Passing the Time

 

I paid our contractor for the final time this week! Also I'm now four days past the official due date, which I know is an educated guess at best, but still...waiting for things you want is hard sometimes. I've spent quite some time playing this awesome puzzle game and sadly finished it, which means I'll have to resort to my old-school 1000 piece cupcake puzzle I haven't had time to open yet:

 

With this pregnancy I decided to count renovating our house as the ridiculous labor project, so I haven't bothered making crafts or blankets or anything like that. But then Austin wanted to do a belly cast, (which I've always thought are a bit silly, because what do you do with it once you make one?) so now that has definitely turned into the ridiculous labor project. Not just because I felt so ridiculous making a plaster cast of my very pregnant belly, but then it needed plaster touch up and spray paint and decoration, so it's a very high-maintenance useless item. No picture. Not happening.

 

Last but not least, I have some pictures of our house now that we are done with it for a little while. For a quick look back you can go to New House Renovating.

 

We finally got the front doors switched out, I can't wait to get going with the landscaping in a couple months.

 

Master bedroom with birth pool waiting in corner...

Master bath, note small bonsai tree, which means I'm committing to this house for a while! 

Front room with completed fireplace

Kitchen, all done!

Kitchen, looking into dining area

 

 

Next on the list, working on a yard overhaul. Austin has already started chain sawing trees; I have to keep an eye on what he's cutting because it's just way too fun for him.

 

Also hoping for a baby soon. I'm not a huge fan of February so I could wait for March. Then again I would be happy to go into labor right now.  

 

 

 

Charlotte on her Birth Day. I need another one!

 

Looking Back

So it's been less than two years and we've taken on two intensive renovations during that time...we have to stay busy somehow! This week our realtor finally got me the pictures he took right before our cute old colonial house sold and I wanted to share them before I shared the "after" pictures of our current mid-century modern house. Just so we can all get some closure.

For a refresh, here are a few old posts about the renovation process: Destroying a Very Large Purchase, Little House on the Prairie, and Kitchen Reveal No. 1!

Here's what we accomplished in a year of living in the house. It was a lot of stress and a lot of hard work. We didn't have time to do everything we wanted to with the house, but I feel good about what we accomplished in the little time we had.

Cut down a tree attacking our water line, put up new fencing, put in new landscaping

 

Re-plastered a large amount of wall in the main living area, painted trim, added charm/décor

 

Put in new kitchen and laundry room and new floors in kitchen and dining room

 

 Transformed yucky storage area into kids' playroom

 

 

Refinished original hardwood floors throughout whole house, put in new lighting and painted

Repaired and refinished stairs and updated upstairs bathroom with new vanity, mirror, and lighting

Repainted the upstairs and made it cute

Fixed large sections of fence that were falling down and chopped down multiple dead and overgrown trees

 

 

We also let the lawn turn brown, but we won't talk about that. Coming up next, more renovation pics and hopefully a new baby. My due date's February 23, but I'm guessing I'll go into March.

New House Renovating

 

The new renovation project has been occupying a lot of my thoughts recently, so I'm going to post more pictures. Now if I was going to do flip houses as a thing I wouldn't do any of the work myself, because with Austin gone most of the time and three little girls I didn't have as much time to help out as I thought. I had to put the girls down for naps at my mom's a lot then run down to the new house, paint and stain my little heart out, then run back about the time they woke up. I missed a lot of afternoon naps, which as a pregnant woman made me grouchy because I like/need naps. On the plus side, I did get a lot of sunshine and fresh air and alone time.

 

 

Covering up the blue on the wood siding.

Dad putting in new deck.

 

New garage door

Master bath

 

Fireplace with old rock off and drywall on top half

 

Rock going on

 

Trying to find the perfect beige to paint the whole house

 Kitchen a little more put together and opened up

Kitchen Reveal No. 1!

Okay, here's a quick review of what the kitchen looked like when we bought it...

 

 

note tile and lighting...

as well as funky cupboards and absence of upper cupboards...

 

hot dog sink still baffles me...

and finally the butler's pantry.

 

Much later...

 

*By the way, I would have to say that Austin really impressed me in the interim with what he figured out how to do in the kitchen. Recessed lighting, electrical, installing countertops, plumbing, undermount sink, etc. Underneath his suave exterior lies a rugged handyman.

 

Ta-da!

Hey, a real kitchen!

 

With lovely custom walnut countertops that everyone said was a bad idea... 

 

a classed up butler's pantry,

 

with the old chimney brick exposed for character. And for memories of the toasty bird skeleton.

 

This is Kitchen Reveal number one because there is still more to do. Backsplash behind the stove and kitchen sink, open shelving on the wall by sink, and definitely baseboards. Just finishing touches. Still, I think of the people without homes in the Philippines and can't be anything but grateful. Especially for a sink and a stove. Until you go without those two things for a month you don't realize just how nice it is to have them.

 

Fully Operational

I'm pretty sure that tomorrow my kitchen will be fully armed and operational! We got the countertops and sink put in on Saturday and will put the stove and dishwasher in tomorrow. Then...pictures! So, what have I been doing without a kitchen sink, stove, or dishwasher for the past month or so?

When we decided to just bite the bullet and move into our work-in-progress house, I had visions of me using my crockpot, toaster oven, and electric griddle to whip up home-cooked suppers, doing dishes in the bathroom, and spraying pots and pans clean in the hose outside. Glamping, remember?

Well, I still haven't found the box my toaster oven is in, and my griddle, which I did find, is missing its cord, which is probably in that same undiscovered box. These are just excuses, though. The truth is that I've had no time, energy, or desire to make homemade meals and wash my dishes in my bathtub.

People ask what I do without a kitchen, how I manage. My answer depends on who asks. Okay, to everyone but my mother I tell the truth: we eat out a lot. Like every night. Normally I feel guilty about eating out if we're not on a date or something. I wasn't raised that way. I think I ate out with my family twice before I left home for college, not counting McDonalds on road trips. I know that home cooked meals are cheaper and much more nutritious...and yet, we still eat out and use disposable dishes for the rest of our meals. That is how we are managing. I do feel guilty because it's not healthy or cheap, but also not guilty because hey, I don't have a kitchen. So, a breakdown of our daily menu:

Breakfast: Mini-Wheats or Oatmeal in microwave plus gummi vitamins
Lunch: Ham sandwich or Peanut Butter and Jam sandwich, chips, and carrots

(Do I ever get tired of eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch? Not really. I like consistency. In college I ate Malt-o-meal every morning for an entire semester.)

Supper: (Criteria are, can't be too pricey, too hard to take kids to, or too far away.)

Little Ceaser's Pizza (Austin used to hate their pizza. Mysteriously it has grown on him and he now likes it. Plus it's really close to our house.)

Wendy's (Really like their new pretzel hamburger thing, which is a little pricey but so good.)

Cafe Rio (Anything pork. Starting to get expensive though now that the free kids quesadillas aren't filling up our kids.)

Panda Express (Orange Chicken and Sweet Fire Chicken)

Arby's (Roast beef sandwiches for the girls and I, and then Austin has a strange infatuation with their chicken strips.)

Annnnd that's pretty much our rotation. To tell the truth, not having to cook supper or do any dishes for a month has freed up a lot of my time to work on the house and do things with the girls. It's been kind of fun. But it's gotten to the point where we're really sick of eating out. Really sick of it. Too much of a mediocre thing, I guess.

Little House on the Prairie

 

 

New playhouse in backyard. Note Welcome Bear by front door.

 

***

 

 

Here we are, having breakfast in our lovely new kitchen. Note the classy wood floors and custom "stacked wood" countertops. I find the hand textured wall treatment particularly fetching, as well as our trendy café seating.

 

Here's the other side.

Yes, we are a long way from done, and we are still living in a construction zone.

Still, I think it looks much better. I just might be turning into an optimist.

 

Lately Sammy and I have been reading Little House on the Prairie. I love it. I don't remember reading it when I was little, but it's an interesting look at real pioneers, and it's really helped me with our move last Saturday into our ongoing renovation. I would compare our life right now to luxury camping, (glamping) but we're indoors and it's not luxurious. It does feel like camping though. You'd have to come visit to get the full picture. However, whenever I get discouraged about not having a kitchen sink or countertops or a nice bathroom, and I look at all the work left and start to feel down, I just think about how Laura's family just picked a spot in the middle of nowhere and started putting log walls up. No windows, no door, dirt floors, etc.

 

They would have loved to be in the house that I'm in now. They would have loved having a microwave and fridge, indoor plumbing, sturdy walls with a door and floor, and a fluffy Persian cat wandering their backyard instead of a circle of wolves. You know, pioneers are awesome, even if just for serving the purpose of making me feel good about my cushy life.

 

I really want to enjoy this time close to family and fun activities now, and not wait until my house is perfect to have a great life. It's definitely a balancing act between working on the house and taking care of the three girls, too. I made the goal this year to be more flexible, i.e. not always have to do things my way, and I think a new baby, move, and renovation are really helping me accomplish this goal. Humans are hardwired for struggle, and when we are stretching our capabilities we are really alert and living life despite dealing with difficult things.  

 

 

Charlotte is flexible. Her favorite activity--playing with her toes.

Destroying a Very Large Purchase



 

It's very stressful to renovate a house. We spent a lot of money to buy a cute little house then promptly started to destroy it. WHAT HAVE WE DONE?? 

Our living room (before)

Our kitchen (before). Hey, it actually looks pretty good in this photo. It could be the dim lighting...or the devilishly attractive female with the screwdriver.

 

But in the cold light of the flash...it's another story.

 

The other side of the kitchen. Note that one of the sinks is the size of a large hot dog. Who does that? 

 

Relaxing in our new kitchen

 

Laundry room off the kitchen

 

 

Demolition reveals a boarded up chimney that contained coal remnants and a toasty bird skeleton that Matthew relished showing Kellie and I.

 

So our first priorities are the kitchen and the floors. Those two things seemed good to get out of the way before we actually moved into the house. The floor refinisher starts tomorrow on the hardwood throughout the house, so that's one thing out of the way. Then we need to level the kitchen and dining room floor and pick an engineered hardwood to put down. We spent days getting up the Spanish tile, which was grouted to the cement board which was glued and screwed to the plywood underneath, so we might hire someone at this point to do the leveling.

 

The kitchen is interesting too. I think the chimney connected to the original kitchen stove, and the original kitchen was what is now the laundry room. I'm putting cupboards in the laundry room that match the new kitchen and taking out the sink behind the door and making it a pantry closet, basically turning the laundry room into a butler's pantry. Actually I just like saying "butler's pantry." I'm not sure if my laundry room qualifies as one. I'm a little nervous about the kitchen.

 

The basic idea

Except I don't like farmhouse sinks, or faucets that are hard to clean. Or those door pulls. Austin wants to go with white subway tile, but I worry that it's too much white. Plus everyone these days is doing a white kitchen with white subway tile. Too trendy?

We have a lot of decisions to make...any input is appreciated.