Lights On, Lights Off

Ok, back to the renovations on our house. Yes these were done a few years ago, but definitely worth documenting just to see how far our little house has come in 3 short years! As we were moving through the house and painting all the walls, I began to develop a hate relationship with all of our light switches and wall plugs. For some reason, the dingy cream colored face plates and outlets were driving me crazy and didn't go with my theme of refreshing the whole house. Luckily they are fairly inexpensive to replace but take safety gloves, turning off the power in each room and tedious man-hours. Hal showed us the way for the first few outlets and then Keith finished the rest. Every single face plate and outlet has been changed in our house to crisp white and they look beautiful. We only had a few instances where Keith killed the power to the house but with the flip of a breaker, we were back in business.

Oh and not to mention that I had Keith change out ALL of the AC vents as well. The old ones had either been painted over or were really old and dirty. Here is Hal working on the face plates and Keith installing the new AC vent covers. Since our house was built in 1961, we have 2 vents in each room; one near the baseboards and the other near the ceiling. This meant LOTS of trips to Home Depot and Lowe's.

Since we were updating almost every inch of our house, why stop with the light switches and vents...we added faux wood blinds to each bedroom as well. (You can see Keith's feet on the ladder in the photo above as he is getting ready to install the blinds in one of the guest bedrooms....soon to be nursery) We all spent many late nights working on the house and are so very thankful to not only have great company but family to show us the right way to update the house. Once we got the hang of things, we tackled many, many tasks by ourselves! My mom and step-dad aren't the most "handy" people in the world so we grew up calling a plumber if the sink was clogged or hiring a painter/contractor to fix something. I have no idea where I got some of my handiness because my dad didn't even own a hammer at his house! He was great at tinkering with tractors and lawn equipment, but beyond that, he liked to outsource his projects! To this day, my mom and day are both pretty impressed at some of the things Keith and I have done to the house without the help of a professional. I guess we're just cheap. Ha ha ha!

It is always hard to get a picture of Keith in action because for some reason, he hates having his picture taken. (I think it is a trait all the Denton kids share!) Hence why in most of the photos he isn't looking at the camera...