Let's just say that berber carpet is NOT my favorite type of carpet.  Our last apartment had berber, and there were so many loose strands and dirt filled in every crack. It wasn't comfortable and didn't look clean.  So our house had almost the exact same carpet as our apartment, but add 6 years of dog dander to it, and it officially is my least favorite type of carpet.  We've mentioned the previous owners had dogs, but I'm not sure if you're really aware of the dogs they had. We've been told they had "litters and litters" of Great Danes in and out of the house. The carpet was filthy. It smelled, it was itchy, and it made you dirty when you walked on it.

Berber carpet in our last apartment

When we saw this house for the first time, we were hit in the face with the stench of a dirty dog smell. Right about now you're probably asking yourselves, "Then why did you pick that house to buy?" Exactly. We still ask ourselves that.  We never got the answer of why this was the house for us, but we do know that it IS our house and we have and will make it our own.

So the carpet was a no brainer.  It needed to be replaced. And that was the first thing on our mind when we got the keys.  Julia and Greta met us at the house, we gave them a tour, and we immediately started ripping out the carpet.

Brandon grew up building houses with his dad and his brothers.  Crazy right? I grew up having a dish night every Tuesday, and that seemed like a lot of work to me. I can't imagine building a house!  So to say the least, I didn't know anything coming into this process. But I sure have learned a lot! So if you have questions, please feel free to ask.

Brandon grabbed his utility knife and started cutting the carpet, pulling it out in large pieces, we would roll it up, and threw it into the garage.  We did this with the pad as well. This was SUCH A DIRTY JOB!! We could tell the carpet was filthy, but when we started to take out the pad, dirt was everywhere. Even in our lungs and sinuses. Gross! Who knew carpet was that dirty underneath?

 

Dirt on the sub floor after the carpet was taken out.

The next night we removed all the staples in the sub floor and removed a bunch of the tack boards where we installed hard flooring. The following night we swept up all the dirt, and used a shop vacuum to get rid of all the large items such as staples and carpet pad pieces.

We had some really good helpers!

Greta helping sweep up all the dirt in Jack's room.

Shop vacuums work wonders with this type of job!

The sub floor was finally cleaned! But we discovered a few stains that worried us, so we sprayed the entire first floor with Killz Primer (2 coats) to seal the pet smell so it wouldn't come through the new carpet.

                                            

I can't show the after picture of this view until we reveal the hard flooring, but look how uncomfortable it looks without carpet!

We saved a ton of money ripping out the carpet ourselves. It wasn't fun at all, but it was worth saving the money. I was asked if we did this again, if we would just pay someone to rip it out. My answer is no. We were able to get nicer carpet with the money we saved.



 The carpet we chose:

We chose Shaw carpet, Tuftex line, nylon carpet with a semi-tight twist. The color we chose was "Fleeting Fawn." We were told that once carpet is in the house, it will look lighter than the sample, so as a rule of thumb, to go a shade darker than what you want. Well we did and it is a little too dark for our taste. But nothing we can do about it now. And the color has warmed up to us and we both really like it now. It is clean and simple, but looks classy and attractive. (Did I just call carpet attractive?! What's gotten into me?)

Can you see those baseboards?!  Keep checking back and you will see more of them.

Here are some before and after shots.

The Loft/ Washer and Dryer closet:

Before

Loft without carpet.

After

Loft with old carpet.

Loft without carpet.

Loft AFTER with new carpet.

Stairwell:

After carpet was ripped out. Plus the tools we used to take out the staples.

AFTER

Again, we can't show too many of the rooms with carpet because we have some other projects to reveal in future posts and don't want to give them away!

You're getting to see some of the painted walls in these pictures. Don't focus on that. Another blog post is in the making to show you all the beautiful wall colors in our house. Stay tuned!

 I'm probably the only mom out there that doesn't LOVE to go to the salon. Don't get me wrong. I love getting my scalp massaged and my hair styled (which I never do!). But it is a lot more effort and a lot more money than I want to spend. I don't even want to spend $6.99 for a haircut at Great Clips. I would rather spend that money on pop (I'm slowly working on my addiction!). I've been in need of a haircut for a while now. In fact, it's now been over a year since I got a haircut. Yikes!

I've tried to convince Brandon for weeks now to cut my hair. But he's been too worried he'll mess it up. So my choices were go to a salon and spend money, or cut it myself. Obviously I know the best option was to just spend the money. But once I got the idea in my head, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Have you ever done something just because you wanted to say that you've done it? I cut both Brandon and Jack's hair. So I thought, "I've got this. I know how to cut hair. I can cut my own!" And with a few days of mentally preparing, I cut it last night.  And I took photos to prove it! (Don't laugh too hard at these photos!)

I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty impressed with myself. I think it turned out really well. I was really worried, so I only cut an inch and a half off just to trim up the edges. That way if I totally messed up, I could go to a salon and get it fixed without getting too much cut off. I included the steps of how I cut my hair in case there is anyone out there that would also like to cut their own hair!

Here are the steps to cut your own hair.

Note: These instructions are for cutting long hair, with a slight "U" shape in the back, without any layers.

1. Get hair damp.

2. Part your hair in the part you wear on a daily basis. Then put your hair in a ponytail.

3. Slide hair tie to the bottom of the ponytail.

4. Hold the hair in between your pointer finger and your middle finger. Using hair cutting scissors (we just have a Conair kit that includes clippers, guards, and scissors), cut straight across the edge of the hair.

5. Remove the hair tie and bring the hair to the front, separating it into two sections.. one on each side.

6. Again place the hair in between your fingers and cut across the bottom.

7. Measure with a ruler or visually measure the length of both sides to make sure they are even.

And voila! You cut your hair!

Damp, Front

Damp, Back

Dry, Front

Dry, Back

 

I felt like I couldn't see a difference at first, but I'm loving my clean, freshly cut ends today.  What do you think? Do you see a difference? Would you ever attempt cutting your own hair? Leave a comment and let me know!

Brandon brought it to my attention yesterday that Jack will turn one next month. ONE?! I'm not ready. Our little boy has grown up way too fast and I'm just not ready for this first year to be over. Our baby soon won't be a baby anymore. So here are some photos of Jack at 10 months old for me to always remember him at this age.

His laugh is contagious!

Jack helped his dad advertise headphones at the campus exposition.

His hair is pretty awesome.

He was sick for 3 weeks. His poor raw nose!

Big beautiful hazel eyes.

Adorable!

Jack and Dad were matching. Jack wasn't feeling well, fell asleep, and held Daddy's hand!

He usually crawls away before I can put his pants on him.

Loves not wearing pants.

Jack loves lasagna!

Jack chooses to sleep in weird positions.

Jack and Greta played on the window during lunch.

Jack loves BYU!

Now for the year birthday, what do you suggest. Should we throw a party and invite friends and family over to celebrate? Or do we just celebrate with our little family and enjoy the day together. Any suggestions?

If I had the money, I would totally be one of those people who hire a maid.  I don't enjoy cleaning, but I do enjoy a clean house. I even might be a little OCD about it when guests come over. 

When we bought our house, we knew we weren't buying a perfectly clean home.  But I never knew HOW dirty it really was. We had have our work cut out for us. This weekend marked 4 weeks since we moved in to our new home.  I can't believe it!  It seems like so long, yet I feel like we just got here and haven't had time to do anything.  Jack and I got sick the day we moved and are still sick today. Brandon has been sick for about 2 weeks now, so we haven't really felt up to house work.  So things have moved slowly since we moved in.

So it is good to remind myself once in a while of all the things we have done so far and I will share it with all of you! This post is a little random, but just some photos to mark the past 4 weeks for you to see.

We got the keys to the house on Wednesday January 25th.

 

We got to take the sign down. We were so excited!

 

That night we started ripping out carpet and discovered just how dirty this place really was.

(You will see this picture again in our carpet post- coming soon!)

We spent every evening at the house getting our hands dirty while I packed during the day at the apartment.

Our little apartment all packed up.

Boxes everywhere!

 

After packing every day for 2 weeks, I started to realize we didn't have enough boxes. My sister came in town the day before we moved and because she is the sweet sister that she is, helped me find more boxes in the dumpsters!

I'm pretty sure this is how we initially got sick!

Brandon got to go pick up our new couches that we bought in December.

  

It was very difficult working on the house with a 9 month old baby.  He hated being confined in a pack n' play and there was just too much dirt and plastic for him to be free. I ended up getting nothing done.

 

When we replaced the floors in the kitchen (hint for you in this picture!), we took the oven out and discovered the strong stench of fermented soy sauce and spaghetti sauce. I was the lucky one who got to clean it. I gagged only 100 times. 

 

 

 

 

How did it get this bad?!

 

We moved in on Saturday February 11th. We had friends and family come help and we are so grateful! We rented the largest truck Budget rents out and still had a trailer full of stuff following the truck. How did we accumulate so much stuff?!

 

Sunday the 12th, we spent the whole day cleaning the blinds in the house. We googled remedies and tried many... and we struck out with them all. The one that worked the best was scrubbing them with dish soap and water, then wiping them clean.  This took two people and an entire day! I'm pretty sure they never cleaned these blinds. Can you see the spot we cleaned in the picture?

 Monday, my sister and I spent the entire day at the old apartment. We got the carpets cleaned and cleaned the apartment spotless. Here is Jack unrolling the whole roll of paper towels like a red carpet!

 Last week we got our air vents, ducts, and returns cleaned. To say they were dirty would be an understatement. I got a super good deal on it, so we had to wait 3 weeks to get them done. But it was well worth it. The service we got was normally $250 and I paid $9.99! 

This is a picture of just one of the 3 filters in our house.  DISGUSTING!

If you haven't replaced your filters lately, I highly recommend it. It helps circulate the heat and air, helps keep your gas bill down, and it reduces the amount of dirt and dander in the home.

Our filter

A new, clean filter.

The guy who cleaned our vents accidentally broke our drain (I am giving him the benefit of the doubt since he neglected to tell me he broke it). He must be super strong, because he broke the metal piece connected to the side. When I went to remove the broken drain plug, I discovered this hair ball rope. I don't think they EVER cleaned out their drains. I'm terrified to check the other tub drain.

On the far right is the top of the drain plug and the rest is hair connected to it!

Yes this is random, but had to be included. Yesterday I was driving home from the grocery store and I was stopped in the middle of the road by this!!!!

Turkeys in the middle of the road. One male and all his females.

Where do we live?! Seriously a turkey in the middle of the road?

 I promise the posts are gonna get better and better! So subscribe to our page. Sorry it's taking so long. We're struggling to find all the pictures we took during the process. But we will have plenty to show you.. so check back!