house for sale!

As detailed in my previous post, we are moving. Now we have to sell our house. It's quite hard to say good bye to our family and friends here in Nebraska, and it's also tough to say good bye to such a fantastic home. We have put a lot of hard work into updating it and we love it.

Please call if you are interested: 308-529-2593. And click here for a collection of several pages of before and after photos.

Here it is: 2102 Avenue G. This updated four-level brick home built in 1970 by Al Fickenscher has three large family rooms, four bedrooms, two bathrooms and an attached two car garage with a square footage of 2784. The garage is 560 sq. ft.. There are two mature maple trees in the front yard, three pine trees, one to the south and two to the north, and one large, trimmed maple tree shading the back yard. The roof was re-shingled and gutters added in fall 2010. Air vents were added to the soffit at that time as well. There is a new steel front door and new storms windows and paint to all upstairs rooms. The garage door opener was installed new in spring 2010.

We completed this stone patio fall 2011. We added railings to the already completed deck spring 2010.

Here is the view of the large back lawn, maple tree and alley access. The tree was trimmed away from the house in the summer of 2010. The chain link fence was added in the fall of 2010. Our trampoline is over a garden area. There is a cement basketball court, brick shed and a fort over a sand box all parallel to the alley.

We trimmed both north pine trees summer 2010.

We are thankful we were given a riding lawn mower because the lot is very large: 90 ft x 154 ft or .31 acres. Also there are underground sprinklers.

The highest level of the house has three bedrooms and a bathroom. The hall has a new ceiling fan. Here is the master bedroom. New wall and ceiling paint, new light and new storm windows.

A second bedroom next to the master. New lighting, wall and ceiling paint and storm windows. The window shutters have new room darkening fabric in them.

Here is the third upstairs bedroom which is across the hall from the bathroom. New lighting, wall and ceiling paint and storm windows.

This is the upstairs bathroom. The Congoleum vinyl flooring was installed approximately six years ago. The white wall tile, new toilet and faucet, wall and ceiling paint, lighting, drawer pulls and new shower head were completed in spring 2010. A laundry shoot leads to the lowest level laundry room.

This is the main floor that contains the first family room, dining room and kitchen. All the updates were completed spring 2010. The stairs have new berber carpet. The large family room has new hardwood flooring and trim. New wall and ceiling paint. New recessed lighting with dimming switch and ceiling fan. New steel front door.

This is the view from the upstairs landing. The room leading off to the right is the dining room.

This is the view from the front door. The dining room and kitchen flooring is the same Congoleum flooring as the upstairs bathroom and it's very durable and in very good shape. The back door leads onto the back deck.

This is looking into the dining room from the kitchen. Both ceilings were textured and painted spring 2010. New wall paint was done at that time. The built in hutch was re-stained. Three hanging lights over the counter and new counter tops were also installed spring 2010.

The view of the kitchen from the dining room. New recessed lighting. Painted cabinets and new pulls. New tile back splash. New sink and faucet. All new appliances. The dining room light was moved and re-hung to be centered over the table.

This is the next level down with the second family room. New berber carpet, lighting and paint. The two windows look out on the patio and back yard.

This built-in shelving was remodeled to make room for a large flat screen and the cabinets, drawers and shelves were painted.

From this view you can see two doors. The left leads to the fourth bedroom and the right leads to the second bathroom.

Fourth bedroom. New paint, carpet and lighting. New window prior to our acquirement of the house.

This is the second bathroom. Just this winter the room was repainted, including the walls, ceiling and cabinets. A new toilet and faucet were installed spring 2010. There is a laundry shoot here as well.

This is the lowest level of the house with the third family room looking in from the stairs. It was our home school and play room. I painted the ceilings and walls summer 2011. We cleaned the carpets spring 2010.

Looking east. There is a door in the left corner that leads up to the garage. There are seven sturdy shelves.

Looking east to the front of the house.

Summer 2010 I painted the laundry room to match the rest - ceiling, cabinets and walls. New light. New water softener spring 2010. New utility sink summer 2011.

There is also a storage room with a lot of shelving. This is where the furnace is located.

"before and after" 2nd bathroom

Today we completed our last project of updating - the downstairs second bathroom. Our house is officially done. And it's a good thing because now we have to sell the house.

So here is what the bathroom looked like when we moved in spring 2010. There were two places next to the shower that the drywall needed to be patched and the ceiling needed some work.

After. Notice the semi-glossy ceiling. I painted everything - ceiling, walls and cabinets - the same color as the kitchen, White Putty. It looks so good. So fresh and clean. I love the smell of a freshly painted room!

Ceiling before

Ceiling after. I love the sheen to it.

The hook board was blue before. I just painted it to match the rest of the house colors, Oregon Dunes.

Freshly painted cabinets, inside and out.

Patched drywall and new trim.

touchups

The sign just went up so maybe that makes our moving more official. Kinda sad looking!

Last week we had a realtor come examine our house and see what she thought it was worth. She gave us a few tips for for finishing touches.

One suggestion was the upstairs bathroom closet doors. We actually took those doors down before we even moved into this house and planned to get new ones or re-paint them. That never happened. We've just been using the bathroom with no closet doors. And check out the old tile and paint!

But the realtor suggested putting them back up so Terry scraped and wiped them down.

We got some glossy white spray paint to go over the old cream color.

All done.

If we had stayed in this house, we probably would have gotten new windows for the ones next to the stone patio in the back yard. Since that's not happening, the realtor suggested we scrape and paint those windows. So this was after I scraped.

Pretty...

I let Noah do a little because he just loves to paint.

After.

Nice right?

moldy paint?

We moved into this, our first house, about a year and a half ago - June 2010. Thankfully, before we moved in, we were able to do all the updating so we didn't have to live in the mess.

I did a whole ton of painting (it's a large house) and by the time I came to my final project, the upstairs family bathroom, I was so done. Lets just say I did a terrible job. The walls were gray but the details were bad. I taped poorly and I cut in wretchedly and I didn't even clean up the mess where I painted over the tape onto the tile.

Today I remedied it. Check out those edges! (this looking in from the door)

However, I did have quite a trying time getting this project done.

The first thing that needed to be done was tidy up the white edges of the ceiling - they didn't match the rest. So I grabbed the ceiling paint that I used for the dungeon make-over, just 5 months ago, and pried the can open. Instead of the nice white color I was looking for, the top of the paint was kind of a grayish black color. And it looked furry. My first thought was that it was just a little dried out on the top so I tried to scoop it off. But when the stir stick hit the stuff, it just kinda dissolved and was lost. So I stirred it up. It was at this point, when a most wretched smell reached my nose, that I realized that the gray/black top was not dried paint. It was mold. And I had just stirred it up. How does paint get moldy? I have no idea. But it was.

However, I was not to be deterred by the moldy white paint, even though the smell lingered in my bathroom. I had other options. I grabbed another can of white primer from who knows when. But when I cracked it open the paint was definitely dry. No mold so that was good, but still not usable.

Luckily I had a brand new can of ceiling paint that I was able to use after I rolled it around on the floor a while. Perfect.

So after my ceiling was cleaned up, the next step was cleaning up the gray edging. After I cracked open that can (which was only 1.5 years old), I saw that it was on it's way to being dried up. It was all solidified and sticky. Not really stir-able at all! But it had just enough moisture to kinda poke my edging brush into it and get my project done. I did add a little white ceiling paint and it seemed to mix in a little.

Lesson learned - Close paint cans more securely. I don't know what causes paint to mold though...

I also got out a trusty razor blade and cleaned up the mess of dried paint on the tile from my first botched job. Finally, our bathroom is really, actually, completely complete.

And Evie is cute.

the past tense oak

Our house has/had a lot of trees on it's lot - it had seven. And that was one too many apparently. Our neighbor was none too fond of the oak tree that was on the boundary line between our two front lawns. The oak dropped acorns on her lawn every year and caused (?) the grass not to grow on her side of the tree (but didn't affect our side).

I scoured every photo I've ever taken of our house but could only find this one where you can see the trunk. The first two trees in the photo are maples. The third is the past tense oak. The fourth is our neighbor's tree.

I say "was," you see, b/c Terry gave in to our neighbor and had the oak cut down. She did pay half so that was nice. Here is the line of pines from the front, but you'll notice that there is no oak anymore, just a patch of sad dirt mourning the death of the friend it once nourished.

Here is the front without the oak.

Sad little dirt pile. I have been quite depressed about the it, though I wasn't particularly fond of the oak. It was just there. However, it just feels wrong to cut trees down, especially oak trees that have been there for almost 40 years. Hopefully our neighbor is happy now.

really finishing the patio

Terry took off the wood framing for the patio and discovered that the gravel was leaking out from under the stones a little. So he put up more wood framing, mixed up some leftover cement and poured it next to the patio. It was my idea to put hand prints in.

Pressing down was kinda hard for the kids. Daddy ended up helping.

Noah - he wrote that himself.

Daddy did Evie's name and pushed down on her hands.

And that's the day we did it!