We bought a house!

I have been MIA for way too long!  We bought a house last summer and have been working on it non stop.  Wasn't a bad house just needs a lot of updating.  My Momma also had a heart attack the day we bought the house and has been in and out of the hospital (mostly in) during the last 7 months.  So between seeing her in St Louis (two hours away) and Patrick working it has been a very slow go and updating the house.  Especially since EVERYTHING has been a DIY. 

I'm going to post the things I have done on here with as many before and after pictures as possible.  A lot of things I didn't get before pictures because I just forgot.  But I can tell you on one had the things for my house I bought new.  The rest came from yard sales and thrift shops or relatives basements! Ha!

First off, let me introduce you to my house!

Nothing fancy just a house in the country.  3 bed/2 bath ranch with NO AC! Window units do ok for now. 



This house needed paint bad.  I knew replacing the siding would cost a lot more than paint so we opted to keep the aluminum.  We had a man give us an estimate on how much it would cost to paint it but he wouldn't just paint.  He told us if his name went on it, he wanted it to look like a show place....Fix the gutters, add gutters, wash it, paint, wash the shutters, and some other stuff I don't remember.  He only wanted $1100 for all that work but I didn't want the other stuff "fixed".  Those are things I can do...in fact, painting is something I can do!  Only wanted someone else to pain because that's a big painting job.  But with 4 peoples and a sprayer we got it done in one weekend!  All it cost was the paint.  Which was about $350 (trim and all).  Did I mention the massive(ly small) budget we have to remake this house?  Yeah, we're poor.  Who isn't!?  I'll tell you now we had about $5000 for EVERYTHING we wanted to do.  We do a little more when we can and sometimes we don't do as much (like when dryer breaks and needs to be replaced before we buy more paint.) 

Now here's what the house looks like after we painted it!

 A little butterscotch color.  It can be very pale tan to a very glowing and vibrant orange depending on the time of day.  Oh and just so you know, I like color.  A lot of color.  Take that as a warning.  
After we hung the brown shutters back up and hated everything about the house.  It looked like a texas cowboy house.  Just no.  So, I spray painted the shutters white! Yes, I took them down first.  And now I love my house.  We also planted some bushes.  I need to get some evergreen things out there so it doesn't look so crappy in the colder months.  And here are a few more pictures of our country home.  Yes, that is an Amish buggy going down the road.

And we have a chicken coop!  Lots of plans for that building.

As well as our two lean-tos.