Friday, April 24, 2015

Our special visitors

Since we have been going over to the house to analyze and draw up some plans on what we want to change, the neighbors have been stopping by and introducing themselves. They are all very friendly.  There are quite a few original owners on our block. It's great listening to the history and hearing about the 28 kids who used to live on our cul de sac!! Most of the homes were built in the 1960's including ours. Our next door neighbor has the exact same floor plan as our home (at least for now). What is great about our house is that the bones are awesome. Its a very well built home. During our first few days we encountered some fun "neighbors" Mr. and Mrs. Mallard.


Can you see them? They are kind of hard to spot.

Here is our backyard! We are in love with our backyard, minus the dandelions. It definitely needs lots of work too but we love having a large level space for the boys to play and us big kids too. Okay enough eye work, time to let the sweat start pouring down! To be continued...

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Our Fixer Upper

We just closed on a home and I am very excited to share our sweat and our tears as we start on the path of remodeling. With three very young kids and Mark working full time I know this is going to be the hardest season of life yet. We are doing mostly all the work ourselves to save money and because that's just how we operate. It feels like we really started this journey in November 2014 when we sold our house and started looking for our next place to call home. I don't know how many houses we saw but it was A LOT. It started to get really discouraging and we started to wonder when we were going to ever find one that fit our criteria and our budget. But the Lord is faithful and after a bidding war with eight other offers, and a few new grey hairs, we got the house. Its EXACTLY what we told our agent we wanted before we even sold our first house. Our first plan of attack is to get a structural engineer out to see if we can vault the ceilings.

Here is our FIXER UPPER

 
I wish that I had a wide angle lens to get better pictures but these will have to do. 
Living Room



Current Kitchen (door to garage) and yes that is parquet flooring!




Bathroom (of course)
Hallway to three bedrooms
The downstairs is halfway "finished" but our main focus right now is to get the upstairs remodeled and then start down there. Bring on the late nights, coffee, cursing and red bull.  To be continued...