Remodel - Pt. 1...

 My apologies to my Facebook friends for posting the exact same pictures here, but this is the only way my mom can see our remodel.  We are finally back in our home, tho' we still have quite a few loose ends to tie up.  I need to preface all of this with the comment that I have no idea what I'm doing with this kind of photography.  I shot all of these on auto.  The before pics were shot in the evening after a long day of moving everything out.  I used my 35 mm lens, thinking that was the most wide angle lens I had (clearly not wide enough!).  By the time I shot the after pics, I realized that I should have used my 18-200mm zoom lens.  DUH!!!  So....I used that for the after shots.  The result is that the after pics make the rooms look quite a bit more spacious.  lol.  For the most part, that's an illusion.  Makes you wonder what kind of tricks they use in all those makeover before/after pics, doesn't it?  :)  At any rate, we were out of our home for a total of 7 weeks...not terrible, considering our contractor predicted 6 weeks.  We have been working on all of this for 3-5 months tho' with planning, organizing, and preparing to move, etc.   I was dreaming to think that, once we move home, we would be done.  I can see that we'll be finishing odds and ends for several weeks most likely.  But we are THANKFUL to be home!  Here is part one of the before/after pics:

BEFORE:  Living Room

This was originally dark paneling, which we painted white about 8 years ago.  So we didn't do too much to change it now, other than give it a fresh coat of paint, remove popcorn from the ceiling, and replace the flooring.  Oh yes, and all of our slab doors were replaced with 2 panel doors (which really do look better with our paneling).  They were all hollow doors before and we replaced some with solid core doors....much better at reducing sound.




 AFTER:  Cannot wait to see what my piano will be like on this new floor!
 

 BEFORE:  Standing in entry hall, looking into living room.  Notice all the boxes stacked out on the back porch.  Would you believe Bob's company moved their office at the exact same time we were moving out of our house?  They told all their engineers they were no longer allowed to have a free standing bookshelf or extra files in their offices and Bob had to bring EVERYTHING home...all his reference manuals etc.  YIKES!!!!  He was finally able to bring some back to work and put some in the attic and I think he had to let some of them go. 

 

 AFTER: So LOVING the floor...especially the way it flows from room to room with no breaks.  BTW...same paint color as before.  What can I say?  I really liked that color (tho' this pic's color is a little off). 

 

BEFORE:  Standing in living room, looking at front door.  Clearly, that lens was not wide enough here.  lol.  Our changes here involved replacing the light fixture (that Bob banged his head on all the time), removing popcorn from ceiling, and removing plaster molding and medallion).  

AFTER:  Wide angle helps a lot, but again...I'm LOVING the floor.  Love this new light fixture too and the crown molding and cleaner ceiling.  Even my new paneled doors to my study are so much prettier.  You can't really see the light fixture very well here, but I love it.  It's made of little crystals and it throws the light around the room on the dark green walls in interesting and beautiful patterns.

More pics over the next few days.