split personality

The right side of our house is neat and orderly, the left side of our house is a disaster area.
Last night I couldn't take it anymore so I cleaned all of the remodeling tools/supplies out of the dining room, family room and kitchen. Finally we have a living space that isn't under construction.

On the right side of the house we have the neat and orderly kitchen, dining room and living room (and the non-cluttered hallway upstairs). On the left side of the house we have the disaster areas known as our living room, office and upstairs bedroom. It seems fitting in a left brain/right brain way.

Some people have requested photos of the interior, which I have been holding off on until there were some clean rooms (we were so harried on moving day there was no time to take photos of the empty rooms). Without futher ado:

The kitchen:
This room isn't changing much in the first remodeling pass. We've already installed a new kitchen faucet. We have a new light fixture (yet to be installed) to replace the ceiling fan. We also plan to swap the fridge and the small sideboard to create more counter space near the stove and make it more accessible. This will require installing a new outlet for the fridge, which is why it hasn't happened yet. Eventually we will paint.
In the second pass of remodeling (2+ years from now) we will replace the fridge, the flooring and the countertops, add a dishwasher and replace the sideboard with upper and lower cabinets.

The dining room:
This just needs to have the new light installed. The red paint is from the previous owner (PO). While it's not my favorite shade of red and I hate that the ceiling is painted in the same red, it will stay this way for the forseeable future becasue it's really not all that objectionable. We have a new light fixture which needs to be installed - the current light fixture would be cool if it wasn't cheap plastic.

(note the classy cable wire which needs to be run up around the edge of the ceiling in the family room)

The family room:

The only thing we're doing in here on the first pass is replacing the sagging curtain rods and replacing the valances on the back windows with some matching ones that don't have scallops (which the PO left for us). All of the molding around the windows in this room is plastic. Several windows also don't fit correctly and are plugged with expanding foam. It's lovely. You may also be able to make out the crank for the security shutters on the back window. There is a matching crank behind the drapes for other large bank of windows. These are the only two sets of windows in the house that have security shutters - which makes me think??? Are you just trying to encourage the burglar to break a smaller, less expensive window? The corresponding metal boxes which house the security shutters on the exterior are also extremely attractive. Someday we will fix all of that.
It makes it sound like this room is hideous, but actually it's fantastic. The windows give us a great view of our yard and let in a lot of light. There's also a door to the back patio off to the right in the first photo. Add in my beloved sectional couch and it's my favorite room in the house.

On the other side of the house we have this (ironically, the living room):
And this - the office/sorry excuse for a guest room where we have made my wonderful parents who came to help us out sleep!:
I refuse to post a photo of our bedroom.

The office is the project for the weekend. J started patching the hole from replumbing the shower last night and tonight we're going to get everything prepped for painting. As you can see in the photo, there is one VERY dark green wall that I'm dreading. We also have to repaint the ceiling as it is currently the same color as the tan walls. If all goes according to our (overly ambitious) plan, we will have the office painted and "put together" by the end of the weekend.

We have another "big change" in the works, but I won't say anything more about that until it's official next week.