{ Before, During and After }

When I first got a hold of the condo, it was a beige haven; beige walls. beige ceilings. beige carpet. everywhere. Which is nice if you like to live in dining-room-carpeted blahsville, but surprisingly, I opted for change.

The timeline I was hoping to follow for the updating didn't go as smoothly as planned (staying up to the wee hours doing house stuff every night wasn't as fun as I had anticipated); so the bedrooms and bathrooms have yet to be painted. But the updating in the main area is complete (YES!). And I will be tackling decorating and painting the rest of the house over the next three weeks.

Here are the before, during, and afters from the last couple weeks. Painting. Flooring. And furniture.

before and during

The aforementioned beige haven minus the carpet. We started with tackling the ceiling painting first.


My saint of a mother drove from Colorado to bring me some family dishes and help me paint my apartment. 13 hours of driving for 18 hours of helping; what a babe.


Marie painting the kitchen; lovely. Tons of friends came out to help paint and clean, and it was a lifesaver. Plus, it's way boring to do things by yourself. Thank you friendship.


Messy painting fingers. We may have spilled the blue paint all over the kitchen sink. And you better believe I am wearing my favorite, recently-acquired pair of painting overalls.


Hard-to-reach spots that needed to be painted required maneuvers like this. Kates got all she could with the extended paint roller while straddling the stair case (I held onto her leg for support), then we borrowed our friend Richard's ladder for the rest.


I may or may not have made dents in the wall setting this ladder up.


Painting completed. Olivewood is the color for the walls in the main area -- it's a classy grey with a green hue. It makes the space feel a little bit dark, but I really like it.


We went with a light blue for the kitchen -- it's called Limelight. Also turned out to be very delightful.


Flooring came next. I got the laminate on sale at Lowes, then my amazing friends Justin and Andrew (Andrew pictured above) helped me put it in.


You would think putting in floor would be pretty simple, but you would be wrong. Little spots like this can get pretty tricky and multiple spots like this may require you and Andrew to stay up till 1:30 am making multiple diagonal cuts and doing lots of shimmying.


Cutting flooring creates A LOT of sawdust on your kitchen counter.


Sick.


But the floor makes me very happy.

after (still a work in progress)
Here is where the house is at so far, at least the main living area part of it. I still need to do the bedrooms and bathrooms. Pics to come.


Livingroom with the brown-monster couches (they honestly eat you up when you sit in them)


Kitchen.


Dining room.

We still got a ways to go, but it's a start :) And it's my home. Fun.

{ Lady Danburry }

My friend, Drew, has a cute wife, Lynette, who sews cute things and gives them away on her blog. This week, I'm hoping to win the lovely skirt shown above. You can enter too here; she has a different give away pretty much every week through the middle of September.

PS -- Birthday and house photos to come soon.

{ Curry is no respector of places }

No, really. It gets into EVERYWHERE! Door jams. Inside cupboards. On the ceiling, walls and crevices associated therewith. I even partially dismantled the hood-vented microwave to de-curry, and there was curry in places even where air didn't even flow! GROSS. BUT! Thankfully it's getting gone in a timely manner, and we are de-stinking today with ozone, so that should be helpful for the smell. I will be glad to be rid of it permanently.

Katy and I were up till 4am last night cleaning to get ready for painting Saturday so we don't waste any time or painting help. Most of our time was spent in the kitchen, not surprisingly. Looks like this rigorous de-stinking schedule is turning out to be sufficiently rigorous :) But awesome. Can't wait till it's all done and wonderful-ized.

In other news, I got my new flooring! It's a light-colored wood laminate, and it's gonna look goooooo-oooooood; pictures to come.


Kates conquering the disgusting, curry-globbed ceiling (which the picture definitely didn't properly capture). As pictured, we put magnets and a small poster on the fridge to make it feel more homey while we're there making improvements before we move in.


409 -- thank you degreasers.


Angela came and kept us company. And filled in some holes in the walls. Thanks Ange :)

{ Goodbye disgusting carpet }

Me and Kates deftly removed the carpet from the dining room and living room in the new condo last night. Who puts carpet in a dining room, anyway? Sick.

Surprisingly, taking the carpet out was kinda fun; let's hope that's indicative of all the other improvements in store.

{ Homeowner for real }

As of this afternoon, I am now the owner of a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in south Provo, complete with garage, vaulted ceilings and clubhouse with pool. It's seriously 100 feet from where I live now, so the move should be easy. At just under 1,100 square feet, the condo is the perfect, cozy size, and I love it.

In other news, I won't be moving in for two weeks because sadly (but not unmanageably) the previous tenants cooked a lot of curry, so the place smells. Ick. Looks like I will be doing some serious de-stinking regimens before I move in. Here is the fool-proof de-stink plan I have come up with that I will be executing over the next two weeks:

1 Tuesday-Thursday
Rip out disgusting carpet in the dining and living room areas. Clean walls, filters and all other surfaces like crazy with simple green.

2 Friday
Get ozone treatment in the house. It works by releasing Ozone (O3) into the house -- an unstable molecule, that deodorizes as it converts into oxygen (O2). This is what is used by house-recovery teams to remove smells after house fires, tenants that smoke and flooding.

3 Saturday and Monday
Paint all the walls and ceilings. This is a daunting task, but I think it will Nicki-ize the home in a major way.

4 Tuesday and Wednesday
Put in wood laminate flooring where the disgusting carpet had been.

5 Thursday
Get remaining carpets industrially cleaned (carpets will still be on stairs and in each bedroom and closet)

Then I move like crazy and clean my old place. It'll be crazy busy, but fun. I can't wait till it's done. Stay tuned for before and after pics.