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!

Slipping Away....

Our summer vacation is slowly slipping away.  They start school in 5 short weeks already!  THEY start school.  As in, my 71 month old baby starts Kindergarten!!!  Neither of my kids have ever been really clingy or attached to me.  Until, of course, it's time to let go of my baby and let him go to school.  Now, within the last month or so, Bodey has become extremely attached to his mama.  He just loves me and wants me all the time.  We had troubles dropping him off at his church class a few weeks ago.  I fear this is only a preview for dropping him off at the big K.  More times than I can count in a day, Bodey will come up to me and say, "I just love my mama" and close his eyes and pucker up for a big kiss.  Every night he just wants to snuggle with me on the couch.  This is all new to me, and I'm totally soaking it in, but our upcoming separation worries me.  Only time will tell.

Swim team will officially be over Thursday.  Today was prelims to qualify for Championships.  I have been extremely worried for Booker.  Not that he's not good, but he's a first year 7-year old swimming with a lot of 2nd or 3rd year 8-year olds.  And a lot of them!  I thought his chances of qualifying were pretty slim.  And I didn't want to tell him that his little brother qualified for Championships and he didn't.  Today started out with freestyle.  Bodey took 3rd and qualified.  They take the top 12.  Booker swam his tail off and I thought there could be a slight chance he could come in 12th, but he didn't.  That crushed him.  I thought it had ruined his whole day and he was too bummed to try hard in his other events.  But he came around and ended up qualifying in back (11th place) and the 100 IM (5th place).  I couldn't be more happy for him!  And Bodey took 3rd in back and qualified for that as well.  I'm so super proud of how far they've come this year.  I wish they understood how awesome it is to even qualify for Championships, because placing there is going to be tough!  I just keep trying to drill it in their heads that it doesn't matter what place they take, as long as they try their hardest and have fun.  That doesn't go over well for a competitive 1st born, prize-driven, people pleaser though.  :(

For the last 5 weeks of summer, you can find us cooling off at the pool and probably an occasional movie.  Oh, and we get to go to Phoenix at the beginning of August!!!  Then, back in the grind.

Swim Team

Last year, Bodey was an excellent swimmer.  He was 4 years old, very willing to learn, relaxed in the water, and very much a natural.  He could swim freestyle with beautiful little arm motions and a nice kick.  Booker was the complete opposite.  His kick looked like he was riding a bicycle and his arms were all over the place, usually going the wrong direction.  He looked completely uncoordinated and chaotic.  I didn't care though.  I was bound and determined to force them to be strong swimmers and they were doing swim team regardless of their skills.

Fast forward to this summer.  Both boys are now on swim team.  Both are very average swimmers... nothing over the top, but they can hold their own.  However, Booker has now realized that swim team is competitive.  So, now he's trying extremely hard and his hard work is showing.  Bodey?  Well, in true Bodey fashion, he is as good as his efforts will allow him to be.  Bodey is carefree.  He's not competitive in sports.  If he feels like trying, he does very well.  If he doesn't feel like trying, the lifeguards are probably wondering if he'll make it to the wall.  I realize he's only 5 years old, and maturity will come soon enough.

The first swim meet both boys were on the free relay.  When it was Bodey's turn, he jumped in, turned right back around to the wall, and got out crying.  In his defense, the water was extremely cold.  And he says he did a belly flop.  And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of his day.  Booker gave his best effort, and came away saying, "That was a lot of fun!" which was music to my ears.

Yesterday, both of them had their best meet so far.  Booker got to swim the free relay, freestyle, butterfly, backstroke and the 100 IM.  Bodey got to swim the free relay, freestyle, and backstroke.  Booker had been working on his fly all week and wanted me to ask the coach if he could swim it in the meet.  She signed him up, but I noticed he was also signed up for the 100 IM.  I freaked out told the coach it must have been a mistake and that he can't swim that!  But then I learned that another little 7-yr old about the same skill level as Booker was signed up and excited to give it a try.  So Booker decided he wanted to try it too.  I seriously couldn't have been more proud of that kid.  He swam 25 fly, 25 back, 25 breast and 25 free... without stopping!  He took 3rd place, but we later learned they DQ'd him for his flutter kick and doggy paddle in the breaststroke.  Poor kid was crushed.  But now he can't wait for this week of practice to try to take the flutter kick out of his fly and breast kick.  He ended up 4th in fly, and he can't wait to try again! 

Bodey decided he was going to put his game face on yesterday and came away with 2nd place in backstroke!!  And he only missed 1st by 1.5 seconds!  He also took 4th in freestyle... missing 3rd by 1.5 seconds.  So, he is right there and super proud of himself!  Daddy and Nana got to take the morning off work to watch them, and I think they were good luck!

School's Out For Summer!

I can smell the BBQ grills, sunscreen and bug spray.  So what are our big plans for summer?  Well, nothing really.  The boys will have swim team practice M-Th mornings and meets on Fridays until about mid-July.  In the afternoons, you will probably find us in the water, too.  When we aren't swimming, we'll be playing baseball, 4-wheeling, riding bikes, or just hanging out with good friends and family.  And that's what it's all about.

Today was the last day of school.  So I guess I officially have a Kindergartener and a 2nd grader.  I think I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that.  How can it be???

Baseball season is in full swing.  Both boys are playing 8U coach/machine pitch.  The coaches get to choose whether they pitch or use a machine.  Bodey's team uses the machine and Booker's coach pitches.  I see pros and cons to both sides.  If it were the other way around it would be a little better.  The machine is a lot faster, and Bodey struggles.  Booker gets a lot of hits off his coach, but is he falling behind the kids hitting off a machine?  I guess I don't really care either way, they are having fun and learning lots.  Booker has been hitting the ball fairly consistently.  It's awesome to watch and I can see him improving each game already.  Bodey is also improving.  After the first two practices I couldn't believe we put him in baseball.  The kid couldn't hit, catch or throw.  He is getting better at all three.  As a matter of fact, he hit his VERY FIRST BALL tonight!!!!!!!  It was so exciting.  However, I think it caught him as off guard as everyone else.  He just stood there.  Didn't run.  Just looked around.  Personally, I thought it was precious!  And, now he knows he has to run to first base when he hits the ball.

Dusty is currently wrapping up a fishing trip in Montana.  Can't wait for him to bring me home some Walleye and Northern Pike.  That just might be the only vacation the Feezell family sees anytime soon.  I think our first priority this summer should be to find a house.  Then maybe we can get out of Kansas for a break.

Last day at our old house.

We are enjoying living at my parent's old house.  It's nice and peaceful and the boys have plenty to do outside.  We are also only about a 1/4 - 1/2 mile down the road from Dusty's parents.  It's been really nice to hang out with them and let the boys head over there on their bikes or 4-wheelers.  They have also been feeding us a lot.  And.... fixing many a flat tire.  My tires are shot and the gravel roads are taking full advantage of them.  I've had a slow leak in one tire all week.  Then, Monday night when we pulled in the driveway I heard air whizzing.  A different tire was flat.  THEN, tonight, that same tire suffered again; but a different hole!  Needless to say, Booker, Bodey, the donut tire and I are headed to the tire shop in the morning.  It's going to be a long drive going no more than 50mph.

Hope everyone has a wonderful summer!