Ross Lake was the third home we purchased. When we started the buying process, I was 25 years old, Scarlette was about 5 months old, and I was pregnant with JJ. It was a short sale so the buying process was not simple. More to come on that later.
The house was in a neighborhood we were very familiar with, growing up about 3 miles from the Ross Lake home. It had been vacant for 5 years before we bought it. FIVE YEARS. I’m sure you can imagine what it should have looked like.
Surprisingly, it was in pretty good shape for being vacant for so long in Colorado. There is wild weather sometimes and with no one living there, it was susceptible to a lot of wear and tear. The main issues we had with it were busted pipes. A whole 25 of them. Again, a story for a different day.
Just know, we were not living in this house at the time these pictures were taken. I think we moved in about 2 weeks later after basic plumbing repairs, paint, and carpet were redone.
By the time we closed on this house, I had a 1 year old and a 6 week old. It wasn’t an ideal time to be doing home renovations but fast forward 3 years, we have done it 3 times now. You do what you gotta do!
What a lovely plum dining room. WIDE EYES here. The paint in this house, y’all. It was laughable. Keep scrolling, you’ll see.
Here’s Bryce trying to repair the sheet rock from the busted pipes. If you haven’t done sheet rock before, just know that it is INCREDIBLY messy. See all the sheet rock dust on the floor? This is why we didn’t move in until all of these repairs were fixed.
LOOK AT THAT DUST. Also – who has island stove-tops? So dangerous and such a waste of space! Also if you look up under the ceiling, you’ll see the previous owner installed some sort of trim. Maybe it was supposed to be crown moulding.
Look closely, it’s quarter round. If you aren’t familiar with quarter round, it belongs on the ground, not the ceiling. It’s the trim piece that is added between wood floors and baseboards.
I guess their logic was sound, right? LOL!
I had plans for those beautiful built ins and fire place. You can see the craftsman style DIY fireplace here. It turned out gorgeous!
Oh yes – there’s ANOTHER burst pipe at the top of the stairs.
If you are wanting to paint your room quickly, just paint AROUND your bed, everyone does it!
Really, don’t do that. Please don’t do that.
We were very drawn to the baby poop paint color in the master.
Oh, hi! There’s me! Annnnnd two other busted pipes.
All jokes aside, it was a dream having an upstairs washer and dryer with two littles. Note – busted pipe #25.
This bedroom felt like the bane of my existence when we first closed on the house. Why you ask?
WALLPAPER.
Wallpaper sounds like a wonderful idea until you hate it and want to remove it. This wallpaper took me DAYS to remove with a steamer and razor blade. What a pain.
Love me some brown paint.
No. No I do not.
Clearly, as seen by the remnants of snacks on the “stove” we were living our best life with cheddar ruffles and Dr. Pepper.
I had a newborn and a 1 year old. I was doing what I could to survive!
I’ll be posting our “after” pictures soon with links to all of our DIY’s in this house. This was SUCH a good home to us. We were actually sad to be leaving it.
Selling Ross Lake, though, enabled us to move on to our next big goal of purchasing rental properties. That’s what brought us to College Station, Texas for the 2nd time. We love the Ravenstone home we are in and have big plans for this one as well.
Ross Lake will always take up a HUGE piece of my heart. Until next time!
Follow along for updates and DIY’s and I’ll email you a free plan as a thank you!
Hi there! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my good old room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this post to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!