The Yard...

For those of you who have been here, know how far the yard has come, and/or know where the plants have come from...enjoy the tour :)

Mini Iris's - Chris found them behind the garbage pail...and they are now thriving in front of the porch and around the mailbox


Chris lined the front...makes a huge difference...


Some of the few annuals we planted (we're perennial people) and the mini Iris's


Doesn't it just look cozy and welcoming :)


The rose on the left was there when we bought the house...the other one he found buried somewhere in the wreckage...and now it's doing great!


All the big rocks were going to be thrown away from a house we were working on....the lady wanted to get rid of them...and now they landscape our yard!


The driveway and side of the house look much better with the retaining wall that Chris worked SO hard on building... Cile, do you know what that big plant is?? (When it blooms it has little purple flowers...)


The Iris's came from our neighbor and a number of other sources...sorry they aren't blooming in the picture - they were so nice.


The patio Chris put in the yard is built out of the marble that came off the front porch when he tore that down, it's fun to re-use the old, original building material. And the patio boasts a number of different plants (most came from Pop and Queenie) - some of my favorite being the cana lilies - they haven't bloomed yet, but they will be SO pretty!





Chris has worked so hard on the yard - the path is made out of old slab he found in the yard and the large stones I mentioned earlier (and pea gravel from home depot...that he bought in broken bags so it was very inexpensive :) It's been so fun to see the yard so nice and full this year - we're sad to be leaving it, but glad we got to see it at this stage before saying goodbye!





Another rose he found buried somewhere and the salvia and coreopsis (forgive the incorrect spelling) that he got on clearance at the end of the season and they have done amazingly well - I can't count how many times he has split the plants - they are all over the yard!









My grandmother bought this clematis for us years ago - it was a tiny plant in a tiny pot and it barely survived in the first place we put it. Now....it gets tons of these massive buds and blooms and beautifuly frames the entrance to the vegatable garden (that has no veggies this year since we won't be here long enough to harvest...)

Hope you enjoyed the little tour. If you are close enough to come visist before we move (in early July) please do!!

Here's a fun before and after - especially for Glenn and Cile :)




And because I'm feeling a little obsessive about capturing and documenting everything....there will be a final, grand-finale tour of the house via the blog :) Probably sometime in the next month or so....

The Upstairs....completed

It started out like this...







You walked up the stairs and saw the bathroom







There was a little front room (I know - you love the eighties look of the mirrors on the wall...)







And a little back room..







For a little while we slept up there, and then for a few years we just used it as storage...and then we tore it apart.



Totally gutted the bathroom











And ripped down the wall between the two rooms (which had to involve taking out the chimney - which went from the basement through the roof).







So we tore down and cleaned out..







And started to rebuild..







It was very dusty...







But slowly but surely we made some progress. Chris worked really hard, and I pitched in sanding sheetrock, painting and caulking.











Chris built a fantasticly huge shower (this is the beginning of that)




And then the shower partially tiled..







After lots of sanding and painting, we scrapped up the old floor so we could lay hardwood..















Chris and Mike spent one REALLY long day putting down the floor







They were very relieved when it was over :)







And now...(with the help of lovely antique furniture from Chris's grandparents...) it looks like this:



The view as you walk up the stairs..







Looking into the bathroom...







Another view of the bathroom :)







Chris's massive shower...







A close-up :)







And the other end of the bathroom.







The corner of the room when you reach the top of the stairs..




The view from the bathroom







The CLOSETS that Chris built - can you tell I'm excited about the closets?











The view from the window/closet end of the room







A close-up of Chris's handiwork - yes, he built the handrail and the shelves!







The pictures don't really do it justice - you'll have to come visit so you can see it in person :)

The Upstairs...

It's not totally finished and no commentary yet, but...here are the pictures! When it's all done I'll add those, and some commentary :)

Transforming the Stairs and Hallway....

Okay, so a long time ago the staircase looked like this....






Then come Saturday, right before it saw the end - it looked like this....









Then Chris took a sharp blade to the concrete in the wall...





Created a dust storm in our house....





And he and some of our wonderful friends pulled the wall and the stairs totally down....









No more wall....





No more stairs!









Yup - that's a hole straight from the attic to the basement!!





This was about the time we were thinking we had completely lost our minds...









But again thanks to our friends (and lots of prep work by Chris) the new stairs started going up...









And they got almost all the way up and the boys realized there was a problem. So...stop, re-evaluate and....





Take the new stairs down...yup - they had to take them down.





Chris...pondering the hole in the house....





And with whistling and great attitudes they put them back up (better supported and with everything straight)!!





And...ta da!!! Us with Shadow on our new stairs!! Yes...that all happened on Saturday and we are so, so thankful for all the help we had. Stay tuned for what the finished product will look like - we're super excited about it (and hopefully it won't be too long!)

The Kitchen

The kitchen actually needed the least amount of work. The cabinets and appliances were all in good shape. Initially all we did was add a coat of paint (we don't really do white rooms...we thought green was a good idea.)







We were happy with the green, but we wanted to tile the floor and we decided that a lighter color on the walls would make it look bigger. So....






And Chris put crown molding on top of the cabinets to make them look nicer







Some tile, bead board, a big mess, and a few coats of paint later....







(Okay, it's not quite that easy - Chris works very hard on all our projects, but this was probably the fastest project we've done so far.)







We had a new kitchen!!











Chris even did 2 built-in cabinets so there is more storage!!











I love to cook and bake (and Chris loves to cook too). So...if you come visit you can enjoy the fruits of our kitchen :)

The Front Porch: Start to Finish

Hi! Welcome to the story of our front porch!




Us in the boom lift that we rented to take care of some pesky trees...



This project was actually one of the quicker ones. Chris started it in August when he had a few weeks off from classes. Despite the very high temperatures, he got a tone of work done in just a few weeks. Work slowed once he went back to classes at the end of September, but we've been plugging away. And now (minus the floor which you can't see :) the porch is just about complete! So, here we go...






Before the work when it was just a lot of concrete















After lots of tearing down and 3 huge loads of concrete to the dump...we were starting to see some progress...











All Gone!! :)










Chris re-poured the floor to make it just how he wanted it to be...











And step, by step it started to look like our new porch! I didn't really start helping until the end - I helped put up the spindles and do lots of caulking and painting - the time consuming, but honestly, the easy work...















Ta Da!! Our new front porch. We think it looks much more welcoming....and now the water runs off the roof properly. So, you'll just have to come visit to see it in person!

The Back Porch - From start to finish...

Well, here are the long awaited pictures of the back porch. This project started....well - Chris bought the material this time last year. Work actually started in the late fall, a fair amount of the work happened in December and January when Glenn and Cile were here. So - here you go!




It started out as a dirty small laundry room with a flat leaky roof. We decided we should do something different so....we tore it down :)



Chris started the demolition from the inside....



And we just kept taking pieces away. I pushed down one of the corner posts!!



Chris just kept going at it with a sledge hammer and we just kept throwing concrete into a big pile



It was a LOT of concrete!! Thankfully...the dump doesn't charge you to dispose of concrete, which is good -because our 10,000 pounds plus of concrete would have been very expensive to get rid of if we had to pay by the pound!!



Once we got rid of enough of the old stuff, Chris started building the foundation for the new porch and laundry room.



Let me tell you - it was fun trying to walk on it when it was just these boards :)



This is the beginning of the laundry room...



Glenn and Cile were here with us for a week before we went to France in December and then they were here again for a week in January before they left for Budapest...they helped a ton!



Started getting some walls up...







That's starting to look like a porch...











Cile happens to be an expert painter...



Finally feels like we're getting somewhere!



Although I wasn't looking forward to it, I ended up having fun helping Chris put the shingles on the roof - it helped that it was a cold day in January rather than a hot summer day! (And it helps that there's not much pitch on the roof so it's not scary!!)



Then we started on the more cosmetic element of the job - plastering & painting the walls, painting the trim, stuff like that. This is the view looking in the door of the screened in portion.







Sorry there aren't more in between pictures - this is the same view looking in the door of the screened in portion - but now there's paint!




This is the view from the corner of the porch (the door is just to the right) looking at the entrance to the laundry room and the house.


This looking into the corner where the previous picture was taken from.





So speaking of the laundry room...Chris did a great job. He made me counters and shelves and cabinets and a place for the freezer...This is the view as soon as you walk in the laundry room from the porch





And more storage space!! (Which there is none of in the house which is why I get so excited about it - the key will be keeping it neat!) This is to the right of the door.





And of course..the washer and dryer with a vent that works!! I'm very, very thankful for my laundry room! (To the left of the door)





The side view from the driveway...



And...."Ta Da!!" The full view from the yard. The only thing that's not done is the lattice isn't painted - Chris is going to wait until the winter when the flowers in the beds on either side of the stairs are dead so he can just spray the lattice - much faster than painting with a brush...



And we are very grateful for the help we received from friends like David (in the picture he and Chris were talking about his motorcycle that's under the tarp - it's a project bike that he and Chris are working on together)



And our good friend Jeff who runs Patch Ministries - he and Chris are always working on something together :)



And David's wife Joy (who is also a master painter). Chris and I enjoy working together...but we also love having other people around to work with!


So....the next project is the front porch! Hopefully that won't take nearly as long - it's much smaller and will be much simpler since there's nothing like the laundry room that took so much time in the back. Chris has a few weeks off between summer and fall classes - he's hoping to make a lot of progress on it then...I'll let you know how that goes :)

The Never Ending Bathroom!!

Well....we started in May with the intention of it taking a few weeks. What month is it? Okay....so it took 6 months - but it's done!!


Chris tried hard to make this work and put off spending the money - but it was hopeless. So...



He tore it all out!

And decided to rebuild it from scratch and tile the whole thing.







With the help of some wonderful friends from church he tiled the floor....



The framed out a shower and tiled it - that was a little tricky.



We thought we were almost done. But...we decided we didn't like the look of the paneling that was there.



So we pulled out the toilet and the sink AGAIN and painted the paneling.



It's hard to get a good view of it because it's such a little room - so you'll just have to come visit and try it out!!!





But it's done and it all works - praise the Lord!!!

The Yellow Room

This is actually one of the first rooms we finished (it's off the living room) so we could have a bedroom while we were working. So, we refinished the floors, painted it yellow and had a nice bedroom...but now that we moved our bedroom to one of the other rooms we finished (the pink room) the yellow room is our office!

The Pink Room

Before we bought the house, this was where 2 little girls had their room...


Yup - It was really that pink!



Then it became a storage room while we worked elsewhere...


Chris hard at work...





Almost there...


Ta Da! It's now our bedroom