Extreme Home Makeover

I am kicking myself because I didn't really get a good "before" picture.  But remember this carpet?

Not only was it coming up in the hallway, but it smelled like old people.

And it really need to be replaced.

So did the kitchen laminate.

So...

I convinced Ben I could do it with his help.

He's such a good husband.

D-Day was Friday, Feb. 17th.  We got the walls mostly painted beforehand late at night, but that day is when the younger kids went to Aunt Gwen's for a few days.  She's a gem, isn't she?

Once Ben and the kids got on the road, I took out the laminate in the kitchen.  Then I started pulling up the carpet.  Guess what I found underneath in the dining room and kitchen area?

3 more layers of flooring.

That makes 4 layers to come out, total.

The linoleum across the top of the picture was the top layer, then the speckled stuff at the bottom of the picture was the next.  Then on the bottom we had the wonderful asbestos tile from the early 60's.  The black stuff along the right is the adhesive they used to stick it down - the tile itself is stuck on the green paper underside of the linoleum above it.  Lovely.

Ben had a little trouble finding his way home, so by Friday night, I had only gotten the flooring up in the kitchen/dining area and the hallway.

Note the tack strips along the walls for the carpet.  I hate them.  They are a pain in the neck to get up and leave craters in your floor when the nails come out.

And here is my rearranged kitchen/dining area.  All the appliances got moved around for this one.  At least we were able to keep the fridge plugged in!

And this picture shows where Olivia spent Friday evening: watching movies on the pushed-together couches.  You can see the cement floor on the bottom left side, and the carpet we hadn't got out yet adjacent.

In fact, Olivia was so comfortable that she asked to sleep there overnight.  We let her do it.  And Trixie.  Special occasions call for special privileges, right?

Saturday morning found us at Panera for breakfast, then back to the house to finish prepping and cleaning the floor.

Just for the record: carpet is disgusting.  And so is everything under it.

Finally, around lunchtime, I started laying the floor.  Since it's a floating floor where the pieces adhere together, I didn't even have to line it up with the walls right away.

And it kept growing...

And growing...

And growing.

By 11:52 p.m. on Saturday night, we had gotten the kitchen, diningroom, and most of the livingroom done.

That just left us the foyer, hallway, and laundry room.  Of course, I hadn't pulled the floor out of the laundry room yet...

We finished up all but the laundry room on Monday, and Ben and I picked out an area rug. Well, Ben picked it out.  I'm officially deficient in the decorating area.  I think Trixie was the most excited.  She made herself comfortable and wouldn't move.

Look at that tail go!

By the time the kids came back on Wednesday night, we had the floor down, most of the baseboards in, half of them caulked, and a bunch of the trim painted.  We still have more to do, but I needed to take a week off to give my hands a chance to recover.  (I forget I have carpal tunnel until I overdo it.)

We have been enjoying the makeover, though.  What do you think?

This one was taken at night.  Hence the overpowering lamp.

Can't forget the hallway, but someone did forget to turn the hall light on when he took the picture...

And after a week of being lived in, it sure shows the signs!

Down to every last hand print.

Next year I'm going to tackle the kitchen...

Upside Down

My house has been turned upside down for the past week or two.  Not because we're doing anything major - yet.  But we're getting READY to do something major.  So I have been pulling baseboards and patching walls and painting and tearing up tile and moving stuff all over the house.  And since we have a very active, inquisitive, and gets-into-everything 1-year old, everything we've got has to be either up and out of his reach, or hiding behind closed doors - i.e. the pantry.

If you know me at all, you know I'm a tad bit OCD and I hate having things out of place.  Extreme clutter drives me batty, and that's essentially what I've got.

Our old entertainment center and TV have yet to find a new home or get out of ours.  Also, be sure to notice the two-tone paint job over the doorway and wall repairs on the left in the yet-to-be-painted area.

Mirror waiting to be repainted and rehung.  Incidentally, it is also serving to block... (see next picture)

...the space behind the couch where we've all the (so far) removed baseboards waiting.

Clutter on my washer (and I really need to do laundry today).

Clutter and boxes in my den.  Pretty soon this room will just have to be off-limits to Maddox so I can move stuff into here.  However, that has to wait until after tomorrow afternoon - there are people coming over to take a reading and a writing class here tomorrow.  I'm not teaching it - just hosting it for my fabulous neighbor, Terri.

Clutter in the pantry.  And here's a (not so) funny story.  Almost all of this stuff was already in here last Friday when we realized the pilot light had gone out on the hot water heater.  It's in the back left-hand corner behind a door there.  Ben realized it in the shower when the water started cooling too quickly.  He forgot to do anything about it until he heard me running the water for my own shower at 6:15.  Shucks.

 Tools and random laundry on the drier.

And this, my friends, is why our pilot light was out on the hot water heater last Friday morning. 

Thursday we put in our new (to us) gas stove.  We also had a near miss.  Apparently, most gas stoves that have been installed in the past few decades have a gas cut-off valve behind the stove.  That way, if you have to disconnect the gas for any reason you don't have to shut off the gas to the house, or have gas pouring into your kitchen should you forget to shut off the gas to the house.  Well, I didn't even think about cutting off the gas to the house, and there wasn't a cut-off valve behind the stove to remind me.  Fortunately, when I pulled out the old stove to disconnect it, the gas line was too short for me to pull the range out all the way for me to get to the line to actually disconnect it.  And since I am not currently flexible enough to climb over the counter and slide behind the stove, I called for back-up.  Fortunately, our friend and handyman Kevin was available to come over and take care of it for us.  And turn off the gas to the house.  And install the shut-off valve.  And install the stove for us.

Oh well, at least it's done.

Irises, Irises Everywhere!

One exciting thing about moving into this house has been the spring.  Since we bought the house in August this is our first spring in our new home.  It all started when we got home from South Carolina and found daffodils all over the front and back yard.  The excitement has escalated as we had some new blossoms springing up several weeks ago...

(Note: All photos taken by Olivia)

What were these funky-looking flowers?!  At first I thought it was some sort of lily, but after a morning spent identifying them online we knew for sure that wasn't the case.  So what are they?

They are bearded irises, to be exact.

There are three petals standing up called "standards" and three petals that swoop down called "falls".  And where is the beard?  This fuzzy thing right here:

Theses are easily the coolest flowers we have ever seen.  Every morning the girls want to go out and count how many blossoms we have.  They're all over the back yard...

...white and yellow/white ones in front of the old shed...

...pure white ones hidden behind the workshop...

...a hoard of lavender ones along the back fence...

...and a few cool two-tone purple and white ones off by themselves.

The girls counted this morning and we have 99 blossoms and another 90 buds that will break out sooner or later.  Pretty cool, eh?

Fortuitous

fortuitous (fawr-TOO-i-tuhs) 
adjective

1. happening or produced by chance

2. lucky; fortunate


This is my lucky day.  I have been trying to buy a small black table to decorate my foyer/entryway.  I found one on Monday at Ross for a reasonable price.  The only problem was that it had baskets for drawers, and they were not the right color.  See?  Way too light to go with the rug.

So I went to the store and bought some primer spray paint and what I thought would be a nice sage green to spray-paint the baskets.  After two days of on and off painting in my pantry and stinking up the house (it was way too cold and wet to do this outside) I put the baskets in this morning and noticed something.  They looked terrible.  Way too bright and kind of Incredible-Hulk green, if you know what I mean.

So I went BACK to the store and bought a darker green to repaint them with.  The sun was shining and it was above freezing, so I set up on the back patio and got busy.  Not only was it a much better color, but the darker green looks AMAZING over the lighter green underneath.  Talk about a fortunate accident!  I love it.  How fortuitous for me.

No More Leaks

We started with this:

Note the towel to catch the leaks that have been there since we renovated, and the crazy extra P-trap on the right that is apparently just there for decoration.

What were the builders smoking?

In the process of fixing the leaks we - okay, I - messed up the silicone coating this crazy looking joint that cobbled together the PVC pipe that is the drain for the HVAC air exchange and the extra P-trap (that dipped part on the right).  Hence, what was originally a leak turned into a rivulet of water every time we drained the sink.

Problem.

So I took some pictures, went to Home Depot (because it's apparently much easier for women to keep their ego intact while asking for help at a home improvement store than it is for men), and the employee and I came up with a plan.

And by gum, it worked:

With the help of a little plumber's putty, of course.

And just in case you're wondering... this was my first plumbing job.

P.S.  In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to note that the man of the house (Ben) did his part on this job.  He worked on it all day on Tuesday, and yet it still leaked.  When I took a stab at it on Tuesday evening, I made it worse.  So it became my problem to fix, apparently.

Ills, Thrills, and Frills

ILLS

It's cold season again - time to pull out the Vicks VapoRub! Fortunately, the only one that has gotten much of anything so far is Connor. Poor little fella. And rather than give him cold medicine, his dad and I have been slathering his little footsies with Vicks VapoRub day and night! It's done wonders for my sinuses, too. I've also done what I can to fill him with vitamin C. In addition to red bell peppers, I've been feeding him oranges. I love good Clementine oranges (which, by the way does NOT include the pathetic bags at Wally World!) and they are just now coming in season here. I got a bag the other night, and Connor will eat two in one sitting! More, if I would let him. Which I won't. The diapers I'm getting are bad enough without letting him overdose on the things.

THRILLS

Last weekend we had a swap and shop activity in our ward. Ben and I started off our date night there right as it started, and do you know what I found???? A Kitchen Aid counter top mixer! So of course I snagged it right away and got Ben to take it to the car. Later that night I received a call from the sister who had donated it letting me know that the mixer worked perfectly fine, but there was one little thing wrong with it. The lever on the side (see the picture below) that was supposed to lift the bowl for mixing had not worked for some time. She generally propped it up with a pan or something to get it just the right height.

Tuesday I finally got to try it out. My adult life has now been divided into two major time periods: Life Before Kitchen Aid, and Life After Kitchen Aid. WOW. I made some french bread in there and... WOW. And then of course I had to try some pumpkin muffins. But of course, I had to try my hand at figuring out how to fix that lever. So I unscrewed the base from the top and gave it a look. This is what I saw:

See that white plastic piece in the middle there? It was broken. So I called the company who referred me to a repair center in Dallas, and within about 10 minutes I had ordered the part for $7.25 + shipping. Yesterday it arrived. Then, just using these tools...

...I took out the broken plastic piece...

...and replaced it with the new one. And now, of course, it works perfectly. I love being a "handy man"!

FRILLS

Some of you may remember the bathroom renovation project we tried to do before we moved into our new home. And some of you may also remember that we had some unexpected problems and that it took a lot longer to finish our "little project" than we expected. However, a couple of weeks ago Niel and Julie came up for a visit with their kids to help us get it finished. I have been meaning to give you the final pictures for over a week now, but I kept forgetting. But today is the Big Day. Presenting... our new bathroom!

And just for the record, one gorgeous thing about the bathroom that you can't see in these pictures is all the beautiful texture on the top half of the wall - courtesy of Julie! (I love having a talented family!)

My Sexy Man

No, not this one. (He's my handsome man.)

And not this one, either. It's my dog and my dog is a girl.

There he is! And what's he doing might you ask? He's using a wet saw to cut porcelain tile for our bathroom. I just love it when he's a handyman.

And here's the floor he helped tile. Before grouting, anyway.

Niel grouted the floor...
And here's what it looks like so far! White floor, mocha brown grout, beautiful walls. We're almost done!