Ordinary life

After spending the last year searching for jobs, houses, and traveling back and forth...a lot, I am LOVING our plain ol' ordinary days. I even took a two week break from unpacking just to soak up some "normalcy".  Our days are spent with school, work, coupon clipping, grocery shopping, laundry folding, and even an occasional nap.  

I am loving the nice weather and our new backyard. There's so much room for energetic boys to skip, run, hop, and ride scooters/skateboards/bikes!  I need to start doing research and figure out what I'm going to plant in our garden.  I'm told I can plant peas in February!

Several neighbor kids have been coming over to play Nerf dart tag after school. 

 Todd is extremely busy with work.  He currently has 16 kids on his caseload, in addition to being the equine therapist and doing all the horse sessions on the ranch.  He is working to build a private practice in the evenings, and has a few clients then as well.  I am so grateful for his education, and all the work he does to provide for our family.   Oh, how I love living under one roof again!

As soon as we knock out a wall and extend my quilting studio, I will start quilting.  It's so different to have just one kid at home all day.  When Brayden was six weeks old I started doing daycare at home, so I've never really been in this position before.  Justin and I are having fun grocery shopping (so many choices here!), taking walks, and figuring out our new "groove".  We were at DI when it opened the other day.  I can now cross that off my bucket list.  If you've never done it, you should.  It's not as bad as Black Friday, but still good for some laughs.

Todd and Justin hard at work on their laptops.  Like father, like son.

This is a video that I caught when the kids weren't looking.  They're singing our new favorite song.  It was even requested for Family Home Evening this past Monday.  You may recognize it from my previous post.

Our offer was accepted!

Unless we run into unforeseen problems, this is going to be our new house!

I will admit that I do not love the 80's look of the outside--too many vertical lines for me, but this house meets our needs in every way and we feel very blessed to have found it.

You can't see it, but there is a mailbox at the end of the driveway.  I've never lived in a place with a mailbox, and now I can check it off my bucket list. :o)

Dad and Melece:  Will mums grow in the desert?  I would love to plant mums in that spot next to the circle drive.  The house faces North.  Is there any shade loving plant that would grow if we put planter boxes under the windows to break up the vertical lines?

The inside has been completely re-done, and I absolutely love the off-set kitchen cabinets. The house has four-ish bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, an office, and a room in the garage for quilting.  I say four-ish bedrooms because one of the basement rooms is actually two rooms (in an L-shape) but one of those "rooms" has a closet but no window, and the other "room" has the window but no closet so you can't really call it a 5th room.  It's a little strange but I can work with it.

 The yard has automatic sprinklers :o) and just enough grass to feel like a yard, without too much to water in the desert heat.  We will do square foot gardening in the built in planter boxes all across the back. If you look closely at the back of the picture, you can see landscaping bricks beyond "the courtyard"--it is a sandbox.
The driveway extends to the back of the property, where a foundation is ready for Todd's future wood shop.

 This is the room in the garage that will be my quilting studio.  It is barely long enough to hold my machine, so we will be knocking the wall out and extending the room so that it's the entire width of the garage.
BTW, Have you ever seen a cleaner garage in all your life?  I think you could eat off the floor...

Oh, and one more thing.  This house is in my Great Uncle Mark and Aunt Joan's stake.  Their daughter (my 2nd cousin) is currently in the ward we'll be moving into, so we'll have family there!  Also, we'll be a mere 5 1/2 hours away from my brother and we are excited to be able to visit his family and their ocean :o)

Before and After

I am feeling nostalgic tonight after looking through the pictures of our house that we just sold.  

Rumor has it that the power company has plans to tear it down.

I have mixed emotions. This house was never my dream house, but we have put our blood, sweat, and tears into fixing it up...one dollar at a time.  We had so many more plans that will never be realized.  

Going through these pictures has helped me to see that even though we lost all the money we put into it (due to the current situation of our local economy), we have learned a lot, and you can't put a price on life experience.

Taken the week we moved in.  July 2006

When we were getting ready to move here, we had a tough time finding a place to live.  I remember sitting in our Honda CR-V across the street, knowing that this was the house that Heavenly Father had prepared for us, but not being overly thrilled about it.

This is how our house looked after Todd pressure washed it to get it ready to paint.

This isn't a very good picture (taken with an old cell phone), but it shows the new paint, the new front door(s), and the window boxes that Todd made. 

 Although our new front door was a huge improvement over the metal, diarrhea brown door that the house came with, I've always regretted it.  I went into Home Depot knowing that I did not want a window in my front door.  I wanted a plain door so I could hang a wreath from it (centered in the window of the screen door).

Instead, I let the weird employee with velcro shoes talk me into a door with a window. 

 
Never listen to decorating advice from a middle-aged man wearing velcro shoes.

Living room

Before:

I was so excited about the hutch that came with our house.

After(s):

This is what the living room looks like now. The wood-burning stove came from the house I grew up in.  I negotiated with the power company to keep it when we move.  They were hesitant until I told them that the other heat source for the house is electric.

This is how the room looked for most of our time here:

This old steamer trunk came with the house as well.

Dining room

I made these pictures extra large for my mom's sake.  She likes when the pictures are big.

The dining room before:

And after.  I got a wild hair one day and decided I could not live with that wood paneling for another minute.  I carefully pulled one of the panels and discovered it was nailed to a completely finished wall!  All I would have to do is fill nail holes.  Unfortunately, after the first panel, the rest were glued to the wall and when I pulled them off they took big chunks of drywall with them.  That is the weekend I learned how to repair drywall.

The countertop was and still is in excellent condition...unfortunately.

We took the carpet out of the dining room, put in laminate flooring, replaced the appliances when they died, and started painting the cabinets. We also ended up inheriting a new table/chairs when Vanessa moved.

Oh, and we got rid of that obnoxious half-wall in the background of this picture.  I haven't regretted it for a second.

It was a good thing I already knew a little bit about mudding and taping.

Todd and I made this cornice for our dining room window and filled the shelf with orange things to go with the countertop.  I got these dwarf lemon, lime, and orange trees free from Gurneys.  The lemon tree actually flowered and grew two tiny lemons the size of a penny (SO CUTE!).  I think I may try this again when I move to a warmer climate.

Kitchen

I really have no words for these.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

I wish I would've gotten around to finishing the cabinets, but since the house is being torn down I guess I'm glad I didn't waste the time.  Painting cabinets is a huge pain.

Bathroom

We painted the cabinets, replaced the floor (twice), updated the fixtures, and put in a new window.  The "after" picture doesn't show it, but we replaced the baseboards also.  Oh, how I want to fix the towels in this picture!  My boys don't seem care about whether the towels look nice. I, on the other hand, sometimes do fancy "hotel folds" just for fun.

Boys bedroom

I wish I had a picture of the ugly wallpaper border that went around the top of this room.  I peeled it off bit by bit with my own two hands. Don't forget to notice the original gold carpet.

Todd built the shelves I designed and I have LOVED them.  I will miss this closet.

I have also loved the pegs around the room.  I'm tempted to take them with me...

We never did completely finish the closet "barn door".  We had planned to put trim around the opening, and I wanted to make a distressed sign that said "Rabbit Valley Farm and Seed Co."  We also had plans to make a chicken coop cornice for the window treatment.  It was going to have chicken wire across the front with stuffed chickens and raffia inside.

Master bedroom

This is the one room we never painted.  I was actually in the process of picking paint colors when we found out that Todd was going to lose his job.

Our bedding has improved, but we still have the brown shag carpet.  We got the bench at the end of our bed from our neighbor's yard.  They put it outside with a sign that said "FREE" and I made Todd snag it.

Family room

We used this room for four years in this condition.  There wasn't even power.  We had to run an extension cord to plug in the TV/lamp, and the computer (not shown).  So many of our friends and family came to stay with us and had to stay in this "dungeon".  

Before Justin was born, we finished it (sort of).  We never finished the tile and mantle around the stove, and we never bought blinds for the window.  Todd made our computer/sewing desk out of two old doors, a filing cabinet, and an old bathroom cabinet that came with the house.

Quilting room

The quilting room was next on our list to be finished.  Todd and I were both excited about doing it, and now we never will.  I guess I'm glad we didn't spend the money on it.  

My mom and I stapled fabric to the ceiling, painted the cement (with some free paint that I had on hand), and organized my fabric into containers.  Oh, and that bulletin board?  It's a piece of foam insulation that we covered with fabric and glued to the wall with liquid nails.

Downstairs Bathroom

You can't tell from this picture, but there weren't any walls in this room when we moved in.  There was a toilet and that was it.  We hung curtains and used the bathroom in an emergency, but there was no sink so you still had to go upstairs to wash your hands.

Finishing this bathroom probably taught us the most. Todd framed the room, put in a shower and sink, filled cracks in the foundation, wired the room for the fan and a future heater/thermostat, installed the vinyl flooring, and built shelves.

Downstairs bedroom

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this is the room that is now Brayden and Caleb's room.  When we moved into this house, it had all the previous owner's stuff (this was his vacation home).  We moved all his stuff into this room until he could come down and look through it to see what he wanted.  

It turned out he only wanted three things.

Todd framed the room and closet, and even though we said we'd never do it again, we did the drywall ourselves because we couldn't afford to pay someone to do it.

I never finished decorating their "science" room.  I started making throw quilts for the end of their beds that had navy, orange, lime green and white stripes.  They were also supposed to get coordinating throw pillows, tin can robots, and their own artwork framed on the wall.

My dad came up with the idea for the corner closet, and it allowed us room for a built-in computer desk (there is no internet access in this room--the computer is for typing practice and CD-ROM games only).  We used vinyl rain gutters for the book shelves on the right.  I made the clock into a giant magnifying glass and printed some "real looking" bugs to crawl across the face.

We've learned...

Other random things that this house has taught us:

Todd actually learned to enjoy cutting/chopping wood to heat our house.  When we first moved in I wasn't very happy at the idea of having a wood-burning stove, but now I would prefer to never live without one!  Hauling wood was a perfect chore for our boys, and we moved our woodpile several times just so they could have a job!  (Shh, don't tell them)

We learned a few things about plumbing along the way.  We now know what we can do ourselves, and when we should call a plumber.

When our bathroom flooded, Todd had to replace the floorboards before installing the new floor.

We learned that it's not a good idea to build a metal shed in the wind.  There were many times that we truly believed the whole shed was going to collapse.  There was lots of swearing, yelling, and finally...a prayer.  Once we got it together it was fine, but Todd still framed the inside with 2x4's.

I don't have a before picture of this wall, because there wasn't anything there.  It was a dark corner in the kitchen next to the stairs.  Replacing the back door with one that had a window was probably the best thing we ever did.  It not only lightened up the kitchen, but allowed a cross breeze since we don't have air conditioning.  I designed this "organizational wall" and Todd built the pieces for me.  It is definitely one of my favorite improvements.