Our Home::Extreme makeover:: {Vancouver WA Photographer}

This post has been on my to do list for some time... but It's one I've been dragging my feet and it seems like nothing is ever perfect or 'ready' for photos
This July we will have been in our home for 3 years. We have worked so hard to make this house a home and the projects have seemed endless.

I remember looking at the house for the first time and thinking "No F-ing way!" I looked at my husband who said he wanted a 'Move-In Ready' and thought "are you crazy?" The house had a musty smell to it. The carpet was blue. There was sponge painting and wallpaper in the master bedroom with carpeted baseboards and the kitchen was so 70's I couldn't stand it. The house felt dark. The backyard was overgrown and had ivy smothering the life out of the trees.

On the plus side, the house is in a nice,  quiet neighborhood with great schools close by. A new roof, new siding, windows, and heat pump had been added in the last 5 years. So really the only issues were cosmetic inside.  We had less than 2 weeks to find a new house since our previous home sold quickly. So we offered full price and asked for a flooring allowance to get rid of the nasty carpet.

Everything worked out in our favor with that allowance and since we did the work ourselves we were able to install laminate flooring throughout and do some other major updates.  A labor of love for sure. I'm not sure I could handle living through another remodel but the hard work is paying off as our house has really started to feel more like home to us.

We've learned  a lot along the way that some things on Pinterest or HGTV look way easier to accomplish than they are in reality. A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into updating our home.

So here are some before and afters... I think the photos will speak for themselves.

Living room  Before:

Living room After:

Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

 Office/Den Before:

After:

I love the look of the white painted brick with the coral colored wall and the Ikea bookshelves worked out perfect in this space for a built in look.

Dining Room After

 Master Bedroom Before:

 After:

Master Bathroom Before:

After:

Gray and white bathroom with Subway Tile

Bedroom 2 Before:

After:

Bedroom 3 Before:

After:

Back Yard Before:

The back yard was a mess with overgrown Ivy choking out shrubs and trees it took us over a year to clear the back yard enough to make it usable. 

You can see all the ivy in the photo above.. we had to kill it off and dig a lot of it out. There were vines as thick as tree branches.

Husband^^ at work trying to pull Ivy from the fence

Back Yard After

We added a retaining wall and raised garden beds where the Ivy used to be. We also removed all the arborvitae and an apple tree.

I hope you like what we did. I have more photos to come of the back yard.. that's a whole other project!




Tags: Home improvement, Home makeover, Before and Afters, Vancouver WA House Flip, Rehab, DIY Project, Home remodeling, House makeover, House flipping, Vancouver WA Photographer, Photography Vancouver WA, Felida, Salmon creek, Hazel Del, Tara Thackeray Photography



www.TaraThackeray.com