Bathroom makeover

Our downstairs 1/2 bath was dang ugly, and still had ugly border wall paper on it. But I don't have a lot of motivation when it comes to decorating and painting, so we lived with it for 6 1/2 years.

And then I got motivated, and it is gone.

Here's a partial before/during tear down. 

I painted it gray, and took down the large medicine cabinet mirror and painted the vanity.

And after- 

We are still working on getting pictures or something for the walls.

New Patio

When we bought our house 6 years ago, we mainly choose it because of the yard.

However, the patio has driven us crazy because it is not big enough to actually be useful.

So this year we had a new patio poured!
Chris pulled up all the old patio plus the flower bed by the house.

Then yesterday they came and gave us a new patio.
The girls sat by the door and watched them

They prepped the area, which also involved removing some grass- we wanted it big enough to be useful.

And now we have a new patio. And we love it! We spend a lot more time in the backyard.

Painted Kitchen

I have toyed with painting the kitchen ever since we moved here (5 1/2 years ago), but painting isn't my favorite thing, and I wasn't ever that motivated to do it.

I finally decided to do it and prepped/bought the paint/and painted all yesterday.

I guess I work best spur of the moment.

Before- 

Some was yellow, some not painted at all, and some was the light beige of the rest of the house.

After-
I LOVE the way it turned out. I think the green works a lot better with our cabinets, and it all looks clean and fresh.

I covered some pillows!

Nothing like a few new covered pillows to brighten up a room and an old/drab couch.

New Table

Chris' parents gave us a new dinning table for our 10 year anniversary. 

We looked for months......seriously months.

We ordered one on November 1st from online Amish.

And it was delivered this morning just after 8am!

This morning we all sat on the bench together. Then everyone was off to their school/work.

Tonight Chris put the legs on (he also installed a new garbage disposal and dishwasher this month!!)
And we got it all put together.
Here it is with all 4 leaves in it.

And with no leaves (they are self storing leaves. Whoa Whoa)
This is what it will look like all the time in our house.

And we have 2 more chairs that will find a home in Caitlin and Ashlee's room at their desk.

We love it!

Thanks Trish and Doug!!

Window washing

Last Saturday it was nice weather, and not raining, so we washed a few windows.

Molly would wipe and then lick the paper towel. I guess Windex tastes good?

And then she helpfully pushed her face unto the glass to make more of the smudge marks we were trying to wipe off. No glass is safe with a toddler in the house! My bedroom mirror is always full of little hand and mouth and nose prints. And I like them, so I don't wash them off very often!

Our newest piano

Chris' parents came for a quick visit last weekend to bring us this piano, among other things.

It was Grandma Will's piano (Chris' grandma), but she has wanted us to eventually have it since we got married.  She moved into assisted living last fall, so it needed to be moved out of her house and has now made it to ours.  We are happy to have it!

Chris tried to take a picture of the grandparents and grandkids, but they had a hard time all looking at the same time!  

Baby's room

The baby's room is all ready and waiting for her.  It has been more or less ready for a while now.

About a month or so ago I sanded and re-painted the crib because it needed it after going through Caitlin and Ashlee.  I also made the crib skirt, the quilt in the crib, a cover for the dresser and curtains.  My mom is bringing a shelf to set the cute little owls and a few other things we have on.

Everything is just lined up on the one wall right now because we will have visitors on and off for the next while, so we need to fit the air mattress in the room also.  Later on we will rearrange and spread things out a bit.  The room will also always be the baby's room/sewing room, so my sewing desk is in there also.

Tiled Floor

In January I came home from an ACLS class one Sunday about 30 minutes before Chris and the girls got home from church.  When they got home the girls timidly walked over to where I was relaxing on the couch and told me they had been bad and splashed in the tub (we do have a NO splashing rule.)  I told them I knew because I had seen the wet rugs and towels in the laundry room.  They went on to tell me that water had been dripping out of the ceiling.  What?!  

They were taking a bath while Chris was showering in our room and had proceeded to splash so much water out of the tub that it had completely flooded the bathroom floor and had, in fact, sent water dripping down through the ceiling in the kitchen.  They were in trouble.  I went upstairs and pulled back a little of the linoleum and sure enough the wood underneath was soaking wet.  We pulled back the linoleum on all the floor that was wet to allow it to dry completely and not develop any mold, and we haven't used that tub since because the floor wasn't protected.

Fast forward to last Saturday when Chris and his friend, Reed put in new tile floor (well, as in most home improvement projects Reed did most of the work and Chris was there for emotional support/comic relief).

It turned out very lovely indeed.  And now we can use that shower/tub when my parents come when the baby is born!  We will also tile the laundry room and our bathroom with the same tile at a later date.

It's nearly all put back together now, we just need to attach the baseboards and re-hang the door.  We love it, it really looks good.  Thanks Reedin!

We also need to get the other rug washed and put back down.  That silly girl, Ashlee, waits until the VERY LAST SECOND to go to the bathroom and she has to dance around very quickly while trying to get on the toilet.  Needless to say, we have accidents more frequently then we would like to.  Maybe she won't have them anymore when she is 4...........?

On Presidents Day:

This girl woke up and realized that she lost her first tooth in the night!  We are still unsure if it got lost somewhere in the bedding/bunkbeds or if she swallowed it?  So she wrote the toothfairy a note and put that under her pillow.

 We played a big family game of War.  Dad ended up being the ultimate winner.

 Some friends came over for a little while to play.

 Someone got a nice, short hair cut.  He loves to have his hair short, but sometimes it takes a while for someone (the mom) to get around to actually cutting it.

 We built some more shelves in our garage, now we have some on every wall and we still have room to park our vehichles!  This time Chris built them all himself and found out it was actually really easy, we just had the store cut the wood.

 Later in the afternoon we did a home movie theater.  Our movie theater is so expensive, so we picked a movie from our collection that the girls had never seen before and had movie theaterish treats.  It was better the going to the movie theater because I could lay down on the couch and take and nap!

We also folded a TON of clothes and hung up some blind brackets for the babies room.  Just trying to get lots of things checked off the list so we can be ready for this little one in a month.



More House Changes

Since Christmas we have been working on some changes to the interior of our house.  These are things that have been in the back of our minds for sometime, but got sparked to life with the coming of the new baby.

First we painted the stairway and hallway walls (just the same neutral color as our downstairs walls).  The stairway is SO TALL, so it was a lot of work.  The girls were ecstatic to help paint a little bit!

After that we painted our 3rd room that use to be the computer room.  It will now be the babies room/sewing room, so we painted it the same neutral color.  I couldn't find a single pic of what the old walls looked like, but just envision mustard yellow walls with a maroon accent wall and this wallpaper border at the top.  The old occupant of this house LOVED wallpaper borders, and since it was a misc. room we just left it.

The computer found a new home downstairs in the dining area.  It fits well, and really doesn't feel squished.

Then we got new carpet upstairs!!!!!!!

The old carpet was so horrible in every way.  It was impossible to vacuum, had no cushion, looked and felt like Velcro and was basically super cheep carpet.

We LOVE our new carpet.  The pictures don't do it justice, but it is darker color than our old carpet and sooooo, soooooo, sooooo soft.  I don't know why we waited so long to replace it!

Before carpet in our room.  It doesn't look so bad, but it was.

The master bedroom piled up in the babies room.  They laid the carpet over 2 days so we didn't have to move anything up and down stairs, so nice of them!

The stairs while they were working. 

The previous carpet was actually laid over mud on the stairs, I know- very classy.  So they had to scrape and scrape away the old dried mud and clean it all up before they could lay the new stuff.

 Pictures with the new carpet.  It is really a lot nicer in real life.
The second day they laid the carpet Chris left out of town.  So all of the upstairs furniture was in the master bedroom.  I couldn't move the furniture back in the state I am in, so our wonderful home teacher and his wife came and moved it back, thank you!
All the rooms are a huge mess, but they will get put back together eventually.

 We have a few more items on the list to get completed before the baby comes.  We have 10 weeks, so we should be able to make it.