It's cold outside...

...so we have kept busy working inside! We had some time off last weekend for the inauguration, since neither of us would have been able to make it into work with all the road closures, etc. Jim had to make up the days he had off, but it was still nice to have a block of time we could use to get some more stuff done.

He spent awhile fixing some of the electrical wiring into our bathroom and also rewired and replaced the light fixture in the dining room.

Jim getting rid of the nasty, dusty fan!


And the new light, re-centered in the room. You can see the part of the ceiling that still needs drywall...hopefully to be patched in the near future.

Another big project we accomplished was grouting the kitchen floor! It looks great. And besides the door and window (which need some work), all that's left now in the kitchen is some trim work. YAY!

Jim starts with grouting. The tape helped keep it a little neater and made clean up easier (that was my job!)

Here's the floor near the end of the project.

And the final product!

We had a visit from Andy and Becky who were checking up on our progress. While they were here Daniel enjoyed riding around in one of our boxes from Costco like he was riding in a little car. It was pretty cute :)

We also fit in a visit with my parents, brother and sister-in-law, and my cousin and his girlfriend! Although I have no pictures of that, it was good times :)


This weekend Jim finished building some utility shelves under our basement stairs. They look great and just need some sanding and painting and they'll be complete. Then I can finally finish unpacking the kitchen supplies and organize both my pantries :)


That's about it for now. The next steps are getting trim done in the kitchen, finishing up the patching in the dining room so we can paint, and putting the door to the basement back on. Hopefully we'll have some more progress to show you soon!

Happy New Year!

Wow, I still can't believe it's January. We had a wonderful Christmas and some nice time off that we used to relax some and also to accomplish some projects of course! We got to spend time with both our families over Christmas, which was great. It's been a hard adjustment going back to work for the past week (especially for me with Congress coming back into session) but we are slowly getting used to full time work and trying to get house projects accomplished at the same time!

Merry Christmas!

We returned home and started to make some more progress on lots of little projects. I've unpacked about 3/4 of the kitchen stuff so far. I'm still working out where things will go and how best to organize things. But its so great to be able to use our dishes and everything again!

Unpacking is messy

We also got a new TV stand over the break which is a big step up from the end table we've been using!

Chip helped Jim put it together ;)

Here's the final product. As you can see, it came with a cat cubby hole too :)

Jim has been working on getting the basement cleaned up and organized...since that is quickly becoming our only work space. He also put lights in the stairwell to the basement and new lights down in the basement too. We also have some more drywall hung in the stairwell.

We got most of the beadboard backsplash up. All it needs is a little more trim and a few touchups and its done.



Last, but not least....we got the kitchen floor in! It still needs to be grouted, but it looks great. Our kitchen is about 90% done now (but 100% functional), which is awesome...I still can't believe it! I'm getting used to cooking again with real utensils, pots & pans, etc :) All that we have left is some trim and detail work to do and then the kitchen will be done!