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I signed an enormous stack of papers and took on huge amounts of debt five years ago. We closed on our house on that rainy Friday and came home and started peeling down wallpaper. We'd rented this house for a few months before we bought it and I was desperate to start working on it. You'll see why when you look at the pictures! Most of you have never seen what our house looked like before we remodelled the entire thing in about 9 months so I thought today was an appropriate day to show off our hard work. And make us feel better that we haven't done anything ambitious lately!

The "front room" complete with peach paneled walls. Bet you can't guess where it's at in the house?

It's now our play room, but is always called the front room. Catchy, isn't it?

The downstairs bathroom was gray and so was your mood after seeing it.

Completely updated including a vanity table built by my handy husband. Oh how I love my vessel sink.

Haven's room required the least amount of work. All we did was paint and replace the light fixture and take down that weird shelf thing.

This was from when she first moved into her big girl room, but it looks pretty much the same.

Oy. The kitchen hurt your eyes! Ugly tile, linoleum, two kinds of wallpaper...where to start!

How about with some red paint?

Snazzy built-in range anyone? With a mural of small children baking bread above it? For real.

I'll take this one instead please! Butcher block countertops, tin backsplash and some stainless steel appliances.

The true beauty of the house- built in "entertainment center" that was too narrow to hold a tv. I'm sure you are wondering how we could have parted with this. Yes, those are narrow strips of mirror placed at an angle. And please note the walls are painted pink in my living room. I spared you a shot of the pastel splatter paint wallpaper that graced the other wall.

The alcove was made for our very large couch- a perfect fit. I didn't even bother to pick up before I took this picture today. Sorry.

More pink in our master bathroom, complete with coordinating wallpaper border from our bedroom.

This isn't a great picture, but you get the idea. A massive transformation that included one of my favorite features- our cork flooring. And I still love that floor even though we had to replace part of it when the toilet leaked and it ain't cheap. But it's worth it! Good thing it's not that big of a bathroom!

Ain't she a beauty? And you can only see one of the two patterns that greeted you floor to ceiling in the master bedroom. It was such a shame because we have a great space with high ceilings and cool angles- not at all what you'd expect in our old house.

Much more relaxing- pale aqua walls and chocolate brown linen headboard and cornice boards. Once again built by my man. I'm the brains, he's the brawn.

And this special little corner of our house- with it's bright blue panelling, drop ceiling and lovely carpet provided one of the greatest challenges.

It's now where my sweet boy rests his little head. I realize that the blues don't look that different in these picture but I can assure they are. This was actually Haven's room when we first re-did it and was very cute yellow and green and girly. Now it's all sorts of brown and blue and stripes and dots perfect for Mati.

So that's my house. I look at before pictures of this place and can't believe we bought it. What were we thinking? Back in the days when we were young and naive and hard working. I like to think of myself as a visionary, but this definitely pushed us to the limit, especially since we were under a time crunch called having a baby. I can still get tired looking at all we did around here, but I'm so glad we did. It's totally us. And I'm never leaving.