Home Improvements - with kids!

Melissa's new house is delightfully wonderful, tons of space, nice layout, and in the way of new homes, some cosmetics that could use a bit of help!  It seems to be that a crazed amateur was set free on her her playroom lights, her interior doors, one ENTIRE room at the end of the house, and (as we discovered yesterday) laying the terrible carpets. She has grand plans to make headway on recovering her house's original charm but with 2 kids under 4, moderation is the key!

Down at the end of the house is the room we were staying in, which has since housed Uncle Eric (who Evie likes better than me!) and is about to house Nonnie & Grampy.  The floor is burnt-orange pile carpet, the walls are deep orange. The window trims and baseboards are a fascinating turquoise and I do believe the ceiling could be called lime green....

Melissa has been wanting to redo the room since they moved in but people keep showing up to stay in it.   :)

She decided to take advantage of the window between visitors and get as far as she can before Nonnie & Grampy arrive.  They're the type of grandparents who won"t blink an eye at whatever state of remodel the room is in when they get here anyway!

SO, (wow that was a long lead-in!) we went over yesterday with 3 items on the agenda:

1) Wash & paint *some* of the orange room.

2)  Strip at least one carpet.

3) Make sure the kids were a part of it all!

My cell phone was pretty low on battery, so I did manage to get painting pics but you'll have to wait until next time for pictures of the hardwood floor.  We did manage to get (almost) one wall painted and the carpet in Melissa"s bedroom pulled up and dragged outside to the back patio where the kids spent the next hour (at least!) tromping all over the dragon carcass and slaying it with garden poles.   :D

The flooring is very reminiscent of our Dorchester house....definitely not perfect, but tons of charm and should be beautiful after some sanding & a shine.  The part that killed me was the *method* of carpet-sticking.  There was absolutely NO carpet glue on one entire half of the room....then a strip of glue straight down the middle and around the edge of *only* the other half.  It certainly appeared that whoever it was then stood in the middle of the square and danced a jig with an open bottle of carpet glue.....I don't know.  Let's just say it was "interesting".   :)

Well, here are some pictures of the boys painting. I did take some of Rebecca too, but I'm not sure what my phone did to them. 

All in all, it was a very fun, very productive and completely successful afternoon!

As you can tell, I'm pretty excited to get in on Melissa's remodels.  I'm sure there will be more pictures to come!

Waiting his turn.....