Christmas is coming

This past weekend I spent finishing up some loose ends on the house. I finished painting all of the base boards in the kitchen, which allows me to say that the kitchen is finished. Everything we had planned on doing to the kitchen is done. Also this weekend, we bought a Christmas tree, put it up, and decorated it. Our house is finally feeling like a house. Here are some pictures of our living room:















As always there is a little touch to do here and there around the house, but we extremely close to being finished. I am loving it, because now with not having to work on the house all of time, Colton and I get to play all night.
I have been getting a lot of request lately for just a family picture, so for all of you that don't get to see us a lot:

I am so eager to have a house warming party, but Heather keeps setting me straight with everything else that is going on right now, so we will be putting the party off until the new year comes around. This will give us time to actually decorate, hang up some window coverings, and any other odds and ends that need to be done. So I will try and keep you updated with what is going on.

Bigger than the House

So, most of you know the news already, but in case you have not, maybe the following picture can explain it:

If you need an explaination, that is Heather left hand.

I asked Heather to marry me on Saturday night and she said "Of Course!"

We are all very excited (including Colton, who did give me the OK). We will keep you all informed on the necessary information as we plan the big day.

In order to butter her up and make sure this weekend was going to go as well as I had planned I did manage to finish off the kitchen (minus some trim painting). Here is a picture of our kitchen:

We are getting close to being done with our house. With the kitchen being done, the light at the end of the tunnel is really getting bright. Hopefully we can plan an open house in the next few weeks so all of you can see our work. We will let you know.

House at a stand still

There hasn't really been very much work done on the house lately. I have been pretty tired from working on it for the past month and a half, but I am getting my energy back up and this weekend will be a busy and good one. I have plans to finish the kitchen and help Gregg remodel the downstairs bathroom. The bathroom needs to be done so Lauren and Travis can then move in. All that needs to be done in the kitchen is some texturing of the new walls and painting. Here is a picture of the kitchen at night with recessed lights I put in dimmed:

I believe soon I will have to go to blogging about what sort of mischievous activities Colton and I get into because I won't have the house to work on. I have to give a lot of credit to SuperColt for being so good during all of this remodel. Being so young he probably doesn't fully understand what we are doing, but he has been so good through out this process. I can only imagine what goes through a 5 year olds head when he sees an open can of paint.

Kitchen is Close

The kitchen is close to being done. We have selected a paint, which was actually a long process of buying one painting a wall, not liking it, and repeating these steps 4 times. Finally my office mate gave me the idea to go onto Behr's website and look at some complimentary colors of our living room. I did this and that is the color we selected. Now this weekend I will be able to install our countertops and then actually have a kitchen sink. I am also working on puttin in some recessed lighting above our breakfast bar. It is really coming together. I will be sure to post some more pictures of our finished kitchen after this weekend.

The Cabinets Are In

So I have been getting hounded to post some pictures of how the tile turned out. Well to say the least it turned out really good. Not that I am ever looking to do that large of a job again, I had fun learning how to do it, and now I really have a sense of accomplishment.

Another sense of accomplishment came with hanging the cabinets. Mike and Anne came to help for a Saturday and were able to hang all of the cabinets and our microwave. Here is a couple of the final pictures we took:











I have since been ablet to put in our bottom wall, hook up our oven, and get our countertops ordered. We will be picking out our paint really soon and painting our kitchen. The kitchen is getting close to being done. Our next projects is painting the kitchen, finishing the walls, and working on the office. I will try and keep you posted.

Tiling is Complete, A's finally Sweep

This weekend was a very fulfilling weekend. The Oakland A's actually managed to get past the first round of the playoffs, and not only that, but they swept the Twinkies. Sorry to all of you in Minnesota, but it just wasn't your year and the A's are better. Also, I actually managed to finish the tile on our house. Now that I look back it was fun to learn how to do it, but I don't know if I ever want to do that big of a job again. The total floor space that I covered is about 300 square feet. It took me 19.6153846 boxes of tile (13, 13"X13" tiles per box) and two 25 pound bags of grout to complete the job. I thank Colton's grandparents (Kathy and Wayne) for the use of their tiling tools (mostly the wet saw). I also thank all the other people that having given me tid-bits of information or directed me towards people that could give me that information. I grouted in two chunks. One chunk I did on Friday afternoon by myself; I had to get this section done, we could hang the cabinets on Saturday. The other chunk I did Sunday afternoon with Heather. If anyone is going to lay tile, do it with two people. It went so much quicker and it was so much easier with Heather helping, besides, I got to look at something beautiful the entire time she was helping. I do still have to seal the grout, but that is not a very hard job.
Saturday was probably one of the most exciting days we have had. Mike and Anne came up to help me hang the cabinets. I can not believe the deference it made. Mike was such a good help and it seriously looks like something you see out of a kitchen magazine. The best part about the whole thing is that we no longer have to go out to the garage to get the milk; we now have kitchen appliances IN the kitchen. It is even weird to think that we can go and buy dishes, put them in our cabinets, put food on or in them that was cooked with our oven, and then clean them in our dishwasher. We should have our countertops to eat this food on in about two weeks.
My next project is to finish sealing the grout and then move my focus back up stairs to our office. Our office needs the carpet removed and the walls painted and it should be in pretty good shape. I don't know if Heather is seeing it yet, but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know many girls that could go through all of this, but Heather is one of them. She has been so patient and helpful with all of the design I can not thank her enough. She is truly wonderful.

God Testing Our Patience

If you ever want God to test your patients try ripping out your entire kitchen, laying down a tile floor, planning a 5 year olds birthday party, then throwing the party, and on top of all that, selecting and picking up your appliances. Oh, and you thought that is all it takes for God to test your patients, well then, why don't you add flooding your basement and having to take back your refrigerator because when the guys that loaded it, loaded it wrong and scrathed the face of it. That is about the gist of our weekend.
Although our weekend got a little stressful, Colton's birthday party was a blast. It turned out great, and I believe he has just about every Superman thing possible (that is until we go to Target again and find the new line of Superman toys). Colton also really enjoyed party, here are some pictures of the kids trying to knock down the penata:

Colton's party was a success and everyone had a good time. Thank you to everyone that contributed (Mom for the cakes, Sue for her house, and Heather for having the best 5 year old there is). Colton also thanks everyone for his gifts; he doesn't go to sleep until they are all in his room right next to his bed.

For the house, I did not get as far on the kitchen as I thought. There is more to think about than anyone could ever imagine (unless you have tiled before). I did not know there was so much planning envolved, but I am glad I took my time because when it is done, it will be awesome. I do have a deadline of this coming weekend (October 7th) to finish the tile because I have Mike coming over to help with hanging the cabinets.

Picking out the Tile

We have actually picked out and purchased our tile. I will add a little plug for carpet exchange, because they gave us an awesome deal. Their selection was also much better than anywhere else that we looked. I tried doing a search online so I could show everyone what we bought, but I was unable to find it. The name of it is Puebla Jaspe Noce, so you can try and look on your own if you so wish. I pick up the tile today, so I will try and take a picture of it so everyone can see. I will be setting the tile tomorrow (Friday) so after this weekend there will be pictures of our tiled kitchen. Superman will be helping me as usual so things should go smoothly, although Superman has taught us a valuable lesson in that our new toilet is not big enough to flush apples. I believe he might have tried to put it in the toilet to save it for later, but again teaches us a lesson in that Liquid Plumber will not desolve an apple over night. So tonight, after pushing an apple through our toilet with a snake (probably a Boa), I will be laying our hardibacker sub-floor and starting on laying out our new tile.

Living without a kitchen isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The only hard part is not having a stove, oven, convenient refrigerator, or a kitchen table. Well, actually we do have a kitchen table; it is more not having comfortable chairs, but obviously Colton doesn't seem to mind:

The table you see in this picture is not even there anymore. This past weekend I was able to completely remove all of the tile and the crappy ply wood the people laid as a subfloor. It was a long process, and was harder than I thought, but it already looks nicer:

My project for this week is to get our new tile floor laid back down. I will be laying everything out this week, and on Friday (Superman's Birthday) I will be setting the tiles. I don't have a picture of it the bathroom is completely done. Colton's room is also completely done, other than his closet doors. That is all I have time for right now, so give a call if you want more of an update. Peace out.

Since we have so many people wondering how our house is going I figured we should start a blog so people can see what we have been doing. This will probably be a temperary thing, as I plan to have my own server at our that I will get up and running as soon as our house is under some sort of order. The start of blog comes a little late, but I am sure I can catch everyone up, and if I don't, then I will also probably be making a DVD of our remodel, which will go on sale for only $15.99. This first blog here is just to let you all know that we have started one and you can check up on it to see what sort of destruction we have done to our house. Check back soon, and we should have some pictures of what we have done.

Just so you know what we are into now, I will be finishing the bathroom and Colton's room tonight (Sept 21). Finishing these two rooms will not take long so I will also be painting the kitchen ceiling and ripping up the current tile. You say that I probably won't be able to do all that tonight, but when I have superman on my side, anything is possible. Stay tuned for more.