Sallyacious

After photos are included here. When I get a chance, I'll post before pix as well.

First, a little background. The people we bought the house from (the W***s family) had absolutely no artistic sense. As in none. Zero taste. 100% taste-free. There was ugly, green shag carpet, installed in 1978 everywhere in the house except the bathroom and kitchen. (And the basement, where there were either cement floors or ugly brown carpet over ugly red and black carpet, but the stairs and the basement landing were covered with the green shag. Still are, though they are now the only carpeted areas in the entire house.)

Every ceiling except, again, bathroom and kitchen has nasty popcorn (not original), with gold sparkles. The built-in bookshelves in the living room, had been covered with 2 layers of ugly, brown, cheap panelling, and the original red tile around the fireplace had been scored and encased in that rock and mortar facing so popular in the 1970's.

The kitchen sink and bathtub are harvest gold. The bathroom counter is marbled, gold-flecked fiberglass, cheap fiberglass, with moulded-in sinks. The walls, are sponged peach. And the tile is ugly. The great big medicine cabinet, the light fixtures, the switchplates and the toilet paper holder are all faux-gilded to look like the 1970's version of opulent baroque items.

The bedroom has green window blinds that make you feel like you're trapped underwater, and one wall covered in the ghastly brown panelling.

All of the light fixtures are horrible.

And every, single thing we've removed or altered (all of them done by Mike W***s to what was probably a very nice little house to begin with) had been done in the most difficult way possible to restore/fix/de-uglify.

And outside was just as bad. They had cut down most of the original trees in the front yard, so it was all water-sucking lawn, with one specimen birch (not doing well) and one specimen red oak (fairly young and looking like it would eventually not do well), and foundation plantings of scuptured juniper bushes surrounded by red lava rock. The back yard was surrounded by juniper bushes, except for one notable spot that was overrun with oregon grape and another where a badly-pruned shrub threatened to eat passersby, and a frightening vine thing growing up chain link along one side of the back porch, making it feel cave/prison-like. Between the house and the garage was a gravel yard, frequently sprayed-down, one suspects, with herbicides, to keep the gravel pristine.

We've done a lot of work on the place, inside and out already, to fix some of the most egregious errors, and now we're starting on the kitchen.

Here's what we've done so far:

Inside

1) First to go, ugly green carpet, installed in 1978, and never removed by the owners because it still "had a lot of wear left in it." We bought the house in 2003. Anyone want to guess how much nastiness had worked it's way into and under that carpet in 25 years? Under it were oak and fir floors, with GREAT BIG NAILS pounded into them to stop squeaks. We know that was the purpose because the squeaks were indicated on the floors with black permanent marker. Yeah.

The floors look fabulous now, though. That's because of Dave.

2) The panelling around the fireplace. I sealed and repainted the book cases, Dave has been building the mantle and the panels to go over the mantle. It's going to be beautiful when it's finished. We decided to leave the rocks alone. We're not stupid. They're pretty ugly, but we'd have to retile the whole thing.

3) The cheap and ugly ceiling fan light and the hideous thing that used to be the entry way light. Replaced with beautiful, simple fixtures by Hubbardton Forge.

4) The panelling and carpet (both layers) have been stripped from the basement and an egress window has been installed to make it a 3rd bedroom

Outside

1) The red lava rock and junipers have been replaced by drought-tolerant plants, perennial bulbs and 2 rosebushes. It's an entirely different yard with just that change. I've also now planted several shrubs and trees in the front yard, with lots of bulbs to come in the next few weeks.

2) Surrounded the unhappy birch and sweet little red oak with 2 feet of manure and compost 3-4 inches thick. There are some flowers around the red oak, but nothing I planted around the birch came up (it was all seeds, no live plants). However, this fall I will be planting 50 big daffodil and red perennial tulip bulbs, so it will get something pretty through part of the year at least.

3) The scary vine and chain link have been removed and replaced with 2 bits of trellis and 2 yellow climbing roses. I like spending time on the back porch now.

4) The juniper bushes (except for one clump) have been removed and replaced with raised garden beds, sunflowers or blueberry and huckleberry bushes, depending on where they were. The big, scary, badly pruned bush has also been removed, and as soon as Dave gets rid of the stump, we're putting in a garden bench. It's along the fence and well-shaded by our neighbor's maple tree.

5) The gravel yard has been moved to the extra driveway and replaced with soil, concrete stepping stones (salvged from the yard) and all kinds of bee and butterfly and beneficial insect attracting flowers. As well as 5 sunflowers which I did not plant. Some helpful bird apparently thought they'd be nice there. It was right.

6) I'm in the process of removing the encroaching oregon grape that was planted next to the garage and threatening to take out people on the back sidewalk. However, it's a horrifying mixture of heavy black plastic and roots, so the removal is taking far more time than I expected it to.