So much to blog about, so little time...

I'm baaaack!
It's been so crazy these past 3 and a half weeks. The first month of summer break has FLOWN by.
I'll be posting a lot in the next week just to try and get caught up.
Starting from the beginning.
The day after school got out, my mom and step-dad showed up here with a trailer to empty out the storage unit my mom has been maintaining here with the furniture from my Grandma's house. The next two weeks was a blur of building, cleaning, painting, painting, more painting, and organizing.
The final score: 3 new rooms, plus new floors ordered for and installed in most of the house, plus old/ new furniture for her master bedroom and living room.
Here's the photo evidence.

Before: 

This is what my mom's house looked like after she spent several weeks taking everything out of all the shelves, drawers, cupboards, closets, etc. For the record most of the junk being cleaned out was stuff either my sister Emily or I had left behind when we moved out and got married, compounded with all the stuff my mom had been gathering in order to complete this makeover. It was CRAZY. The first 2 photos are mid sorting. I was emptying out that huge hutch and figuring out what stuff to keep, what stuff to send off to other people, what to donate, etc.

During: 

Once we got rid of everything we ripped out the old carpet, cleaned everything thoroughly, and then painted.

We also spent a ton of time refinishing some of her old furniture. My mom has fantastic solid wood furniture, some of which has been in the family since she was a kid. Most of it, though, was either severely water damaged, scratched to pieces by cats, or sloppily painted by her teenagers back in the 90's. Cough. Rather than sand everything down to bare wood and restain it, mom decided to take a gamble and let me do some paint finishes. I think the results speak for themselves.

After:

I don't have any photos of the finished craft room, but here's a partially finished one that at least shows off some of the cool tables I made for mom out of old doors, and the paint colors we were working with. The general color scheme was yellow, navy, and red, and she wanted it to be a fun, energetic, vintage inspired place where she can just create.
The guest room we kept really simple. We just freshened up the existing paint, put in some furniture from grandma's house, and some linens. It's a much more romantic, softer feeling room. This is mostly due to the ivy stenciling and window boxes that a few of us girls did back when we were teenagers in that room.

 (This antique mirror is actually a creepy unicorn clock in a gosh-aweful faux gold frame that I fixed up with some mirror paint and ivory Krylon)

The office was my favorite room. The photos don't do justice to the rich colors and cool Hollywood Regency feel in there. I seriously would find myself just standing in there whenever I wasn't doing something somewhere else.

Anyway, it was the experience of a lifetime. I'm amazed we got through it, and I can't see what mom does with the rest of the place. I'll be back at Christmas and we'll have to do like a "6 months later" feature.
Now excuse me while I go do 7 million loads of laundry and spend the next several hours editing photos of Cancun. It's good to be back!