The West Family

Friday, April 10, 2009

Home Sweet Home... finally!

Many apologies for taking SO long to post about our new house! It took us forever to decorate and get around to taking pictures that were worth posting... but here it is... our first home! :)

On July 15th, we officially closed escrow on our townhouse! The sellers rented back from us until the 25th because they needed more time to get into their new house, and as soon as they were gone, the renovations began! We wanted to wait until we had the house together to blog, because we thought it would be fun to post before and after pictures-- especially for those of you who may not get a chance anytime soon to come see the house.

*A big thank you goes out to Sandy, who worked for us pro-bono! haha Pays to know people in high places :) She helped us find and buy furniture, and arranged ALL of the work we had done on the house... and man, was there a lot to do! We did more work than we planned, but that is much thanks to Sandy, because with her help we were able to get more for our money... and all the work was done within 3 weeks! So thanks Sandy, for being our 24 hour on-call interior designer, problem solver, and go-to gal! :) (And also to Sandy and my dad for letting us be their temporary roomies for a few months!)*

We officially moved into our house on August 23, 2008!

In a nutshell, the work we did was: scraped the ceilings (got rid of the popcorn), replaced the flooring everywhere except for the kitchen and bathrooms, re-tiled the fireplace, re-tiled the entry/step, remodeled the kitchen cabinets and countertops, replaced the lighting in all the bathrooms, painted the bathroom cabinets, painted every single wall in the house (+ the ceilings), replaced the railing on the wall going up the stairs, replaced the baseboards in the kitchen, and replaced the old fluorescent lighting in the kitchen with recessed lights... and then we topped that all off with all new furniture everywhere except for the guest bedroom! Whew! Thanks to all that, we are living on a very tight budget now, but it was worth it... we have a beautiful home that we're very proud of, and one we are looking forward to starting our family in!

Now for the main purpose of this blog entry... the BEFORE & AFTER pictures!

KITCHEN (yeah, there's no way we could've lived with this! haha)

(everything was covered in plastic while the ceilings were being scraped)

MUCH better!! we love our little kitchen

DINING ROOM (flows from kitchen)

(what it looked like when the sellers lived there)

LIVING ROOM & FIREPLACE (boring!)

(what it looked like before the sellers moved out)

what a mess...

ENTRY STEP (parquet wood floor = no go)

in process

WALL BETWEEN MASTER BEDROOM & GUEST ROOM (aka the "Ketubah wall")

MASTER BEDROOM

(when the sellers lived there)

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Dad's Surprise 60th... a Roast

On March 30th, my wonderfully amazing dad (Albert) turned 60! Sandy, Brian and I had been working for months on a surprise party for him, which we held on Sunday at Dad & Sandy's house. We invited about 40 of his closest friends over for the celebration and to "roast" my dad. It was amazing! Brian and I also worked very hard on a video that showed my dad over the years, which he loved, and we loved making! I don't think I can post the video on here, but I'll post a few pictures we used in the video.

the backyard