Dining Room

Bryce and I spent last week working really hard to get the whole inside of the house painted.  I had huge swatches of so many different colors all over the walls and it looked and felt terrible.  I was SO ready to finally hang some pictures on the wall but of course wanted to paint first.  I had originally planned to paint the whole house the color I had picked for the kitchen, but then that color looked pink.  Part of the day it was great the rest of the time, pink.  So I went an entirely different direction with YELLOW and I love it!  So here are some before pictures of the dining room. Notice the huge chandelier, we hit our heads on it all the time and isn't quite the style we would like.

 I loved my corner cabinet in the old house, but in this house it's blocking the window...

 And after!  We found an antique buffet to replace the storage of the corner cabinet, the window is opened up and it feels much better!  We put in a new much smaller light with some cool Edison style bulbs and hung up the kids artwork in the frames behind the table.

 A couple of years ago I bought these chairs to replace the ones that came with our table because they have been slowly breaking.  They were in rough shape to say the least, earlier this spring I finally recovered them!

This was my first major upholstery project, it was hard work pulling things tight, my fingers were exhausted!  But I love the fabric and although the light color wasn't the best idea for the kids...hopefully it will last!  After spilling apple juice on the chair in the first 24 hours after they were done Lenorah told me "mom, I wish you had waited to fix the chairs until we were older and knew better." That kid.

The Kitchen

At the old house the kitchen was my favorite, it was so big and had the awesome bar that Bryce built and I do like to cook and bake so I definitely wanted another great kitchen  I wasn't sure about this one at first but turns out it is GREAT.  Tons of counter space and tons of floor space, which is especially awesome with three kids always underfoot.  The cabinets are new and the appliances are only a year old,  MUCH nicer than what I had before.  However, the red wall wasn't speaking to me so it was time for a (THREE) coats of paint!

Before:

 AFTER:

Check out that double oven, it was my housewarming present to myself.  Although there was a nice year old stainless oven it wasn't double, and I do love a double oven.  So I picked this one up about a week before move in, I only lived here two days without it.  And then we got to gift the other one to my sister and brother-in-law who totally deserved something after the serious hard work they put in helping us move and clean on both ends.

I haven't yet painted the dining area, but figured you needed to see how it flows from the kitchen to dining and around the corner to the living room.

 The white counter tops would not have been my first choice but they are new so I will live with them until I can afford a stone counter I want.  We replaced the faucet right away, the other one was old and awkward and apparently I am now spoiled and can't live with stuff like that.  Just past the cabinets to the left is the door to the backyard, the door on the back wall goes in to a half bath that continues in to the kids room, makes for some awesome circle running for them!

 The kitchen feels much brighter and WAY cleaner with some fresh paint.  It might also be cleaner because, you know, I cleaned it...details. It feels like it is taking forever to get this house in shape, but then we have only been here a month!  I have to keep reminding myself of that... I just made our first house payment, gulp, when you buy a house twice as expensive as the last house the house payment is, well, twice as expensive.  So in a month we've gotten four rooms done, that's pretty good!  Now off to unpack the two boxes in the hall way that have been there so long they now look like they belong there and maybe I'll hang up a couple pictures, so far that rooster in the kitchen is the only thing on any of the walls (the real rooster out in the yard crowed for an hour this morning from 5-6, he may have to go...).  

The Bar Kitchen

So I am realizing I can't wait to show you the whole house with before and after pictures because it's going to take a while to get to ALL the after pictures...

So today I wanted to share with you this super fun little feature in our a house, a little kitchen in the basement!  They didn't show this in the listing pictures, probably because it was so dirty and just kind of stacked with stuff, obviously not in use.  This week the big kids are at VBS and this morning I had my friend's 12 year old daughter while they were there.  She was AMAZING help wiping down all the cabinets and counter tops and the stove so that we could unpack and start using this space.  It is going to be ABSOLUTELY perfect for beer brewing and canning.  It's nice and cool down there on these hot (?) summer days and really bright with three non-egress windows (that need replaced, whomp whomp).

 And if you know me at all you know how much I love these colored appliances from the 50's and 60's.  It's so perfect in the basement (in all honesty I couldn't keep it in the main kitchen, I need something a little more efficient, like a double oven...) here it's just an extra stove  for big holidays and beer brewing and canning!  It works great!  And the sink matches!

 Check out the sweet teal colored leaves in the counter top...

For a little perspective this door and cutout go into the basement TV room, hopefully we can take more of this wall out and make it one big space sometime in the future.

And can we just take a moment here to talk about spiders? Spiders do not even bother me that much, I don't freak out, I can kill them.  But this house, it was INFESTED. Bryce spent LITERALLY hours vacuuming up spider NESTS.  Not just webs, crazy NESTS.  I have never before seen so many spiders in a house and I am so over them.  OVER THEM.  Lenorah seriously freaks out about bugs and she's seen so many spiders now she was holding a box with one in it and very calmly said "mom there is a spider in here and I don't like spiders" it was so huge I'm pretty sure it gave her a thumbs up and I squished him. Every time I see one I think the next one I see I am going to FREAK out.  And then I pick up wood out of the "fire pit" and find a black widow and I'm still not freaking out so there's that...So this room had to have the ceilings and walls swept to remove all the webs and I said "This is amazing" and my 12 year old helper said "This is disgusting" she is so right.  What a trooper she was helping me to clean up spider webs all morning! (We have sprayed for spiders because I can't even...so don't fear, we are on our way to being mostly spider free).

So there is of course plenty to do in this room because well, it's us and we LOVE (???) projects (But DO we?) More projects to come...sigh.

Big Kid's Room!

This new house has four bedrooms on the main level, when looking I HAD to have three bedrooms, but since this house has an addition of a master suite we got really lucky with four rooms.  Before we moved in I told the kids they could decide if they wanted to share or have their own rooms.  Lenorah informed me she wanted all THREE of them to share a room.  We compromised on Beatrix getting her own room since she still cries at night and Dietrich and Lenorah will still share for now.  Since our room is an added master the kids get the original master bedroom, so it is nice and BIG and fits all their stuff so nicely.  I have been desperate to get their room done so that we can get these toys under control and since they were gone all weekend with the cousins I was able to finish it and surprise them when they got home!  We will start with the obligatory BEFORE pictures:

 And the AFTER pictures!  We switched out the chandelier with the fan from Beatrix's room and I took the bedding in to Sherwin-Williams with me and let the designer there pick the colors.  We went with a neutral light gray and then a fun accent wall.  The shelving was in the guest room and we just moved it in to here.  I was really excited to find the kids matching bedding a few months ago, it's hard to find stuff that works for a boy and a girl. Lenorah's new to her dresser came from a flea market, it will eventually get a new paint job.

 It's hard to get a picture of this wall with the bright window but I love this bright green wall and their names over the bulletin boards, it will be perfect for all the school projects that come home!  I made Lenorah the bow holder out of a mirror frame about a year ago. 

 The closet is still full of stuff but organized now!  The white shelving came out of the church and we added some closet dowels on each side to add more room to hang clothes.  We found the closet doors in the top of the shop, so at least we don't need to get new doors here for a while!

Now that the toys are organized and have "homes" the house feels much more orderly, and I think the kids are starting to really feel at home since they have been reunited with all their things. They already enjoy playing in their room so much more than before since it is close to everything and there is plenty of room for activities ;)

Outside and all around us

(Click on the pictures for a nice big view)

So I haven't written over here in ages, pretty much since we tried to sell and it all fell apart last year, but I figured it was time to start blogging again, and since you probably already know from facebook we sold our house and bought us a place in the country! 

On May 5th we found this place that was EVERYTHING we were looking for (except an attached garage but with a rancher style house and husband who builds things, I WILL have one in the not too distant future), on May 13th our house hit the market and on May 20th we had accepted an offer.  It was a stressful few weeks as buying and selling houses is the WORST.  But we survived it and we are here and slowly but surely getting settled in.  We feel unbelievably lucky to have found the home that is perfect for us, and by being perfect for us YOU KNOW there is lots of "projects" to be done! 

While I have so so much to say about the lovely home we just sold, I figured you are all dying to see more pictures of the new house (because my mom told me you were hoping I would start blogging again so you could see the house and all the fun stuff we do to it) so we will begin with the outside which I think is going to see the biggest transformation. The previous owners of 9 years were obviously not outside people and apart from a nice little flower bed out front they did nothing with the yard.  However, we found an AMAZING piece of gold in the form of a scrapbook about the original owners and it included some pictures of a beautiful park-like yard, it will be our goal to bring it back to it's former glory!  This first picture is looking at the back of the house. I sprained my ankle chasing the dog who won't come in because he's afraid of walking on hardwoods, and oh my, the weeds...

 This is my chicken coop!  Full of 7 chickens and a Rooster whose name is Foghorn Leghorn, obviously. The building to the left is a horse shelter next to the pet cemetery where "Buffy" and "Lady" were buried in '97 and '98.  Loving the hodgepodge of different fencing!

 This is Bryce's shop.  That huge building that is LITERALLY only a couple hundred square feet smaller than our last HOUSE is his new shop.  He's obviously in Heaven and I will probably never see him again, but my house will be full of amazing furniture and updates. While it looks like an adorable barn (and maybe was originally?) it is definitely a shop now, but I love that it isn't just a pole building and is super cute, since it's basically all you see when you drive down the driveway. And it smells like a barn, so there's that.

Front of the house, weird broken concrete circle, the well house.

 Left to right, coop, lean to, playhouse (the original owner lived in that little building!) and then the shop again.

The driveway...

We have been cleaning and organizing and PAINTING away, I hope to start some before and after pictures soon, the kids are gone to their cousin's this weekend so I'm hoping to finish up their room while they are away!  I am hoping to start posting here again regularly so don't forget to check back :)

Baby number three nursery?

With four weeks(ish) until baby will arrive we are working diligently on making some space for baby. How cute is this?

Not my closet...The walk-in closet in our room is totally big enough to convert into an adorable nursery like this, but here is what I would like to know, where do these people keep their stuff???  I mean, I have clothes and shoes, Bryce has clothes and shoes, and with a big closet we also store bags and hats and other random stuff that needs a place to be stored.  I can't just dump all that out in the living room to have an adorable nursery.  Don't worry, I KNOW that babies give zero care's about an adorable nursery and they do not in fact come out demanding dessert colored walls (Juno anyone?).  But as mom's we have to nest and who doesn't love adorable baby stuff? 

Since kids one and two are not ready nor willing to make the move down 15 steps to a new bedroom of their very own (while this post may make our house seem incredibly small we actually have four bedrooms, but nobody wants to move downstairs...), they will stay in the current adorable nursery that was painted and decorated for number one (seriously click on that and go see the cute room we had ready for him) and updated to fit number 2:

There was also a twin bed added in here for Dietrich at the time.  

But baby number three, well, there just isn't room for number three in the room yet.  He/she will certainly be moving in to that same crib but not until we have bunk beds done for the other two and there is room for the crib.  So in the meantime...

 We have added bins to our closet for baby stuff:

 The three drawer rubber maid also holds baby stuff, both diaper pails fit in the closet, and one of the drawers in the dresser is open and ready for baby clothes once we know boy or girl:

 The vanity in our bedroom makes a great changing table...

And Bryce is currently working on building a co-sleeper that will attach to our bed and be baby's bed for the next few months/years.  So there you go, that's how "real people" fit a baby in a closet and while it may not be super cute, there is no theme, and it's a bit crowded, I'm pretty sure baby will  never know (except I just documented it here so know that we love you even if you didn't get your own room). For the record, my parents did not have a home the first year of my life and were essentially gypsies traveling around living with family members and in a camper.  Clearly, I was still loved, despite not having a nursery.  We have been making so many "Baby number three" jokes around here that we are starting to worry about giving the poor kid a complex!  

How we didn't sell our house

When we started our first house hunting 7 years ago we went through a lot.  We made offers on 5 houses and paid for inspections on three before losing them due to something ridiculous before finally finding our house 6 months later.  We were so thankful for all that we went through because in the end none of the houses were as "good" as this one.  It was the best price in the best neighborhood and while it needed a LOT of work it was all things we could do ourselves (except laying carpet and putting the roof on, the only two things we have paid someone else to do for us).  So we had hoped that selling our house and finding a new one would be an easier process for us....BWHAHAHAHAHA!!!  Oh we are so silly....

We started making plans to put our house on the market this spring last October.  We looked at the first house in December.  We looked at 15 more houses during January, February, March and April. We became nervous about selling our house when we weren't finding anything else that we liked.  We put in new carpet, added hardware to the cabinets, replaced the roof, touched up paint everywhere, put new trim in our bedroom, finished the fireplace, cleaned and de-cluttered like crazy.  In May we finally found something that we liked and made an offer contingent on selling our house.  Our house didn't sell as quickly as everyone thought it would.  We lowered the price.  We changed our mind about the house we made an offer on and backed out.  We continued to look at more houses and continued keeping our house ready to show at a moment's notice.  Then it came unexpectedly on a Saturday evening when I hadn't picked up my phone for hours.  A full price offer!  They wanted my double-oven and we were asked to pay closing costs but that still put us in a good position and we accepted.  They had a letter from the bank stating their pre-approval for the loan.  We needed to find a new house NOW.

We spent the next two weeks looking at every house we could find trudging around in 90 degree temperatures looking through disappointment after disappointment.  We had some requirements, sure, but they didn't seem THAT unreasonable.  A garage for Bryce's shop, a "big enough" back yard, three rooms on one level (no more split level), a master bath,  and a place to park our old Packard.  It didn't seem like a long list of desires but soon proved it was. The house would have most of what we wanted and then a weird backyard.  Or the house was too new, or too dated (even for me).  Nothing was quite right.  After seeing another 20 or so houses I was feeling defeated.  Our "homelessness" status was fast approaching and we were going to have to pack up everything and leave our lovely home with no new home in sight...

On  Wednesday night two weeks before closing I had a break down crying that I wanted to back out of the deal and stay in our house.  Sure it's not perfect, but at least we aren't paying MORE money for a different not perfect house.  We know how to deal with what is wrong with our house.  Plus our house is DONE!  On Thursday morning a good friend called because she knew I was super stressed about the house stuff.  After talking it through with her I finally decided that one of the houses we really liked had MOST of what we wanted and would work.  It was in the right school district although not the "area" I wanted to be in.  It was a split level but still had three bedrooms on one level, and it was two lots together so Bryce could build a shop.  I called Bryce, told him to call the realtor and make an offer.  In the mean time a friend of mine that I met through the store (she even worked for me there!) posted on facebook that she was having a huge yard sale and moving to Alaska!  So I started asking her about her house (I hadn't been there before). It sounded perfect, so I asked her could we see it?

I called Bryce back, this is it!  We were both so excited and anxious we could hardly get anything done until he got off work and we headed straight to her house.  It was literally perfect, EVERYTHING we wanted.  Three bedrooms on one level, big kitchen, laundry on the main floor, walk straight out to the back yard, PLUS a huge basement with two more bedrooms.  It has a master bath, it had a HUGE area for Bryce to build a shop and more than enough room to park the old car. AND she would leave me her five chickens!  I told her we will make an offer.  That night we did.  We had somewhere to live!!!  We would close on our house July 15 and then move in to the new house August 8th, we would live with Bryce's parents and spend some time camping and staying at my mom's too.  They would let us move all our stuff in to the basement so we didn't have to pay to store things.  They didn't have to worry about selling their house before moving to Alaska, it was meant to be, we all believed God had a hand in this one.  It was all too perfect.

Then on Monday after the Fourth of July weekend, after spending the weekend sharing our new house with all of our friends and family, we were scheduled to have the appraisal, the guy didn't show.  After many phone calls and a stressful morning we learned that our buyers financing had fallen through.  two of the four people signing on our house had their own personal business which of course they wrote of everything for and didn't pay taxes.  Then when they filled out their pre-approval paperwork claiming they had so much money in the past two years.  When they bank finally saw their taxes it showed no income, they didn't qualify.  We were devastated.

Bryce and I spent two days depressed, walking around angry and unsure what to do next.  We put the house back on the market, I had already packed so many of our things, we weren't show ready and we had to work hard to get the house back in order.  We worried we would lose the new house.  We all felt awful and stressed.  The buyers who lost their financing showed up at our door after dinner one night asking if they could rent our house, the nerve!  And where are we supposed to live while you live in our house???  They offered to pay us $10,000 advanced rent to help with our down payment.  Sure is nice to have other people think that we  must be made of money and could at some point afford two mortgages (which we can't by the way), and that $10,000 was a down payment for us (which is wasn't). We clearly turned them down.

The house showed a lot, we lowered the price again.  We wondered what would happen, where would we live?  Where will our kids go to school?  It was so stressful.  Our contingent offer came to a close on Thursday July 30th.  We made the very difficult decision to take our house off the market at that point.  I expected to feel incredibly sad on that Thursday, but I didn't.  I felt relieved.  We could stay in our nice house, I could unpack our things and put our pictures back on the wall.  We could start planning for everything coming up (school starting, a new baby!).  I wanted to give my house a big hug and tell her I'm so sorry we put everybody through this (I believe houses have feelings, I blame this on the children's book "The Little House").

It was an INCREDIBLY difficult and painful process.  It is difficult to explain to people what happened and part of me feels like we "failed" at selling our house.  But in the end, we get to stay in a very nice house with a much smaller mortgage, it's not perfect, but EVERYTHING about it is something we have done ourselves, with our own blood, sweat and tears, and hours and hours of work. It may not have been the outcome we hoped for when this all started, but I believe it is what was meant to happen.  We may not know why just yet, but someday we will know why this is the way it all worked out (or there is no freaking reason for it but I'm an optimist so I can't help but think there are better things to come...).  So we will stay here and we will love our imperfect little/big house. Stay tuned to see how we will fit three kids in one bedroom!