Never Dull Moment With This One!

Bodey brings a lot of action to the table.  He's crazy, energetic, and you just never know what's gonna be next.

Like for instance, the time he busted out a window in our new house!  Yes, someday we will laugh.  I was in the garage when I heard an extremely loud bang.  I thought that better not be what it sounded like.  Low and behold, I walk outside to see a broken window... and kids nowhere in sight!  I just yelled BOYS!!!!  They both came running around the corner, Bodey just saying, "Just ground me, just ground me!" over and over again.  Booker claimed his innocence.  Somehow a piece of 2"x4" hooked to a sting got sling-shotted (that's a word now) through the window.  Seems like a step backwards in the house remodel, and the $295 repair job stung a little, but this, too, shall pass.

Last year at flag football, he was completely lost 100% of the time.  This season, he threw a touchdown pass, ran a couple of touchdowns, and pulled several flags.  He was on it.  Today, when I asked him how many flags he got, he said 3 and 1 tackle.  I said I thought he had another one and his response was, "Yeah, I saw that.  The quarterback dropped the ball.  That's when I was the rusher."  Slight improvement from last year!!!

And, most surprising of all, Bodey and school.  This is an equation that I wasn't quite sure what the answer would be.  Last year of daycare = total wreck.  1st year of preschool = my worst nightmare.  2nd year of preschool = improved behavior, no interest in academics.  Kindergarten?  Well, short of being told he needed to learn self control the first week of school, it has actually been (knock on wood), FANTASTIC!  He is totally digging it, academics and all!  Something has clicked with Bodey.  He is sounding out every word he sees, and says his favorite activity is reading.  HUH?!?!  Crazy, I know.  But, I'm so excited!  I've only had one call from the principal (for something I didn't really agree that he should have gotten in trouble for anyways) and his report card was fairly decent.  Great on all the academics... so-so on the behavior stuff.  :)  Either way, I'll take it!

Remodel Updates

SHOP

The shop went up in 4 days.  I still can't believe those guys were so fast!

Ground Zero

Start of Day 1

 

 

End of Day 1

 

End of Day 2

 

End of Day 3

End of Day 4

LIVINGROOM:

So far in the livingroom, we have scraped popcorn ceilings, pulled carpet, raised the ceiling from 8' to 11', sheetrocked, painted ceiling, re-did trim, painted the walls and got hardwood floors.

Before - 8' ceiling, stained trim, carpet

Raised ceiling

It wasn't in our budget to replace all the trim in the house with the higher baseboard.  Thankfully, Pinterest showed me how to make faux tall baseboard.  Looked kinda funny at first.

But it turned out!

 

 

Painted

 

With hardwoods!

DINING/KITCHEN:

Dining - Before

Added chair rail and boxes

 

With paint and hardwoods

 

Kitchen - Before

Took out old countertops
 

Replaced with granite countertops

And siligranite sink

Dusty cut the panels out of these cabinets.  I don't really like them, but I need to keep them for storage purposes.  So, we are putting glass in the panels to help open it up.  Today the painters started on re-doing our cabinets!

 

 

And, we still have a long way to go, but at least we are out of demo mode and moving forward!  The basement is about 4-6 weeks behind the upstairs, but we hope to move into the upstairs after the basement is sheetrocked.  Oh, and then there's tile.  We have a lot of tiling to do, too.  And painting.  Ugh.

Progress

I have to start out by saying my husband is incredible.  This guy can do it all.  Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, framing, sheetrock/tape/mud, layout, tile, etc.  But, most of all, he can visualize anything and have a little map drawn out in his head of what needs to happen and when.  I'd be completely lost without him.  Ok, I'm still lost, but I know he knows exactly what needs to be next.  I'm so glad we don't have to hire someone to design and map this house out for us.  So far, we have made a great team.... we have a history of fighting when doing these kinds of projects together.  I just have to do what he tells me to and all is good.  :)   I also can't imagine how burnt out Dusty is.  He goes to work at the butt crack of dawn, works all day, then goes straight to the new house and works on it until about 9-9:30 every night.  Then he puts in 14 hour days on the weekends.  Right now we can't even imagine what it will feel like for this house to be done and to get to actually RELAX in it!

Pulling up linoleum.  We also had to pull up the wood underlay to get to the subfloor.  And then I had to go back and nail down about 10,000 little nail/staple thingys.

If you look at the picture above, behind Dusty on the pink wall is where the pantry door will be.  It's kind of scary to watch him just take a sawzall to the wall.

And whala!  There is our pantry door opening.

I scraped all the popcorn off the ceilings.

This is the old office closet looking in to the old laundry room (left) and the master bathroom (right).

It is all one room now that will all be the master bathroom.

In the picture above where Dusty cut out the pantry opening, you can see this wall before we took it out.  It was a half wall with weird wooden shelving above it.

Now it is gone.  :)  Look at Booker being such a helper!

The stairs to the basement were originally in the garage.  So Dusty moved them inside.  Again, scary to just cut a huge hole in the floor of your house.

But, it all worked out.  Can I just tell you that I can't believe Dusty designed these stairs?  A lot goes in to it.  Degrees, angles, rise, run, # of risers, etc.  And it all has to follow code.  Impressive.

We are filling the old stairway so it will be more garage space.

And, where the old stairs were can now be a storm shelter or gun safe room.

The whole house had 8' ceilings, which isn't the end of the world, but I wanted at least room to have higher ceilings.  So we raised the ceiling in the livingroom 3'.  It really made a big difference!

And my current project is tearing out the old carpet, pad, and tack board.

Now What, Supermom?

You've seen it.  You've probably thought about trying it.  Well, today, at my wits end, I tried it.  The Get Along Shirt.  You see, my boys have started digging my grave.  And it's time for school to start.  Ask me two weeks ago and I would have nearly been teary-eyed at the thought of my time off with my precious boys coming to an end.  Not any more.  They be bad.  Real bad.  So I tried it.

 Aren't they cute?  Well, probably because that, my friends, is not a picture of my heathens.  That is some other Supermom's heathens.  This Supermom didn't think of taking a picture when I first put the shirt on them.  And, no, I didn't take any special craft time to neatly write anything on the front of their cutesy shirt.

 Our shirt started out looking like the other Get Along Shirts, and ended up looking like this.  And do they appear to be getting along any better?  I didn't think so either.

But then, this!  They found a use for the Get Along Shirt.  And this "getting along" lasted all of about 2.3 seconds. 

So, Supermom, I'd like to know what brilliant idea I should try next.

We Bought a House!





We finally found a house WE BOTH AGREED ON.  It goes back to the basics of what we originally wanted.  A ranch-style house, 10 acres, on pavement, and close to town.  It was considerably cheaper than everything else we had looked at, but needed some updating.  So, here are the before pictures and demolition has begun!

 

 

My dream front porch.

Side view

Back view

Sunroom

Sunroom

Livingroom.  Will have new flooring, new doors, and a 2-foot higher ceiling.

This wall between the livingroom and kitchen is coming out.

Diningroom will have new flooring and my pantry access will be here.

Kitchen will have new flooring, the cabinets will be re-finished, and new countertops.

Bodey's room will have new flooring and paint.

Love his double closets.

Booker's room - same changes as Bodey's.

Guest bathroom will have new flooring and countertop and I will refinish the cabinets.

Master bedroom will have new flooring, fixtures and paint.

Master bathroom will be totally different.

The hallway laundry closet (left) will become part of the master bath and laundry room will move.

We are finishing the basement that will include a bedroom, bathroom, rec room and living room.  You also can't see it in this picture, but there is a utility garage down there too.

The stairs are currently in the garage and will be moving inside.  This area will be my mudroom.

This is my office.  Part of it will be gone to accommodate moving the stairs inside.

 

Our backyard - to the trees!