I Wish I Was a Cowboy...

Oh wait, I am...

Last weekend we began work on the house we just bought. I wish I had gotten there in time to take true "before" pictures but the husband had already starting ripping the belly of the beast out. The home we bought has good bones and there is nothing majorly wrong with it. It just needs a lot of cosmetic adjustments to put it nicely. The woman who owned it before loved Texas, everything cowboy, everything country, everything Texas-esque. We were also told repeatedly by several involved parties that, "she was a single mom and she just didn't keep up with the house" while they should have just said, "she did everything half-ass and spent her money on useless items like faux-leather wallpaper instead of more important items". When we bought the house I have to admit I was not prepared for the amount of work it needed. It seems like everytime I turn around there's something else that needs to be fixed that I hadn't noticed before. I guess I've learned that next time we buy a house I will inspect much more thoroughly. Nonetheless, we are moving forwards and I still love the house overall. I didn't get any pictures of the front so I will have to post those another time.

A view of the living room. Doesn't seem to bad at first. Upon further inspection you may notice that the walls are a lovely peach with light tan wainscoting. The baseboards, also a lovely tan, have been scuffed and stained from when they put the stain on the concrete that is throughout the house. The mantle on the fireplace is also about to fall off the wall of glossy coated red brick covering the enormous brass covered fireplace. I have to say that scraping off the popcorn ceiling was a wonderful decision. Even with bare sheetrock it made such a difference. It's a shame some one would do that to all the beautiful vaulted ceilings in the house!

This the formal dining room. Since my kitchen is red i was going to keep the wall color until I noticed that in fact that is not red paint. It's more of a magenta-ish red, yak. The chair rail and wainscoting around the bottom though is very nice and it is a very bright room. I already bought a new chandeleir and a beautiful ceiling medallion to put up after the ceilings are painted and textured.

A view of the kitchen. I was happy that I'm going to be able to fit an island in the center since there isn't much counter-top space. I'm not crazy about the black laminate counter tops but believe it or not this is one of the better kitchens in the houses we looked at. I wasn't planning on doing anything to this room for now even though the walls are a little too white for me. Then yesterday I noticed that the walls are not textured. So if I'm going to get that done I might as well have them paint it a color. Since my kitchen is red like I said I wasn't sure if it would look weird with such white cabinets, black counter tops, and the color of the tile. There is also a chair rail in this room (not pictured) that I could keep white(ish) so maybe that wouldn't make the red so striking? I'd appreciate any advice on this one...

Here is the entry way and yes, that is cowboy hat wallpaper border and a texas star light fixture. There is also a large Texas star design in the floor that is soon to be covered up a by a strategically placed rug. We were able to rip the wallpaper off but of course there's no texture on the wall underneath. Another thing to add to the list...

Above is the spare bathroom. Again there is no texture on the walls or ceiling. They must have taken wallpaper off in her and just painted straight over the sheet rock. We removed the border wallpaper with no problems. I also bought new knobs and a toilet paper holder to replace the horse-shaped one they have (not pictured). Then I noticed a crack around the base of the toilet, guess that will have to be replaced too.

This is the biggest treat of them all! A cowboy mural complete with leaves stapled to the wall in the tree and all. Two coats of primer and they hit the trails.

This is the master bedroom with faux leather wallpaper. We gave a good effort to remove it ourselves but no luck. The painters we hired said it's stuck on there so well they will have to float the wall instead of removing it. This means a thick coat of oil and primer then texture then paint. The vaulted ceiling is quite nice though. Since our bedroom is also red I was thinking of doing the walls neutral and the ceiling red maybe. Or a combo of red or red and another color. This is another place where I could use some advice!

And this would be our master bath. It had the most thickest texture treatment in dihareah brown paint I have ever seen. We managed to sand down most of the ridges which is great. This will be painted with new framed mirrors, faucets, knobs, and paint on the cabinets. Should look semi-decent when we're done.

We also have a lot of plans to make this house energy effecient. I'm very excited about this because it a)helps save money on our bills b)will be great for resale and c)the goverment gives you back up to 30% of the cost on your next tax refund. So far we had a radiant barrier installed in the attic. Next we plan to get and energy efficient AC unit and since we need to replace the toilets those will be energy efficient as well, in the near future we will install energy star certified exterior doors too. We also installed solar film on all the windows that recieve direct sunlight and I have to tell you just that made a huge difference. Once we get our first electric bill I will report on how much we are actually saving on our bills. It's a lot of work but we bought this house because something about it gave us a good vibe and it will be even better with all of our personal touches.

So what do you guys think?