Home Sweet Home

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and walk through the house, I'm still amazed at all that has transpired here within the last few months. I was completely in love with the house from the first day we came here to see it and meet Mrs. Yurada, but who knew that it would change so much and look like this?
It took a LOT of hard work, and when I look around, I see the faces of the people who worked here with us and helped us fix up our home sweet home. I remember my three siblings walking out the back door with the horrible green carpet from the guest room and a look of triumph on their faces; I remember Bianca in the kitchen, tossing out canned foods that had expired 15 years ago; I remember my dad working tirelessly to paint the ceilings and teach the rest of us padowans how to paint an even coat; I remember my mom outside with a bottle of Windex swiping through years' worth of grime on the windows; and I remember Jesse and our faithful friend Greg ripping out the orange carpet from the front room and scraping up the disintegrated rubber mat underneath--two days before our wedding!

Well, here it is folks, the culmination of all of our work so far (with many things still on the to-do list, but here's what we've got right now!)

The before and after pictures you've been waiting for!

The front room on our first day with the keys to the house:



The front room now (give or take a sister or two!) beautiful wood floors were hiding underneath that old yucky carpet! This is now our music room (in case you couldn't tell!)


The dining room had antique gold wallpaper...nasty stuff.


Painted and set for dinner!


I fell in love with the kitchen at once

It (besides the bathrooms) is the only room in the house that we didn't paint.
I love yellow kitchens! (good thing too, huh? Not much you can do when there's yellow linoleum too!)

I love the vaulted ceiling in the den...the fact that it has a fireplace...
and the beautiful hand-built bookshelves that are on either side of the brick fireplace


Here it is with our furniture in it:


Our room was already painted blue, but we gave it a fresh coat (and a lighter hue) anyway


The beautiful quilt on the bed was made by Jesse's Aunt Leann--isn't it gorgeous?!?


The guest room is one of the rooms that made the biggest transformation. From this...


To this...


And of course, one can't forget the patio out back!


Ta-daaaaa!



It has been a lot of work (a LOT of work) but we can't be anything but sooo grateful for all of God's blessings!