboards to replace the old, fake-wood ones. We hung new curtains, and I bought a new floor lamp from IKEA.

Here's a before and after photo that shows the old room color, old door, and old carpet.

Planter Gardening

Our HOA replaced our front lawn with a xeriscape. Because the climate is so dry in Colorado, it's impossible to maintain a lush lawn without daily watering. Many people have replaced their front lawns with xeriscaping, which is basically done with decorative patterns of rocks and drought-resistant shrubs and plants. Xeriscaping always looks very naked when it's first placed, but, when it grows in, it can be quite beautiful. It takes time to get used to it, but people are starting to appreciate it more because it's so much better for our state and our scarce water resources. You can see some examples of xeriscapes here.

Well, ours is so new that the plants haven't fully grown in yet, and it looks bare. I added a few planters of flowers and borrowed a bench from my mother-in-law to help fill the space. I filled my oak barrel planter with petunias and snapdragons, and then I bought an already-filled planter from the Home Depot to fill the corner by our stoop. It makes a big difference, and hopefully it will be more appealing to potential buyers! This is their first impression of our home, after all.

Here's my little garden helper:

Home Improvement: Stairwell

Andrew's an outdoorsy kind of person, and we like having a little "nature" in the house. You can't really see the detail very well, but the glass in our new light has a light leaf design in it.

We also chose this wall sconce from Lowe's with the leaf design.

Here's the finished stairwell! All of the changes we did included replacing the outlets and outlet covers from brass to white, painting the walls, putting on new handrails, putting in new flooring (including the carpet), adding new trim, scraping off the popcorn ceilings, and updating the light fixtures.

New Carpet!

We finally, finally got new carpet yesterday! When we moved into our house, there was a powder blue carpet that wound from the entry way, through the living room, up the stairs, and into both bedrooms. It was a outdated, but that wasn't the big problem. It had a faint smell of dog pee (better than cat pee!). It also had numerous stains and large bleach stains in places.

We removed it entirely from the downstairs when we put in our laminate wood floors. Of course, it had to be replaced everywhere else, but we kept putting it off. What's the point in getting new carpet when we were about to have a baby? Babies spit up and poop everywhere! So we waited. And waited.

I cleaned the carpet a number of times with a carpet cleaner. It helped with the smell, but, on rainy days, you could get a whiff in the air. It was so unsightly that we almost never had anyone go upstairs.

Now that we're planning on putting our home on the market, we couldn't put it off any more. Carpet was more expensive than we'd thought, but it had to be done. We went with the second estimate (Carpet Exchange). They did a really good job with the install, and I love the new carpet. I only wish we'd done it a little sooner so we could have lived in the house long enough to get some use out of it!

Here's a photo of our room looking very spiffy with the new carpeting. There's something else new in our bedroom, too. My friends Aminta and Olivia went with me to Whimsy Paint & Sip yesterday with some vouchers from Living Social. We had a blast, and I got a new piece of artwork for the house!

My painting:

Kitchen Updates

Here are our before and after photos of the kitchen. Some of the improvements were made a while ago, but the lighting in the kitchen is brand new.

Blog Absence (Plus Dining Room Photos)

Andrew and I have been working nonstop all week. The kids have been mostly entertaining themselves, and we've eaten take-out more than we ever have since having kids. I'm sure the kids now hate home improvement projects. We're meeting with our real estate agent on Saturday, so our workload won't slow down until then. My blog entries will be pretty sparse (and mostly about home improvement) for a little while longer.

Here are some updated dining room photos that show off our hard work. We started scraping off the popcorn ceiling last Saturday. Popcorn ceilings can have asbestos, so be sure to get your ceiling tested before tackling a project like that. Plus, it's a huge mess. Dust is still settling in our home.

Early in the week, we did patching and repairs to the ceiling. Andrew's friend came over to help us finish spackling and priming. We textured the ceiling, painted it, and then repainted the walls near the ceiling. My dad is an electrician and came over to hook up our fan and other new lighting.

We used to have a sliding back door and replaced them with French doors a few months after we moved in. The door was busted, and we were trying to install a new handle to fix it when the glass shattered. This is the only photo I have of the old flooring, old floor grates, and old back door. The flooring wasn't installed well. There were large gaps in between the boards, and it was laid over the existing flooring. There's my late, great dog, Bailey. I miss that old girl!

When we got the French doors installed, I thought they were pre-primed and painted them. After a few months, the paint started peeling. Last week, I finally got around to removing all the paint, priming them, and repainting them. Like I said, we've been busy!

Our New Toilet

The top photo is our new toilet, and the bottom is the old one.

Andrew and I have a new toilet! Haha, it's funny what's all exciting when you're a home owner. Really, though, it's quite the improvement. The last toilet ran all the time, used gallons of water to flush, and was really (really) gross. I don't think the last owners were fans of cleaning their toilets, to be honest.

We removed the last toilet, and the last floor, and the last baseboards, and the last sink & cabinet. We also removed the toilet paper holder because it was crazy-crooked.

Since then, we've gotten the new floors in; we put in the new, thicker baseboards; and, today, my dad installed our new toilet. It's so exciting! Once we get the piece we need, we'll put in the sink, add the mirror and towel ring, hang a few photos, and call it good!

Moving In

Here is the "before" picture of our front door and living room wall:

Here is the after photo:

We're moved into the new townhome! There's still about half a dozen boxes to unpack, but it's definitely starting to feel like home.

Andrew and I went to work right away! We moved in on the evening of Wednesday, July 15 with the help of our parents and family friend, Taylor. The following day, my mom was off work and stayed at our place for the afternoon. She waited for the cable guy and cleaned the carpeting in our bedroom.

That weekend, Andrew taped and primered over the hot pink wall in the bedroom. Let me just say, that's no exaggeration. The wall was hot pink. Then, he helped me tape the rest of the walls (he taped high, and I taped low), and my mom and I painted all the walls a bright yellow. I thought it would contrast nicely with our dark furniture and navy headboard. We traded the fabric drapes for some white mini-blinds, and my dad replaced all the outlets and switch covers in the room. That Sunday, we moved the furniture in. Rather, the three of them moved all the bedroom furniture in while I worked on unpacking boxes.

Next, we moved on to the living room! Andrew removed all the old window coverings that I didn't like. They were straw and over-sized and very dirty. He then primed and painted the purple wall. I had so much fun picking the color for the living room and finally settled on a color called "witch's hazel," which is a very earthy green. It looks nice against the stone fireplace and the new white outlets. I then painted the door with a fresh coat of paint, which did wonders because the door was so dirty and had purple squares painted on it. My mom took me out and bought me some new drapery that's a little darker than cream and looks pleasant against the walls.

Our next project is the main bathroom. I've stripped the wallpaper border from the room (thanks to my coworker Tonette who told me I could just use hot water to remove it!). Andrew pulled up the floor. Well, the first layer, anyway. There's still another layer to go! I think we're going to wait on that until it's time to replace the floor. Our parents are both wonderful... my mom and dad are treating us to a new floor throughout the first floor of our townhome, and Andrew's parents just bought us a new washer and dryer (to be delivered August 15).

We're definitely working hard. I have a constant "to do" list in my mind that Andrew thinks has a lot to do with my nesting instincts. They might be strong, but I'm waiting to do the nursery until I can't stand it anymore! I think that's going to be the most fun room to do (after the bathroom maybe ;-) ).

I might add, we're very grateful for the first-time homebuyer's grant. It's allowing us to do a lot of work in our new place :)