Monday, September 30, 2013

New House Project

We bought a house a few weeks ago and have been working hard to make it feel like home.  It's a great house that needs some TLC.  It was built in '99, lived in for 8 years by one couple and then the next owner had it as a rental house, so it has been a rental property for the last 6 years.  All of that to say, we are finding out renters don't take as good of care of a home as owners, at least not the renters that were in this house.  Anyway, we closed on the house on Friday the 13th and I took the next week off and worked hard to make some improvements.  I added it up and I spent 108 hours working on the house during the first 10 days of owning it...and I'm exhausted!
 Here is a tour of some of the "before" pictures...here is our entryway.
 The front room and dining room (the carpet and stains got pulled out pretty quickly...)
 The kitchen
 The family room
 ...more stains on the carpet
 Upstairs...one bedroom is bright pink...
 ...the other is blue
 The master
 ...and the stairs
 Let the remodeling begin, our plan was to get all the floors redone, paint every room and install new trim!  Pulled up the floor, I had to build up the floor where the carpet was in order to match the height of the other floor, so I added new OSB subfloor to make one seamless main level.
 Here is the dining room with new floor, baseboard and window trim.
 ...and the view the other direction.  This is the floor that we used from Home Depot, it went down great and was "fairly" easy to install.
 Here is the room with Trigg's toy cubbie and more furniture
 Here is the kitchen with the floor halfway thru...
 ...and all the way.  Eventually we want to remodel the kitchen but for now it is functional!
 Here is the family room with carpet torn out...
 ...mantel primed and floor halfway done.
 And with the finished floor.  For the fireplace wall, I used a product called liquid deglosser that I got from Lowes, it takes the shine off so you can prime and paint without sanding and creating a lot of dust!  It worked great.
 Here is the upstairs hallway, painted and trimmed out, the pink room has been de-pinked and is now Trigg's big boy room!
 The blue room is primed and will be transformed into the nursery before Baby Boy Two arrives
 The master got a coat of fresh paint and trim!
The upstairs got all new carpet and paint and feels brand new!  I will get some pictures added for the new carpet soon.  We still have lots of project left and lots of boxes to unpack but we are getting there.  We spent this past weekend outside doing some yard work.  The neighbors are great and have welcomed us to the neighborhood and we are excited to get settled in!  More before and afters to come!

Month in Review

It has been a crazy month, lots happening and not much time for me to be online and no updates.  I was finally able to sit down and look through the pictures we have taken over the last month and get to some updates!
We had an ultrasound, baby is growing great and we found out the gender.  We had the technician put it in an envelope.  Then we went to Party City with a big empty box and had them fill up balloons based upon the gender in the envelope.  It was a little strange to have the employee at Party City know what we were having before we did...small price to pay for a fun surprise!
We then headed to a park for the unveiling...it's a...
BOY!!!
 We are all super excited, Trigg is pumped to teach his little brother about cars, trains and helicopters!
 We also celebrated Heather's birthday!  I smoked brisket and ribs for the good part of the day.
 We rented Barnes Place in Adel for the party, we had lots of food...
 and lots of desserts!
 The table is set!
 We had some awesome cookies made for the party too!
 We had a ton of fun celebrating Heather, we played some game and laughed a lot!
 No birthday would be complete without a birthday cookie!
 Trigg and I celebrate National Dress Like Dad Day!
 At the end of August, Heather and I spent a long weekend in Vegas!
 We had a lot of fun seeing all the sights
 Watching the fountains dance...
 ...and seeing Cirque du Soleil show Love!
 It was a fun little trip but we were excited to get back home!
 Nana, Mom and Trigg headed to Grandma-Great's house one Wednesday afternoon to pick apples.
 "Found one"
 Trigg found lots of apples...and one baseball!
 They had a great time picking apples...now to make some applesauce and apple crisp and apple butter...
We also moved into our new house this past month and have been working hard to make it feel like home, there have been lots of updates, pictures to come!  And just like that September is over and fall is here!