It’s a Giveaway!
EDIT: Giveaway is now closed, thanks for playing along! Winners to be announced Monday night.
Thanks to everyone for stopping by as part of SMS’s Giveaway Day! A special hello goes out to my regular visitors, I appreciate all of your comments and encouragement the past couple of months! *waves hello*
Anywho, for those of you are stopping by for the first time, or just haven’t been in this space in a while, the short story is that my hubs & I just bought our first home in SoCal, and we do feel very blessed we’ve been able to make this happen.
The previous (and original) owners (POs if you please – because they make me PO’d) did not half-arse living in this house, but they sorta forgot to clean and/or do much in the way of home improvements (and some of what they did was not an improvement, but rather a “de-provement” – like painting the walls with a white FLAT paint that shows every speck of dirt that they never cleaned up).
We’ve replaced all 1600 SF of flooring in the place – 30 year old carpet could be livable IF it is vacuumed and cleaned on a regular basis…but again, the POs were lacking in these skills. And the woman seems to have an unnatural obsession with sticky stuff – wallpaper and contact paper have proven quite difficult to remove.
We’ve also had to put forth some effort to remove some squatters (aka cockroaches) from the premises… cleaning and Raid seem to be helping
So lots of work has been done and still needs to be done to make the place a bit more modern and generally livable, let alone adding our own touch of style to the place.
My sewing machine has been stuffed away for the moment, so y’all will have to content yourself with this array of fabric:
Sorry for the bad iphone photo, I have no idea where my USB cable is for my camera right now, so that’s what worked.
The fabric will include some fat quarters and other smaller, but generously-sized pieces…bigger than scraps (scraps are what you make string quilts out of).
REQUIREMENTS: And because encouraging comments sometimes aren’t just enough, I want to hear your home improvement horror stories. Even if its not your story or even true…just something to let me know that life could be so much worse for Steve and I. And because poor Steve has been stressed about all things house related, I’m going to have him decide whom he would not trade places with in a million years, and that person will bring home the bacon in the form of the goodies above. Because of the quantity of fabrics I pulled out, this may get split into 2 packages.
And if you really truly don’t have a great horror story for me, leave me a nice comment 
I guess the worst thing that’s happened to us is when my DH got a rented excavator stuck in a ditch while it was pouring down rain. Thankfully he’s super smart and handy and got it out!
No major home improvement horror stories but, I’m still trying to figure out how to remove the rest of the wallpaper off the bathroom walls in my grandfathers house. . . Most of it is off but, there still wallpaper – apparently two kinds – and a couple layers of paint and trying to get level walls to put up new wallpaper has proven quite the challenge. Now, I know why my father hates wallpaper! (He’s a painter)
Anyhow, love the blog!
The lady we bought our house from had smoked 3 packs a day inside for 30 years – there were nicotine stains everywhere! You could see the outlines of the pictures when they were taken down. There was navy blue shag carpeting in the main rooms, with red, purple and green shag in the bedrooms (NO JOKE!). in the purple and green rooms, the closets were painted to match the carpeting. The bathroom vanities were plastic. and the master bath had a sunken tub.
Big hugs coming your way!!!
Oh, I can feel your pain! Our last house was 120 year old 5000 sq. ft. monstrosity that hadn’t been worked on in over 40 years. No joke. We had to strip fuzzy HUGE printed wall paper in ochre and avocado off EVERY WALL in the place. AND THEN…we found that the whole place was lathe (we suspected as much) and had to skim coat the walls before we could paint them. Then we had to paint them. It took FOREVER!!!! Incidentally, we moved to an apartment when we left that place! LOL! NO Maintenance anymore! LOL! jinglesells at gmail dot com
great giveaway!
so sorry about your home improvement troubles.. i don’t have any horror stories because we haven’t really attempted any projects. just too busy!
thanks for the chance to win!
lora
eagerhands@gmail.com
ps-check out my blog for a vintage goodie basket giveaway!
Oooh, I get PO’d with the PO of my house, too! I bought it about a year ago. The furnaces (there is one for each floor) were really old, and I wanted them replaced, but the PO refused because they didn’t have the money. So they agreed to buy me a home warranty that would cover the furnaces when the broke, which was sure to happen the next winter. Well, they broke, and then I found out the warranty didn’t cover them because they were so old and didn’t have some kind of safety valve. So I had to buy two new furnaces. Then, although they said the basement had never flooded, the basement flooded. Of course, the flooding was occurring in the one finished portion of the basement, so I had to rip out all of the carpet and the bottom half of the walls. And when that work was done, there was evidence that the basement had flooded many times in the past. It flooded happened three times before the problem was diagnosed as a bad drain. I had the drain ripped out and replaced…several thousand dollars later, there is now flooding coming from a different area. Now I need to rip up the concrete floors and install drain tile and a sump pump. Haven’t done it yet because of the cost. Oh, there’s more. I had gross carpet, too, and they said there was hard wood underneath. So I ripped up the carpet and found that the hard wood did not cover the entire floor…some of it was just plywood. And the wood that was there was beyond repair. So I had to replace the entire first floor with new hard wood. Lots of other, smaller problems, but those are biggies! As you can tell, the PO gets me really PO’d! Hang in there.
What beautiful fabric!
My home improvement horror stories. Wow, I don’t know were to begin! In 2002, my shower head broke off in my guest bathroom. I called a family member to help out. And before I knew it, I had no tile left in the bathroom. But the plumbing got fixed. The tile, well I still have huge wholes in my wall. I don’t know how to tile. So I nailed in some boards.
I also tried to fix a leaking roof during the summer. It didn’t work! My ceiling caved in this past week. We got a lot of rain and snow lately.
Don’t feel too bad! You know, it happens. We just have to figure out how to deal with all the problems. Even if they are temporary fixes for a while. Because we don’t have those great maintenance guys anymore! I hope it works out for you guys though!
Oh my Heather Ross!! I am drooling and would love to win. My horror story is still unfolding
We decided to paint and switch our bedrooms all around 3 weeks before our newest baby was born. We are still in the middle of it all and the house is a total wreck and nothing is organized. I feel like crying every time I think about it! Talk about bad idea! Bad timing! All around bad!
Thanks for the chance to win!
rollerkskates at gmail dot com
I’m in love with your giveaway!
My husband and I decided to relandscape our front yard to make it easier to maintain and use less resources than lawn. UGH! What a nightmare. It took over a year and gobs of money spent on renting landscaping supplies, planting things, unplanting things, redoing landscape material to keep weeds down, on and on. NEVER AGAIN!
a friend of ours bought this apartment that not only had stubborn wallpaper and dirty corners and cabinets housing cockroaches, but also had a thick brown layer of nicotine covering the ceilings. How do we know its nicotine you ask?, well it sure smells like someone smoked their lungs out in there!!! good luck with making your home pretty and cozy!
I hope you’ll finish soon your improvements!. My previous house was a swinery with humidity on walls, dirty earth in the courtyard and when rained pools appeared with too much slugs. The house was builded too bad with uneven ceiling ¬¬.
Be patient and the reward will be the satisfaction of make your home with your hands!
Hugs
My dad has some great home improvement stories. Like the toilet being replaced upstairs and not being sealed them leaking through the dining room ceiling upstairs. Then the ceiling in the dining room had to be replaced and they found rot up there, so more things had to be replaced. From what I remember it was a nightmare. Of course I was a just a kid so to me it was just fun to see all the workmen tearing apart the ceiling. Fun stuff!
please check out my giveaway if you get the chance! http://crissybell.blogspot.com
Ok, Imagine with me that you have helped your parents renovate a cute 1950’s one story house that you love now that it’s done. It took a lot for you to get there, there were almost ten years of on again off again work. Always something in some state of being fixed. And then when it’s all done and you finaly think you will get to enjoy the house and all of your hard work the Highway Department makes you move because they want to build a highway and your house is in the way. Then you watch as they dismantle your old house, while you move to a new house that guess what…your starting to renovate again. This is a true story…promise.
This isn’t really a home improvement horror story about our house,but years ago we were renting an apartment from my sister-in-law and she had a really weird plumbing situation where it was nearly impossible for her to get plumbers in to work. She finally got one who had a bit of a drinking problem but did good work when sober. One day he came up and took the sink out of our bathroom and told us he was going to lunch and would replace it whe he came back. Unbeknown to us my SIL paid him before he finished the job! needless to say he never came back that day… not until three months later!!! I’m was just grateful it wasn’t out toilet he took out!
my home improvement horror story is from when i was 15. my dad was putting up sheetrock on the ceiling of the foyer using a t-brace. i was being insistant that i needed to be underfoot. dad kept telling me to get out of the way. well, the sheetrock shifted and the t-brace fell. bopped me right in the forehead. ended up with a bunch of stitches!
have a merry christmas and good luck with the improvements!
thanks,
Kim
my favorite home improvement thing is when my hubby tried to redo our backyard. he tore it all up and reseeded it. problem is that the grass never really came in. sadly he is gone during the summers working so our backyard was very sad looking and my 2 year old couldn’t play back there like we dreamed. needless to say this spring we’re going to just do sod!
Gorgeous fabrics BTW!
Our semi-horror story is that the previous owners of our house put drywall over plaster and lap walls. The also replaced all the 2-pronged electrical outlets with newer three pronged ones but didn’t update the wiring! There was no ground on the third prong. Thankfully we had a great inspector who caught this. It was supposed to be fixed before we moved in but never was. So my husband had to do it himself.
Thanks for the giveaway!
WOW, so sorry to hear about the nightmare POs! I’m still a renter, so I rely on others to do these types of maintanance things and I don’t have any horror stories to share. But maybe I can share a bit of encouragement. I’m sure that when you’re all done with the house, you will have such a HUGE sense of accomplishment and satisfaction with the beautiful job you’ve done (from your previous posts, I see that it’s coming along beautifully). And it will be all you and will be your creation. Also, I do want to say your fabrics are GORGEOUS and so cute, and I would definitely find a great quilting project to put them to good use.
When I was a teenager my folks added on a family to the back of the house. We did a lot of the work ourselves but what sticks out in my mind the most was the ceiling which was a huge pain in the neck to paint and we did like three coats hoping that the colour would look better. It was called “whipped banana” and was supposed to be a lovely light yellow. It looked more like “mashed overripe banana” once we actually painted it onto the ceiling. After the third coat we stood there litterally watching paint dry…and get uglier and uglier before our eyes. We ended up painting two more coats of peach over it to get rid of that colour. By the time we were done we swore the ceiling was lower from all the paint.
I’m recently married and rent, so don’t have any horror stories just yet… good luck though and thanks for the give away.