Progress.

Well! Now that we're homeowners, we're discovering the absolute joy that is remodeling our house.

Besides a couple really quick pictures and the big announcement, I haven't said a whole lot about the house or our home projects, I realize. So, here's the skinny.

Back in June, we purchased a 1934 farmhouse in rural Iowa, and also around 20 acres of land (some pasture, some farmland, and a little pond), along with a barn, two machine sheds, and some other buildings.

For the past few years, we've lived right at the Camp where we work, (the commute has been awesome), but we've really wanted to get our own place and have been looking for a while. This lovely acreage came available, and all the pieces fell into place, and now it's ours.

We're incredibly, undeservedly blessed.

The house is in pretty darn good condition, but we decided to take advantage of the fact that we don't need to move in right away and do a few updates and remodel-y things to make it "ours."

Here's what we've been working on for the past few weeks/months...

~Tearing up carpets.~

This room will eventually be our laundry room/mudroom. Mud and carpets don't mix, and after we discovered the original hardwood floors underneath, we started pulling up the carpet tiles.

Here's what it looked like before...

(Laundry room before)

(Laundry room before)

... and here's what it looks like now, with the carpet mostly torn off and the floors mostly scraped. We still need to sand and refinish this floor.

~Mowing the lawn. (And mowing some more. And some more.)~

We've got several acres of lawn around the house, and Trevor's been mowing it. It takes about two hours to get the whole thing done, and he's been mowing about twice a week. While I spend time...

 ~Tearing up more carpet~

The same carpet tiles were also extended through the kitchen. I just knew that the minute we move in, I'll drop an entire pot of spaghetti sauce on the floor and destroy the carpet, and I really love the idea of having those beautiful hardwood floors restored.


So, more pulling up carpet.

(Kitchen Before)

(Kitchen Before)

This whole scraping process has taken a really, really long time. But now all we have to do is some major sanding, then finishing the floors. No biggie. ;)

(Kitchen with the carpet up and floor scraped)

~Tearing up even more carpet.~

The bathroom was also carpeted.... so we tore that up, too.

(Bathroom before)

And we found adhesive tile underneath! So I'm now working on scraping up those tiles (some are loose) before we put in a new underlayment and linoleum.

~Ordering... carpet.~

For the majority of the house, carpet is coming out and we're either restoring hardwood or adding vinyl linoleum stuff. Except in the living room- where we'll be taking out carpet and putting in new. And some wood, too.

Here's the current living room...

(Living room before)

and a sneak peek at the new carpet and wood.

~Going through the sheds.~

One really fun thing about moving onto a farm is all the stuff that was left behind. We have so many buildings on our property, and most of them have some lingering "junk" in them-- and it's been really fun to go through the stuff and find little treasures (like deer antlers and old dishes).

The next steps include finishing floors, painting, putting in carpet, roofing the house, putting in a new septic system, planning next year's garden, maybe doing some thinking about where to put chickens... there's some fun stuff ahead!

Have you done a home remodel? What was the most rewarding thing about it?