Bathroom DONE!!!

As I have previously mentioned several times, mom and I painted this weekend. Mom worked on the little bedroom, affectionally known as her bedroom and as the future baby room to me :) Sorry, you will have to wait for pictures of that room! I painted the bathroom, and as usual I debated over the color for a long time but finally picked one! Just so you remember, here is the before picture. Note how they started painting the walls and ceiling next to and above the shower:

Here is Bryce putting up our new towel racks! We have been living the last month without them, it's more challenging than one might think!

Ta-da! The finished product! Mom and Bryce's Dad both said welcome to the 60's when they saw all the teal.

Beautiful new towel racks!

Another towel rack, the sugar and cream bowls that I use for q-tips and cotton balls came from a yard sale. I got a whole set of retro dishes for $4.00!

So far the bathroom is the only room that is totally done, except for the moulding and the hole in the linen closet door (see above far left). After a bit of detective work we believe it was to a litter box for a rabbit that the previous owners had. We plan to start on moulding and light fixtures the rest of this week, hopefully I will have more to post tomorrow!

Dishwasher

After such a productive and fun Saturday I had a pretty lazy Sunday. But Bryce was busy all afternoon putting in the new dishwasher, yay!

Working in the hole where the dishwasher will go.
Several hours later the dishwasher is installed and loaded up!

Pushing the button to run the first load!

The dishwasher worked great and we are SO lucky and THANKFUL to Sarah and David for giving it to us. It would have been a long time until we were ready to spend the money on a dishwasher, it is so exciting to have a brand new one and we didn't even have to pay for it!

Saturday

Yesterday was awesome! Mom and I painted away (pictures will be coming soon) and Bryce drove back from Seattle. A couple of Bryce's friends, Ted and Krista, called me yesterday morning to see if they could come spend the night. They got here around 3:00, dropped off their dogs and then took off for some shopping. They came back for a late dinner of pizza and beer and about 10 minutes before Bryce got home his friends Josh and Jill showed up as a surprise! It was so great, we had an awesome evening of visiting and hanging out. None of them had been to the house yet and it works great for having lots of company! Mom and Paul were also here for the festivities. They have all gone home now, but we had so much fun entertaining in our new house!

Thisbe thinking she is a lap dog!
The first work done to a car in the garage.
The boys spent a couple of hours down here working on Ted's Jetta
Josh, Bryce and Paul


Here they are again

Here are Ted and Krista's dogs watching for Ted and Krista to get home from shopping.

All the puppies napping on the couch while mom and I were painting.

Lucy, Layla, Thisbe and Rico

Blinds

This lovely blind for our sliding door has been laying on our deck for a couple of weeks now. Last night we finally finished scraping the "mistakes" off the edge of the slider and I took this baby apart and cleaned it. It was pretty gross, Paul said it was one of the jobs you should only do if you are getting paid for it. I figure cleaning the thing is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new one. Although even clean it's still pretty worn and "brownish" in some spots, but it's clean brown! Bryce hung it back up and we have a blind again!


This is one of the before pictures of the bathroom, I promise it's not usually that messy, and beer is usually not consumed in the bathroom either... :)

Here is the trim and door frame that goes between our bedroom and the bathroom. Yes an animal did this, and no it was not one of ours. Although it looks like something they might try.

Bryce removed the rest of the trim in the bedroom and the bathroom so that mom and I can start painting when she gets here tomorrow. Tonight we finish spackeling and Bryce starts working on the electrical before he leaves for Seattle tomorrow to get the dishwasher!

Payments and Pictures

It was a big weekend, we made our first house payment! Not that it is terribly exciting to send off all that money it is exciting that the money is going toward something we will own!

We were pretty busy this weekend with work and school and friends so we didn't get too much done on the house. We did however get a few things hung on the wall tonight which is pretty exciting. It's nice to see some of our pictures and knick-knack things, it's been a few weeks now.
Here is the very cool sign that Paula Mykins and family got us for our wedding, it is hanging over our front door.

Here is the vanity in the bedroom with a couple of wedding pictures hanging next to it.

This will be a busy week of getting things ready for painting the little bedroom and bathroom this weekend and the new dishwasher.

Windows and Trim and the Vet

We have slowed down on the house this week, I think that's mostly because my classes at Gonzaga started again and I don't want to fall behind this time like I did in the last class, you know, because we bought a house and all. So I have been sitting on the couch reading every night and Bryce has been trying to get some painting done around the windows in the kitchen. They now have 3 coats of primer, so this weekend they should get the final coat of paint and be done, whoo-hoo! Bryce is also planning to go to the Ugly Duck, which if you are not from around here it's a place with cheap building supplies, anyway, Bryce is going to go order us some trim. We need 380 some odd feet of it! Yikes!

Thisbe made an appearance at the vets office this week, she appears to have some sort of allergy because she is very itchy and she is losing the hair around her eyes. We are thinking that eating paint may be the cause. Yes, she loves paint, if you are not watching she sticks her whole head in the paint can and comes up with a white nose and licking away. She will lap it up like water if you don't pay attention. We are not positive, but we are guessing this is the cause. She is getting some steroid ointment in her eyes that we are hoping will take care of the problem.

This next week we will be preparing for another big paint job and for our new dishwasher! Yay! Bryce's sister Sarah and her husband David just bought a new house in Marysville WA. They purchased a stove and dishwasher but were unaware their new house came with a stove and dishwasher. So Bryce and his folks will be headed to the West Coast next weekend to pick them up, we get the dishwasher for FREE (yay for awesome new family!!!) and his parents are taking the stove. So my mom will be coming in to Spokane (because they will be taking her truck to Marysville) and she is going to help me paint the little bedroom and the bathroom. Then the whole upstairs will be painted! YAY!!!

Things are very busy with work and school so hopefully things will start to slow down (probably not though, I just always WISH they would slow down) so that we can spend more time on the home improvements!

The Yard

Last week the snow was almost gone, we could see a small part of our yard, it didn't look too good. Then it snowed again! So we got to shovel for the first time, turns out we will be buying a snow blower before next winter. A driveway is a lot to shovel, and on top of that we have a corner lot with sidewalks all the way around.

It has been raining since last night so the snow has melted out of the yard and here it is, in all it's weedy glory:




Here is a close up of the weeds:
Now to the lovely backyard. I think that the weed situation is slightly better, but instead we have this lovely "wading pool" that the previous owners put in. Basically railroad ties surrounding a hole they dug in the dirt. Currently I would call it a mud-hole, not a wading pool.
Close up of the mud...Thisbe has found this part of the wading pool to be quite fun.
So it looks like we will be doing some serious yard work this spring. It will be good to get outside and hopefully by the time it's warm enough we will be pretty happy with the inside of the house!

More black windows

It appears that our dogs are finally getting used to the new house. Although I'm pretty sure that Rico is hiding under the orange chairs on the deck for some reason.

So as all good house projects go we had a great idea that we would be able to repaint all of the trim and molding we took off the walls. Well, as we tried to take out the old nails we discovered that not only did the nails come off, but so did chunks of the board. So it looks like we will be replacing all of our molding and trim, as always pushing back something fun we wanted to buy for the house!

Here are pictures of the the priming on the slider in the kitchen and the kitchen window.

Here I am sitting int he sink priming the window in the kitchen. A couple coats of primer and a couple coats of paint seemed to work on the window in the living room, so hopefully the kitchen will soon have white windows too!

Bryce was able to sand off all the old black paint of the handrail to the stairs going to the basement. He stained it tonight a nice dark color. It is going to look much better!

Tomorrow we will continue painting the windows and then we are having a BBQ with the family after church. It's so fun to have people over so that they can see what we have been working on and the progress we have made!

Priming

We haven't been doing too many projects around the house the last few days, I guess we needed a break! I came home tonight from book club and Bryce had sanded and started priming the black window in the living room. We got two coats on tonight, it looks much better already! I am hoping that this works so that the black will be all gone!

We are planning on priming and painting molding and trim this weekend, it will be another busy weekend!

The Kitchen

On Sunday afternoon we painted the kitchen, it's the same color as the rest of the living room. It only took us about 40 minutes to get it done, so awesome! Here is Paul pulling down the track light so that we could paint around it.
Paul standing on the counter, he was over to help for a few minutes at least!

Bob and Shawna, Bob is testing out the top of the new fridge. It was so great to have them here, especially because they are getting married! They got engaged last weekend and waited until they came to visit to tell us. I am so excited! They have been dating for 5 years and it is definitely time. Shawna also asked me to be her maid of honor, er...I guess that would be matron of honor, which made me cry. I have never been a bridesmaid before and I am so excited to help her with her wedding and be there with her on her wedding day, yay!

Bryce did a great job turning our yellow ceiling to white!

Here's Bob on the fridge again, I love the flowers and beer bottle in the background.

Last night I unpacked a few boxes and then decided I was too tired to continue. Bryce had church council so we didn't get the kitchen table upstairs yet. Maybe tonight...we are also going to buy an entry way light with the gift card Shawna and Bob got us to Lowe's and we need some groceries badly, that fridge you see is empty! So we will have to run a few errands first but hopefully we can unpack a little more tonight!

Back to Work

I hate how my real job interferes with the work on our house! But, we can't do much work on the house without the money from the real jobs so...

We had a great weekend, we got the living room and kitchen painted. I would love to show you pictures but the rest of the house is in such shambles that you would be totally distracted by the dog kennels in the living room and microwave in the hall way....between last night and this morning things are starting to look much better. I am hoping to get things organized enough that I can hang up some pictures this week!

Last night Bryce continued to replace outlets and light switches. We have several 3 and 4 way light switches, it took him a little bit but he figured out how to wire them all by himself, not even any help from the internet! However, the constant flipping of the breakers, because none of them are labeled nor do they make sense, we currently do not have power in the bathroom or bedroom. But we hooked up a lamp to an extention cord and Bryce will put in a new breaker tonight.

I spent half the evening looking for my stir-fry pan, which I never found, and then made dinner. After that I got down and scrubbed the kitchen floor. Two hours and a serious case of carpel tunnel later, the floor looks fabulous. However, I am not VERY grossed out about how dirty it was! Things are getting organized enough that I think tonight the kitchen will be in order and we can bring in our new kitchen table, sold to us for a bottle of whiskey from Bryce's uncle. My cool cousin Sarah just wrote an awesome blog about the kitchen table she has had since her and her husband got married over 10 years ago and all the memories they have made at the table, I hope we have lots of awesome memories with our table too!

This morning was an exciting one. Bryce had to leave early to go to Moses Lake to check out a job, so I had to walk the dogs by myself. It was 7 degrees this morning (seriously it's supposed to be spring!) and my little dog Rico has trouble below 10 degrees. The snow and ice builds up in his feet and he ends up limping around. So I carried the 15 pound little bugger for half the walk while Thisbe the big lab, pulled me down the icy road. Then on the way back, seeings how we are walking around in a confusing suburb, I missed the street I meant to turn on and ended up going way past my house before I could find a road to take me back. So the dogs had a nice long walk and I got a TON of excercise! I get back and Bryce has left the garage door open, now why would he do that? So I go in and as I walk through I hit the garage door opener and it starts to close and I go in and shower.

So for some reason I decide to dink around and make breakfast and lalala even though I'm already running late from the long walk. So now I am rushing around trying to get out of the house. As I walk out to the garage I see that the door is open again "what the heck?" I am thinking. And Mom's truck is parked behind my car. So I go back in the house, find the keys to the truck, move it into a snow bank, walk through the snow bank in my heels, yes I realized I should have put my boots on but I didn't have time! And seriously why does it snow 5 inches in MARCH!? I jump in my car, nearly killing myself on the ice on the garage floor, back out, close the door, and it doesn't close! It pops back up. So I jump out and move the garbage can and some other things to see if they are setting off the sensor, I shut it again, it goes to 3 inches from the bottom and pops back up, it does this about 10 times.
So I call Bryce, "the garage door won't close." He tells me a few things to try and then says grab the red cord hanging from the track, so I grab it and pull, the door shuts! But now I am locked in the garage, my keys in the car that is running and the door to the house locked...
Fortunately, I was able to get the door back on the track, get my keys, shut the door, go through the house, and finally leave the house. I was only 15 minutes late and only cried for about 5 minutes while locked in the garage...

Mom comes home from Vegas tonight, I can't wait to show her the new colors in the living room, hopefully things will be organized enough that I can post some pictures of the finished paint job later tonight!

The Living Room

So it took many trips to Lowe's and 6 different cans of "sample" paint on my walls before I finally picked a color. In this first picture you can see the color I finally picked on the wall at the top of the stairs.


Here are the before pictures, note the 4 different colors on the wall by the fireplace.

Prep time! Here I am sweeping the ceiling so Bryce could start painting.

Our AMAZING friends Shawna and Bob came out from Helena Montana just to help us paint. Here is Bryce and Bob painting the ceiling and walls.

Smile!

We had to borrow a 15 foot ladder from the church to reach the peak on the ceiling. Here are the boys and Shawna's head as they paint away!

The walls are getting close!

Here is another before pictures showing a couple more colors I tried on the wall.

The night before the big painting mom was here and painted this whole wall so that we could test out another color.

Here is another picture of the sample colors.

Here is the new light fixture we put in the master bedroom over the sink.

New fridge! Whoo-hoo! We thought we could live without one for a while and just use our big dorm fridge, but that only lasted one night. So we visited Fred's Ding and Dent and bought this fridge.

Today we plan to paint the kitchen! With the extra help yesterday painting the living room and hall went by VERY quickly, it shouldn't take us long to get the kitchen done this afternoon. Hopefully I will have FINAL pictures of the kitchen and living room very soon!