Kitchen Update

The drywall going up

The drywall in, the mud on and ready for texture

The new sliding glass door and a view of one of the windows.  All of the kitchen windows are now counter top height.  Not to mention they are all brand new so they won't leak.

The front walkway

Peter and David trying to take out a palm tree that has taken over the cable box and lifted a lot of the sidewalk.  Peter says-Don't ever buy a fan palm and if you have one, get rid of it immediately!

The downstairs bathroom

Peter and my mom scraped the paint off.  This bathroom will be textured today and ready for paint by Monday.  Normally you would just paint over the wall, however the paint used on this bathroom peeled.  We thought if we painted over it, it would basically fall off of the wall.  So we're doing it right.

More of same bathroom

The view of the living room from the top of the stairs

The kitchen cabinets were ordered a few weeks ago.  The appliances have been ordered.  We originally were going to go really cheap for the kitchen and then redo it nicer later when we could.  However, Frank convinced us as well as some others to just do it now.  So, today we picked out a granite counter top that we liked as well as a back splash.  But we're going to check out Home Depot and see if we can find the same things for a bit cheaper as well.

All pictures are from today except the very first one.

Under Construction

The First two pictures were taken about a week ago.

 Above: Old dining room-The windows were shortened as this is now part of the kitchen and there will be cupboards there.  The drywall was added to fill in the doorway.  There will be two tall pantries there.
Below: Isn't the kitchen beautiful?!  We made the ceiling 8ft to match the family room ceiling.  In doing so we blocked off the skylight-it was in a really strange spot to begin with.  Now the skylight will light up the attic space there.  From one of the upstairs rooms there's an attic entrance to the space above the kitchen.

Yesterday Connor helped grandma sand down the door so it could be painted.  

He's such a helpful little guy.

Our kitchen cabinets have been ordered...now we wait 4 weeks for them to arrive.

Poison Oak

Well I've had a wonderful day today!  About a week ago I noticed what looked like bug bites on my arms.  Yesterday those bug bites started to really itch.  Last night I woke up and couldn't stop itching.  Then today at work it looked more like a rash that was spreading.  So this evening Peter took me to urgent care.  I have poison oak...lucky me.  Apparently there's poison oak in the backyard of our new house.  Remember those 12 cans my aunt and uncle and I filled with greenery?  I was wearing short sleeves, they had long sleeves on.  Note to self-wear long sleeves when dealing with unfamiliar greenery.

Moving Day

Saturday morning bright and early we started to move our stuff out.  Peter picked up the rental truck at 7am.  By 8am they started filling it up.  At 8:30 people from the ward came to help.  It all disappeared so quickly.  I ran to the store and picked up doughnuts (apparently a must have for moving) and popsicles because it was just so darn hot!  The popsicles were a major hit!  Then just about everyone ventured over to the new house to help unload the truck.  From what I heard, they had a great assembly line leading from the truck to the garage and had the truck empty in very little time.  I stayed back and Rebecca and I loaded boxes with the odds and ends stuff that got left behind.  The condo is now 99% empty.  All that remains is some laundry soap, mops and a few pans that we forgot to pack up.

We'd like to send out a HUGE THANK YOU to all that helped us move.  We really appreciated it!

In the move we only broke one frame-a small casualty.  Though today Peter went to church with sneakers on as he forgot to pack dress shoes, and he borrowed a tie from my dad.  We also have no idea where our cell phone charger is.  But thankfully my brother had an old one that fit perfectly.

Pre-Moving Day

I'm exhausted!  Peter returned home from a trip to Home Depot and then to the new house to drop stuff off and finish scraping the old tile up at 11:30pm last night.  He then informed me that we needed to get out of the condo as soon as possible in order to have a chance at getting it rented before school starts.  Which meant that today we finished packing up our condo.  Peter and Chris made several trips over to the house with several van loads full of boxes.  Tomorrow morning we're getting the U-haul to take the big stuff and the boxes that got left behind after 4 trips to the house. 

Where is all our stuff going?  After all the kitchen is still a mess and the bedroom has no carpet or really anything.  Well, our stuff is going to the garage or the living room and we'll stay with my parents for a week until our bedroom gets finished and then we'll head over to the house.  While packing up stuff we found our emergency stove, so we could even make food :)  Too bad we don't have a fridge yet though. 

So I know this is all last second and all, but if anyone has spare time, or more importantly a spare hubby :) tomorrow morning we would love the help.

Things Never Go As Planned!

Yesterday I was supposed to go shopping for kitchen appliances with my mom.  I was at Home Depot picking up new locks for the door when Peter calls.  "Plan has changed, Do Not buy appliances.  We have major water problems in the kitchen, it must be gutted first."  I arrive back at the house to find this:  All of the lower cabinets were filled with mold, the floor buckled because of water damage.  There were multiple leaks from multiple sources. 

 This is what the kitchen looked like while there were still people living in it.  The pictures really look much nicer than it was in person.

 

 

I told Frank-our guy doing the fixing-to remove the upper cabinets too.  I want everything in my kitchen to match, and I really didn't like the cabinets in the first place, I was just going to make them work for me...and now I don't have to.

This is the dining room...or at least this was the dining room.  It was also a very small room right next to the kitchen, but since we were remodeling the kitchen we decided to make it larger.

So we told Frank to take out the wall.

 

Here's Frank taking out the upper cabinets.  You can also see how small the kitchen was from this viewpoint.

Did I mention there was water damage in the walls-up 4 feet!  Isn't the kitchen just lovely?

The black stuff on the wall is smoke damage, so there was also a fire at some point that they tried to cover with ugly appliances.  The stove and microwave were there.

I am standing in the dining room taking a picture of the kitchen.

And now I'm standing in the kitchen taking a picture of the dining room.  I told you they were both small.

So since we are turning the dining room into the kitchen, we are knocking out another wall-the one on the left is going too and the area between the window and the other wall is going to have a wall.  And if you can imagine it...there will be two pantries there.  The windows are going to be shorter, but up higher and there will be cabinets under them.
This is what the windows looked like this morning.  They don't look like that now though...I'll take more pictures tomorrow.  Frank hopes to have the support beams in, the windows redone and the walls done.

Everyone has been working really hard the last two days and there have been great improvements already.  The backyard is looking much better as we took out A LOT of ivy and cut back many plants that were overgrown.  We filled up all 7 of our trashcans.  Then I borrowed four from the neighbor (they're super nice) and filled those up as well.  We still have bushes that have been cut, but no more cans.  I might ask the other neighbor too.

The house is being tented on Monday so work will stop tomorrow afternoon and resume Thursday.

BIG NEWS!

We bought a house!

Back in March Peter suggested we should look into buying a house.  With interest rates so low was it better to buy now, or wait a year or so when we have more money and buy later with the chances of a higher interest rate by then?  Well, our lender said to buy now.  So we did!  We put in an offer on this short-sale in May and it was accepted.

We wanted the ugliest house in the nicest neighborhood....and that's basically what we got.  This beauty ;) is most definitely a fixer upper.  She's also located in PQ 2nd ward boundaries.  This is the only picture I bothered to take today as we picked up the key.  This house and one other on the street have an awful curb appeal and the rest all have manicured lawns, well kept fronts and homes look brand new. 

Walking up you'll see two dead trees, a dead lawn along with dog droppings-how lovely.  Inside the living/dining area isn't too bad, there's skylights so that's nice and vaulted ceilings.  The family room is doable as well.  Then walking into the kitchen...well if you can avoid the kitchen that would be the best thing.  It's UGLY and DISGUSTING and well we'll fix what we can and clean A LOT and in a few years we'll gut it and replace it.  The master bedroom is located on the first floor and it is HUGE!!!!  The closets need a bit of help and the carpet is yucky, but all the carpet in the house will be replaced.  The bathroom-eh-well a baby lizard went running into it, we just left it.  Oh the seller took the shower heads in both bathrooms...lovely.  This bathroom needs a bit of help.  Then we go upstairs and there are 4 more bedrooms up there.  All of the bedrooms need a bit of help and then the upstairs bathroom is DISGUSTING!  There's mold all over the baseboards, the water was on in the tub-we tried to turn it off, but couldn't.  We plan on gutting that bathroom.  So yeah we have our work cut out for us.

We'll post pictures as we fix things up, cause right now the pictures would be a bit depressing.  "You bought that?" 

It has a lot of potential...it's a diamond in the rough.

Ambidextrous?

 Monday's breakfast-Left handed

 Tuesday's breakfast-right handed

So is Connor right handed or left handed?  I really don't know.

He is equally skilled with either hand and often switches which one he uses to eat.

Our week

On Monday our little critter decided to help himself to some breakfast. 

Then after absolutely refusing to take a nap at 1:00 when I put him down.  I returned to find him stinky and very talkative at 1:30.  I changed him and told him it was time to take a nap.  He wanted absolutely nothing of this nap business (which is odd, because he normally willingly takes one).  After much screaming and bonking his head...aren't the bruises lovely?  I gave in and let him get up.  By 2:00 this is what he looked like:

Seriously?!

At 4:00 he woke up crabby, climbed into my arms and then promptly fell asleep.

This is how daddy found us when he got home.

On Tuesday we ran errands.  Connor enjoyed the first five minutes of Target and then wanted nothing to do with sitting in the cart.  We quickly finished up and then it was off to Vons.  He lasted much longer at Vons and enjoyed putting things into the cart.  He also likes to help carry the groceries inside.

On Wednesday we watched Chris and Mary's kids while Chris had a job interview and Mary slept.  Peter took some time off work to help too.  He took care of the boys-Connor-20mos. and Calvin 12mos., while I played beauty shop and did arts and crafts with the girls.  At one point we all went in the backyard and Connor was told to go get his shoes so he could come outside too.  He returned with only one shoe...thus started a search for the missing shoe.  We all saw Calvin playing with the shoes at one point, but nobody saw him leave with the shoes.  We all tried to think like a baby and find the shoe.  In the end Connor got to go outside barefoot.  It was several hours later, after we had all given up on our search, that Daddy found the shoe sitting in the bookshelf on top of photo albums.  It was right next to where the shoes were originally located....ARG!

Today was super warm in the morning.  I put Connor down for a nap and he woke up covered in sweat.  I had his ceiling fan on high and another fan on low and that wasn't enough.  When he woke up he was still clearly tired, didn't want to get out of the crib.  So I turned the AC on and he was quiet in bed for at least 30 more minutes and then started talking.

I stripped him of his clothes while he enjoyed an apple juice popsicle, and then just let him wander around the house in just a diaper.  He seemed quite content without clothes.

He noticed some bibs on the floor next to the washer and decided they needed to be put away.  So he started the laundry....it's never too early to get your kids to do their own laundry:

After finding more laundry, we were back to finish the job.

After Daddy got home we went for a walk and stopped at a few favorite destinations.

The Mailbox, 

The fountain at the pool

The tennis courts,

and then the PLAYGROUND

Connor figured out how to climb back up the slide too.

For some reason this video is all pixelated...but you get the idea.

Staying Cool

This is how we keep cool

 Connor and Daddy running in the sprinklers.

Connor and Mommy playing with squirt toys-a great Sunday afternoon activity

Connor driving the car with the door open...he's a real dare devil

Helping Mommy wash the car

Connor and Daddy running in the sprinkler

Connor and Mommy squirting Daddy