Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Floor Plans

I found a neat program here. And drew up a floorplan of the house so everybody can really visualize it! The two bedrooms side by side are ours and our daughters. The lower one is the office. I think you can figure the rest out. These are rough estimates. Some may be inches off and I'm also not very good with the program. Thus my bedroom sticking out a few inches to far in the front! But you get the idea :)

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Monday, February 22, 2010

Our First Week

Whew, what a busy week. We had a bunch of family coming and going, stopping to see the house.
My mom brought me these. I think they are gorgeous! Yellow roses are my favorites.

Dan reassembled our matching desks. They will be used solely for artistic reasons.

We got to do some yard work since it was such a beautiful day. All over my yard I found bulbs popping up.

I can't wait to see what lovely colors come out!

I also found a rose bush at BiMart for $4.99 and planted it. The same yellow roses as in the vase above :)

We sorted through some bricks that are laying all over the neglected yard. Some are even half burried. It'll be a long process. Dan is too scared to mow the lawn! I found a burried dog dish, hammer, hand hoe, and tons of rocks.

Dan worked on raking out all of the dead stuff and sod lining the driveway.

While I transplanted my peonies and created a stone border from the pile of rocks on the lawn.

Hopefully my next yard project will be tackling these overgrown planter boxes and starting a veggie garden!

I also finally finished up this project. Which I stole from here... You should really check out this blog. She is incredible!
http://knockoffwood.blogspot.com/2010/01/plans-clip-art-rails.html

I can't wait for us to start crafting on these matching desks!
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Sunday, February 21, 2010

We Moved In!

On Friday we moved into our new home!
My Great Grandma's tredle sewing machine found a temporary home against the dining brick wall.

Our living room is set up, and has a temporary buffet at the end, until our kitchen is up and running.

I couldn't believe it when I saw the guys had put both couches and 3 end tables on one wall! This place is HUGE!

She loves it too.

Especially this part.

So do I, because all of the toys are contained in this safe place for her, and not all over my living room. All of the furniture is drilled into the wall. She can go nuts, and I can feel secure. I think her bookshelf turned out nicely!

Unfortunately there were a couple of casualties during the move. One was my dresser which the bottom broke off of. The other was Nemi's crib. While being dismantled she walked into the room and stood on the side slat. It promptly snapped in half. If you look closely at the back side you'll see one is now silver.... that is... duct taped. Ah well. I guess it's a sign to start building her toddler bed soon!

Our bedroom is also set up. I still can't decide what kind of curtains to put in this room. I just love the bright blue walls against my white furniture! I still haven't chosen sheets either. Please forgive our boxes!
The most exciting part was last night when Dan worked on the bathtub!
Here you can see where Dan welded his wrench to the pipe he was working on... Oops!!!

Just look at that beautiful plumbing job!
Blogspot isn't letting me upload videos, so here is a link to two videos. The first is testing all of the plumbing, the second we test the overflow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X32mstzH5PM
I am extremely happy to announce that the tub works beautifully. I took my first bath in it this morning and it was Divine!
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Friday, February 19, 2010

Moving Day

The last 2 days have honestly been incredible. Things have been falling into place. My husband and I have been working together and kicking butt.
We finally hung our uppers, and hallelujah, it went according to planned, the first time, even, level, plumb.... I know something must be looming. But I'm thanking my lucky stars anyway!
Look at these beautiful open shelves!!! Can't you tell he is elated the kitchen is finally coming together?

I had no idea that the picture in my head would actually be this beautiful.

The alcove for the fridge is my favorite part so far.

I love watching my man work away, making our house a home.

My dad was also there, just like he is every Thursday and Friday. He installed these boxes in the bathroom for the two matching lights to go up. Now we can install that last piece of drywall easily.

He also made the new doorbell look very pretty.

It's moving day. We are as ready as we'll ever be I guess, which is not really that ready. But here we go! Tally Ho! It's an adventure! We are ordering counter tops today. We have the dimensions for our tile just have to find a day to order them when we are able to sit and use the phone for 5 minutes. Our kitchen should be up and running in a few days, then we can concentrate on cleaning up the apartment and repainting, then making sure our shower is tiled so we can bathe!


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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

From House to Home

It's 3 days and counting until moving day. The house is not nearly liveable. We are not nearly packed. But, Friday will be our first night in our new home.
We decided to buy a new toy with our tax refund and got a 40" LCD HDTV. It's our first brand new TV ever. And we are in heaven! Of course we had to buy a new dvd/vcr combo to go with it. We felt so dirty spending that much money. But it does look beautiful in our new living room!
The bathtub is finally plumbed, waiting for tile to go up before we can install a shower head and spout. Meaning, we still can't use it. Even though we'll be living there in 3 days.


The floors look amazing and my husband says the living room looks like a room in a magazine. What a nice hubby. We found these great cheap tables on sale at Target for $26 for the set of 3!!!! We also found these new rugs at a crazy crap mart up the street for $40 each!



I've been having fun starting to hang art, finding the perfect place for every decoration, and repainting sad old furniture.

I found this french memo board at Ross for like $7.00!!!
This old movie board was at the Hollywood Video store where I worked when I first moved to Portland. The manager gave it to me when it was taken down. I've kept it all these years. I think it looks great in my kitchen with all the antique bronze and dark cabinets.

My daughter's door.

I wanted my daughter's bedroom to have raspberry accents. So I decided to paint this old yellow bookshelf I'd found at a garage sale years ago to match her new color scheme. Her bed is cherry, and we had refinished my dad's old toy box in a cherry finish to match. This is what it currently looks like. I had to rip the back out because it was so bowed from age. The new back has a nice matching raspberry paint and will be ready to install tomorrow.

I also had purchased these wall shelves at the antique mall a while back. There were two, but one was precariously perched, and an unknowing brother in law broke the other one. So I decided to use the raspberry paint to make it cute for baby Nemi's room.

I also purchased this other one, and I think it looks great in the entry way. I'm thinking of putting some hooks on it to hang keys from.

If you look back in the posts you'll see these end tables as I found them on the side of the road. Now just look at them! I'm so excited with how they turned out!

I found these finials at The Home Depot for $12 a set. I had been having difficulty finding large enough curtain rods that didn't make my wallet cringe. So when I saw these I grabbed them. After a few coats of white paint on some dowels and brackets, they look great! And were super cheap.
And, I think we've finally agreed on an exterior color!!!! We think it's gorgeous. Can't wait to see what my parents say!

And lastly... a project that has been sorely neglected. My daughter's rocking horse got some love tonight. I had a lot of fun starting it out. I'm thinking of padding and upholstering the seat in some raspberry. Then making a tail out of the same raspberry ribbon I used for her shades and also getting some brown and green to mix in to match the other colors. I can't decide what color to paint this pony's eyes!

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The floors are stained.

Mr. Brick Ranch here. I took another load of boxes over to the house today, and took some photos of the floor. Some of them are through the windows and are not that great quality wise, but I couldn't walk on the floors. They also look a little different because of the natural vs lamp lighting. The guy who has been doing the floors is from Siberia and he is a master of his craft. They look Fan-Freakin-Tastic! He sanded, puttied, sanded again, replaced an entire section of scratched boards in the office, 2 coats of stain, and 2 coats of sealer... all by himself. In 3 days!
Here is a photo of our entry way.

Entering the living room from the kitchen.

This is the living room looking through the giant window.

And finally our bedroom through one of the windows. I love the blue up against that dark wood.

My wife absolutely loves how the grain of the wood has risen to the surface and can't wait to get some thick white toe board in place. Tomorrow he'll be buffing and putting on the last coat of lacquer. The end result will be a satin finish. We're extremely excited to see the final product.