House Renovations

As you can tell in the photo, Eli is crawling around more now.  Well, scooting.  The previous flooring was some cheap tile we put down when we moved in 4 years ago to replace the cigarette- and pet-stained carpet that came with the house.  Between the firewood and the glue from the tile, I couldn't seem to keep the floor clean and was constantly vacuuming.  So we dipped into our savings and got carpet.

And a sofa bed.  We wanted the sofa bed for a few reasons.  1 - The armchairs we had in here didn't give us enough sitting space.  2 - We like to have a spare bed for the occasional guest. 3 - We wanted to be able to cozy up together on a sofa.  We got it from the virtual-bulletin board at Christian's work.  My sister and sister-in-law helped me make the curtains.  I say helped, but they did most of the work. 

A new (to us) toy container.  A lady at our church gave us this container along with a huge toy train set and train table, loads of books, and a toy car mechanic/tool station.  I convinced Christian to do away with the humongous and in-the-way TV and TV stand.  How?  By telling him we could save up and buy an off-brand (small) flat screen.  

I used to have a serving table underneath that window, but decided to get rid of it.  It took up too much space for the purpose it was serving.  I put Silas' bookshelf and desk in its place, which will be a better use of the space (hopefully). 

When we bought this place almost four years ago, we knew it would be a work-in-progress.  I don't know if we anticipated just how much so, though.  After doing a lot of work to the house before we moved in, the renovations kind of stopped for a couple of years.  Redoing Eli's room last year got us into the groove of fixing up the place again.  After installing the carpet with Christian, we both realized how much we enjoy doing this sort of thing together. It was fun! While there's a lot to do around here (sometimes it feels like we fix something just in time for something else to break), I enjoy getting to redo it the way I want it.  Christian is great about it, too.  He knows that the house is my workplace and lets me decide what to do with it for the most part.  It's going to take a long time to get this house where we want it, but I'll enjoy doing it bit by bit with Christian.