Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays
from
Our Brick Ranch

Growing up my mom had a tradition, we all picked out one special ornament each year. I've continued this now that I have my own children. This year I found these sweet snowmen for the twins. The hearts above them say Babies first Christmas. It was really hard finding ones that were both the same in different girly colors. You usually just have the choice of pink or blue. I think they are super cute!

I'm also super stoked about our stockings this year. We really needed new ones, plus the babies didn't have any of their own yet. I wanted to make some special ones that'll last for a long time. Unfortunately we are in somewhat of a financial crisis at the moment so I couldn't afford the supplies. I found these ones at the dollar tree! I'm going to make paper tags with everybody's names to identify them.

3 year old Nemi decorated almost all of the tree. She picked out which garland and lights to use and was so excited to hang the ornaments. She went to bed late the first night with the promise of more decorating the next day. When she woke up she stumbled out of her bedroom her eyes still half shut and begged me to continue the tree.

She asks me every single morning, "Is it Christmas yet?" She also told me we need to buy some more presents for under our tree.

I was ultra depressed this year because we didn't have enough money for presents or a tree. We are very blessed to have family who care so much about us. We got 3 offers to buy us one! We finally accepted one. Then last weekend Nemi went to stay the night at her Nana's house and help them pick out a tree. While they were at the lot the guys took a liking to her and let her pick out her very own tree! I couldn't believe it! Now we have two trees!

And she absolutely adores having her very own in her bedroom.
It really is starting to feel a lot like Christmas here at The Brick Ranch
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Sunday, September 18, 2011

Current Progress

Before

Currently

Yes I know, we're slow. But it seems that every time we have a tiny bit of time to work on the house some family obligation pops up or I have a baby or two. :) But we're getting there. The carpet people come Tuesday! I'm thinking of a dark brown low pile carpet. Now I just can't decide whether to cap the mantle off in white or black/dark brown.
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Sunday, September 4, 2011

Family Molding

Let's take a trip down memory lane. Hard to believe this was the family room at one point. Do you see the baseboard heaters on either side of the fireplace? And beside them you can see the blue carpet extends up the wall? That is because this room was once the original garage.

When we pulled off that old carpet this is what we found. The cement footing for the "garage". It took us a while to figure out what to do as some walls didn't have this bumped out area and we definitely didn't want carpet up the wall again. My first idea was to putty it and paint it black. But after brainstorming we decided to use two layers of plywood on the other walls to bump it out the same depth as the walls with concrete.

Then we layered a piece of 1/8" vinyl paneling on top to cover it all up and give it a prettier face.

Then because every wall was really a different depth and height we ripped primed MDF boards for the tops to finish it all off.

It's more of a Craftsman look than I originally wanted but it seemed the easiest way to cover it up. And yes we'll also be putting the white facing on the concrete areas as well. Hopefully in another week the entire room will look like this and we can order carpet!



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Monday, July 4, 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Work Party

They came in droves. Well.. we had like 12 workers and that was awesome! People started showing up around 10am and our dumpster was well on it's way to full by noon! I couldn't believe how much yard clean up was already done. So we separated everybody into groups, some for yard debris, some for the shed roof demo and some for the bathroom/laundry room demo.
We had cleared the bathroom all out the night before so my dad could go in, disconnect the plumbing, and then get to the smashing!
A friend brought over her kids and they were super stoked to try out some demo in the bathroom. So I set Alayne in charge of demo. She did a mighty fine job too.

This is my dad. He's awesome. The laundry room is now down to the studs.


Here's the shed before, the beam ends were rotten as was all of the sheeting. And it was growing a thick moss.

This is my stepdad Lennart. Everybody got in on the action!

My best friends son Tony up on the shed roof with my hubby.

And good ol' Jeff.

There was a little of this.

And a break for some of this.

And some ice cream bars to cool off.

And tons of this.

All goofball. Pure Cheese.

And this is my current after photo. The tar paper is up but I don't have a picture of it yet. And hopefully the shingles will go up this weekend!


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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

One last picture

I finished the quilts for the nursery. I thought I'd post a picture.



This weekend we are hosting a work party so stay tuned. We have a lot of yard debris, old lumber, and styrofoam to get rid of so we are renting a giant dumpster. We also hope to re-roof the shed, tear out the 2nd bathroom, and clean out some junk in the garage. I hope people show up!
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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Nursery's Done

The nursery is finally done!



I moved around the artwork and we hung the doors on the closet.



I'm still not completely happy with the furniture arrangement. But for now it's done. I also want to save up for these cute bedskirts at target.

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Friday, June 3, 2011

Nursery

It's been an interesting few weeks but we have made some progress on the twins nursery. We hung the oar and swapped the red curtains in our bedroom for the white ones in the nursery. I always hated those red curtains in our bedroom.



Then it hit me, they match the red in the quilts I'm making and the letters I decoupaged perfectly! And I absolutely love the white ones in our bedroom with all of the white trim and bright blue walls.



I tied the red ones off with strips of blue and white striped seersucker to help with that beachy vibe. I also found these great frames at a thrift store. They are covered in seashells and were only $3.99 each! I only originally found 5 and thought oh well I'll just do a mural wall with them, then I went back yesterday and found 1 more! Score! Now I'm super happy with them lined up on the picture rails. I still have no idea what I'll put in them yet. Maybe some sailboats?
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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

New life and love

I've been missing lately. My world has been turned upside down. And this is the beautiful amazing reason why.

I'm only about halfway done with the nursery, but here it is.

A genius creative friend of mine Tara made these sweet paintings for the girls.

We've been making slow but sure progress on the family room and I hope to get it all up soon, but you'll understand if I've been preoccupied with other sweet things.

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Saturday, April 2, 2011

Paint

Let me apologize in advance. I'm about to give you some during photos. But no after photos, because my camera fried. And I am currently completely without one. But I was able to get some photos before that happened that show the color of the room a little bit better. So for a slight update.
Here is the door to the back patio. To the right is the laundry room and 3/4 bath.

This door faces the last one and goes to the garage. That's our beautiful electric panel.

And I just wanted to get a couple of closeups of the texture.

Just so I can say WOW. Look how incredible this turned out? Can you believe that is all 70's dark wood paneling underneath that? How wonderful is my hubby!?!?!

I can't wait to get some chair rail up and carpet installed!

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Family Room

Let's start with a before photo because it makes me giddy.

I told you in my last post that there would be a lot of progress this week. I was right. Out of the blue my brother came to stay and asked if he could help out. I put him straight to work. He filled out the rest of the upper half of the old wood paneling. Then my hubby and him sanded like crazy.

Then Mr Brick ranch convinced me it'd look even less like paneling if I let him texture the upper half.

The next day my baby brother primed the textured walls.

And put the first coat of paint up :)

My hubby is currently finishing the texture on the other half of the room while my brother is painting the bottom half white on the finished side. I can't believe how much it actually looks like wainscoting! The lighting in this photo is terrible so you can't see the color accurately. But it's Sherwinn Williams Bonafide Beige in Harmony.

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