HOME IMPROVEMENT

4 1/2 years ago Jeff and I decided to buy a house. We opted to buy an "older" house to keep our monthly payment down even though we could have been qualified for a lot larger loan. I use "older" in quotations because that's somewhat of an understatement for our little house. It was built in 1910. It's old. We completely romanticized what it would be like to workntogether on a "fixer-upper." The thing with a fixer upper is that you need money. And time. And skills. And patience. All of which we are lacking.

As with life in general, it's easier to see what you HAVEN'T done than what you HAVE. I always have a laundry list of "to-do's" for our house, but it's easy to forget how much we have done already. In 4 years we have repaired walls/ceilings, repainted almost every room, completely ripped out/redone a kitchen, added new plumbing and electrical (moving washer/dryer downstairs), and redone our yard - front and back - added new stairs and patio in back. And now, we can successfully add new flooring on that list.

We had toyed with the idea of new floors for a while. Although it probably wasn't the "highest" on the priority list, we felt like it would make the most impact on how the house looked and how we felt being here. So, on an impulse, we went to Lowes and bought some new floors Memorial Day Weekend. The trouble is: we know NOTHING about putting in floors. Enter really amazing friends to our rescue. This could not have been done without them. These pictures are out of order...as always, but here is the process. START FROM THE BOTTOM UP.

#9 - Here is a view of the kitchen. Again, the pictures don't do it justice, but for any of you that have been to our house, it's a million times better and I'm sooo happy we did it. It makes me actually enjoy being home.

#8 - Here is the final product of the floor. It's hard to really get a good shot of the whole room since it's so small. We ended up not taking the baseboards off and just adding quarter-round trim to the bottom of it and then caulking around it. That's what took the longest for Casey was cutting all of that out. Sheesh. It looks great though! I also repainted that bench. It was super dark wood before.

#7 - And the after pictures. We had this super ugly old side table in between our couches. I hated it. And our pictures always got knocked over. Drove me nuts. I bought this "ladder" shelf thing. It helps make that space look more open, I think.

#6 - This is after all the tile was finally out of the kitchen.

#5 - Truth be told, we were extremely naive as to how much help we would need with this project. Our friend Casey (in the red hat) is seriously so nice and helpful. He and his wife live a few houses down from us and we have become great friends. Luckily, we have benefited from his knowledge since they bought and have re-done their house as well. In my mind, we would have him show us how to do the basic cuts for the floor boards and we would take it from there. Not so. He seriously spent the last 3 weekends doing the job with us. Really, there is no way to repay him (or his wife, Melissa for letting us steal him away fro so long.)

#4 - In the midst of all of this, we had tickets to see Les Miserables in SLC. Jeff realized that there was no way he could go with me and still get this project done. So...we asked one of my mother in laws, Linda if she was interested in going with me. I'm a little spoiled. I've seen the show 5 times by now, but she had only since it once, 10 years previously. We really enjoyed it. And we had some AWESOME seats. Meanwhile, Jeff was still ripping out tile and our house was in utter chaos. We had already had a babysitter lined up - although now she didn't have the luxury of a house to watch out kids in. Ha ha. Thankfully, she was able to bring the kids to her house and watch them.

#3 - This was the tile in the kitchen. People were curious why we chose to rip our tile in the kitchen since it's "easy" to clean, etc. BUT...this tile was gross...and very poorly done. Uneven and I just hated it. We also just wanted to floor to flow more nicely. This is where our AMAZINGLY KIND friend, Nate Sommers helped the most. He and Jeff spent something like 7 hours cutting out this tile. It was a nightmare. There was dust literally EVERYWHERE. In every crevice of my kitchen, bathroom and toyroom/pantry. I was cleaning for hours and days. Every utensil, every tupperware, every toy, every can. UGH. Not fun.

#2 - We don't truly have a "before" picture of our living room since the carpet is already ripped out in this one, but trust me...it was nasty. The people before us had pets...or at least one and it was gross. Sorry for all you pet people out there. I'm just not a fan. Anyway, you can tell that we had hardwood under there, but we chose not to try to sand it. Ripping up the carpet was the easy part.

#1 - The fun part about an old house is all the random things you find...like this "intake vent" in the corner. Weird.

Now, the only trouble is with this new flooring is that I want to re-do EVERYTHING now. Our bathroom, carpet, etc. Be patient...right?

SOPHIE TURNS TWO!

Our little Sophie turned 2 on May 27th. She is seriously the cutest. We just adore her. She loves babies, dolls, anything to do with babies and dolls...

Jeff's grandmother's birthday is May 28th, so we did a little combined get together at her house. She just turned 92, I believe. Crazy to be 90 years apart in age and to get to celebrate together!

Sophie with a bunch of her cousins and Great-Grandma Hadley.

Sophie loves Care Bears lately, so I decided to do this little cake for her. Probably not my best, but it worked.

Sophie is such a big girl. It's hard to believe she was every a newborn at times. She talks a bunch of course. I mean, how could you not with me and Jeff as parents? It's kind of funny because she loves to push Chance's buttons sometimes. He will be trying to tell a story to us in the car and she will purposely talk over him. He gets so mad at her and tells her, "Ugh...Sophie, it's MY turn to talk." Generally, she pauses a second and then the right as he starts talking again, she pipes in in her cute little voice. It drives Chance nuts, but I just chuckle. We are all talkers around here.

Although my kids still fight, I finally feel like they are at an age where they are starting to play together. It's so cute. Sophie loves copying her big brother. Which of course means bad behavior as well as good behavior. She does throw your typical 2 year old tantrums at times, but for the most part, I don't think she's too bad. Or maybe I've just become less rigid? If that is even possible?

Needless to say, we couldn't imagine our family without her. We love her and we so blessed to have a happy, healthy two year old now!