Rental House ~ Before and After!

This is our rental and I apologize for not having too many before pictures. I was going through a rough time in our life and just didn't care about the rental house plus with the smell and fumes over there it was too overwhelming for me. The couple who owned it smoked in there for 54 years!!!! YUCK!

Josh and his buddy, Mark Moore did an AWESOME job fixing it up with some help from Pa Proper and Jason Peterson! We had to hire out (besides Mark) a plumber to put in a shower and fan, a painter to paint the ceilings since the tar was bleeding through anything Josh painted and to lay the carpet...other than that Josh and Mark did all the work....Josh re-did the hardwood floors and Mark was jack of all trades he did the flooring in the kitchen, entry way and bathroom and the guys even installed the new windows themselves and did some wiring! It turned out better than I thought it would.


The new flooring in the kitchen. Nasty carpet was in there before.


This is one of the walls before we painted. Can you see the outline of the cross?


The dining room before...........


Avery LOVED to paint and "supervise" the boys ;)


Josh sanding the hardwood floors (Mark helped with that too)! They were in AWESOME shape!


Dining room after.


The nasty carpet that was downstairs......you can see at one point it was nice.


The living room after they painted and ripped the carpet out.

Living room after.

The new flooring in the entry way.

The entryway. Mark and Josh in action. They made a great team!

The entry way after.

The stairs with the carpet ripped off.....

The stairs after then new carpet.

The hallway after they painted and ripped the carpet out....


The hallway finished.

Bedroom #1 halfway painted.....

Bedroom #1 finished.

Bedroom #2 before.


Bedroom #2 finished.


Bedroom #3 finished....all bedrooms got painted, new carpet, new light fixtures and windows.

The lovely pink bathroom before....


Bathroom after.

The lovely wallpaper in the bathroom (thank goodness that was the ONLY wall that had wallpaper on it!

My awesome mother-in-law put up new wallpaper left over from our house ;)

The NASTY carpet.... the carpet on top was in bedroom #3.

Old light fixture.....

New light fixtures....replaced 2 of them.

I got the job of cleaning (except the kitchen Julia did that! Thanks again!) We have a few little things to do yet but are ready for renters. Let us know if anyone needs a house to rent. Thanks!

These shoes are made for dancing....

I was getting out Avery's clothes for tomorrow and she spied her "new" shoes (they are used but new to her ;) and said "Oh mommy thank you for my new dancing shoes!".......she cracks me up!

Outer Banks (Corolla, NC) Vacation

Well I can't believe our vacation has come and gone.....seems this year is just flying bye! We ventured to the Outer Banks Corolla, NC for 2 weeks. The weather was cool, rainy and windy most of the first week and Avery was sick most of the 2nd week!

We left Friday morning at 10am planning on stopping half way and Avery did so well we drove straight through. Took us 13.5 hours - traffic in DC area was horrible!

Half hour into the trip she's already snoozing! She only slept maybe 2 hours of the entire 13.5 hour trip.

Our "home" for the week. There were 5 adults and one 6 yr old that stayed with us.

Avery and Libby enjoying the hot tub.

Avery enjoying her lunch....life is rough ;)


Our jeep. We loved driving on the beach!

Miss Avery's first day on the beach. We took her to Surf Side, SC in Sept. 2007 but she was only 3 mos. so she got to enjoy the sand and water much more this time :)

She loves the water. It was a bit chilly.

Jason and Justin Crawford catching blue crabs at the Currituck Heritage Park.

They caught about 5 or so and then left them go.

This bird kept trying to get their bait.

Miss Avery with her "cheese" smile!

One of the crappier weather days we went to Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Here are some facts about it:

Number of steps: 214

Height to top of roof: 162 ft.

Number of bricks: approx. 1,000,000

Looking up at all the steps we had to climb.

Views from the top.....this is Currituck Heritage Park.

More views

You could see "our" house from the top.

The ocean

Poor Josh is terrified of heights! I can't believe he even did it! I love this photo makes me snicker :)

He wouldn't even let go of the door to pose for a family picture! Then there was Miss Avery who was running around and trying to climb the fence!!!!

That same day we went to Kitty Hawk which is a good 45 min. drive to visit the Wright Brothers Museum.

Again it was soooo windy!

Trying to feed the turtles at our complex. One of the locals said that many of them have all ready migrated and we only saw one here and there. By the way they don't like cheese balls :)

Sitting in the sand.

Avery's BFF Liberty.

This was a common thing....Avery who rarely sleeps in a vehicle did it quite often on vacation.

This is just getting to the beach which was like a 2-3 min drive!

Ahhhh enjoying an adult beverage :)

Girls having fun in their "pool"

Eewww a HUGE jelly fish! We saw quite a bit of these.

After dinner one night.

Avery enjoying the playground we had at "our" house.

Missy, her daughter Libby, Kristen, Amber, Avery and me. Never did get a picture of the boys.

Week #2 was just us and we rented a house on the 4x4 beaches of Carova. You had to drive about 8 miles on the beach to get there.

"Our" house. Hated the peach color on the outside but inside was pretty nice but I think it had a funny smell in the basement and 2nd floor...the 3rd floor smelled fine.

Views from each side of our house....yes the "roads" were sand!

View from the front.

View from the back....I was trying to get the sunset.

They have Wild Spanish Mustangs that roam the Outer Banks. This one was in our front yard one day.

And one was in our driveway and

one (a colt) was by our backdoor. They don't mind people or vehichles but they won't let you pet them.

Mommy and Avery taking a morning stroll on the beach.

Poor Avery we just got set up and she was asleep. She started with a fever on Sept. 8th and I thought a cold each day that went by I was giving her more and more tyl. then on Sun. the 13th she was just so whiney and crying not sleeping well then we went to town on Monday morning to get motrin and oragel, she didn't eat NOR would drink anything and still had a fever so I called our Pediatrician and nurse said we should have her checked out. I did notice her lower right side in her mouth her gum was swollen - stupid 2 yr molars! So Monday night we drive over an hour to get to Kitty Hawk's Urgent Care and the Dr. said everything looked fine it's either something viral or her 2 yr molars so he said alternate tyl and mortin every 3 hours. That in itself was a fight to get her to take all her medicine but once she had it in her she acted better! Of course the 2 hottest/nicest days we had in the 2 wks we were there Avery felt the worse :( She also developed a cough (like a smokers cough) and still has it. I wasn't all that impressed witht the Dr. and think she did have something!

They had legos at this house and Avery loved playing "puzzles" with daddy.

We improvised on someones castle they had built :)

Enjoying the water with daddy.

She wanted to swim so bad and we had a pool at our complex in our first house but it was SOOO stinking cold we never did get to swim so I brought a little pool for her and we took it to the ocean and filled it up for her.

Here she is flying her kite. That's our jeep in the background. It was so handy to drive and park on the beach...you would only load the jeep up once and only get out what you needed instead of dragging everything by hand to the beach.

There is her Elmo kite she got at Kaid's bday party.

We decided it was too much work hauling and filling the pool at the beach AND Avery's limit at the beach was about 45 mins. so we set it up on the deck and she wanted me to swim with her.

Naked Booty Girl!

Our footprints leading to the ocean. It was only a 2 min. walk to the beach.

2 of my FAVORITE photos!

I love the sand between my toes..............

We saw a lot of these sting ray shells on the beach. I never did see any crabs though!

This is the most horses we saw in a pack. At night we always drive around and see a few here and there. We also saw wild boars, fox, deer and a bunny rabbit. I wondered if they ever wondered on the beach and well our last night there coming back from dinner we almost rear ended 3 of them....it was so dark. Couldn't get a good picture since it was so dark.

We were only 10 mins. from the Virigina line.

Probably Avery's favorite thing to do was to take a shower outdoors!

She loved these froggies and they hung out in the outdoor shower and by the back door.

This is one of the many roads to get onto the 4x4 beach.

Taking another morning stroll. The mornings were nice then it would be overcast and cool out :(

She's starting to feel better and thinks when she's at the ocean that her clothes need to come off!

Alex, Linda, little Alex and his neice, Kaylynn came down for 24 hours. Yes he's nuts took him 2 days to get there b/c he stopped so much (personally I think he got lost) then he said he was going onto Florida but I don't think they ever did!

Alex make quisadea's for the kids for lunch....Avery eating only the ham.

The kids playing by the dunes on our last day.....Kaylynn HATED the water!

Linda kept giving Avery suckers!! Suckers and sand DO MIX!

Love this photo she has sand everywhere!

Then she saw little Alex rolling down the hill so she had to too. Took me a few days to get the sand out of her ears!

Had to go rinse off since little Alex threw sand in her face. Then the sun came out for about a half and hour so we got our suits on and headed to the beach.

Again her "cheese" smile.

I took this one myself...not bad :)

Family portraits - not how I wanted them to turn out but oh well. I noticed Avery has fruit snacks in her cheeks!! ha.ha.

This was blurry so if I black and white it you can't tell as bad.

After we dropped Alex and crew off to get their van we ate a nice dinner and let Avery play on the playground.

This was the morning we left at 6:30 we finally saw the sunrise.

On our way home. We drove straight through again....took us 13 hours. Left at 8am and got home at 9pm. It didn't feel like we were gone 2 weeks even with crappy weather and a sick child time still flew bye!