Painting My Tush Off is Hard Work

Family! It's Kayla! Brace yourselves for a VERY long post. I apologize ahead. As you know, I moved! To Tetonia, Idaho. Population 300-something. It's tiny. But it's got a bar, a church, a post office, a gas station, a park, and a shop full of rustic mountain-y wood things. And people are a little CRAZY for rustic mountain-y things here because Tetonia is a cute stop on the way to one of the biggest tourist attractions in the region if not the country. If you walked through the grocery store (the next town over), you'd think you were surrounded by mostly hobos. Don't be decieved, there are several huge ski resorts nearby. They're just a bunch of ski bums. Funny enough, they sound and look like beach bums but they traded out their surf boards and salty hair for snowboards and ski caps. I'm not exaggerating.

The other part of the population out here are very nice ranchers and farmers mostly. The parking lot of the grocery store is filled with really. big. pick up trucks. In an overwhelming majority, the people are ridiculously nice. Even at stores, people will have random conversations with you and wish you luck on whatever ventures you're having. I've really had to pretend I'm not shocked when people talk to me and actually expect an answer. I suppose part of that is also the family I married into. I'm now related to a LOT of people. Who I don't know. Who know who I am because of Sue, or they were at our wedding, etc. Also, the Tetonia 2nd ward is probably the best ward I have ever been in. Ever. It is so great. AND I have some people waiting to take lessons from me! I just need to finish my house.

Which brings me to the reason for posting. Mom has been waiting for these pictures for a long time. I have to put a disclaimer on these pictures which are mostly befores (I'll make sure to get an awesome camera for after pictures): these were taken with the camera I had available- my phone. The quality is horrible and often they're blurred. That just means greater afters right?! Yep... So without further ado, a tour of my before-house in no particular order:

The whole house kind of felt like this stove.

A good close up.


In the house's defense, a nice old man lived here for a long time and got too old to take care of it. And then he died... and that's why we got to live here. Best rent of life. Which is why I'm not complaining too much about this stove. Chelsea, Mandy's roommate is actually the one that scrubbed it. It's beautiful now. It just didn't feel great when we got here.

A spice rack with vintage turquoise spice containers. OH MY GOSH!!
I'll definitely need ideas on how to make it cuter.

The living room. If you're wondering about the gray box, it's our heater.
Unfortunately, we can't move it. Fortunately, it works great and isn't very expensive.

Door leading to front porch/mudroom leading to front door.

Decor that came with the house. The curtains weren't horrible, but the hardware was dead.
When we took it down to paint, there was no putting them back up for temporary privacy until
I got my own curtains. The windows are huge and awesome though.
And we have a view of the Tetons people would kill for.

Kitchen from Living Room and all our paint stuff in a pile on the counter.

Front Bedroom.

Other side of front bedroom. It's really small. You're not missing anything except a window.

Kitchen Sink with dishwasher hose photo-bombing.
~By the way, the yellow sink actually looks awesome with the turquoise in the kitchen now!

Unmarred section of the kitchen floor. I love it.

Laundry area! I'm so excited to have my own washer and dryer!!
That dark doorway is the back porch! It'll probably be Kerry's
work area when he's home for boxes and stuff.
It's small, but there's a ton of storage which he needs.

Laundry area floor. At some point Dick (the old man who's house this was) decided he didn't like the linoleum on top of this stuff in the laundry room so he ripped it up. And not the adhesive. It's not sticky, just cement-like. Sue and Leon have some extra stuff they offered to give us to cover it. Yay!

Bathroom. This room is a whole other post. I'm not even going there today.
Holy moly, it's a disaster.

Except there's a window. I LOVE having a window in the bathroom even if it's in the shower. haha!
At a super-awkward-for-ladies height... hence the mini shower curtain.

We have a new-ish but oddly short fridge.

The crown jewel of all 70's living room lights. We had already raised it so Kerry didn't hit his head.
It was actually the first thing we did. And then we took it down completely and took it apart...
Also notice the recessed light in the background and the yellow stripes on the ceiling.

Have you noticed the whole house was covered in dark wood paneling.
You just can't escape it.  It's in every. single. drawer and cupboard too.

Our attempt at taking off the really old vinyl wallpaper. We took off the rest of this chunk of wall,
but I just painted over the other side of the room. It was like taking off normal wallpaper difficulties times a hundred. Horrible!

This bug (the brown spot is a bug) is convicted of trespassing and attempted vandalism.
(He got in my paint.)

Of my beautiful lights. They look awesome on the wall. They were $5 each at DI!!! I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS!

This is the fabric I want to make my living room and kitchen curtains out of. With such big windows and at $9.99 a yard... it'll take some saving. Did I mention my front windows are HUGE? They're huge.

Underneath the kitchen sink. I painted it, but we decided to just rip it out.
My wonderful husband is going to be putting in new bottom shelves in the whole kitchen and bathroom.
They're really that gross.

My bedroom painted. I thought I'd leave the drawers and cupboard, but the more I look at that fake wood, the more uncomfortable and unhappy I am. I'm thinking I'll paint it white with a gray or green pattern on them. And put a lot of accent colors on the wall because the pink is not exactly what I had in my head.

I left out both porches and the back bedroom because at the moment there's nothing to see. They're jam-packed with our stuff so we have enough space to paint and clean and fix everything else. Eventually, the back bedroom will be our huge walk-in closet. Yes. Closet.

Any ideas are welcome! I'll post the bathroom and in-progress bedroom pictures tomorrow. And hopefully soon I'll be done enough that I can post after pictures! YAY! Having a house to actually live in will be awesome.