Once upon a time...

Before we moved into our house, another family lived there - I will dub them "The Old's Family". This is usually the case. It was a family of 4, 2 parents and 2 grown children - one just out of high school and the other finishing up that year.

Our house has 3 bedrooms, and one bathroom. At times its too small for D.Soup and I... Who am I kidding, it's almost ALWAYS too small for us.

I think all the time about how those two "kids" were living in the two rooms that we now call the computer room and the exercise room. I wish I had the actual room dimensions to give you. You would feel bad for them too.

I'm sure I am going to spend a ton of time listing off all the things that were wrong with the house once we were physically there all the time, and you are going to be thinking to yourself "Really, Mz.Soup? You spent all this time to complain about... what, exactly?" And then I'll be sad because you don't understand.

But whatever, continuing on.

And maybe, just maybe you'll be on my side and completely understand why I tell people all the time "I really dislike the people who lived in our house before us."

*crosses her fingers*

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The first time we ever saw the house. Before we bought it. Our realtor called 30 minutes in advance to let the owners know that we would be stopping by.

You know, so they could get out of there... because who wants to walk around a potential house with the owners following you around breathing down your neck??

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We walk in the door... And there they all were. In the house. With us.

Awkward? Yes.

Especially when Mr.Old started following us around and explaining each part of the house to us

because that's not what our realtor was there for or anything.

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The closet. Oh god our awful closet. I knew it was awful the first time we ever walked in there, during the incident with the previous owners. I'm fairly certain my first words were: "This is going to need to be changed" even then.

Of course, we're just now getting around to doing something about it, but that's beside the point.

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The paint (part 1).* There are three real rooms on the first floor of our house.

Kitchen, Living room, Dining room.

Our living room and dining room are connected (well, all three are technically connected but just for visual sake). Two separate rooms, but connected. They were painted the same color. Tan. Oh, so was the stairwell. Tan. Almost everywhere was tan.

This tan to be exact: Now, don't get all "oh it's not that bad!" on me. Two full rooms of that. Hundreds of feet of wall space covered in THAT. It was awful. And it took us almost 3 years to be completely rid of all of it. Ugh.

The only other room in the house that was painted something other than white... was lavender.

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The floral wall borders (part 1). Three separate rooms.

All. different. border.

Maybe it's just because I'm not much of flower person.

(I made standees of D.Soup and I as centerpieces for our wedding because I did NOT want flowers)

Two rooms downstairs: Living Room and Dining Room (again, attached) each had their own special borders. Then the one room upstairs, the only other non-white paint room in our whole house - also wall bordered.

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The floral wall borders (part 2). Removal.

We started in the dining room - super excited about getting rid of at least one border and armed with a wall steamer. We did fairly well, only minor cursing and a few steam burns. And we got very skilled at maneuvering around the room on our dining room chairs.

We got three quarters of the way down. And discovered another. layer. of. wall. border. UNDERNEATH the first, with a layer of paint in between.

Who does that?!

I believe this is the first time I uttered "I HATE the Old's"

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Here is a picture of the wall the way the Old's had it (after the border was taken down -- note the TAN, and the back of D.Soup):

we got rid of that fan too, it's just not one of the necessary "I hate the Old's" memories

Luckily the other two rooms were no where near as bad. In fact the day we started working on the living room, we were dreading the wall paper removal... and I went downstairs and pulled the whole thing down - sans steamer - in almost one full piece.

It was a thing of beauty.

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The paint (part 2). I'm not the best painter, I understand that. Even on my worst day, I am 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times better than anyone in the Old's family. In every room that we have painted since we bought our house, we have had to cut the electrical socket plates and light switch plates from the wall.

Because the Old's painted right over them. Socket and all.

Which meant paint running down the wall after they were finished from where it had globbed on the corners of the plate. And paint in the holes of the sockets.

We had to sand the wall around each of the holes where there were sockets, because the paint was so thick that there was a ledge.

We have purchased new electrical sockets/light switches and covers for every room that we have painted.

(You're next, kitchen)

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The doorknobs. Every. single. doorknob. upstairs. was. different. Even knobs attached to the SAME DOOR. The front would be gold and the back would be silver.

WHAT?

that is all.

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I wish that I would have had the forethought to take more pictures of this stuff before we got rid of it. But at the time I just wanted it GONE.

Gah.
I hate the Old's.

I feel better now.

*Now I understand that paint color is a preference thing. I'm sure whoever buys our house from us is going to COMPLETELY hate us too. Because I have bright (read: "crazy") color preferences. And D.Soup is color blind so I pretty much can choose whatever I want. So I get that. But Tan and Lavender are NOT something I would choose. And they were both ugly versions of their designated color family. And for that I blame you, people-I-shall-not-name-but lived-in-the-house-before-me. The end.