A little painting...and some more demo

So we decided to get our hands a little dirty on this big ol' house project.  There are so many pieces to this puzzle, and many of them Brett could do himself (in theory), but with a full time job, a side project, and three kids, there is really no time for him to do much of the remodel.  He did decide to get the garage in ship shape before we moved in.  We never got our garage organized and cleaned up in our last house, so Brett was determined to get this one all set up BEFORE we dumped all our clutter in it!  So, he painted it and used one of the shades of white we are considering for the inside - a nice big test swatch!  It was A LOT of work as it turned out and made him feel even better about our decision to hire out the painting for the rest of the house. 

The kids got to help, too.  They love to paint and since it was "just a garage" Brett let them dive in and didn't have to worry too much about the mess.  They loved it and would have covered the entire garage (or at least the bottom 4 feet of it), but time was precious and Brett had to finish it up before the sun set, so they just helped for about an hour.  Next step is to hang the kitchen cabinets we took out and saved on the back wall for storage and get some bike storage set up.

 

 

(Sorry there is no "after" picture - it's just a white garage!)

As for me, I took on a much smaller painting project.  I decided to save this 1980's beauty of a brass chandelier from our dining room by spray painting it Rustoleum's "Antique Bronze." 

 

It cost $8 and took just a few minutes to spray each coat (I did about 3 coats).  A simple project for me and it will save us several hundred dollars by not having to buy another chandelier.  I think it will go in our breakfast nook, and we'll get a new one in the dining room.

And for the master bath... Before:

Now:

Notice the big hole in the back of the shower?  We didn't do that.  It was like that, if you can believe it.  The hot water heater was crammed in the back of the adjoining coat closet and it was too big for the space so the builder cut out the drywall so it would fit.  What a mess!  So, we decided to move the hot water heater (and get a new one) to the garage.  By moving it to the garage, we don't have to worry about the potential disaster of a leak (on our hardwoods) and we got to extend the relatively small master shower back almost 2 feet.  Win win.  Now we need to pick out and order some finishes for our master bath so it doesn't look like this when we move in!  (Actually, these pictures were taken yesterday.  I went by today, and the room is now completely down to the studs - no drywall left AT ALL.  The wallpaper was so thick (2-3 layers, it appears), that it was easier to just re-drywall it than try to salvage the existing walls.)