The last couple of months...

Okay so I know it's been a while, but I have A LOT of pictures to compensate. So at the end of January I went into Carpet Mart to order the carpet for the basement. James and I have always enjoyed working with the people at Carpet Mart. So at first I was told that it would be 2-3 weeks to order the carpet that we wanted. Then the owner told me that another customer had ordered the same carpet and about the same square footage as me, but the customer wouldn't be ready for two weeks and the customer's carpet was going to be delivered on Friday. So instead of waiting 2-3 weeks we were able to switch carpets and would be able to have it installed that Wednesday. Later Carpet Mart called James and told him that they could do it sooner and scheduled it for Monday and Tuesday. So Monday came around and the carpet guys began to lay the padding. They were only supposed to lay the padding and then come back on Tuesday and lay the carpet, but since they got done so soon they decided to do everything in one day. As soon as James heard this he dragged me up to Furniture Row to buy a couch that he has been wanting FOREVER! So back in October we went into Furniture Row for fun and found this couch. Of course James wanted it immediately and said we could store it until the basement was done. I, being the sensible one, said no. Now that our basement was going to be finished I didn't have any more excuses to say no to him. Although I did make a deal with him that if we bought the couch he had to let me get a dog. We bought the couch and then ran over to the warehouse to pick it up. On our way home James received a call from Carpet Mart. They told us there was a problem and that they had charged us $400.00 too much. We were pretty ecstatic! So by the end of the day we had our new carpet and couch all in place.


Our awesome couch! Even though I didn't want to spend the money to buy it...I am so glad we bought it!

Our new family room. I still need to find an entertainment center and make a coffee table.

And as you can tell I still need to decorate...

Bedroom One. A lot different from before. Before it was so dark with the dark wood on the walls and ceilings. Now with the enlarged windows it is bight and airy!

Bedroom Two.

Our new doors in the basement. I love these doors. I can't wait until we are able to change all the upstairs doors to match the basement.

The baby's room. We love how well the walls turned out! We decided to go for the blue and gray and have a nautical theme. I am in the process of recovering a chair and refinishing a dresser. It'll look amazing when we are finished.

In March for my birthday James surprised me with a work bench. I have wanted one forever! Now I don't have to clutter my kitchen table or counter tops to work on my projects.

James putting the work bench together.

So a couple days after my birthday James and I were coming out of Sportsmans Warehouse when I saw a sign saying Free Puppies. Of course we had to stop and look at them. I had been looking for months for the right puppy and James did promise me that if he was able to get the couch then I could have a puppy. I found the one that I loved and James told me that it was my choice and walked back to the pick up. He said he was thinking I would make the "right choice." Haha. I got in the pick up right after him with the puppy still in my arms. I told him that if he wanted me to make the "right choice" then he shouldn't have left with me still holding the little guy. He's pretty cute and growing like a weed! The previous owners weren't sure what he is. They knew he was half lab, but the other half they aren't sure about. He is extremely smart though. After one day we had him fetching and it only took a week to house train him. You can tell that I already love this guy a lot! He is growing on James too.

I let James name him. He decided on Bruiser.

Bruiser's favorite place to sleep. In the kitchen with his face in my shoe.

We went to a cabin for a couple days last week and had to leave Bruiser home. This is his way of telling us that we aren't allowed to leave him anymore.

Bruiser riding on James' lap down to Logan, UT for a baby blessing.

James and Bruiser taking a nap together.

A week after my birthday we received a call about my little niece, Evalette. She had been diagnosed with Leukemia. Poor little Evalette had her 1st birthday at Primary Children's hospital. She's home now from having to be in the hospital for a month, but will have to go back regularly for chemo. Luckily Danielle's twin sister was able to move closer to her and has been such a help babysitting Danielle's little boys.

Evalette and me at the hospital.

Evalette and her momma.

Dad and Evalette at Christmas time. My dad doesn't often let us take pictures of him so I had to be sneaky.

I took Bruiser with me to Utah. The grandkids absolutely loved him! They all had to take turns walking him.

When it was time to come home Danni's boys came home with me for the weekend.

We stopped at McDonalds on the way home.

Silly boys playing Three Musketeers.

After James quit Vivint and became a farm manger, Kraig took over James' position as Lead Tech for the Long Island office. So for a couple of months Bruiser has some friends. Harley and Ranger are full beagles. They are a lot of fun, but three dogs are definitely a hand full. We will be excited when it's only Bruiser again.

They are pretty cute dogs. It's hard to say no to them!

This is Harley. She's very small and delicate.

This was the night we brought them to our house. Ranger loves to be on top of his kennel.

Bunk beds!

Apparently being underneath the bed is the cool place to go. It's the first place I look when looking for the dogs.

At first Harley wasn't very fond of Bruiser. I was shocked when I saw her letting him on her blanket and actually touching each other. Usually she avoids him like the plague.

So I am so excited at this purchase. The little kennel on the right is what Bruiser sleeps in now. James and I decided that we will always kennel Bruiser at night. So I've been looking for a big kennel. I was at Petco when I saw this HUGE kennel on clearance. I was able to get it for $60. I am so proud of myself! My mom says it's a mansion! Right now it fits all three dogs!

James took off a day of work and stayed home to work on the yard. We were able to borrow a skid steer and used it to level out our yard. No more hills and bumps for us!

 

Next week I am planting grass. So our back yard will once again be green.

 

On Sunday we celebrated Stephen's birthday! He's 24 now! It's weird to think of my little brother getting older and being a Dad!

Stephen, Lili, and Natasha.

Natasha is getting to be such a big girl!

Whew! I think that's it. I'm all caught up now. As soon as I finish the chair and my other projects I'll post pictures. Adios!

The Basement is DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our basement is finally DONE!!!!! Yay! Well except for carpet, but carpet should be installed next week. James and I are so excited to finally be able to use our basement. I was going to take pictures to show the finished product, but James' tools are still everywhere so I'm just going to wait until next week to take pictures.

So we actually blew in all of the insulation. Trying not to inhale the insulation while it was flying everywhere was fun. But it is so much warmer down there now.

 

 

So everything is textured and ready to be painted. We actually did the painting in one night. James loves painting which I find so strange. I dread painting.

 

While we were finishing up on the basement we finally put tile in our front entry way. We should have done it a year ago when we remodeled our upstairs, but by that point we were ready to be done.

 

So first of all that table does not go there! Any of my interior design friends would probably cringe if they saw this. That's actually my sewing table I refinished. James and I loved the color and so we wanted to see how it went with the shutters. The shutters were actually originally from our house. My grandma put them up so no one could see her washer. We just painted them red and antiqued it. The table we have now actually spans the whole wall and is a little taller. I still need to refinish it though. Of course when I took this picture we hadn't put the baseboard back up. So it's coming along.

 

So we still have a bit to do, but we have gotten so much done! While we are waiting for carpet we are painting the bedrooms upstairs, because they sorely need painted and new carpet. So we are making one into a craft room for me (WAHOO!) and the other is the baby's bedroom. I just can't wait for carpet to come, because everything is in my dining room and living room just ready to go back into those rooms. So next time hopefully I'll have my basement finished and all three upstairs bedrooms have new carpet and paint! Then maybe we can take a day to relax!

 

Changing Our Blog Name

Hey everyone! James and I have decided to change our blog name to lifewitheandj.blogspot.com. Just to give everyone a heads up. Also if you don't know James and I are adopting and planning on putting in our paperwork the end of January. We are so excited to start our own little family. So if anyone hears of anything please let us know. Thank you!

Hello World!

It has been forever since I updated my blog. In my defense when we were in New York we worked 18 hours a day and 6 days a week. Wow. So Sundays we just pretty much were lazy bums and slept all day long! So this year so far has been pretty interesting. We finished the upstairs remodel of our living room. Which I have to say it turned out pretty neat. I wanted to paint one of the walls orange, but after thinking about it I realized that it would clash terribly with my red kitchen. So I went with blue. We love it. James was sure he was going to hate it, but admitted that I was right and he should always listen to me. I think that last part was actually me telling him that he should always listen to me. I'm slowly working on decorating my home, but man it's hard! I don't want to put up anything I don't love and I never have time to look or make the things I want. So it's slowly coming along. I was looking at some of the pictures I took during the demolition and I was so confused what part of the house I was looking at. I remember it was so hard to take any pictures because there are walls everywhere and so I could never get a good shot. Plus I'm an awful photographer. I really need to take some lessons.  

Since I was having trouble remembering what our house was like before I made a floor plan. It looks so spacious here, but trust me it wasn't. This is not to scale.

So this was the bookshelf that was just left of the front door. I'm not a fan of homes that when you open the door you can see right into the dining area or into the kitchen. So to try to counter it we tore down the bookshelf and instead put up a wall and made a little entry way for me.  

This is the closet you see right when you walk into the home. So we were in the middle of demo when we remembered we wanted to take before and after pictures. Oops.

Here's the side of the closet. You can see the wood laminate which was actually on all of the walls. Earlier we had taken off most of the laminate in the kitchen and dining area and instead textured and painted the areas.

Like I said earlier I am not a good photography. But this was actually taken inside the living room. The wall juts back so the washer can fit right in the corner outside the wall. You can kind of see the cabinets that are on the other side of the wall.

So here is the other side of the living room. The blue tarp in the back was actually to keep the dust and mess out of our kitchen and dining room. You can see the little hall here separating the living room from the cabinets and washer. The problem we were having with this is that this wall that separates the two is a bearing wall. We really didn't want to have to keep the wall up and have two hallways. So we ended up cutting down some of the ceiling and putting a beam up in the attic. It worked perfectly and we were able to take down that wall.

So here is a view from our laundry room. As you can see the stairway is enclosed. James wanted a banister and an open stairway so we started to tear out these walls as well.

So from the front door you can now see clear back to the laundry room. The closet is gone, the counter tops are gone, and most of the wall enclosing the stairway is gone.

Here's the man that did most of the work. He's pretty much amazing.

All the demo is done! Yay! So here you can see that where the bookcase used to be we put up a wall. We are also starting to build our banister and mud the walls.

Just another view. No more counter tops or hallway just the living room.

 

Here's the finished product. We love our new living room. I still need to decorate it. I'm only done a few things.

The banister. I love the open stairway! I think it makes the room feel larger.

The only bad thing is you can see straight into my laundry room if I forget to shut the door!

Onto the next project...the basement.

So here's a shot of the basement from the family room. You can see that the rooms start right after the stairs. There's a long hallway you have to go to the first room and then the second room was huge.

We decided to take the rooms back so there wouldn't be so much of a hallway and it would make the family room larger. Here's James slaving away.

There's so much dust in the air, but I wanted to show you what the first room looked like. You can see the very lovely orange carpet. And the barn wood on the walls. James and I actually loved the barn wood on the walls, but it made the room too dark. You can also see the really small windows here. They are only 3 x 1.

So this is after the windows were enlarged. Our basement had so much water and mud in it afterwards. It was a huge mess to clean up.

The windows were 3x1 before and now they are 3x4.

I'm so glad we put in the bigger windows. So much more light! It looks less like a scary dungeon.

The windows were not fun to cut. As you can see here there is actually a shelf of concrete that we have to drill out so the window well can sit flush to the foundation. The family room window was the worst.

Just filling in the holes now.

Framing and all new electrical are done. Now the next step is putting in the duct work for our new propane furnace. After that sheet rocking, mudding, painting, and carpet. We are almost there!

 

 

Home Sweet Home

So James and I are almost finished with our house. We can’t believe it’s our house. It looks so different! It feels like a brand new home. We just have a couple of patches to do on the ceiling and put tile in the front entry and then we’re done! Well except for decorating, but that’s my department. My goal is to not put up anything that I don’t love. We also picked up my Christmas present last Saturday. I have new couches. Yay! They are so nice and comfy. They’re micro suede and the style isn’t being made any more so we got a great deal on them. They didn’t have any love seats left we so were able to get two full size couches for the same price. Plus we got the chair and ottoman which I think is our favorite place to sit.

So the only Christmas decoration we have is a snowman filled with candy. Sadly this year we are not putting up a tree. I promise we’re not grinches. It’s just with all the construction and having a tree in the middle….oh what a mess. Plus it’s only a week to Christmas and then we have to take it down anyways. So no tree for us this year, but next year we’ll have a real one.

The other day James and I were just being lazy on our new awesome couches and I could just picture our little kids running up the stairs Christmas morning and covering their eyes so they couldn’t see their presents when they ran past to go wake up Mom and Dad. I love my house. I can’t wait to make more memories in it.

Home Remodel Almost Done!

James and I have been living in our home for two years now and for two years we have been making plans of what we'd love to change. So we've finally started remodeling. I took a week off of work so I could help James. Demolition was by far the fun part of the project. James let me swing the sledge hammer first. After we got the demolition done it was all up to my Hubby to finish the rest. I just made sure everything was cleaned up and helped motivate him. He had to remove the wiring from the walls we were tearing down and so many other things. We also put in two beams so we could remove a bearing wall. Thank you to all the family that came and helped. We could have never got as far as we did without you! By the way have I mentioned how AWESOME my hubby is? So far this has cost us around $2500, but if we had to hire someone else to do this it would have cost around $15000. All we have left to do is mud, texture, paint, and have carpet installed. Yay! When it's all done I'll put pictures up of before and after.