After week 1:

We were so excited to have my parents come down this last weekend to help us get moving on house projects! I was so excited for them to come down and see the house empty and the potential that it has. We are so blesses to have such wonderful family members who came over to help us make the house ours.

Sunday was the day that we had the most help. Dad, Mom, Lynn (my mother-in-law), Elizabeth (sister-in-law), Mike (father-in-law), Debbie (Mike's girlfriend), my cousin Pauline, and her boyfriend Jake all came to help...and help they did!

When we arrived at the house, the contractors had already scraped the ceilings, removed the padding from the pit, and took down the wall. We had a lot of work to do, so we got started right away.

The pile from the contractor's work.

Dad moving the chandelier so that we didn't hit our heads on it. Fortunately, no one got electrocuted either!

The ugly, dark brown carpet is gone! So is the brick around the fireplace.

Ryan cutting metal left over from the half wall.

View of the pit (soon to be filled-in) and fireplace before it is drywalled.

After much debate, we opened the doorway from the living room into the kitchen. We had many opinions about this and I am VERY glad with the result (it still looks narrow in the picture, but trust me, it is much better)!

The kitchen without the fluorescent lights.

Ugh...removing wallpaper! We spent at least two days removing wallpaper and there was some that refused to be taken off, so we will have to paint over it. We are SO thankful that we had so much help removing wallpaper!

The kitchen without cupboard doors and with the ceiling fan removed. The cupboards will be painted and it is so much better without the fan.

Wallpaper removed and can light put into the ceiling.

Our helpers: Pauline and Jake removing wallpaper in the den.

The fireplace in the den without the brick and carpet. Notice our paint samples above?

The den without carpet.

The laundry room before we removed the wallpaper and painted it an oatmeal color.

Cupboards in the hallway with the doors removed waiting to be painted.

The office. The closet doors and walls will be painted. (another before picture)

The guest bathroom after taking down the wallpaper...

...and after it was painted blue. We are still working on getting the color right so this may change a bit again.

Aaahhh...no popcorn on the ceiling!

Our new textured ceiling. We spent hours and hours the last two days priming and painting them. A word of advice: pay someone to do this! Our arms and necks are sore from looking at the ceiling and holding up paint rollers, not to mention getting covered in paint splatters!

After a long day of ceiling painting!

A hard days work deserves a reward and we all agreed that margaritas were the best way to reward ourselves!

Thank you to everyone who came to help, we are so very blessed to have such wonderful family members! We will be having a painting party soon but we will be at the house every free chance we have, so if you are in the mood to paint, come on over!