Fixer Upper is my one of my favorite shows.  And I’m definitely channeling my inner JoJo with our old house.  I shared the story of our house when I made our building announcement.  I didn’t share that the current house (which will be an attached garage/bonus once we build) is a bit of a fixer upper.  We have had several renters and it is in need of an upgrade/really good cleaning.

The outside doesn’t need much work.  When this is turned into a garage, there will be two garage doors on the front there, as well as a brick exterior instead of the vinyl.  The porch on the back of the house will be my new laundry room.

When you walk in the current front door, you are in the dining area looking into the kitchen.  Immediately to your right is a half bathroom (not pictured.)  This entire area will be painted, but other than that, it just needs a really good cleaning.

To the left of the entrance and kitchen is the living room.  Again, it needs a fresh coat of paint.  All the carpet is coming up.  It’s gross.  Our first set of renters sneakily brought a puppy in and let that puppy do it’s business ev-ery-where.  It’s a hot mess and it stinks to high heaven.  The downstairs flooring is stained concrete, which I highly recommend.  (One tip:  make sure you seal the concrete stain extremely well.  Ours wasn’t sealed so well originally and it ruined all our socks.)

You can see the grossness in this picture.  Just yuck.  Upstairs, we currently have three bedrooms and a bathroom.  In the current master (future guest room), we are going to replace the carpet with new flooring and paint the walls.

The additional two bedrooms will take the most work.  Carpet is being replaced.  Walls are being painted.  And that entire middle wall and entrance area will be taken down to make one big room.

I have big dreams of a Fixer Upper Chip-style demo day, but I’m pretty sure Justin has other ideas.

He is very organized and methodical about things.  I don’t see him jumping through that sheetrock like Chip would.  He will, however, measure and remove strategically so that we can reuse every possible piece.

Maybe he’ll at least let me swing a sledgehammer a few times?  We’ll see.

So, to recap our to-do list:

• Remove all carpet, padding, etc.
• Put in new flooring.
• Remove wall and doorways between two bedrooms.
• Paint every square inch of sheet-rock (this even includes ceilings!)
• Seal concrete floors downstairs.
• CLEAN!

I’m wishful thinking that we can knock out that to-do list in a few weeks.  Things are going so great at my moms (having extra sets of hands with all my wild children is a major plus!) but we are somehow accumulating more stuff and need somewhere to put it, asap.

As far as the new house goes, we have our plans, have met with a few builders and are getting ready to meet with banks.  This will be my least favorite part, I already know.  I’m taking notes though and I can’t wait to share all about the bank process (good and bad!) with you.