Our first Home Improvement Project in our New Home

I teamed up with Dyson to sponsor this post.  To enter our giveaway, see giveaway details towards the bottom of this post.

As most of you know we’ve been *trying* to purchase a house that’s been in foreclosure for quite some time.  We thought we had it, but we didn’t.

We were determined not to give up.  Because it really & truly was a dream come true for us to find a home in an area we wanted to be in.

In all our efforts (and our Realtor’s efforts) it seemed it was a constant battle of drama.

After the drama, battle and time – I did what I should have done in the first place, and asked Jesus to take the wheel.

And He did!

This past week we finally closed on our dream foreclosure home.  It took us 3+ months to close because of a title dispute.  That’s longer than a trimester if you’re doing the math!

To us, the house is already a dream come true.  But with it being a foreclosure – it obviously has some major issues in basically every room of the house.  And let’s not forget the major cleaning and vacuuming that will be required to make this our {live-able} dream home.   But I can honestly say, *this* is truly my favorite element to be in.

Sure, like anyone would I know I’ll get stressed, be mad or even say “why me” – but I am loving this messy, gross, major fixer upper.  I am living my dream.

Since we had about 4 months to really think on what we’d like to do to the house – we’ve been really planning and budgeting to the penny on what we wanted to do first when the house was ours!

So…we decided that our first project would be to gut one of the bathrooms.   This particular one is the kids’ bathroom.  Here’s the before:

GEEZ!   You would think I would be observant enough to put the toilet seat down when I snapped this pic.  But this is truly how it was when we first walked inside & toured this house.  Not a terribly small bathroom, almost functional but needed a shower + new fixtures + paint.

At least I remembered to put the toilet seat down for this picture.  😉

We started gutting our first day!!!  We’ve been running around like crazy the past couple of days.   Some projects we hope will move really fast – others, we know we’ll have issues.  Our main goal was to get a shower/tub operational and to clean & vacuum so we can move in ASAP!

And I think we pulled this part off in record timing!!!

What a difference, right???  We have a shower now!!!  Oh how I love subway tile.  It’s so clean & classic to me!  It’s like a dream come true.

We still need to install a new vanity, toilet, paint, and of course clean, vacuum & mop.  In case anyone is curious – we used ReBath to install this tub unit.  We have used them in our current house, and we absolutely love it!  We did all the prep work, and yes – we paid for this BEFORE we even closed on the house!  We are risk takers for sure!  (I do not recommend doing that, btw!) 

So to answer any other questions – it really is faux subway tile.  I knew when I saw they had this design, I HAD to get it.  They also put the same material around our entire window to make it waterproof.  So we can take a shower in there without worrying about water damage.  Everything pertaining to the bathtub materials and labor has a lifetime warranty.   It was the perfect solution for this tub with a window, that also needed a shower to meet our family’s needs!

Guess what???
I have a fun giveaway for you today!!!

 I think the genius people at Dyson must had heard I was living my dream surrounded by dirt, dust and spider webs.

This Dyson DC59 Motorhead – it’s a cordless vacuum(!!!) $600 value – will be sent to one lucky winner.  The winner will be announced August 18th.

The ease & versatility of the Dyson DC59 Motorhead along with the fact that it’s the latest Dyson Digital Slim™ vacuum that’s cordless(!!!) are some of the most favorite things!   3x the suction of  any cordless vacuum!  That’s a whole lot of cereal & pasta being cleaned up – if you have kids…you know what I mean.    Watch out wood floors & carpet – there’s a new kid in town.

P.S.  It can go straight from the wood floors or tile right to the carpet!  Perfect for any house!

There’s only two thing you have to do:

1.  click over to see the Dyson DC59 Motorhead and all it’s fun features!
2.  Come back here and leave a comment telling me about your favorite dream space
and favorite feature of the Dyson DC59 Motorhead!  That’s all you have to do to be entered.
Good Luck!

*Many thanks to Dyson for sponsoring today’s discussion.*