Progress

Well, a lot of things have happened on the house in the last few weeks. Some are not picture worthy, but there have been busy contractors there 7 days of the week.

I haven't been good about taking my camera with me or even thinking to takes pictures of the progress, but here are some that I stole from Chad's iphone in order to prove that we are moving along.

Remember the before picture of the kitchen. We liked the "feel" of the old kitchen and the look of the cabinets and backsplash. We had kind of hoped to keep what was there and add on. We just couldn't figure out how to carry that around the corner to the blank wall without loosing a lot. So we had the cabinet maker design cabinets similar to the ones that were there. We weren't able to salvage all of the subway tile backsplash either, so that will be replaced. We are going to keep the same look on that too, though.

Here are the new cabinets! I think they turned out great. Sorry you can't get the full picture yet. I will take pictures with my camera after they are painted.
This is the before picture through the dining room to the door leading into the Butler's Pantry, which will be out desk area. Behind this door was another door the same size leading into the kitchen.

Although I loved the cute doors with the glass knobs and little window, we thought it would make the whole area feel bigger if we opened it up a little.

Chad did the demolition himself and most of the framing. He did have a framer help with the shaping of the arches to match the one between the living and dining. I love the way it turned out!

Other finished projects:

Foundation, mold removal from the little bathroom, ALL new electrical wiring (not in our original budget, but had to be done), ALL new plumbing under the house, new framing and sheetrock to replace torn out walls in the bathroom and places that were damaged from the bad foundation, new texture throughout the house, refinished wood floors throughout the house and some random odds and ends and repairs.

The painters are there right now and I can't wait to see it all painted!

I always stress about picking paint colors. We probably spent $175 on samples to try on the walls. I have paint colors that I have used over and over because I like them and feel comfortable using them; but I am going for a little different tone this time, so I was kind of starting from scratch....not fun. The sad thing was that I had the hardest time with the nuetral color for most of the house. I didn't want stark white, but I didn't want too beige or too gray either.

Projects to be completed in the next two weeks....hopefully. (That is our goal move in date):

interior paint, exterior paint, brick repair and cleaning, countertops, tile, new plumbing fixtures, light fixtures and other odd jobs and cleaning.

Hopefully that will give us about 6 weeks before Baby Molly makes her appearance! Maybe we will have some time to recover before we enter the world caring for a newborn.

"Tu Tu" Cute for 2

Last night we got to head over to Frisco for our Niece Maclane's second birthday. The theme was Tu Tu Cute which works out perfectly for Meg, since she has a number of Tu Tu's to choose from. She was so excited and didn't appreciate the rush hour drive, to the other side of the metroplex, that it took to get there.
Here she is sneaking up behind the cake. We found her like this a number of times. She was pretty sure that was the only reason we came, and didn't understand why we had to wait to eat it.



The Birthday Girl on her Birthday Scooter

Meg snagged another kid's scooter

Refueling

Getting her face painted by her talented Aunt Shaye

When it was time to sing Happy Bday and cut the cake, Meg pulled her little chair right up to the best seat in the house. I was laughing to hard to take a picture when she leaned forward and took at bite out of the icing....twice!

Nephew Knox and his Tiger face

Helping blow the candles out

Mama Joy and Meg

Her "New Special Prize".....the parasol party favor, which she has thoroughly enjoyed.

I don't know who this little kid is, but he stood there drinking his juice and watching Meg for quite a while.

Dream

The attic in our "new" house is really big. I for one, think that this would be the perfect use of that space and solution to the small bedroom closet delimna.......but, I don't think that Chad is on board.

This is the picture of an attic/closet from a bungalow featured in D Magazine recently. I pulled it from http://www.fabulouskblog.com/.

For Sale:Out With the Old, in With the New

Everytime we move I become less attached to some of the things in our house. I have a love/hate relationship with Craigslist. I love when I post something and someone emails me ten minutes later and comes to get it the next day. I hate to post a bunch of little things for really cheap and people want to email me with 100 questions and don't end of buying or having something sit on there for weeks. I am not patient enough for that. Here are a few of the things that I need to purge from our house. Let me know if you see something you like. Trust me....they are mostly pretty cheap.

The lamp above has a few cracks that have been glued back together. It works great, and they are not noticeable. Just wanted to let you know.

Stay tuned! I will have more. I am thinking of things as I write this.

Here Comes the Sun!

I remember having a similar post to this last year. Meg and I love Spring and Summer! We love to be outside. She has been asking me for weeks to swim in the pool. I don't know if she saw my neighbors out there laying out or just realizes that it is getting warmer outside....but I have had a hard time convincing her that it is still too cold to swim. Today I had the idea to dig her Water table out of the garage. It is the perfect day. I even filled it with warm water from the kitchen instead of the cold water from the hose, although she really wouldn't have minded if it had been freezing. She loves outdoors and anything with Water. She is getting a little big to climb in the table, but don't try to tell her that!

My friend Angela sent Meg these sun glasses as a baby gift when she was still living in Japan. She still loves them, and her purple leopard sunglasses that her "Bunny" got her. I don't know how they have survived so long. Chad and I break our own sunglasses on a regular basis.
Even after we changed out of her suit to watch Alice in Wonderland she kept the sunglasses on. It must have been relaxing......I had to carry her to her bed for naptime, because she was already out.

On the House Planning/renovating front....no pictures of change to the house yet. It is still in the foundation, electrical, plumbing stage. Nothing pretty to share.

Here is one of my current projects, though. I bought this at a charity thrift store yesterday.

My plan is to turn it into something cool, like this.....

( I can't remember where I first spotted this picture, otherwise I would give the credit. I saved it from one of the decorating blogs that I like to read.)

We shall see how I do on the make-over once I actually get it home. I didn't used to have to think about how to get things home when I had a Tahoe and Chad had a truck. This one could be tricky!

On a totally random note. I came across this picture on http://www.decorista.com/. One of the blogs I like to look at for decorating inspiration. If I were getting married this year, this is the color scheme I would use. Isn't it fun?

AHHH!

I got a call from Chad yesterday saying, "whatever you do, don't go by the new house!"

Here is a link to his blog to see what is going on...
http://thewayitcouldbe.com

foundation repair is a whole new experience for me. I am used to tearing out walls, plumbing, floors etc. This looks a little scary.

P.S. You could not pay me a million dollars to crawl under that house or in one of those holes! I hope those guys get paid well.

Big Girl Room in Progress

I am having so much fun planning out our new house. I love change. I get sick of looking at the same things over again. I also LOVE to clean out and organize. Get rid of what we don't want or need. It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff I binge from our house every time we move. I know that I haven't accumulated a lot of new stuff since the last time. I just become less attached to things after moving it around a few times.

I am excited to be able to plan a big girl room and a baby girl nursery at the same time. I will share more on the nursery as my ideas turn into actual progress. For Meg's room I had kind of a preppy/modern pink, aqua and white thing in mind......then I went to Home Goods, my new favorite place. I have wanted to go to one for a while, and didn't even know there was one right by my house; until I looked on the website. I spotted these throw pillows and lamp and totally changed the course of my plan for Meg. I think it fits her personality better then what I was thinking before anyway. She is more of a bright and colorful, out of the ordinary kind of girl.

So here is the loot. I am aware that the lamp shades don't match. The lamps were on the clearance isle for $20 and I could not pass up the peach glass shape of the base. I can replace the shades for pretty cheap. You will have to wait until we move it to see it all come together.

Since her furniture will all be moving into Baby Sister's room, I have been looking for some sort of dresser.....also, some sort of cute toy storage/organizer (which is still I am still on the hunt for). I decided that instead of just going to the store to find something that we don't have in our budget....since the renovations are taking care of all of that....I would be creative. I went to the Arlington Resale Shop. It is a place right around the corner from my house (one of the places that I take a lot of those things that I mentioned cleaning out of my own house). All of the sale proceeds go to the Arlington Pregnancy Center. I bought this dresser for $60. I had sold a rug on craigslist the same morning and used the cash from that sale, so I like to think it was a free dresser....a trade-in, at least.

Problem #1 was that no one was home and I had to unload it before going back to pick Meg up from Preschool. I won't mention how it got from the back of my car to the garage. I got a good reprimanding from Chad already. Trust me, it was harder on the dresser then it was on me.

Anyway...I went straight to Lowe's to get white paint and some new hardware. Here is what I came up with.

I tried really hard to cut all of our stored belongings out of the background of this picture.

I am pretty proud of the finished product.

Next up on the house.....light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, paint colors, etc. I got my assignments from Chad today and I am ready to get started.