Some sneak-peeks!

It's coming together guys! Bit by bit by bit and we are so grateful! Here are some random sneak-peeks at those little "bits" haha :)

Our dining room chandelier...


Laundry room knobs...


Kitchen knobs, lightswitch plates (you cant really tell but they are pretty cool) and papertowel holder (it didnt match so i painted it black! lol)


We love getting cool art from antique and thrift stores; here's one of my favorites:


Some of you may know I have a shameful addiction to aprons... Here's my collection :)



That's it for now; lots more to come! Thanks for stopping by!

Welcome Ben!!

Hip hip hooray! We had a very exciting break in our work recently.. To welcome our newest precious nephew, Benjamin Daniel! At 8 lb, 4 oz he's as healthy as can be. We're so happy for my brother Chris and his lovely wife Clara; what a happy family!





And as an added blessing, our brother Dan and his super-great girlfriend Becca came to greet the baby but somehow found the time to be a huge wonderful help to us with the house. Even though we were only half done when they came, Dan and Dave knocked out the rest of the flooring in an evening! Becca helped me hang curtains and set up the guest room, putting together the bed and everything. We are truly grateful for such sweet, fun and supportive family and friends, all of you! Our doors are open anytime; we can't wait to have you over! :-)

Changin' the floor!

Goodbye, blue carpet! I bet you looked great in your prime, but now we respectfully lay you to rest in your new home - the dumpster. Here's Dave's pickup truck full of the stinky stuff:

Then pull up all the padding:

And here's a shot of our nude, carpet-less floors

They look better already, huh!!

And here's what came next, all our lock-and-fold "fine finish aged cherry" Armstrong flooring:


So first lay the "underlayment":


Then get to work!

And we're back!

So, sorry about the interruption in programming - we hit some technical difficulties hahah :) I'm trying to stay lighthearted about it all, especially now that it's behind us, but we got thrown a curveball. We pulled up the carpet downstairs to change the flooring and noticed around the base of the door leading from the dining room to the porch that the plywood was in kinda rough shape. So Dave cut out the spots to replace them... But hiding behind that was more damaged, rotten wood - in the walls. I don't really know the words for it all but basically the wood that supports our two-story house on one side was just deteriorated to crumble. And even though we caught it within three weeks of closing on the house, there was nothing we could do. Sigh. We thought asking for extra inspections, termite warranties and a contractor's letter on the "structural soundness" of the home would be enough. Turns out every single inspection and even the structural letter said "no guarantee, no warranty". We got a lovely home warranty, but part of what-they-won't-cover is anything caused by "people, pet or pest" and it's largely termite damage. So there went a large part of our budget just to get it back to sound, standing condition. Guys, let me just tell you, I had to eat a lot of ice cream those days. And Dave and I had to pour ourselves some wine those evenings. But it is fixed now and we're ready to live "happily-ever-after" and we've resumed our fixing-up of the place!

Fishin'

So every day this week, Dave's gone fishing. Yesterday he announced that he's so happy to live on a lake that he's going to fish everyday until it's too cold... I'll keep you posted on how long that lasts :) But in the meantime, it is a peaceful little ritual.

I sit nearby with Stella and chat him up or read or fiddle. We're pretty close to a highschool, so if we're out there in the late afternoon we can hear the marching band practice. Since we hear them work on their routine everyday, we decided we're going to go to the first football game to watch them and cheer them on! It might be a fun thing to do kind of regularly! Then again, we might be those weirdos who dont have any kids and yet go to the high school football games... yet to be determined lol Again, I'll keep you posted :)

Oh, and you can see we have this massive stretch of waterweeds along the shore. Until we figure out how to/get around to pulling them up, they really get in the way of Dave's fishing! So the other day he built himself a better fishing spot:

P.S. He hasn't caught anything yet... Again, I'll keep you posted ;)

The Blue Heron

See our friend?? He comes by just to perch and hang out for a little while! He's sitting on a big fallen tree branch that's supposedly been there for years. We were going to pull it out right away, but then we realized how much it actually is a hotspot for the lake's wildlife. The turtles love it- we see up to 7 or 8 at a time just baskin' in the sun on those branches, everyday! Annnd it brings this cool blue heron right to our backyard, which is awesssome.
Actually, he seems to be fishing a lot, head bent down, watching the water... Sometimes he likes to fish from a higher tree branch, and then swwooopp down, scoop up his dinner and fly off. It's so cool to watch him! His wingspan is huge; he's really a beautiful creature. I was thinking maybe we should name ourselves "The Blue Heron B & B", what do you think?

The best-laid plans

So, this house is teaching us valuable life lessons too. I think our first lesson from the house is how plans change with time. Maybe the lesson should have been "don't make plans for the house until you actually have the house". Perhaps it was all the waiting involved in getting the house that lead us to fool ourselves into hammering out all the details before we ever got the key, but we've only had the house a couple of weeks and our thoughts have quickly changed.

Here were some of our initial intentions:
-Take down all the wallpaper
-Repaint everything
-Pull up all the carpet
-Tile the bathrooms
-Carpet the bedrooms
-Hardwood the living room/dining room
-New vanities & shower/bath fixtures
-New toilets
-Granite countertops
-Double oven
-New fireplace hearth
-Put in a dock

Oh boy. What were we thinking. Good thing we started with the wallpaper... Here's what we ran into:


See that? That's wallpaper, on wallpaper... Sometimes up to 4 layers!
And yet we persevered... (and accepted helping hands!)


Until we discovered that the bottom wallpaper was peeling the sheetrock off with it. Apparently there's some step you're supposed to do when you hang wallpaper to prepare the wall, and skipping this step leads to what we have. Lots of damage to the drywall...

So I'll admit it. After giving it our best in the kitchen, laundry room and dining room, we gave up. We got some estimates, and hired a team to take down the wallpaper, re-mud the walls, and paint. They're awesome. They have turned this place around so fast! And honestly, they're doing way better than we would have. I mean, they're painting the ceiling and the trim, and carefully respackling and sanding to make it all perfect, even inside closets. Hah! Closets?? Ceilings?? I'm sure that by the time I got to working on the upstairs I'd be rethinking letting the wallpaper just stay up! So, we've gratefully moved on to other things, but it was the start of re-thinking everything (as well as budget!)

Here are our new intentions:
-Thank Progressive Painting Inc for taking down the wallpaper and painting
-Thank Carolina Carpet Co for pulling up all the carpet upstairs; recarpeting the bedrooms and laying linoleum in the upstairs bathrooms
-Lay our lock + fold Armstrong flooring (in a nice dark cherry) in the living room, dining room, and downstairs half bath
-Repaint the vanities, clean the shower/bath fixtures
-New toilets
-Clean up the old formica countertop
-Single oven
-Clean up the old fireplace hearth
-Just put chairs at the water's edge.

And we're pleased as punch with the changes! There will be time enough for remodeling down the road. We're so grateful for what we have, and that's an important thing to remember when you get into big projects like this. It's so easy to lose sight of reason when you get into stores or look at "idea catalogs"... or watch HGTV... But we truly are learning to keep things within moderation, be humble in our decisions and above all be grateful. Like my brother Dan reminds me, we're keeping "an attitude of gratitude"! We have so much love between us, and a safe place to sleep - that really is just so much to be thankful for!