Category: The House

The last 8 weeks has been musical bedrooms and a game of dominoes in the upstairs of our house. The move to get Teddy out of the crib spurred:

1. Turning the guest room into Andrew’s new room
2. Turning Andrew’s old room into Teddy’s new room
3. Turning the nursery into the guest room
4. Changing ceiling fans in the master bedroom and guest room
5. Old furniture finding new homes
6. Updating two bathrooms that included lighting changes

Said differently, you know lots of things are changing when the UPS delivery man comments on the number of packages you’ve recieved recently…

But I’m happy to say that we’re 99% done and the boys are happily settled into their new rooms… and Teddy into a big (BIG!) boy bed no less. The guest room went from:

To Andrew’s new room:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A few updates to Teddy’s new room to make it HTP appropriate:

And the nursery is now ready for more ‘mature audiences.’

• 

• 

Just a few final touches and we’re done! Thanks to all those who helped with the stream of transformation projects. And special shout out to Andy for patiently and lovingly managing me (and my OCD) through this process. Though I’m pretty sure the most terrifying thing I can say to him now is, ‘So I have an idea….’

From the very first time I stepped foot in our house I despised our pink bathroom. And after 4 years of living here, it did NOT grow on me….at all. Pink paint, brass, frilly lights; albeit very nice, it just wasn’t me or a house full of boys. So I FINALLY said peace out to the pink and welcomed in a much more ‘me bathroom.’

From:

To:

Nothing fancy and I love it! And Andy is happy I’ve stopped complaining!

Footnote: Andrew was my sidekick in this process. ‘Mommy, you ready for me to keep helping you?!’ ?

We’re learning it takes a lot of wood to fill our fire pit. If we’re not careful our wooded 1.5 acres will quickly become an open field! ?

Before

After

Planted a lime tree in my office which should yield lots of fruit for happy hour cocktails! This may be the 1st time I’m REALLY excited about gardening! ?

I was nearly worried I had gone through all the effort of putting the plow on the tractor without it getting to see some serious snow. Boy was I wrong. This year March came in like a Lion and has thus far stayed a Lion. On Tuesday we got around 14 inches of the white stuff plus some sleet to top it off. It is nice to look at though!

 

Ever since I was 16 and Chris House let me drive his eye melting yellow wrangler I was hooked. As many of you know when I was in college I bought my first wrangler (Isabel)  and cherished her dearly. Then when I moved into the big bad apple I had to sell my first love, cried a little, and held on to an extra key as a keep sake.

Fast forward to our move out to suburbia and then us needing a second car. Kristi somehow let me get the wrangler of my dreams. A 4dr 2015 JK wrangler with manual transmission and the dual top group (named Bertha). Having both the hard and soft top is awesome. It makes it feel as if I have two jeeps instead of just one.

Though having the hard top during the summer months creates a small challenge, where to put it? Kristi refused to keep her car outside so I needed to figure something else out, and I got creative.
It started with questionable drawings including thr location of my rafters (mostly to scale).

 

Then proceeded to lag bolting some 2×4 to the ceiling.

 

 

Followed by trying to figure out pulleys

 

But I eventually got it all figured. It’s been a few days and it hasn’t fallen yet, I’d called that success!

One our latest DIY projects: I’ve wanted to do something with the barrels from our wedding. For almost 2 years, they sat in the garage just collecting dust until we finally got around to turning one into a coffee table for a our newly renovated living room.

From: Notice the barrels in the background by the entrance to the tent; not the skinny, mortgage-free, well-rested kids in the foreground:

To: A new coffee table!

   Special thanks to my loving husband who essentially deconstructed and then reconstructed these barrels just because his wife ‘had a fun idea.’

I’ve wanted to redo our dining and living room since we bought our house. It just wasn’t us and I wanted to make it feel more like our home and not the sellers. So here are the first pics of the new room. It’s taken a while since we’ve done everything ourselves but I’m really happy with how it’s turning out!

Before:

After: 

It’s still a work in progress but it’s coming along!