Extreme Makeover

Meet the Design Team

My parents came up this past weekend to help us renovate our house. Our weekend was filled with painting, ripping up floors and carpet, more painting, and some good visiting. I think we're on a first name basis with the people at Home Hardware because we made so many trips there for paint and supplies. I finally decided on my colors...I stayed pretty safe with a light sandy brown for the living room and hallway, and a green in my kitchen. The house isn't anywhere near being finished but we still got so much done! Thanks Mom and Dad for driving all the way to help us with the house!
This week our project is the floor. We're going to be buying laminate to lay down so we can start putting in our cupboards and re-building our kitchen.

Here's more pictures of our not yet finished house:


This is the green I chose for the kitchen. I was really happy with how it turned out

Here is what's left of our kitchen after Josh took out all of our cupboards. We'll definitely be doing a before and after picture for you all to see!

There is still lots to do! I can't wait to show you all the finished product!

Our eventful weekend

Josh and I had another very eventful weekend!
On Friday night, Josh and I were in charge of planning youth so we played the "Amazing Race". It was so much fun! The youth had to drive around town and video tape themselves doing certain challenges that Josh and I had made up. Since we were in charge, we thought we'd take advantage of all the youth and use the game to get our yard cleaned up a little. So one of the challenges was, "Video your entire group picking up dog poop in Josh and Laura's new backyard". We made sure it was worth a lot of points towards their team and they actually did it! Other challenges they had to do were serenade a rubber duckie with, "Rubber Duckie, you're the one" in a church members bathtub. One of the groups videotaped Josh's grandpa (one of the elder's in our church) and a youth in the bathtub singing. It was so funny that they showed it in church on Sunday!
Then on Saturday Josh had to work so I headed over to our house to do some painting. As I pulled up, I saw a family from our church doing yardwork for us! The people who we bought the house from had decided to leave the front yard and backyard full of dog poop, cigarette butts, and lots of garbage. Josh and I had planned to take a day to clean it up, but instead it was all done for us! We felt so blessed by this family considering two of them are youth and they could have been taking a day off but instead came and cleaned up our messy yard!
After Josh got off work, we headed into Edmonton in search for new kitchen stuff. We spent the night at "Alissa Hotel". It was great to visit with her and she even came shopping with us the next day!
So onto Sunday...we spent the whole day at IKEA! I think Alissa just came for the hot dog deal but it was still so much fun to have her around and give us advice on certain kitchen stuff. We got to IKEA just after 11 and Josh and I didn't leave till 6. We couldn't make up our mind on what cupboards to buy, but finally decided on the Antique Finish. Thankfully it all fit into the blazer and we headed home!
Josh is starting school again today in his 2nd year apprenticeship and I'm sure as soon as he gets home, he'll be ripping open the boxes to our cupboards to start assembling them. Then my parents are coming up on Thursday to help us paint and bring up some furniture! I'm so excited to see them!
Well thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope you all have a great week!

Thanks everyone for all the painting tips...

Friday night Josh and I had our first meal in our house, a subway picnic on our living room floor. yum yum

We then went around the house making a list of everything we need to change and therefore buy. We are planning to renovate most of the upstairs, putting new laminate floors and paint everything. On Friday night, we decided that we would love to renovate our kitchen and so Josh has been on the IKEA site designing out a new bigger kitchen. Thanks for the IKEA tip Alison...

Now I'm getting really excited because I get to have a big kitchen, which is something that I didn't have in the apartment.

Josh is excited about our new house

Enjoying our subway Picninc

Josh got a little distracted while measuring the house

It's official, we own a home! We got the keys today so now all we have to do is move all of our stuff in! We're heading to Edmonton this weekend to buy everything we need to renovate. I'm really excited about all the painting I get to do. There are so many color ideas I like, there just doesn't seem to be enough rooms. The people who lived there before didn't like too much color, considering the walls are all white. But if anyone has any paint colors that they've used in the past and have liked, I would love hear them. We'll have to post before and after pictures as soon as we finish renovating everything!

Here I am holding up the keys to our new house!