Friday, April 30, 2010

The house the house the lovely house!

I stopped by the house today to take a few new pictures. Not only for myself but also to blog about too. lol I like to share. So lets begin shall we!

The 1st picture was taken about a month ago. The second one was taken today. Not a ton has changed but you can see we have a "new" screen door (as in the one from the side door) & new landscaping around the trees. You can kind of see the new fence on the right side too. Also the grass is a heck of a lot greener now too. lol It is getting there. The front tree on the left is dying so it needs to come down before it comes down on the house. Yikes! You can also see my two little peanuts sitting on the front steps of the house. Too cute!

This is the new front walk way. It looks SO much better than before. I just wish those stupid orange rocks weren't there. Have I mentioned just how much I HATE the orange rock?! I also need to figure out what to do on the other side where all the dirt is. Maybe plant some plants or something. I need something pretty even it's just some boring green plant. Better than boring grass. lol

 That awesomely ugly plastic is whats keeping my basement from flooding. I can't wait for it to be covered up. But for now, I will settle with ugly.

This is a nice sight to see. I hated the orange rocks. lol I can't say that enough. The fence is coming out & being replaced. More stones are going down too. These stones are all wet so this isn't the true color. They are lighter like the front walk way. We got a really good deal on these giant things. We also have ugly gray ones. Kyle buys ugly things sometimes. Like white rock? Um no. That is going bye bye for sure!

This is the start of our fence. It will be so nice to have a fence here considering there was nothing here when we moved in.

This is the current sate of Karie's room. Kegan's looks the same but his room is filled with stuff so it was hard to take a picture of. All the sheetrock is down & all the insulation has been replaced. All the windows have been taken out & got all new casings. All the trim will be replaced & the carpet too. Along with a new door. Of course new sheetrock too. lol

This room has changed a lot too. We actually have some walls up! OMG! We have a new window & the two others we taken out & all the casings replaced here too. We will be getting a new floor which I admit I am sad about. I love the old hardwood but it was put in really badly & it will be impossible to save. So new floors it is.

That is really all that is anything "exciting". I just can't wait until it's all done. All the walls are painted. All the pictures on hung & we are living there. That will be an exciting blog post for sure!

Getting into the swing of things...

I said I would get back into blogging. So, here is my 1st attempt in that. We'll start this post, with talking about the house. The biggest project we have ever taken on & hopefully, we will never have to do this again. I thought "This will be so much fun!" when we 1st started. I thought it would be awesome being able to design our entire house. I did go to school for Interior Design. But no, it's not. At least not this stage. It's so slow!!! I can't even describe how slow this part it. All the tiny little things that need to get done before the big, noticeable stuff can even be touched. Plus, if you don't know, all of this is being done ourselves which takes even longer. But, we save money. We get more bang for our buck this way.

BUT, once it's all done, it will rock! There are some things that are slowly coming along. Of course I have taken pictures of all of these things! Duh! lol

If you don't remember, this is what our house looks like. the only thing that has really changed from this picture (I need to update) is that we have a front screen door & part of a new fence on the right side.

This is what the house looked like when we 1st bought it. We had to paint the house because FHA wouldn't approve it otherwise. The paint colors didn't come out like we had in our minds but we didn't have time to change it. We plan to get new siding but that stuff isn't cheap so in the mean time we just might paint the green either a dark color, or a different color all together. We'll see.

This is my favorite thing about the house so far. This amazing door! I wish this was our front door but it couldn't be. Not only does it swing the wrong way, but it is also too big. It's 36 inches. This doorway was originally 32 inches like the front door. Someone returned this door. $1,500 door. How much did we get it for? No joke, $150. Not even lying. It's stupid the price that we got it for. It was well worth the half of a day it took to put it in considering we had to cut a big hole in the house to fit it. Now everyone stops to look at it when they drive/walk past. I can honestly say, it is the best door in the neighborhood, by far.

Today, if it stops raining for a few minutes, I plan to take more pictures. We have a new front walkway. It's not 100% done but it's better than it was before. Before it was ugly cement blocks. Some were broken. Instead of fixing them, they put down fish tank rock. Yes. Fish tank rock. Red, blue & I think if I remember right there were some green in there too. While pretty in a fish tank, it's not so pretty in front of a house. It was pretty trashy which is the last thing I am going for with our cute little house.

We found out from our neighbors (who all seem to be awesome BTW) that the houses leak when it rains. We have no drainage system in the neighborhood & no sump pump. Grrrrreeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaatttttttt! So, they laid down plastic all around the house to hopefully prevent the basement from leaking. Lets hope. It worked the past rain so lets hope it works this time around. Then I will feel more confident. It looks rather ugly right now but we plan to cover it with rocks & put big planters over it. We can't plant anything there like we planned so pots of plants it is. I would rather have a dry basement than plants planted in the ground.

We took up some of the ugly orange rock & started to build a little patio.

See behind the steps where the hose is laying over the rocks? They are no longer there & a patio stones are there. I want to do the same thing with all the other orange rocks you see. I HATE them. They are ugly as sin! If we have to keep rock, I want to get rid of that rock & get something else. One I hate the orange & two they are so dirty & nasty. Not even something you could clean or want to clean.

There has been more work done on the inside too. Work that you can actually see. Both more tear down and more put up. I will try to get pictures of that today too.

I am starting to think our June move in just isn't going to happen!