Gone Fishin

We took the weekend off from housework and went down to Jim's parents house at Lake Anna. It was great boat weather so we spent most of the weekend out on the boat, wakeboarding, swimming and cruising around. It was a much needed break away from the construction zone!

Somewhere Over 16th Street....

I wish there was a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Today some summer storms rolled in while the sun was still shining brightly...the result was a big, beautiful, bright rainbow right over our house and down the street.


It's been a week since we brought Chip home and he's making himself right at home here and we love having him around. He's very affectionate and loves to play and run all over our house. When he's not playing, he's usually sleeping :) He really likes his treats...

It's hard to not just play with Chip all the time, but we managed to fit in some work this week too ;) Jim's parents came on Saturday to lend us a hand (thanks again!!) They really helped us tame the jungle that was growing in our backyard. It looks great now and is ready for some plants in the fall.

The kitchen floor was removed (all 7 layers or so of linoleum) and there was a lot of kitchen prep/planning discussed. The next step for the kitchen involves putting in a new floor joist underneath where the new wall will go and then putting in the new wall. And also, sometime in the near future a new roof will go on the kitchen as well.

Kitchen subfloor

Jim holding a piece of the kitchen floor.

I was able to get some more painting done too and I think we're done with painting for awhile now since the next rooms to paint will be the living room, dining room and kitchen (once completed!)

Here's what Chip did while the rest of us worked hard on Saturday...

On Sunday, we attended our nephew Daniel's dedication at his church. Here he is with Andy, later in the day...


We also attended Talula Donaldson's first birthday party on Sunday. Here she is while we sang happy birthday. She was adorable!!

Welcome home!

We brought home a tiny kitten today :) and we couldn't be happier. After much deliberation, we've decided his name will be Chip (Jim kept telling me that "the people had spoken" so thanks to you all for voting in the poll!)

Chip was very timid and inquisitive when he first got home. He had to explore every inch of our house, but once he did, he settled down a little bit. He's spent a good part of the day sleeping, with a few bursts of energy...playing and darting around from room to room. He's very sweet and definitely likes to cuddle. It was a good first day!


We got the second bedroom all ready in time for Chip to arrive (minus the new light fixture, which is on the couch in the picture...Jim is working on it!) This is how its going to look like for awhile now. It's still transitional until we figure out the rest of the house. But we have been able to get everything a little more organized and we've opened up the space a lot through out the house.


And here's what the living room looks like now that its a little less cluttered.



You might have noticed that we pulled up the carpet in both of the bedrooms. We're lucky that the hardwoods look really nice in there and need just simple refinishing. Unfortunately, it seems that throughout the rest of the house the floors have an old carpet pad which is stuck to the floor. Here's a picture of Jim investigating how hard it might be to scrape up the carpet pad (or if it could even be done without ruining the floor).... and its looking pretty good.

Lastly, our garden is really flourishing. Our zucchini plants just started blossoming, which means the veggies aren't too far behind!

Crises Averted!

Sorry for the lack of blogging....a series of unfortunate events has taken up all our time and energy over the past week.

Jim came down with a bug and was out of commission for awhile :( Thankfully, the fever and congestion have passed and he is on the mend.

Crisis #1: On Saturday, in the midst of the heatwave of 100+ degree weather, our air conditioning broke. It was a low point to have the AC break on top of all the other chaos. But Jim came through. He was able to figure out the problem, order the part and fix it with in a few days. He even thought of a temporary solution (borrowing extra window units that Matt and Mary had...thanks again guys for letting us borrow them!) I was the happiest lady alive when I heard the sound of the AC coming back on.

Tragedy:


Success:


Crisis #2: On Tuesday evening, we came home to a bit of a strange smell in the house. I thought it might have something to do with the window units, but then one of the circuits in our house kept tripping. We realized that there was a short in the outlet in the 2nd bedroom. The funny smell was the plug to our wireless internet melting. Thank goodness we figured this out and Jim immediately fixed and replaced the outlet and also put a new smoke detector in our bedroom for safety purposes.


Last night, I slightly re-injured my back by slipping getting into the shower. Its not as bad as last time and I think a day of muscle relaxers and a heating pad has significantly helped. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll feel better tomorrow.

I hope we can write off this week as a scratch and start over. It was a little crazy having one disaster after another, when we have plenty to deal with in normal conditions!!! Somehow, we were able to accomplish a few things too. The 2nd bedroom is very close to being put back together. And that will definitely be done before kitty arrives.

Speaking of the little guy...he comes home Sunday!!!! For real this time. His health has been cleared and he got his 2nd set of shots today. So as of Sunday at 10 am, we'll be happy pet owners. Here's a few more recent pictures of him :)

he's on the left in this one

This one is older, but so cute of kitty with his litter and the mama cat:

**NOTE: In light of recent events, Jim let me know that he thought the title of this post should be: "Jim--Handyman....Superman?"

Sad news...

Well its sad to me anyway (because I'm so impatient)....we have to wait another week to get the kitty! :(

He has an upper respiratory infection and is on antibiotics, which means he can't get his shots yet and we can't take him home until he gets his shots. So the new kitty day is now Sunday, June 15. Hopefully (fingers crossed) he'll be ready to come home then!

I guess on the bright side it give us more time to get ready for him and more time to pick out his name...

Kountdown to Kitten...

The countdown is officially on! The kitty comes home in one week. YAY :) Which is great news, but we have been working our butts off trying to get this place livable for a small little animal. We can handle the mess and drywall scraps all over the floor, but we know the kitten needs a cleaner environment....So, we accomplished a lot of that this weekend!

I've been hard at work painting lots of trim, closets, etc. I am happy to say that our bedroom is DONE! (well as done as its going to get for now...we have a light fixture on the way in the mail and eventually we'll get some new window treatments and maybe some new nightstands) But all the painting is done and we moved our furniture all into place, which I feel like is a HUGE accomplishment!!

The finished bedroom

Bedroom closet

Hall closets...

Jim worked on installing the new utility sink in the basement and also ran some new pipes including the pipes up to the kitchen! Jim's dad came and helped us on Saturday (thanks again!!) and helped get the kitchen cleaned up a little more, we just have a little more demo left in there now. We're also working to figure out the kitchen design and have a working plan for now.

New utility sink and pipes

We did also did a lot of organizing and cleaning. Here are pictures of what all the other rooms look like now. We've come a long way since we first moved in.

Jim in our living room

Front door area (much more open without a dresser!!)

Living room looking toward the dining room (yes, we now have plastic sheeting hanging up to separate the work area from the rest of the house)

Dining room (work room) looking toward the living room
Dining room looking into the kitchen
kitchen


More kitchen (if you look on the left you can see the pipes for our sink!)

Our next project that we started is to get the second bedroom painted and the carpet pulled up before the kitty comes. Here's the bedroom, ready for paint!