Getting Out!

Last week we had tickets to Eric Church with Dwight Yokum opening.  It was a great show!  We had a blast.  Kris said it was the best concert he had been to.

Dwight had lots of bling on! (and then my phone died)(and so did his)

We went camping last weekend and Friday night we went down to Oskaloosa to see my dad race the old sprint cars again.  PK had no nap at daycare so he cashed out on the way down.  (He's wearing Kris's work sunglasses :))

Little bit blurry and not many people there watching!

My favorite race fan.  He doesn't look impressed but he had a good time!

Other Updates

Living Room

New closets/bedroom/bathroom doors

Bathroom is done; let's be honest here.  I didn't exactly try to get some good "before" pictures of the bathroom.  The light was burned out... The rest of the house was dirty and scary.  I wasn't going to step in there to take some pictures.  It was quoted as being "remodeled"... ha!  They put in a new sink base in and called it good I think.  We had to put in a new sink and toilet.  Replaced the flooring and some fresh paint made a huge difference.  We also installed a fan/light combo.  I think we chose the hottest day of the summer for Kris to be up in the attic to install.  Emotions might have ran high that day trying to figure out the wiring!  Me: in the bathroom yelling up instructions from the diagram.  Kris: sweating in the attic messing with wires.  Multiple failed attempts.  Hours later: Suddenly he finds the wires that I had been describing! Minutes later: It worked! :)

Storage in bathroom

We all have break chairs at the rental now! :)  Mostly because it had been too hot to eat outside; so we'd been eating camping style gathered in the kitchen.  'Tis the life.

This might not look like progress.  Tools tend to get shifted from room to room as we work.  But we got the appliances installed in the laundry room.

Closet in laundry room when walking in.

Front Room! (We are Making Progress!!)

Wearing his "I'm a little farmer" hat on the way to ... wait for it.  Menards!

This was what the front room looked like when we bought it.  Not good at all.  Carpet was horrible.  This room is actually the only room that has old windows that haven't been replaced.  At some point we will need to replace them but from the looks of the window sills and walls they don't leak.  Needless to say we weren't real excited about this room.  And hadn't touched it until the past couple of weeks.

Lots of windows.

Down at the end is PK's "office".  Lots of lost items have been found in that little closet.  It's filled to the brim with toys and tools that he has confiscated.

And how it looks today!!  So awesome!  This would be my favorite room if we lived here.  Lots of sunlight and nice and warm :)

We aren't sure what that box (hole in the wall down there) was used for.  There is an outlet in there.  We need to either put a grate over it or paint some boards and cover up.  

The carpet looked purplish in the pictures (phone quality) but this is closer depiction of what it looks like.  I must say I'm pretty proud of my carpet laying skills too :) (Kris was listening to the Iowa/Iowa State game in the kitchen and not participating much; we've determined it's better for him to stay at a distance unless needed while I'm working :)) 

Hanging out at the Rental

Boom! New Vinyl Floors!

We all remember this right? 12x12 peel and stick tile.

Well last week for two nights Kris and I tag teamed ripping them up; one.by.one.  It was painful and I have a blister the size of a quarter on my palm to prove it.  We had to use a torch to warm them up to lessen the sticky mess.  One person on the torch, the other person using a driveway ice scraper.  It sucked.

So we ended up with this.  Many different levels of flooring.  At different points in time it appears different things were replaced/patched.  So we got everything on one level.  The floor was soo sticky!  It was a workout just walking across the floor.  Poor PK hated it; he kept getting stuck!

With the vinyl flooring laid out I marked and cut what we needed in the kitchen.  The tape was about 1 1/2 wide and I cut just outside of it to give ourselves extra wiggle room.  For the laundry room I ended up cutting right on the tape line; we found out that we didn't need as much extra as we had planned for in the kitchen.  This marked out plan seemed to work for us.  The only trouble was that we had left our kitchen sticky with the thought that we then wouldn't have to put glue on this piece.  So you were committed when you decided where it was going.  We basically started under the window and worked ourselves across the room.  If only someone could have got a video of the two of us... Oh boy.  I'm sure it was quite the scene with us balancing the remaining vinyl on our bodies as we pushed on our butts/stomachs the vinyl down as we went across!!  We were sore to say the least.  Ugh.  Like whole body sore.

Beautiful!  

As you notice from all pictures the break chair and shop vac have came in handy for this house remodel project :)

This is the laundry room before.  As you can see more of the same story from the kitchen.  Not pretty.  More flooring all over the place.

It also had a sink we had been using to clean up paint.  We decided the sink had to go rather than mess with trying to fix it up.  Well what a mess.  The hot water line wasn't hooked up so thankfully we had shut off the hot water almost immediately when we took possession! We would have had one heck of a mess.  Also the base was basically nailed into the floor at some point in the past with multiple levels of flooring that were built around it.  The plaster basically shattered when we tore it off the wall; so we had some drywall work to do.  We also had to patch in a lot of plywood in the laundry room to make it level.  We went ahead and used some fiber glass boards on the walls that were heavily damaged in there to clean it up.

Yesterday Kris got a new hot water heater back in, I got started painting in here and we got the fiberglass boards up.

State Fair!

Immediately when we got there we had to head straight for the John Deere booth.  On the way there PK said "I find farmer and ride on his tractors".  Well bud, John Deere display will have to do.  There wasn't any looking at anything else until he had sat in every one.  He was almost too excited to really enjoy it though, each time in a tractor was less than 30 seconds.

Giving Mom a ride on a 4 wheeler

Only stuck his head in one display this year and I had to be quick.

Helping Hands on the Farm.  Awesome set-up for the kids.  I'm sure he didn't understand it but it was cool for him to be able to do.  He got a little distracted while we were going through because the race cars were starting and was more concerned about going home to get his headphones so he could go see the race cars!

We had a pretty nice evening out there.  Were wore out when we came home.  Got there a little before 5 and left around 8.  Plenty of time for all of us.

Kitchen and Doors

New backdoor

New front door (and helper)

Kitchen counter tops and tile!

I am beyond excited about the kitchen updates! I love the new counter tops with the white cabinets.  We got the tile from Menards from a discontinued line they had and it worked perfectly.  I told Kris I want to replicate all of it at our house now.  Loving it!  

More pictures of the counter tops and kitchen to come.  We were rushing out the door with normal PK patience so I grabbed a quick picture as I was on my way out to a unruly toddler ready for nap!