Saturday, February 27, 2010

Project "Love Our Home" Post #3

We have done a lot of work this week! Some highlights:

Jamin's study painted! It looks great! It is a little bright in the picture. It's a little more "hunter" and a little less "grass." (Although the name of the color is "Fresh Green Grass.") :)

Our bedroom is painted. It is beautiful!

This is the kitchen ceiling being painted. The previous owners were smokers, enough said. So it now has a nice coat of Kilz. :)

Drywall going back into the bathroom. It's starting to look like a room again. :)
So much measuring!
Bathroom ceiling "before." It needs a coat of Kilz, a new light and new fan.

Jackson loves to "measure." He kept us smiling and light-hearted as he spouted off "3-5-9, 3-3-9."

After a long week of work, we accomplished:
  • Painting the study
  • Painting our bedroom (Now, it doesn't sounds like much painting happened, but if you had seen these walls... you would know why we were only able to finish two rooms. ;) It is amazing how good they look now!!!)
  • Painting all ceilings except the bathroom
  • Getting in the shower/tub, toilet and most of the drywall in the bathroom
The painted rooms still need:
  • The baseboards and trim painted
  • Closets painted
  • Floors sanded
Mom and Dad have been wonderful this week. Jamin and I have a hard time getting much done with two little kids in tow, so a big thanks to our parents! We probably wouldn't have done half this much without them here! All that work done... it's a good feeling!!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Just Sunday Pictures

Sunday, February 21.


Project "Love Our Home" Post #2

Mom and Dad have been with us since Sunday afternoon. Boy, have we put them to work!! The week started out slow with some sad delays and unexpected twists. But we have had a few pretty smooth days and that has done great things for our morale!


Mom tearing off old sunflower border:

Jackson "cleaning up" the sunflower border... he would pick up a piece and lay it in front of the broom to sweep up. So cute! :

The bathroom, on its way to being gutted:

New bathroom floor:
Floor in, toilet in, tub going in:

Mom patching:
Unbelievable holes!!!
Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better! (Psst! Don't give Dad a ball peen hammer!)
Now to fill MORE holes!
Finally!! priming!:

So far we have completed:
  • heat and air: finished! (that was contracted out and finished today)
  • priming walls in ONE room
  • kilz-ing the ceiling in one room
  • getting some drywall, floor, tub and toilet back into the bathroom
  • a LOT of patching
What we still have to do:
  • no one would read my blog for that long ;)

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Project "Love Our Home" Post #1

Today was the very first day to work on our new house! It is super cold and snowy right now, and the heat has been set on 40 in the house for a few months now. So it wasn't below freezing inside, but pretty close. We were there for just under two hours and we got SO cold. We took the boys and they both ended up with purplish-red hands and bright cheeks. I was cold, but when I touched them, they felt like ice to me... poor little guys. We finally put Jackson in the pac-n-play snuggled with a blanket. That helped. :) I carried Timothy around a lot and tried to pull nails at the same time.

(Jackson is watching "Cars" for those of you trying to see)

So, what did we accomplish? We ripped the stained, worn carpet out of the living room to make sure it had good hardwood underneath. We didn't need any $urprises later! ;) And... it does! Ta-da! It needs to be sanded down and polyurethaned, but so do the rest of the floors.

We also pulled all the nails and the ridiculous amount of sticky hooks from the walls, and the baseboards from the floors (just in the living room). We took down the curtains and curtain rods in the whole house.

In the scope of all the work that needs to be done, it wasn't much, but it was a start. Not too shabby considering the freezing temps and purplish-red boys. Stay tuned for LOTS of updates on our house. It will be so fun when we get to the "fun" part: paint. :)

The living room still needs...
  • the baseboard heaters ripped out
  • new baseboards (Dad is volunteering for that project ;)
  • walls patched, primed and painted (the "three p's" we'll be using all over the house)
  • painted ceiling
  • window and door trim painted
  • floor sanded
  • new furniture (I am being very ambitious and optimistic here!)

Getting a House

We have been house-shopping since August 2008. We looked and looked. Then we went to the bank, and got a loan amount and approval. Then we looked some more. Then we had to re-qualify because it took longer than 30 days. Then our agent suggested a new lender. We tried there, qualified, and found a house we loved. But... there was a slight problem with the house and the lender would not give us the loan. So...

a friend of a friend suggested yet another lender. We checked there and got a 3% loan! By that time, God had changed our hearts about the house we loved. We no longer loved it! The low interest on this loan gave us a bigger price range, so we shopped there. There were some nicer homes, but they were at the top of our range. And one of them (that I loved) only had a tiny eat-in kitchen with a super-small table shoved up in the corner. There was no way to remedy that.... not enough room to eat at the table! (By the way, we didn't want to spend that much money anyway, but if we had, the house would have had to be perfect... with enough room to sit around the table.)

So, we kept looking. Then we found a little house we both loved for almost half of the small-kitchen house. We checked it out thoroughly, then made an offer! For the price, we could gradually fix it up with super low payments. But... our lender, the USDA saw several things they wanted repaired by contractors and placed in our loan. Some things we were fine with, but they wanted several small things done too... like painting every room, and replacing door knobs. Not that we wouldn't want these things done, but we just didn't want to put them in our loan. But there was no way around it. And even with several thousand dollars-worth of repairs, it's still 20,000 cheaper than the perfect, small-kitchen house. So...

We closed Friday, February 12th!! And the three-day waiting period is now over and...

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!!

Jamin's boss made a bid for all the work, so Jamin will actually be doing the work (with me helping of course). ;) A contract has to be signed before we go in and work, so all the waiting has been driving me crazy! So... I've been working on projects to go in the house. :) Here are a few:

Jamin got this chair for free somewhere. It had potential. Before:
After: it's going on my side of the bed to hold a stack of books. :)

Before:
After: to go above the boys' beds in their new room. :)

There's no "before" for this one. I made two of these for the boys' beds.

We are so thankful, and so excited! It is always scary making a big change, "signing your life away," and all that goes with buying a house. But we feel we have prayed, and waited, and received the perfect house from God. It is 5 minutes away from our church! We currently drive 30 minutes. We really want to make sure we use it for God's glory... after all, He gave it to us!

There will be lots of pictures to come of the house. We are going there today! I need to measure windows for curtains. There's not really much we can do there today, but we just need to go to "our" house. :)

Monday, February 15, 2010

A Monday Memory

Today's memory: our engagement :)

This was about two weeks before we got engaged...

The day we got engaged... see the beautiful red roses, my gorgeous diamond, and our bright smiles! :)

Engagement pictures:
Engaged December 23, 2003

Saturday, February 13, 2010

My baby

Trying to crawl: unsuccessful as of yet. Well... does backwards count?




Trying to steal my heart, melt it, and win my love: he has been VERY successful!

Snow fun!!

Ready or not... here we go!
Having so much fun!



This was the first time Jackson got to play in the snow, mostly because of his lazy parents. We would rather stay in under a blanket than bundle up for the snow. But we finally decided to just do it. And out we went! We left Timothy napping soundly and headed out to play. Jackson was so adorable! It was a little too deep for him to really play but he loved it! He was a little scared at first, but quickly got used to it. His favorite thing was to help Daddy shovel. And a great help he was!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

My valentine...


I love you, my valentine.