new house – Our Lustron Home

Listing Photos

It all started with my Starting Point post. There I wrote my initial thoughts and ideas for this house as recorded last November. We bought this house and found many things wrong with it. We starting putting work into the house starting last October/November, and below is what we were able to accomplish so far.

Current Progress

As you can see just between the first set of photos and the second, we’ve made some big changes. We removes trees and bushes, put in raised beds, added an exterior door on the garage, and changed the accent color on the house from red to teal. Inside, we removed a lot of the latex paint off the utility room walls, we built and removed our builtin pantry, and installed a storage shelf instead. We removed the broken dishwasher and sealed the space to be used for my canning stuff. We also upgraded the light in the kitchen, painted cabinets, remove the old range microwave and added a new range-hood, as well as replaced the old leaking kitchen faucet. In the dining room, we refinished the wall after removing about 1/3 of the wallpaper in the house, and we also created a lampshade for our single handing bulb from a lantern we used at our wedding reception. We haven’t done too much to the living room yet; we added a projector screen and are mainly using it for storing some of our extra stuff until we finish the master bedroom. We replaced the light fixture in the hall, and upgraded all the light switches in the house to the rocker style. We repainted the bathroom, removed the medicine cabinet, changed the light fixture, and painted the vanity and changed the hardware. We also added a new shower curtain to match. In the original green room, due to it’s carpet color, we originally replaced the floor in the closet with vinyl planking. After seeing how easy it was, we took on the task of redoing the entire rooms floor, which was not an easy task. we remove the wood from the closet to be replaced with matching floor eventually, I also painted the bedroom the two shades of orange, we moved in, and that is the state of our orange room. Finally, our current project is the master bedroom, or our new green room. We just finished laying the flooring on Saturday. There is still a lot of work we want to do in that room before the new unveiling, but I hope this helps build some excitement for the next unveiling, which will be coming in the next two weeks or so.

A Year’s Worth of Projects

A year is so long, yet so short. We were able to accomplish so much because of the blessing we’ve received this year and from taking things in stride. We are happy for our new experiences and are content with this house even as we continue to find more problems. We aren’t sure if we’ll keep this house forever, but we are happy for all the good things this house is providing for us. This Lustron gives my husband and I something to do together, to bond over, and to dream for. We hope for nothing but the best for this house in the future, and we hope our fingerprint on this house improves the beauty of this old Lustron, rather than hinders it’s potential.

For more on our home improvement posts from this year, feel free to check out any of this posts below. If not, I’ll see you again soon!

New Dining Room Light

Removing Wallpaper

Closet Work

Bathroom Transformation

Dishwasher to Storage

Kitchen Cabinet Updating

Raised Beds

New Kitchen Vent Hood

A New Big Project: Laminate Plank Flooring

Green Room Flooring

Finishing Our Guest Room

New Kitchen Shelf

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good day today.

To start this blog, I’ve decided to give you a little update into where we were, and where we hope to head in the future with this house.

So far, we’ve been working on the house since we bought it in June. We started with outdoor work. We’ve trimmed the magnolia in the front yard cutting it significantly back, removed cedars that were along the rear edge of the garage, removed two yews along the side of the garage, and done basic maintenance including washing the siding, and cleaning gutters and fixing the broken ones along the front of the house.

When we moved in there was quite a bit of neglect to the house. The back screen-door handle was broken, leaving only the push button to open the door. We found out after we moved in that the refrigerator leaked and the freezer formed excessive amounts of ice, the dryer hose was busted so the lint was being thrown everywhere behind the dryer and the pipe it vented to had completely rusted away leaving just ducting tape. The doorknobs didn’t work because the mechanisms inside were plastic and ruined with the bathroom being particularly bad. The drain for the kitchen sink was almost completely blocked, and though they vacuumed, the house needed some serious cleaning.

Thanks to my husband, all of these problems got solved over the first few months. Josh changed the handle on the screen-door, got a new dryer hose and the piping to replace the ducting tape. He tightened the bolts of the refrigerator and freezer and used petrolatum jelly to create a better seal on the doors. He changed out the doorknobs in the house with the old front and backdoor knobs. And the kitchen drain, after trying Liquid Plumber many times, we ended up buying a pipe bladder that created enough pressure to force the gunk out of there! We then scrubber the walls, windows, doors frames, and tiling with diluted distilled white vinegar, which worked well on grease, dirt, and significantly reduced the lingering smell of dog.

We also bought new hardware for the kitchen cabinets and replaced the old. We took out the old medicine cabinet in the bathroom and replaced it with a new light fixture and re-purposed the mirror from the front of the cabinet to be our new mirror temporarily. We also installed a new double towel rod in place of the old single towel rod. We bought curtains for all of the rooms, 84″ blackout curtains that reach the floor, and sheer curtains for underneath. We’ve installed a projector screen, because we decided to buy a cheap projector rather then a TV. And, we removed some of the carpet in the guest bedroom/cat room/home office/storage-room.

Our upcoming projects
Right now, we are working on removing wallpaper that goes from the dining room through the living room and into the hallway. We plan to remove the wallpaper sections at a time, plaster the areas that have previous damage, sand it all flat, then paint it with satin white latex paint since we received a free gallon from a local hardware store.
Also above the cabinets in the kitchen, you will see there is a hole. We discovered that a couple months ago. It is a spot where someone just wallpapered over the old vent hole, so we plan to cut a piece of wood that will fit, attach it in there and seal the hole, then paint it.

There are still many things we hope to do, from painting cabinets and walls, to removing carpeting and adding new flooring. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you soon!