Tiling joy!

Hello...It's early in the morning and I haven't been able to sleep for the last hour, so it's a good time to post since I never do!

The master bathroom is almost done! How exciting...Tom has put up all the major tile which is all around our shower to the ceiling! Now comes the tedious little tile stuff, like cutting smaller pieces to do the arch and the front of the arch and the smaller pieces for the tub backsplash. Tom also did a neat insert in the shower that he framed in pencil moulding so as to do a neat tile design. So we are still trying to figure that one out as well as what to use on the shower floor! Enought tile talk, onto the pretty stuff!

So we got our blinds installed at the end of December right before our New Years Day open house for the locals!
We got them from Budget Blinds and the people who installed them are a really nice couple that did a great job! I picked blinds that aren't the norm. I saw them at a parade home in which I loved most aspects of! They are 2 1/2" faux wood blinds with tapes on them to hide the strings!
I saw them and said "I want those too." Getting them for sure was still up in the air as far as finances, but we were able to swing it!! Woo Hoo! When they were installing them...I couldn't help but smile I was so happy to get them!
They look so nice and I love the feel of them as they make it nice and homey! Almost a cottage type feel!!

Our open house was absolutely wonderful! We saw friends that we don't normally see, even though they are all local!! Crazy how life gets so busy and we don't get to see our friends as often as we would like! Well we had good food and it was fun to give everyone a tour of the house and to be able to visit with everyone!

We just heard that we will be having guests from Winthrop in February! We are thoroughly excited as we have not seen them for a very long time! A couple of Toms close friends he went to school with and their families are coming to see us! We are excited because we have the room for everyone now and it will be so good to see their families since we haven't seen them for a couple of years almost!

Goodnight...need to get some sleep!

Projects to finish!

A few down....and many to go!!

I guess that is the territory we now roam! Home ownership! Always a project huh??

So we are still working on the completion of the home! Tom did an AMAZING job with the fireplace surround!! I'm excited to post a picture at some point! It's beautiful and makes the living room look so beautiful!

As I type, my wonderful husband Tom is setting tile in the master bathroom shower! We are trying to decide how to design something nice in there...of course at the last minute! This should have been thought out long ago, but that's how we roll (as they say)!

I'm anxious for the time when we get to take our first shower in the enormous shower, and get to use the beautiful vanity that we got at Costco!!

Tom in the meantime has finished painting the shelving that will go in the closet of the main bath, so it's ready to be nailed up!

Tom built a wonderful mantle type coat rack that runs along the hall at the start of the entry! We got the idea from Grandma Forrest, who found a picture in a magazine of a neat coat rack with black hooks and said "You need to do this!" The picture looked so neat that we, of course, agreed and now we have the neatest looking coat rack on the block!!

Now I'm sure we are the only ones who needed this coat rack attached to their wall, as we got rid of any hall closet there was on the original plan....Tom loves the idea of a long hallway as it reminds him of his granparents home in Chelan!

The best project of all,which didn't take much time for Tom to accomplish, is my absolutely wonderful hidden garbage cans....the kind where you make a cabinet into a pull out garbage...yup we are so cool like that!! I've always dreamed of being able to hide my garbage cans by having a pullout cabinet! We bought the converter kit at Lowe's, and Lowe's and behold we are in garbage heaven???!!! Well you get the picture, right??!!

I love the pullout garbage just as much as I love the built-ins in all the closets, which I thought I loved the most before he installed the garbage pullout deal!!!

So folks thanks for taking this journey with us...even though I didn't do the greatest at posting consistently!!

If I ever do another blog I will try my best to be better at posting....until then I will hopefully get more pics up of the wonderful finish work!! Maybe I will even continue posting as we move into the spring and start the wonderful life of yard work and gardening!!

Which brings me to another project on the list....THE FENCE!! Aaagh..that will be huge laborous chore as well as a nice chunk of change!! But it will be so nice to get it up!

Goodnight all!! Love~mel

Drumroll please!!

We are finally in the house!!
Moved in a couple weeks ago and now comes the settling in, which seems to be taking me forever...with the kids, work, socializing, etc. We are trying.
A few big things have yet to get done: the master bathroom shower needs to get tile set and grouted and the floor needs to get grouted, also the fireplace needs to have rock put on it!
We have a walk in pantry and we decided to use stain grade wood to match the cabinet color in there...so we have made way more work for ourselves...as we have lots of wood to stain and then Tom needs to set them all up! I'm anxiously waiting for that since we will be putting lots of items in that walk in pantry!
I will try to upload some pictures right now! So I will exit for now and hope to blog more soon!

Final items....

Howdy...

The end of October is coming fast upon us...so hard to believe!

Time sure flies.

We are having lots of fun seeing the final items being completed at the house!
Tom laid out travertine in the master bath on Saturday with the help of Papa Forrest. It took quite awhile laying it all out to see how they actually wanted to have it truly lay, but it ended up looking so beautiful. We are waiting for the thinset to dry before Tom grouts it.

These last few days Tom has been working on built in's for the closets. They are turning out great!! I can't wait to post the pictures of those built in's...I'm so proud of Tom. He is so talented and he plans it out in great detail. He measured how much the clothing sticks out of our current closet compared to shelf depth, etc.

We are hurrying to prep for the painters to come in to paint all the beautiful trim work this coming Wed. They will be there tomorrow to prep.

Thanks to John for hanging all the interior doors and putting on the trim. He did an excellent job!! The trimwork looks so great!

Today, mama and the kids will be heading out there to spend some time cleaning to prep for the painters. It will be quite the chore.

I keep thinkin of how my friend Meagan described running her half marathon and talked about how that last mile was the worst part of the run, knowing you are so close, but how you want to stop running so bad.

Tom and I are at that last mile and boy are we tired of this whole thing, but we need to keep running because we are so close to the end of the race!! Tom is doing a great job going out there everyday trying to accomplish a little at a time to get us all finished up!

The granite is going to be installed on Wednesday...it is beautiful!! I can't wait to see it installed. It's actually the cheapest stuff out, there...it being 2 cm (which is being phased out of the granite world so I've heard). It's called Santa Celia. It is so beautiful even if it is the cheapest out there!!

Once the painters are done at the end of the week we will have the electricians and plumbers come in for their finish work, hopefully by Monday or Tues., and have the carpet installed ASAP, hopefully by next Thursday or Friday...

Still have to take the time to upload the latest pics...hopefully soon!! I'll put a couple on here of the kids that were taken just the other day!

Closer to completion!

So here we are the 9th of October... wowsa!!!

Sorry guys...I guess I should just junk the blog life. Too much for me to handle I guess!

Well even though we seriously thought we would be in our lovely new home by the end of June...we are still a few weeks away...it won't come soon enough!

Currently Tom is laying the bamboo floor and has completed the dining room, living room kitchen, and will work on the hallway and pantry tomorrow! It looks so beautiful!!

Today a nice guy named John was working at the house with Tom, hanging all the interior doors, and doing the trim work around the windows, etc. He is the same guys who hung all our cabinetry!! Thank God for John is all I can say. He is saving us lots of time and he does a good job!!

We laid our sod in the front and immediate back yard a few weekends ago with the help of Mike Paris and Mitzi White, and our babysitter Abby coming to the house to hang out with the kids while Mama helped Mitzi and Dada! We all worked hard and did a good job!

Our house looks like a nice home now from the outside! So neat!! I will be posting some pics soon since we got a different computer and hopefully will upload pictures easily!

We are hoping for a move in date of the end of the month so we can party it up for the kids birthdays at the beginning of November!!

Take care all...more to come soon!

Love
mel

Can you say snake???

Ok....so where to start....
most recent is that Tom was able to start the rock work on the front of the house. We picked some ledgestone styled rock called "Chardonay" with hues of gray, black, plum. The front of the house mostly done, with a column to do and the rock underneath the entry patio on the concrete wall.. it's a neat look which they started on the back patio as well. Putting rock on the wall of the cement patio underneath a cantilevered (sp?) edge. The rock looks so neat. Very excited to paint the exterior to see what it looks like all put together! Ryan has helped Tom all this past week getting that rock up, and for that we are extremely grateful!!

We thought final excavation was done, but the septic tank is too high I guess and the excavators who did it are going to give us some dirt to make it right instead of digging the thing back up to dig deeper. So hopefully sod will grow on top of that! We'll see!

Over 4th of July weekend, we were at the house all day on Friday and Saturday! We rented a trencher to trench the ditches for underground sprinklers. Boy was that a doozy to get the hang of...maneuvering that trencher! Tom was a pro by the end of the two hours it took to trench! Although we wet ground way too much in on spot, so it got stuck in the mud and I did my best to help get it out! Very hard for this weakling!

We got all the things for the underground sprinklers and we got the design for free since we purchased at the irrigation store!

We ordered some bamboo flooring from an online supplier called Build Direct and boy was it a great deal...and that bamboo is some strong stuff! Pretty eco friendly as well. Not that we have been making that a goal, but it's nice to add that element.

The bamboo will be dropped off on Tuesday, and the appliances we ordered through Sears are in as well.

So we need to get the exterior paint picked out, some floor put down to install appliances, and toilets at least. We are needing to put in the underground sprinklers in, so that will be an all day thing probably!

Oh yeah...we have rattlesnakes up there folks!! Lots of rattlesnakes!! How exciting for this Mama...(not!) Tom killed one the other day with a shovel..it took him by surprise as he opened the water box to turn on the water! EEEEKKK!!

So now everywhere I walk...every little thing I see or feel is a snake, I'm always asking about the latest snake sightings, etc. I've even let out quite a few screams these last couple of weeks since I thought I saw a snake!! Ughhh!

I'm a little more freaked out about it, because I actually saw the snake that Tom killed, because we were there that day and I made him show it to us as half of the body was still slithering and had it's rattles still up in the air!! Ryan found the rattles a few days later and took them home!!!

Ok everyone...thanks for reading my monthly posts...maybe the next time I post the house will be done!! LOL!!! Hopefully not that long in between posts.

The house may not be done for awhile...maybe at the end of August. We'll see!

Love you all!! mel

Time Flies!!!

Hi all....long time, no blog!!!

I can't believe it's the end of June already!! Time sure flies! We have a lot of stuff that has happened at the house so hopefully I can remember it all!

We've had plenty of visitors to our place...our good friends Larry and Patty, Krisanna, Mitzi, Aunt Jen and Uncle Jerm with Mady & Logan came to see it!

So the siding is officially done as of last week...the last bit of shake was put up top, and the guys have worked on caulking, building up the posts that are on the back patio as well as the one on the front porch.

The sidewalk was poured! So nice, with a flaired end up to the driveway! Good job Flatline!

We just got done with the interior paint! Our friend Larry has his own painting business and has nice equipment to make painting easier! Those fancy spraying machines!! He helped Tom starting last weekend with a full day on Saturday the 20th and then again the next Thurs. and this past Friday! It is done other than a bit of touch up work!

We had quite the time trying to figure out paint colors, but thankfully Grandma Forrest came up for a few days in a row to help us think it all out! She is the Master Interior Designer! She knows her stuff and has great taste as well..it's the taste I love! So it's been a blessing to have her help us! Thanks G'Ma Forrest for all your help!! I haven't even seen it yet! Tom went today to take off the plastic from the windows so he could see it in the light and it is quite dark he said. We picked Barnwood which is a sort of brown...and a green color for a few rooms, and a yellow color called Hubbard Squash for the extra bathroom and the laundry room!

Now comes tile choice! Wow...what a chore. Costco is currently carrying some great floor tile for way cheap and it looks great too! We are getting it!! Costco is a great place to get stuff if it fits the theme of the house!

Bye for now...it's way past my bedtime!