Our Kitchen

They actually showed up today to install the kitchen!! Yeah!! I cannot wait until it is completely finished. The cupboards were even nicer then I thought, which is always a bonus :) Tomorrow the installers (Steve and Steve, father and son, makes me laugh) will be done with their part of it. We were fortunate enough to stumble upon West Valley Ceramic for our tile. I believe we were working with Dana. She was GREAT! First person in our search for tile to sit there and take the time to help us find the right colors to go with our cabinets. We just kept a door off one of them and brought the whole thing in. She was able to help us find a nice tile for the floor, laminate for the counter and a back splash to help set off the counter. So, two more weeks and all that will be done! We will go talk to someone about carpet tomorrow. Painters come tomorrow also. Only a couple more weeks and it will mostly be over with. Not sure what is up with the siding guy. He showed up yesterday, stayed for a few hours then took off and we haven't seen him since. And of course we are experiencing a little hiccough with our water heater. The water comes out nice and hot for 30 seconds then turns lukewarm. We've turned the knob as high as we dare and still no hot water for longer then 30 secs. After talking with Tom today it seems a part upstairs may have been put in backwards or a switch of some sort left the wrong way and it's diverting the hot or cold water (not sure I get it) the wrong way. The plumber will be here nice and early, 6:30 am tomorrow, to fix it.

Little by Little

So, here are some photos with the sheetrock up and textered. Little by little it's starting to come together! Our painter is coming tonight with the primer so next week everything will be painted :) It's so exciting!

View from the downstairs living room.

That will be the kitchen.

Upstairs family room.

Looking down the hall to the back, the house is not crooked I just can't hold my camera straight :)

Elizabeth and Rob investigating a giant puddle of mud in the new family room.

This morning we went on a three mile hike with what Webelos were in town. Elizabeth and Jonathan got to join us. Seth was in a backpack on Rob's back. The other three boys are Luke, Steven, and Sterling. We had a great time though everyone was pretty tired when it was over. We went up to the Hoyt Arboretum at Washington Park. Thank goodness it was shaded it was pretty hot out there! We have a great group of Webelos, I enjoy working with them.

Catching up

So, thought I'd catch up on things since I've fallen behind. I don't get as much time on my laptop since I don't have wireless at the Gardiner's and if we are here Seth is usually asleep in the room with the laptop. When he's not asleep we are usually at the house working on it or waiting for an inspector.

Life is crazy right now. We do have insulation up at the house. Today they delivered the sheetrock and guys are actually coming tomorrow to start hanging it! We were a bit surprised at that since it is a holiday weekend. Sounds like they will be working the whole weekend. We were told, too, that if things continue along we may be done at the end of the month! Woohoo!!! I can go for that.

Here are pics to give an idea of what the downstairs will look like. Have to imagine the walls are done.

View of our new kitchen space.

Stairs and entry to garage. LOVE IT!!

View from upstairs, they cut the wall down to a 1/2 wall. We want the appearance of open space.

Went to the zoo last week with Grandpa and Uncle Shane. It was a nice day, not too hot, not too cold.

The sea lions are my favorite stop.

They have a dinosaur walk right now at the zoo. The kids loved it!

Yes, it's called the spitter and it really spits water on you. At least, I hope it's water!

The kids always love to stop and feed the lorikeets. Most of the time they can get them to land on them.

These two were just being cute.

The zoo was too much for Seth, he finally conked out near the end.

The kids are taking swim lessons right now. All three are loving it!

And finally today, Jonathan found a frog outside and had to catch it. It was sitting on the waterslide they have out back.

Kitchen Has Been Removed

Today Rob went over to the house and, with the help of my dad, took out the kitchen. He actually started earlier, like 4 am. Seth had woken up this morning around 2:30 am and would not stop screaming. No idea what was wrong but Rob finally took him to the house with the hope that Seth would fall back to sleep in his own crib. Guess he continued to scream until 4:30 so Rob figured he was up he would get started on the kitchen. Actually didn't take the two of them too long to get it done. I don't have access to my before pics, they are on the hard drive at home, but here are some during and after shots.

Here is just a cute photo of Seth. He fell asleep there last night after we had run upstairs really quick to talk to Scott. Poor kid was pretty tired.

Changes Inside Today

Before, corner where the piano was located. The piano is now in the boys' room.

After.

Before, this is where the TV was.


After, Jonathan is standing where the TV used to be. Sorry it is so dark, took three photos and my camera just would not cooperate.

The closets after they took them out. You can use the post there to the right for a landmark. I took a before photo but blogger won't let me load it.

And just so people know, we have officially given in and realized there is no way we can live here while this is going on. As I type this Seth is constantly getting into everything that is out of it's place. So, we discussed things with the Gardiner's (Scott and Sarah-friends from church) and they are willing to let us live in their basement for the next couple of weeks. We are extremely grateful to them for their kindness and generosity. They are too good :) I will have my laptop there so will still receive email and because we have internet phone we can hook our phone up there and actually get our home phone calls, hopefully, we'll see :)

Tagged

Julie, Julie, Julie. My dearest friend decided it would be great to "Tag" me. This means I get to go around and take photos-none staged- of various objects. Ug. She even warned me she was going to but I just now found it on her blog. I'm only doing this because I love her so much :) That and I have nothing else to do while my house gets torn apart :) Thanks, Julie!!


1. Favorite Vacation-Every year we go to the yurts down in Winchester Bay, OR. They are deluxe, so they have a bathroom and mini-kitchen inside. That is my idea of camping! We spend a lot of time each year finding and exploring new beaches.

I think this one is at Horse Fall beach.

Taken at Sunset Bay, newly discovered by us this year. It's gorgeous and I can't wait to go back. We had nice sunny days this year too.


2. Laundry Pile- HA! Just got caught up the other day so this is what is left. Unfortunately my washer goes away as of today so it's not going to be looking too pretty in a few days.

3. The Fridge- What can I say, it's a fridge :)




4. The Closet- It was just cleaned up since the workers had to come in this morning to look under the house, the crawl space opening is there under my side of the closet. Phew!





5. The Toilet- It didn't say which one so I chose the kids' bathroom. I'm impressed, it's actaully clean, I don't have to be embarrassed :)






6. The Kitchen Sink- Soon to be long gone!! YEAH! Tom came in today and put blue sharpie markings all over the counter. Dang I lucked out today, it usually looks so much worse.




7. Favorite Room- Sorry skipping out on this one cause right now I don't have a favorite room. Every room is trashed from the remodel so I really don't like looking at any of them! I'm sure it will soon be the new family room upstairs :)


8. Favorite Shoes- I wear these everywhere and have gotten lots of comments on them.





9. What My Kids Are Doing Right Now-Ah, game time! Now that school is done they get time every day to play instead of having to wait for the weekend. They have to earn Beasley Bucks though to do it and I think in their excitement blew all the Bucks they had earned. Guess they weren't thinking about tomorrow :) By the time I wrote this Seth was letting us know he was awake.





10. Self-Portrait- There is a reason I don't like to post pictures of myself. Dang I look tired. Feel it too :P I debated make-up this morning, should have done it. And so in need of a haircut! Wearing a jacket because it's FREEZING in here.




Your turn. I tag: Breezy, Rachel, Megan, Melissa S. and Heidi.

Inside Walls and Trusses

This will someday be the new family room.

This is taken from the family room looking toward the back of the house. The hole on the left will be the stairs the first room on the right is the bathroom and the hall looks strait back into the boys' room. Elizabeth's room is sandwiched between the bathroom and boys' room.

The trusses arrived yesterday. It was fun to watch the crane drop them on top of the house. Unfortunately it was also raining so they called it quits after they got the tarp back on. Today isn't much better, cold and windy but no rain yet. Hopefully they can get them up.

We have Walls!!

The walls went up yesterday! Yeah! Now it looks like something :) They only got 3 walls up, I'm assuming the 4th will go up today. We should have a roof by the end of next week! It's starting to move along pretty fast now. Though Tom told me yesterday that Mark, our foreman, is taking off for about a week and 1/2 so not sure how that will affect things. He's pretty good at driving the others. We like Mark :) I also found out I lose my washer/dryer next week and will not have another hook up for it until the house is pretty much done. I'm not too happy about that one. I can handle most things, I do not handle not having a washer/dryer well. Ask Rob, last time I had to use a public facility with our apartment complex I lost it because other people were so dang rude. I told him I wasn't doing laundry again til he bought me a house. It worked, 2 mos later we were in this place :) End of the month I lose my kitchen too. Ug. Ok it will be worth it, it will be worth it. I HOPE! All I can say is I'm glad it's over the summer. Who wants to cook during the summer anyway?