Paint Me Shabby: New Year, New Home, NEW POST!

Where to start? So much has changed since my last post. We sold our house and bought a new one. Well not new, but new to us! This house had some serious issues, it was a HUD house so that's basically worse than a foreclosure. It had been vacant for 2 years and had so much water damage inside that I was a little more than worried about what we would find when we started gutting it. It also had most of the siding missing on one side on the house. All of these issues aside, when we first came to look at it I instantly fell in love with it! I saw so much potential. This house was just begging for someone to love it again and make it pretty. We knew this was going to be a huge undertaking and so much work but we knew we wanted this house.

I'll fast forward through the drama of submitting an offer to the government agency that is HUD and the pain in the neck everything was, and how amazingly stressful it is not to know how much $$ to offer and being afraid that your offer would be too low. You cannot counter offer, you go in with your highest price and pray that it beats out all of the rest. BLAH BLAH BLAH! When our offer was accepted I wont lie, I was scared! Did we pay too much? What were we doing? We didn't know anything about this house and here we were sinking everything we had into it. But I am pleased to say that *so far* it's turned out to be a good investment.

Everyone knows the kitchen is the heart of the home. If you have an amazing home with a disfunctional kitchen, it doesn't work. This house is pretty big, and I honestly don't know how they made this space work. It was BAD! The floor was completely rotted out where the dishwasher and fridge were and there were some unwelcome furry visitors that I absolutely CANNOT stand. Mice! Lets just say that me being a clean freak and a baker/cake maker this kitchen was completely gutted. End of story.

This is the main formal living room. It is very hard to see but please try, the the walls, ceiling and trim is all painted the same color of baby blue. Yes, ugly baby blue. Even all of the doors. Yes, it was like they loved blue so much it was like the song "Blue" by Eiffel 65 was their inspiration. You're welcome. As you can see, it didn't take me very long to start slapping paint samples on the wall.

Dining room. Nothing to note here except the awesome bright orange tape over the transitions. That's right folks, apparently people that look at Government HUD homes are so clumsy that they trip and fall when walking from room to room so they (the government) rip out all of the wood cover pieces that are raised and meant to walk on and replace them with bright orange tape. Honestly. This is still a sore spot, especially since we have yet to find a supplier that still makes this floor for the missing pieces. It's over 10 years old, so good luck with that. Phooey.

This is getting depressing, I'm sorry! I'll switch gears here and skip to something happy and uplifting.

Ah, much better. This is the part where we started demo on the kitchen and I'm ripping out the joke of a pantry. Yes, I know I am wearing pink rubber gloves but I am allergic to preeetty much everything so I am always wearing gloves. Get over it.