Author: admin

So, after four days of vacation after his last job contract job expired last Friday, Doug has another job lined up that starts in two weeks. And it is “close enough” so that we don’t have to move immediately. 🙂

Picture mean more these days. Here is what we have been up to this past few weeks.

Tree Removal

Side yard garden

Downstairs bathroom

Entry Light

Flowers

Drifting through the house, a familiar smell lingers in the minds of those present. No, not more wall paint, but the scent that lures a person to the kitchen.

Fresh chocolate chip cookies!

I have a bit more time on my hands these days, and I believe in a certain style of persuasion. So, there are Chocolate Chip Cookies in the cookie jar and cold fresh milk from the local dairy in the fridge just waiting…

We have come a long way, and are still working on many parts of the house. With the exceptions of the bathrooms, every room has been painted, every light switch and outlet is now white not almond, almost every light fixture is replaced, most of the doors and handles are replaced, new carpet in the lower bedrooms, laminate flooring instead of carpet at the entry, and the kitchen is 2/3rds of the way though a medium update and the bathrooms are almost finished with the soft update.

Master Bedroom wall flip



Master Bedroom today

Library wall move



Library today

Kitchen

Great Room Upstairs

Downstairs Living Room

Outside

I turn off the shower with a tired sigh of relief and reach for my old blue towel. The sound from the heater is grumbling in the room next door and then shutters to a stop as the heater turns off. I suppose it is tomorrow already. It has been a long three weeks and I am just now getting to bed.

The wires dangle out of the walls, visible only by the candle I use sometimes as a luxury. Tonight it is a necessity. The medicine cabinet and lights are disassembled in the other room waiting for their eventual fate. I need to make a huge run to the habitat for humanity store. Reuse. Repurpose.

Carefully picking my way across the floor to reach the toothbrush and paste, thankfully safe in their new spots in the newish vanity drawers, I am reminded that while the other bathroom in the house isn’t in much better shape, it at least has a new working light and quiet fan. However, it does not have my toothbrush. And I would have to go through THAT room to get there. I have had enough of THAT room today.

Among other things these past few weeks, this week has been to paint THAT room. The emphasis is only because it is 2am and I still have touch up and trim work to do. And I mis-measured the lower line on the three-striped wall. Ug.

I am tired. I blow out my candle only to decide too late that it would have been useful to find my way to bed. I cross my fingers and pad carefully across the floor into the bedroom. Hopefully my husband has not left anything laying in wait in the traffic areas. Thankfully, my reminders, requests and nagging over the past year are paying off- even the throw pillow from the bed, a new addition to our lives, are neatly placed on the floor leaning against the wall so I won’t trip.

I grab my small water bottle and pad with more confidence back to the bathroom to fill it up. It will be mostly empty by the time I wake up, but I won’t remember all the night time gulps. The furnace blowing on my face dehydrates me. I pad back to the bedroom where my hardworking husband is sound asleep and snoring. I will try to remember to thank him tomorrow for all the little things he has helped me with today from keeping me company while I put yet another coat of paint on, to the neatly stacked pillows. The bathrooms already look better and I am excited to see how they will look all finished. The upstairs room on the other hand… I will see how it looks when it gets all done and put back together again before I pass judgment.

But for now, it is bedtime for this house-frau and her sleeping provider.

We went skiing at Keystone last Saturday and then got to join my family and two close family friends for a special dinner. My cousin Rachyl was in town from the midwest so we got to see her, and she and Granny came up to our house yesterday for dinner. It is the first time she and Doug have met and we really enjoyed getting to see her when she was in town. I haven’t seen her in probably ten years, so it was good to catch up. I am really glad she got to see our house, and Granny got to see the progress since last July. Doug made Mahi with a pineapple salsa for dinner and we all talked for hours.

We have been working so hard on the house and the kitchen that it was nice to stand back and take a break last weekend and to clean all the dust off the surfaces and host company. It is rare when someone will drive the hour to visit us, so we make sure we reward anyone who does come visit with really good food. I know we had a good time, and I hope that Granny and Rachel did also.

We have been at the house for just over a year. Saint Patty’s Day marked the day when we moved from our apartment to the house. We had already started painting and working on it. So, in reality, the construction project that is on going, has been that way now for over a year. And the entire house looks so much better. I will have to get the before and after pictures up here somewhere for everyone to see.

We have learned soooo much about many different parts of remodeling a house from paint color matching to cabinet making. A bit more 150 sanding and then a fine sand will finish off the remaining bank of cabinets and then stain and poly! The first bank of cabinets looks great! I am so proud of Doug for making the new cabinet doors. And we picked great hardware to go with them too. Next- replace the counter top. Goodbye snot yellow counters and poo brown cabinets! The best part- we have repurposed the cabinets by keeping the boxes, sanding the old stain off, painting the interiors white and just putting new doors on. For those of you who have remodeled your kitchen, you know how much money that saved us, plus we did the work ourselves.

Hope everyone has a great spring!

So, we have had a bit of camera trouble this past year, meaning that most of our pictures that we have managed to take were unavailable. But, here is one I have rescued from the “stupid camera” category…

This is our Christmas picture from 2007.

This was from our honeymoon to Australia.

Now that I know how to post pictures…

… And after it came back from the shop, it looked like this:

After running the numbers on the new job here to start in a week, it was cheaper to buy a new car that was fuel efficient that it was to pay fuel in my old red beast.

So after much hemming and hawing, this is what we decided to go with.