Finally Pics of Upstairs

Okay well I had been asked awhile back from a friend to post pictures of the upstairs and Parkes' room, and I have been a very bad blogger lately. So here are pictures of half the upstairs (I will not post pictures of the bedroom side until I finally get through the mountain of clothes I am trying to weed through or Parkes' room until we get his new bed and furniture painted). We have been asked by several people about cutting cost on doing remodeling and although our most cost cutting tool was having Brandon do all the work which is not possible for everyone, here's a few tips. First, we saved tons by shopping on craigslist.com for building materials...we were able to get all the shingles, tar paper, carpet, and more from there were people had over bought for their remodels and would get it at a third of the cost or less (always check out the free section too you just never know what you'll find). Second, we took stuff like doors and trim out of houses that were being torn down for bigger house to go up which takes some labor time but you are recycling perfectly good materials. On that same note we tried to reuse everything we could from our house...some didn't happen like taking the oak planks from the roof to use as floors due to Brandon is just one person and time, but then we could resale the stuff we didn't use on craigslist to make some extra money for the new stuff. And thirdly, although not a huge savings but every little bit helps is "Ooops" Paint at Home Depot. It is how we paint our house and one of mine and Brandon's favorite things to go look at to see what colors are out there. It used to be much better when you could return any color if you didn't like it when you got home but they stopped that, but you still have the colors that are mixed wrong or the ones people don't pick up and can buy a $20 can of paint for $5. We just check out the colors everytime we are there until we find the color we were looking for which eventually shows up if your patient. Now these tips are not for those that need things done quickly as they do take patience and storing issues as you collect materials, but can drastically cut down the cost of renovating and remodeling. I put the picture of the bathroom to show the radius wall my extremely talented husband built (it might be hard to tell but the wall is a semicircle).

And then here are some pictures of Parkes painting canvas that are going into the baby's room. I am going to write some Bible verses over them so I'll take pictures of that when we get the baby's room completed. It is getting close, I got it painted chocolate brown the other day (don't worry I wore a mask and checked it out with my doctor before I painted). Parkes and Brandon flew to Houston last weekend to go see Brandon's mom so I had a quiet weekend to work on things and rest because we have 7 weeks left until this baby is here and I'm sure it will fly by with the holidays (actually I know it will as I had Parkes 3 years ago around this time, but like when I was pregnant with Parkes I have all my Christmas shopping completely done and actually wrapped...don't get too impressed if I weren't pregnant I would still be shopping Christmas Eve). Okay I do have more pictures to post from the week....Parkes had his first school program which was adorable and he did a great job singing which when he sings he sways back and forth the whole time so it was very funny. So I will get those pictures up as soon as I can, I'll try this afternoon, but no promises as we are still on dial-up internet so it either works or is too slow and I get frustrated and just get off the computer.