One thing we have come to learn over the years is how wonderful our friends and family are. Especially friends that own power tools :)
This week our friend Ed came over with some snazzy gas-powered hedge cutting devices and the boys went to work. It went from a hippy look to a buzz cut.
Before/During:
look how high and uneven it is....
"After": All even and quite a bit smaller! looks great...
We also got most of the weeds/grass in the front yard cleared, and the maple tree and creeping jenny are doing great:
We are slowly taking on the 'front yard project'.
It is slowly morphing. Here is the history:
Because of our neglect of it last summer (when we were focusing on the inside of the house), weeds had taken over. So this weekend we are working on clearing out the space again, and spend some time and resources on the yard in the next couple of months.
Today we started clearing weeds and planted a new weeping willow.
Winter get-aways:
We have been lucky to have 3 weekend get-away since January:
- We celebrated Eric's 31st Birthday at a cabin near Mt. Baker with 15 of our closest friends over MLK weekend
- We headed to Whistler in February with friends for an impromptu ski weekend
- Over President's Day we visited friends Andy & Michelle in South Ogden Utah for a weekend of snowboarding & fun!
Here are photos:
Mt. Baker:
Whistler: I dont have photos uploaded yet, so coming soon!
We got a couple of inches of snow today, and it keeps falling all day! And it is 12/21 and we now have more than 6 inches of snow at our house!! we took a lovely walk down to Carkeek Park and hiked back home :) All of the pictures can be seen
I have been meaning to do before & after's of the house-- so here you go!
One reason we are delayed in doing so, is we are still slowly putting back together the house. So, as you will see, the walls are still pretty bare, and we still have some more cleaning and detail work to do. But other than that, it looks and feels great! Enjoy.
Living Room (off of the front door entrance). Before:
After:
Kitchen: Before After: and the new breakfast nook:
The wall between the living room and front bedroom before:
The new french doors in replace of the wall, and the front bedroom (now our tv/reading room): Our Bedroom (we dont have any 'before' pictures):
Bathroom. Before: After: (all we did was paint... this is a project in a year or two)
And lastly the 2nd bedroom/office (I dont have a before picture... and it is currently a mess so I will only show a bit of it...)
Here are photos from our party Saturday, compliments of my Dad, Mark:
We mostly finished in time for the party Saturday (working right up until party time). We still need to finish hanging some crown moulding, put up the trim around the windows and doors and do some deep cleaning.... but it looked wonderful on Saturday and we are happy to have our house back!!!
Here is the progress we made this week. We have been working hard every night after work, and were lucky to have some mid-week help from family and friends.
We are done painting. Tomorrow Eric will put up the trim and we will do touch-up work. We also have A LOT of cleaning up to do and putting the house back together again :) We can't wait to show it off on Saturday! Hope to see you then.
This weekend was exclusively spent working on the house and we are making great progress!
I am not feeling very linear tonight, so here are some photos and notes.
Here is Eric working on sanding the ceilings. As you might recall, we scraped all of the popcorn off the ceilings, but in the living room and kitchen areas the popcorn was painted over and difficult to completely get off of the ceiling. This posed a problem for the finished product, so Eric went back over it with a sander (taking MANY hours) and the finished product was well worth it. It looks smooth and normal and fantastic! My Mom was a great help on Saturday painting doors (in the background of the picture above).
On Friday we put up the LAST wall and decided to leave a gift for the next homeowner-- One of our wedding beer koozies, an empty Pabst and a photo of us with a little note. Egotistical and fun. Here she is:
So Saturday we got the rest of the house ready to paint, and Sunday we had help from friends Heather & Jesse and Nick Martin. We finished priming the main living room, and got the first coat of paint up! Here is Heather: ... And Nick and Jesse: Here is the wall in the living room painted. The trim around the windows will be white. The wall color is butter.
With a concrete goal of finishing by November 15th, we are really pushing to get things done. Last week we worked almost every week night, and worked all day Saturday. Sunday we took a break. We went to the Seahawks game and celebrated my birthday.
In the last week we painted, installed trim and painted the trim in the 3 bedrooms. Here is the office: And the front bedroom:
We moved all of the furniture into these bedrooms, so we could work efficiently in the living room and kitchen areas. Saturday we finished hanging the last drywall in the kitchen hallway, and will be working to prep the drywall, apply the texture and then paint.
Here is a photo of the fireplace, with the new drywall: Here is Eric hanging the last of the drywall in the kitchen:
We are still deciding on a paint color for the living room and hallways. Which do you like best?
We expect to have another busy week of working each night, so we will try to post again this week as things move along.
Also, everyone is invited to our house re-warming party on November 15th! Call or email us for details.
We had a ton of fun this weekend, too, celebrating my birthday. Here are some photos from the Seahawks game on Sunday, and dinner with my parents on Friday:
