Kitchen Reveal

Remember how we started a major remodel on the kitchen way back in January?  And then we were all totally done by the kids' birthdays in April but I wanted to wait to blog about it until I had new rugs and a new garbage can and had all the new knobs on the cabinet doors, but it's August now and I have new rugs but none of those other things and I decided forget it lets just see some pictures!

You may remember the "original" BEFORE picture:

And then in January of 2010 we stripped the black away and had this:

And here is the newly remodeled 2014 version of our kitchen!!

In January I came home from work to find Bryce and my borther-in-law Mark ripping out the linoleum, YAY!!!

Then we tore out the grey back splash and the awful tiles that were glued down to the counter.  I was very disappointed to learn that they were easily removed, and I had lived with them all these years...

 Hey, lets tear down a wall!!

 Bunk beds!

 Then we started painting cabinets.  This was kind of miserable because it took about 4 coats.  We used a special filler paint first, to fill in the grain of the wood, between each coat we had to sand and wipe down and paint again.  We had cupboard doors all over the kitchen.  We had to live with this mess for about two weeks while we painted, sanded, and let the cupboards and doors dry.

 Then we removed the blue counter tops, and learned there had been pink ones underneath!  Man I'm sad we missed out on the pink ones...and as long as we are redoing counter tops we did the bathroom and our bedroom too...

 We got SO lucky with the flooring!  I wanted to match what we had put in the hallway but when we got to the store it was no longer being manufactured.  We looked all over trying to find something else that would work when we found a very dusty sample of our flooring.  The salesperson looked it up and there was enough left that we could do our kitchen, the stairs, and the downstairs hallway.  At a great discount!

 Look at those gorgeous floors!

 Here comes the counter top!

 Good bye BLUE!

 Bryce put this custom wood edge around the counter, you will see later it is stained to match.

 While I was at work Bryce did the back splash with this great glass accent.  

 Then, you know, no big deal, he just whipped out a custom made bar from scratch.  I was so impressed, the next house will have ALL custom Bryce cabinets!

 These drawers are so great for holding all our little appliances, and they pull all the way out for easy access to everything.

 We put in a new faucet, so fun!  New to us sink coming soon...

 And another close up of the tile.

And look at this gorgeous half wall!  We took out the top of the old wall and then Bryce added a top to it and then decorated the existing post (on the right) and made a faux matching post (on the left).  It looks like it has always been this way.  And the kitchen now feels so open and bright and I can see the kids playing in the living room.  We should have done it as soon as we moved in! 

We have really been enjoying out updated kitchen, such a huge improvement from the original black cabinets and blue counter tops.  The bar is so much bigger than our old one we can easily fit five people around it and I can cook and bake at one end while the kids play at the other, or I can just have lots of stuff piled on it. Oh and we found our new bar stools at a neighbor's yard sale for $30, whoo-hoo!  

A loss in our family

As has been my way lately, I haven't blogged in ages.  But today I feel like writing.

On April 1st I took a pregnancy test (or maybe 4) and discovered that we were expecting baby number three!  And since I am obviously terrible at keeping a secret we waited a whole two days before everyone found out because it's oh so exciting and also my aunt guessed it.  I wrapped up Christmas presents for my mom and Bryce's parents to tell them the news because by my estimation we were due December 13th, just before Christmas!  A sweet new baby at Christmas!  I finally made an appointment with my Dr. at about 8 weeks, he said I was measuring right on schedule but wanted to do an ultrasound to double check dates.

 So on Tuesday of this week we went in for an ultrasound, Bryce and the kids' came and we were going to use this opportunity to see the new baby and tell the kids the news!  But the ultrasound tech looked and looked and didn't show me a heartbeat, she looked and looked some more.  I started to wonder...finally after she looked and looked again she said "I'm sorry but there is no heartbeat" I burst in to tears.  Weirdly the night before I had started preparing myself for this possibility which I had never done before when pregnant with the other two.  Of course my Dr. was at the hospital and so I had to see the on-call Dr, who was wonderful.  He of course knew just what to say and wasn't phased at all by the tears we cried in the little examining room.  As I waited for blood work my mom called and I told her what had happened, I should have been 9 weeks but baby measured 8 weeks.  We went home, and my mom met us there shortly after.  I called my friend, the one who had also had a miscarriage and was waiting to hear from me.  She cried with me on the phone.  My mom arrived and it was a beautiful day.  We sat in the sun ALL afternoon.  We talked about how lucky we are to have two children, and that we get pregnant easily.  We are sad, but we are not devastated.  This baby wasn't meant to come home with us but we will have one soon that is.  We sat in the sun and I sunburned my shoulders and ate delicious pizza with my family.  I called a few close friends and family who knew and told them the news. We scheduled an appointment for a D&C, I was fearful of waiting for things to happen on their own, and sometimes even when they do a D&C is still necessary.  I folded clothes.

At my store this week I met more mom's due in December, mom's talking about their ultrasounds and their babies and their due dates.  I smiled and was excited for them, all of them.  I told them we have two children and hope to have a third one day.

This morning, Friday, I met my Dr at the hospital at 6 a.m. He was sad for me and so kind.  Every nurse and Dr. was so nice and understanding and just really lovely. The procedure went smoothly, I woke up feeling totally fine.  I came home and ate a horribly delicious lunch and a milk shake and laid on the couch watching Harry Potter until the pain pill made me fall asleep. Our friends and family have been amazing, helping, jumping in and taking over, watching the store for me, taking our kids, checking on me.  It is sad situation, but it is amazing and wonderful to feel how much people love you.  We will miss holding our new baby at Christmas, but we are ok.  We can handle this and get through it, and bring home a third baby when the time is right.  We understand this is how things work out sometimes, and while we would love to wish it all away, we will deal with it and get through it, and continue to be grateful for the children we do have and all the family and friends and of course each other which will help us all through this.

Play room organizing

The kitchen is still going great, I know I haven't written about it in a while and I'm sure you are all waiting with bated breath.  The cupboards, floors and countertops are down.  Now we are waiting on the grand finale, a new bar.  It's almost done, I can't wait to share with you!  In the mean time I've been organizing.  And last night I tackled the play room.  Which nobody has played in for a while because I had it full of clothes getting ready for baby fair and then it became a catch all for junk and then it was a crazy huge mess.  And with birthday season rapidly approaching it was time to get it in order.  So here is the before... look there's a dog in there!

 I took EVERYTHING out and put it on the back porch.

 And ta-da, the after pictures:

 And the table on the weird tile in the room is a great place to have snacks and do art projects without sacrificing that incredible blue carpet.

 Closet with ONLY toys in it, and not all our stuff too...

I went crazy making labels with pictures so the kids would know where everything goes.  I'm hoping this also helps when we have friends over, the kids can do all the cleaning!

 My pinterest inspired jars with craft stuff.

This room is the only room in the house that we have done NOTHING to.  It needs a total sheet rock job done because the texture doesn't match up and a leak in the kitchen before us made a mess of the ceiling.  So someday I will get to paint this room a fun color and maybe do some other fun stuff, but for now this should work, for a while anyway....also, I used everything I already had.  I am hoping to convince Bryce to build me some cool cubes for the closet and/or make a storage bench in here too.  But that will come after this room gets a remodel I'm sure.
This morning the kids went down there and were so excited to find a bin with "logs" in it!  They have never even played with the Lincoln Logs before, now they know where they are and where to put them away at. Yay!

Prepping

 Normally I would not be sharing my mess with you on here, normally I would check the picture to make sure it makes the house look better than it might actually look most of the time, but today I'm going to show you the mess.  Because that is the part of the project we are into, the really messy part.  We are going to paint the cabinets, (BLACK!!!  HAHA, just kidding!) white.  This might have made Bryce sigh a little if you remember this happening exactly 4 years ago.  And since those pictures look almost exactly like this I guess it's a little redundant.  But here we are again, changing the cabinets...again.  So far they have all been taken down, filled the holes and sanded them.  Next up is priming with a filler/primer, then sanding again, then painting.  In the meantime I have to figure out how to cook dinner with my kitchen spread out across the house like this...

There goes the wall

Hey!  It's been a while!  You know, because I bought a store and all...  But it's January and you know how much we LOVE LOVE LOVE a project in January!  So after my mom changed her mind about the bar she commissioned Bryce to build and "gave" us the bar we were like, well we better remodel the kitchen I guess.  I have been DYING to start this project but we keep putting it off in favor of not getting into debt over yet another house project.  But on Saturday when I headed off to the store and Bryce said "don't be surprised if I rip up the linoleum" I literally jumped for joy and I think turned his sort of joking comment into a reality.

 Bryce convinced our Brother-in-Law Mark and his Sister Bekah to come over and help.

 There it goes!!!

 And after everyone left on Saturday night Bryce ripped out the back splash and all those awful tiles on the counter top.

 So on Sunday we thought, hey, why don't we remove this weird wall...

 Dietrich helped of course.

And so it begins, another fun January full of CHANGES in our house!  There is nothing I love more than a little construction going on.

So I bought a store

Two weeks ago on Thursday I did my usual perusing of facebook to see what's up.  That is when I saw that my very favorite second-hand maternity store was closing!  Oh no, but we might want another baby!!!  First, I considered going and buying everything I thought I might like, then I read a comment where someone asked "would you sell the store?" And I thought, hey, maybe I should buy the whole store.  So first I texted Stacey, "what do you think about owning a second hand maternity store?"  She thought I should do it.  I called my mom, who I expected to talk me out of it, and she said "that could be a great thing for you."  So suddenly I got a little more serious, I could really actually do this...own my own store!

I e-mailed the owner to tell her I was interested and then we started texting with each other while I asked a million little questions.  When I woke up on Friday I got everybody loaded in the car and went to check out the store, but by this time Bryce had told me that he did not like this idea at all.  Small business is a huge risk and it didn't make any sense that I would all of a sudden and out of no-where decide I wanted to own a store.  I talked to the owner, she showed me the books, told me about the store, she has it open Wednesday-Saturday 11-4, pretty great hours for someone who hasn't worked in almost 4 years.

Mom and Steve drove into Spokane ready to check it out.  But Bryce still wasn't buying in, he had LOTS of very good reasons why we shouldn't do it, and I agreed with him.  And then I disagreed, and then I agreed again.  So we told her no, we couldn't do it, and I cried for a while.  Then we went out to dinner with Mom and Steve.  After we went to bed I disagreed again and we stayed up until 1:30 in the morning trying to decide if it was something we should pursue or not.  On Saturday morning I told Bryce I really want to do this, I don't know why, but I think it will be great!  He of course agreed because he's great, and also maybe tired of arguing with me.  So I sent her a text, "I want it, we will buy it."  And there was no response.

So I got in the car and drove over there and she had 5 other people in the store interested in buying.  Two women ready to swipe their credit cards to buy it.  I got her alone for a minute and assured her that whomever she decided to sell to would be the person right for the store.  That I wouldn't be hurt and I would understand whatever she needed to do.  Mom and Steve stopped by to see it, they liked it and still thought it could be a good thing.  They were both very supportive, however things might work out is meant to be! Later that night the owner texted me and said, "the store is yours!"

It is has been a whirlwind of business licenses, resale permits, bank accounts, lease agreements, phone, electric, washing, cleaning, rearranging, putting things in storage and planning a grand opening!  I kind of can't believe we are doing it, and sometimes the anxiety and uncertainty is hard to deal with, but we are almost there and I am so excited for this new adventure! I am excited to be challenged and do something I have never done before.  I am so lucky that I have some pretty amazing support people to help me with everything from getting the store ready to watching kids while we work on things.

So on a whim, I decided to buy a small business, and in the wise words of the three year old in my house, that is how it works...