9 DIY- Remodel Your Whole Freaking House

Here I am. I'm back.

For the last 2 weeks, any spare time after work and on the weekends has been at the house. And just like a reality home makeover show, there were bumps in the road we didn't expect even after a very positive inspection.

Like, pipes exploding in the kitchen and laundry areas that require you to remove hardwood you just put down in about .00001 seconds. Yeah. That was fun. Lucky for us, my dad and little brother came in town to help us figure this whole homeowners thing out.

We didn't get quite everything done that we wanted to and we got behind schedule with plumbing issues but we were able to paint and put hardwood down in the kitchen, family room and 3 bedrooms.

I had Friday and Monday off of work and this is the result of 5am mornings and 1am bedtimes. We are absolutely exhausted but we got pretty far.

Let's rewind...

This is the first picture I saw of this house when our realtor sent us the listing. One thing I learned when house hunting is to keep SUCH an open mind as far as the cosmetics of the house goes! You can do whatever makeovers you want as long as you factor that in to your end budget. The house is only 6 years old and has good bones, which was important because we're both not home enough to have to worry about a fixer upper.

Umm, P.S. Do you know how many coats of paint this house took? Navy walls, red walls, fuschia walls. I thought I was going to be 95 years old and still painting.

We knew we wanted hardwood and we knew we'd have little dog paws running around so we went with bamboo floor. It's pricier but extremely tough and so in the end, to us, it was worth the extra money. Sean even took his keys to it (very vigorously) and it didn't scratch.

We ripped up carpet and foam, scraped glue off floors, pulled off baseboards, swept over and over again and laid down a hardwood moisture barrier. All of this took two and a half long days and felt boring because you didn't see a lot of progress.

Once we saw the hardwood going in though, we got excited and that went a little faster. Lots of sawing and some really tricky spots where you have to be really good at math and carpentry so obviously, I left some of those parts to my dad, brother and Sean.

My poor dad stayed awake from 5am yesterday until 5am this morning to finish the kitchen floor before he left for L.A. He's the hardest working handyest handy man!

We are on a roll! Only thing is, I'm looking for a great rug! Does anyone have any suggestions? It needs to be a semi good deal and I don't want anything too fad-ish or trendy since it needs to stay there for a few years. Yes? Help a player out?