Laundry room makeover

Good morning everyone!  It's hot here again in Texas and I really wish we had a pool in our backyard.  I would love to just float around all day.

I'm starting my house tour with the laundry room.  This is probably one of the biggest transformations in our house.  Maybe even one of the least expensive too.  So let's just jump right in with the ugly and scary before pictures.

You can click on each picture to see a larger version.

You can see in the last picture where there were once shelves.  I wasn't home when Matt started the demo for me to get a true before picture with the shelves.  But just imagine a long piece of wood and a shorter piece of wood there.  Not much storage at all. 

I need to mention too that this room is a weird shape and so getting pictures in here is really difficult.  Also, there is no natural light so please forgive the horrible before pictures.  I will include a source list at the bottom of the post.

As far as demolition goes that is all that we needed to do was to knock down the shelves.

So on to the wonderful after pictures.

This is a shot from the exact same angle as the last picture above.  I'm standing in our garage to take this picture.  As you can see, we added a BIG cabinet in there and additional shelves on both sides of the cabinet. 

Matt reused the wood from the previous shelves and just cut them down to fit the space that we had on both sides of the cabinet.  All of those bottles hold my homemade laundry detergent.  The baskets are from an old dishwasher and work perfectly to hold the detergent. 

Originally, I wanted to do some sort of wood treatment on the wall but then I decided I wanted this to be done as cheaply as possible.  So I just painted the white stripe on the wall to break up the other paint color. 

This is another view from the hallway inside our house.  I painted the door leading to the garage black.  It was always dirty with fingerprints and was just yucky.  So the black hides all that.  Out of sight out of mind, right? 

  

This is looking straight in the room.  The red pail holds my dryer sheets and adds color to the room.   



I use these hooks to air dry some of my shirts that I don't put in the dryer.  I found the shelf and clock at Goodwill a long time ago for $1 each.  The frame holds a quote that I found online and made into a printable.   



Instead of putting crown molding in here I decided to go a cheaper route. It changes up the look from the rest of the house.  I bought furring strips from Lowes for $8 total.  That beats the cost of crown molding by a long shot.  We also changed out the light fixture with one I found on Craigslist.  The light was brass and I spray painted it black.

So that's it.  One last look at the after.

It's a totally different room.  So much brighter and lovely.  I hope you like it too.

Sources:
Light fixture-Craigslist $10
Furring strips-Lowes $8
Cabinet-Habitat For Humanity ReStore $35
Ironing board cover-Target $10
Ironing board hanger-I made out of a piece of pallet (Free)
Wire baskets-from old dishwasher (Free)
Red pail-Target $3
Rug-Ross $10
Hooks-Ikea Leksvik hooks $10 (came with 5 hooks)
Shelf & clock-Goodwill $2
Paint color-Silver Sage from Restoration Hardware (had color matched at Sherwin Williams.  I already had the paint so this was free.) 



Total $88

Linking up to these awesome places
Thrifty Décor Chick
Mom4Real
House of Hepworths
Fox Hollow Cottage
Tatertots and Jello

House Tour

Happy late 4th of July! 

This is how we celebrate here in Texas!!

We had a great day yesterday that was full of fun stuff for the boys!  It started with a ward breakfast, then Levi and Jax were treated to a movie at the theater and finally fun fireworks with friends.  Then today we took the kids to the George W. Bush Library.  What an amazing place that is!    

Since we'll be moving out of our house soon I thought it would be nice to look back at our house over the years to see all the changes we've made to it.  I don't have before and after pictures for everything but most things I do.  I'll be doing this over the next week or so, that way I don't overload one post with tons of pictures. 

So keep checking back so that you can see how all our hard work paid off. 

Have a great weekend! 

Texas versus Wyoming

Hi peeps!  How's the week going for you?  It's been really nice here in Texas and we've been enjoying the cooler weather.  This just doesn't happen here in July so we'll take advantage while we can.

Texas versus Wyoming.  When it comes to football I'm always going to choose my Longhorns.  But unfortunately this isn't about football.

When I left you two days ago we weren't sure where we were going to end up.  We had two options on the table.  We could move home with my parents in East Texas or go to Wyoming.  Yeah, that's right.  WYOMING! 

Moving home with my parents would work but it wasn't going to be ideal.  We would be living in a tiny cramped camper trailer.  My parents just bought a new house but it is smaller so there wouldn't be room for all of us inside.  So we would be roughing it in a camper trailer.  Not ideal but we would sacrifice and make it work.  It's only temporary. 

Option two is move to Wyoming and live with my brother in law and his family in their basement.  Let me tell ya....Wyoming is cold.  Like freeze you to the bone cold.  It's something I've only experienced once and thought I would never experience again.  Wyoming was not initially an option.  We thought Utah or Arizona maybe.  A couple of weeks ago Matt sent an email to family and friends asking if they knew of any basement apartments available in Utah or any cheaper housing in Arizona.  Much to our surprise my brother in law responded and offered his place. 

Our response was heck yeah we'll come.  That was said very quickly and without thinking because once I said it I then realized that's pretty much the Artic Circle.  We've been talking back and forth with our family and trying to figure out how this would all work with the living arrangements.  The basement is 1300 square feet which is only 200 square feet smaller than the house we just sold.  We still have a few things to work out but the ball is rolling in the right direction. 

We'll be living about 2 hours away from Salt Lake and 5 hours from Denver.  I'm excited about a new chapter in our lives and being closer to my husband's family.  Being in Texas we don't get to see them very often so it will be nice to have cousins really close.  Living over our heads close.  I'm very sad though to be leaving Texas.  I'm sad to leave my little town and all the things I've grown to love and enjoy.  There isn't a Chick Fil A in Rock Springs.  There isn't even a Target there.  I don't know how I'll survive without a Target.  Nevermind...I'm not going!  Can't live without a Target.  Just kidding...but hey Target...Rock Springs is a great location for a store!!  But there is a Taco John's.  Oh Taco John's, how I love you and your tacos. 

I feel horrible for taking my kids away from their friends.  It makes me cry every time I think about it.  But I know they can make friends wherever they go.  But Levi especially loves his little buddies and will surely miss them.  I know they are young enough that they won't really remember this part of our journey much.  But it still breaks my heart. 

It's amazing to me how you think you have your life planned and figured out and then Heavenly Father steps in and turns you in a different direction.  We'll be close to the Teton Mountains and Yellowstone and will be making trips there for sure.  Matt will be busy with school and work but we look forward to exploring all that will be around us.  Matt grew up in Wyoming so he's excited to be going home. 

I promise we'll not be gone from Texas forever.  My family is still here and we'll be back soon enough.  Our top choice for a PA school is actually in Arkansas so if Matt gets accepted there we'll be back in the south very soon. 

How will this Texas girl survive in below freezing temps and wind gusts that freeze you in your tracks?  Stay tuned to find out....

The Beginning

I started this blog several months ago.  This was supposed to be a blog to record all the projects or changes that we would be making to the new home we were building.  I chose the name "Serendipity" because when working on projects a lot of times you get a "happy accident" and things turn out better than you originally thought.  

But everything changed back on May 31st.

So here's the backstory. 

Earlier this year we put our house, that we've lived in for 6 years, on the market.  We had finally finished with all of the projects in the house and felt like it was the best time to sell.  So we did.  We had one offer that fell through but then quickly came a 2nd offer.  We closed and all was great. 

We had picked out a floor plan from a local builder and fell in love with it.  After spending 8 hours one Saturday picking out all the details of our future house all was going great.  Then May 31st happened.

At the end of the day Matt was called in and told that his position would be changing and along with that came a pretty hefty pay cut.  Our lives were shattered.  I fell to the floor in disgust.  Matt has worked his tail off to get to where he is.  In a matter of minutes all that hard work was gone.  All the long hours and long days were for nothing.  I won't go into all the details of how I feel about Matt's boss but let's just say I don't have kind words for her.

After a long weekend of crying, praying and tears we came to the conclusion that building our dream house just wouldn't happen.  There was no way that we could afford it.  We realized that our dream would just have to wait.  Heavenly Father had a bigger plan for us.  Also, by the end of this weekend we had decided that Matt needed to go back to school.  After being in the corporate health/wellness field for 5 years it just wasn't what he wanted to do anymore.  So back to school Matt went to become a Physician Assistant. 

Matt quickly enrolled in summer school taking just one class.  We spent the next few weeks looking over all the PA schools in the country and figuring out where we wanted to try to get accepted and how many prerequisites are required.  Now we have our schools picked out and the classes that Matt will need to take in the fall/spring.  We just don't know where we are going to end up for the fall/spring.

All the classes that Matt needs to take are day classes.  That means that Matt can't continue to work his 8-5 job and that also means we can't afford to stay in our house.  We are renting our house back from the investor that bought it while we were building our house.  Our lease is up September 1 and Levi starts school this fall.  So we have very little time to figure out what to do and where we'll end up. 

We do have a couple of options that we're still trying to figure out the details to but either way we know we can't stay in our comfortable little town we've really come to enjoy.  It kills me to pull my kids away from their friends and what they know.  But at the same time they are still so young they won't remember much of this ordeal. 

It is apparent to us now how things were supposed to go.  We needed to sell our house to get the most money possible.  We needed to sell our house so that when Matt gets accepted to a PA school we will not be tied down because of our house.  We needed to sell our house so that Matt can go back to school to take care of our family.  It's amazing how Heavenly Father watches out for you and has a plan for each one of us.  We couldn't be doing this without his guidance. 

So come along with me on this new adventure as we start down a new path and a new career.  I'll be sharing all the ups and downs along the way.