Seven days later, a New Year

If you watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you know that one of the important parts of the show is that the makeover is complete in seven days. And if you've been watching from the beginning of the show, you also know that the stars of the show used to fret over whether they would finish in seven days. I guess after the show was a hit, they could throw so much money around that they could finish ANY project in seven days.

We don't have unlimited resources (we're not advertising for Sears at our home), so we didn't finish in seven days. But we accomplished a lot in our Extreme Room Makeover in just seven days! Here are before and after pictures of the living room/dining room area, from both directions:

Before (Christmas Eve...very messy!)
After (no mess, and no couch)
Before (Tom testing out the new wall color)

After
What is left to do for the house is to paint the baseboards and door casings, purchase and install a chandelier for our dining room (hopefully we'll do that tomorrow!), sand and paint the bookcase that Gary and Rose built and installed (it's fantastic, but this picture doesn't do it justice since it's not painted and has our construction stuff in it), and purchase and install a new front door (we replaced the threshold with an oak one to match the floor and need a longer door).

AND we have to buy a couch, and we're also planning to join the 21st century with a flat screen TV and some kind of new entertainment center that goes with a flat screen, and of course little decor items that go with our new look. And I REALLY want to iron the curtains, but at least they are up and we have privacy (I will iron them before the weekend is over!) But all of that is not urgent... and everything from here on will just happen a little at a time.

Here are some more pictures from the past few days that we thought you would enjoy.

Konrad taking a Daddy break from the babysitter (thank you Sarah and Rachel so much!)
Natalie asking for a Mommy break.
Lukas installed the plates around the outlets and switches with no help at all.
Right before we removed the paper from the floor, the kids posed for a celebration picture (the step ladder was great for painting the crown moulding, but I had to put it away when we didn't have a babysitter, because that was the first thing Konrad crawled for, and up on!)
Another thing that is unlike the TV version of Extreme Makeover is that we didn't get a vacation while someone else worked on our house. We're not going to get a vacation right away, but just NOT WORKING ON THE HOUSE seems like a vacation at this point.

Happy New Year everyone! We're excited about what 2009 will bring, and we pray for God's blessings on you and your family in the new year.