We got our kitchen counter installed today!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippee!!!!! It looks SO nice. Of course we decided that we really should paint the bathroom before the floor goes in, so now we are back to no plumbing downstairs (the bathroom vanity is covered in plastic, the toilet is out, and we can’t install the kitchen faucet for 24 hours.) At least we are making some progress!

I think we are officially out of “living in the dark ages” . . . you know no running water etc.
Scott got the bathroom put back together this morning – YEAH – he is such an awesome guy! hopefully in less than a week we will have the house “back to normal”

We have a 2-3 week old, why again did we start major home projects?
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Since Scott was home we had time to find someone to do the work in the kitchen and to deal with them when they were here. But some how the slippery slope of projects has gotten the better of us.
We went from Kitchen counter and dining wall(all done by one group of people) to flooring and then realized that if we were having floors installed we really should replace the bathroom cabinet . . . how hard could that be? Right?
Now most of these projects we are not actually doing much of the work (for example – in the kitchen Scott only had to remove the light fixture, paint and replace the light fixture. The major demo and construction are being outsourced), but some how the parts that we are doing ALWAYS take 10 times longer that we thought.
We thought we could handle the bathroom vanity install ourselves, went to home depot got a new vanity et al. came home are realized that our existing plumbing was 1) sketchy and 2) in completely the wrong place. The bigger problem is that ALL the prefab vanities that we saw are the same general arrangement, so our plumbing was never going to work with any of them. Poor Scott has spent the last 2 days trying to get the plumbing under control so that we can finally install a cabinet. (hopefully by end of day today) Yesterday ended with finally getting the water turned back on ( at 11:30pm), 3 trips to home depot, and no hot water.

To conclude: we are not very bright! We ripped out our kitchen (i.e. we have no sink, prep space, etc.) and they decided to also remove the ONLY working sink downstairs. Why do we do this to ourselves? and of course there is always the timing deadline (must be done before 1) the floor guy come to install, and 2) Scott goes back to work – NEXT MONDAY) Hopefully we have just crammed all the annoyance and pain into a small space of time and will be happily living in our improved downstairs before we know it . . . cross your fingers for us!

Pictures

Oh and I almost forgot – we have a now 3 week old and Chanler has the flu/croup!!!! could life get harder?

A while back (September) we celebrated our 10th anniversary. We had decided on a few things we wanted to do/get, but when it actually came down to it – we procrastinated. So a few months later we finally upgraded my ring – doesn’t it look amazing!!!! I am so happy (now I just wish someone would notice that it has changed without me having to tell them.)

For those of you who can’t tell, the diamond is about twice the size it used to be. Oh and the jewelry store cleaned and polished the setting (what a difference that makes!!!)

I realize we started the backyard project LAST year and that all work halted at the end of the summer, but with the last two projects completed this April we are finally all the way done.

Thanks to a birthday present from my mom we had the Sun Shades that I had really wanted.

This caused a small dilemma because in order to install the shades we had to get around to running the trellis around the rest of our fence (our neighbor to the right did all of his fence years ago so our fence was uneven, Plus we wanted to block out more of our other neighbors from our view.) Of course this sounds easy, they sell pre-made trellis at Home Depot – except – that’s right folks our fence isn’t in standard lengths (i.e. 8 foot sections). Poor Scott had to cut each individual piece to fit. Also since our fence is about 20 years old it is no longer straight or level which made it more challenging.

But here I am now that everything is done it is 1pm and I am enjoying iced tea on my patio while Chanler plays in the sandbox with not a drop of sunscreen on and loving it.