Ta Da!!

So here we finally are, some before and after pics. Keep in mind we still have a lot of finishing work to do (painting, trim, hardware etc.) but for the most part we are up and functional. Up above you have the main kitchen wall, which also held the only cabinets that were in the kitchen. Those were obviously removed and replaced, and you can see the false ceiling up above that we ripped out. That gave us an extra 2 feet of head room. All of my cabinets are now a full 8 feet tall, with 2 feet to spare on the top! Its a little bit crazy how much bigger that made the place look.

Down below here we have the wall directly to the right of the upper pics. You can see there was nothing on it. Also the wall to the right in this pic is the wall we ripped out. That gave us an extra 3 1/2 feet of space in the kitchen. Not to mention how much it opened it up to the rest of the house, but we'll get to that.

And here we have the other side of that wall we hated so much. We didn't have to do too much in this room once the wall was down. We refinshed the floors, textured & painted the ceilings, replaced the light fixture, replaced a broken window. Um.. what else, a LOT of paint.

Ahhhh.... the living room. This one alsowasn't too bad. Except for the electricity. This room only had one outlet in it so we added a few more (which was no small feat, just ask all the blood splattered on the walls and the curse words echoing out of there...) In here we also textured & painted the ceilings (we actually did that in every room....) removed the wall paper, replaced light fixtures, repaired lots and lots of holes, and painted the heck out of it.

So, there you have most of the main floor. We are getting our bedroom carpeted soon so I will post some pics of that once it is done. But for the most part, now you have visted our almost brand new 90 year old house!!

Holy Crap!!

Ok, so my house has been completely all encompassing this sumer, and there hasn't been a post about anything other than that for a while. However, we are just about done (with the major stuff) and I can finally point out that SOMEHOW we managed to squeeze in a little fun this summer also. So here is some of our summer in a few pics. There are more but I am having issues getting them uploaded, so I will try for more later. Here we go!

Ross Park! We went to this swimming park on Jeff's birthday and had a blast! There was a lazy river, a regular pool and a kids activity play pool where the water is only about a foot deep and there's a big play toy in the center. There was also a slide that we were hard pressed to get Rhianna off of. She definitly was much braver this summer than last.

4th of July. We had sparklers. We watched fireworks, we had a BBQ. The usual.

Alex's first head wound. He fell backwards off a chair and landed on the thread post on my sewing machine (top pic.) It took a big chunk of scalp off and we were afraid he was going to have to have stitches. However, since it stopped bleeding and the scar would be covered by hair, we opted for no stitches.

That's what I have so far. I'll post more later!

Let there be a kitchen!

Oh man my life is exciting!! I have a sink, I have appliances, I have a coutertop!! I know, I know, all of you have all these things too. However, I can guarantee you that none of you have the tremendous appreciation for them that I do! So here is a 'durring' pic of my new kitchen. Off to the right here are my full lengths. Or massive wall o' cabinet. Please notice how tall the fridge is (it's not a small fridge) then how much farther up the wall the cabinets go. A full 8 feet of storage! Down below here are just some more durring shots. None of the uppers have been installed yet, that is happening tonight. So they are sitting all over the floor and you can see Jeff's butt in the pics because he is screwing the doors onto the frames as we speak. The last pic down on the bottom is out at my dad's shop while they were still building them. Jeff is sitting on the floor doing something... probably taking a nap. Anyway, hopefully soon we can post some DONE pics!

Moved In!

So, we got moved into our house last week. It's a little bit like camping seeing as how I still don't have a kitchen, but it's nice to have sooooo much more space than we are used to. Alex and Rhianna get up in the morning and just run laps around the house. You can hear them upstairs just running back and forth into and out of eachothers rooms having a good old time.
My dad brought over a few of my new kitchen cabinets today (just the boxes, they don't have doors or shelves yet) and I am a little amazed at all the new skills my Jeff has picked up in the last few months. In the last two days he has mowed the lawn, rewired and installed the plug in my range jack, drained and snaked the main line in my house that clogged (we have a weeping willow eating our main line) hooked up my washer and dryer and installed a light over them, then he helped build and paint (with a compressor sprayer, not a brush & roller) my 8 foot cabinets. Who the crap is this guy???
Anyway, right now you get no pictures because mostly the house is still in a massive state of disarray. There is stuff EVERYWHERE!!! So as soon as we get a little more cleaned up and you can actually see what it looks like I'll post some pics.

House Updates

Ok, so here we go! Here is (finally) a pic of the front on the house. The only thing that has changed out here so far is that boarded up window has been replaced. The other pic is of our living room ceiling (sweet light fixture huh?) we forgot to take pics of it before we textured it, but here it is textured, and you can see the line of where we had painted. It's amazing, we never really thought that some texture and a nice clean white celing would make SUCH a difference, but it really does. The wall in the kitchen is fully removed and the support beam that replaced it is pretty much done. The majority of the wiring has been completed throughout the whole house, and the are building my new closet in my bedroom as we speak. We have also fully removed the chimney and patched all the walls that had to be ripped down to do it. Most of all the walls have been patched and are ready to paint, and almost all the ugly 40 year old wallpaper has been removed. It still looks pretty much like a disaster in there, but we have made some really good progress over the last few weeks (thanks Dad!) It is starting to look like it might actually be completed one day! I'll get some more pics to post soon.

Babies are Crazy

Since I keep forgetting to take my camera over to the house to take pictures of all the amazing work my darling husband has been doing... I'll tell you a funny store instead.
Yesterday Alex and I walked outside into the rainy 58 degree weather (apparently Idaho Falls has banned both spring and summer) and he looks at me and says "Col!" (cold) So I say, 'col-d." with a real emphasis on the D, you know, sounded like col-duh. So Alex, being the good boy that he his , repeated it perfectly, Col-duh. I was so proud of the genius that was my 2 year old. We head inside and a little while later I give him a cookie. He eats the whole thing the walks up to me with his hand stretched out and says 'More-duh?'
So much for being a genius.

Our House

Alright, here are some pics of our house so far. It seems I haven't taken one of the front on the house, so I will be sure and get that done and post one of those. This first is the missing chimney. It was an old closed off coal stove chimney that was leaking and causing the plaster to crack all the way down. Also it was smack in the middle of the wall that I wanted to rip out. So we ripped it out as well! Let me tell you, the day Jeff took it down it was SOOO windy! He may have been a scared little girl the whole time he was doing it.
This is the back of the house with the chimney still in tact. This picture actually does not do the house justice, the paint is WAY worse than it looks in this picture! :0)

Here is the super cool Coke kitchen. And this set of cupboards with the sink were the ONLY thing in the kitchen. No other cupboards, no appliances, nothing. Those are gone now, as well as the false ceiling that you can also see in this pic. The ceilings are actually 10' high, we are not sure why someone would put a drop on it... guess maybe it was cool 30 years ago....

Here is the wall seperating the kitchen from the... well we aren't really sure what this room actually is/was/will be. So we shall call it the.... dining room? Sure, that sounds good. It is also the entery to the house, the front door is on the wall that you can't see in the pic. Anyway, this is the wall I wanted ripped down.

And here it is mostly ripped down. That chunk in the center is the chimney. The chimney that was just poured concrete. A lot of concrete. It has since been removed (ask Jeff how much he LOVED that job...) and the support beams are being built as we speak so by the end of the day this should be one huge open space!!! That's the majority of what we have done so far, but I will continue to take/post pics as we keep working. Sorry it took me so long to get all of these posted (sandy...:) I am a bit of a slacker. I'll try to be better from now on.