Linen Closet

My sister and her husband came out to help with our next phase of renovations, creating a linen closet out of a small covered porch area.

This meant a little bit of demolition, which I think both guys delighted in.

Until they realized how well the previous owner had placed this a/c in the wall.  We always say he loved nails, but this was new levels even for him.   

After they finally got the a/c removed, they found this thing in the hall.  A mummified squirrel! Weird, and not really in a good way.

Cleaning up some of their mess before they start building the walls.  This is the covered porch, which is going to get closed in and will become a linen closet.

It always seems to drizzle when JD comes out to construct something.

The walls are being framed.

And the plywood is going up.

Sadie helped out since she was Superman that day.

The closet's not finished completely, but I'll post an update once it's done.

Flooring Finished...And Two Cute Photos

We finished the flooring in the office/schoolroom.  We still have to put up the baseboards, but that's okay.  It's 99.5% done.

Now I just need to get a rug so I can cover it all up.  No, that's not the reason I need a rug.  I need a rug so we can sit on the floor and comfortably read books together.  I think.

We're slowly getting everything ready for first grade, starting August 13th!  We're also taking full advantage of the lazy dog days of summer before we start school.

Eli likes to pull his trousers all the way up past his belly button.  Silas did it to him once several weeks ago and now he's constantly hitching them up as high as they'll go.

Mr. Banana Face came and got me and said, "Cheeeeese.  Picture?" So I, of course, had to take his picture.  It's blurry because he won't stay still for half a second, but it's still cute.  And I won't think badly of myself for posting two photos of Eli and none of Silas because Silas was at his grandfather's for four days and wasn't around to have it taken.

Office/School Room Renovations

We've been redoing our computer room, getting ready for this fall when Silas starts First Grade and we'll need a dedicated space for school.  The old computer room had a lot of desk space (it was originally built as a sewing room) and lots of bookshelves, but no floor space and no ventilation.  When the weather got too hot or too cold, we basically shut that room off.  If we were going to use it as a school room, we needed to open it up a bit.  

Bear with me, I forgot to take BEFORE photos, so these are some old ones I managed to find:

The main desk area.  We wanted to move the computer monitor around so that it could be seen from the kitchen (on the right).  

Wasn't Silas cute at 2-1/2 years old?  We also needed to take out the bookshelves to create floor space and take out the exterior door because it was constructed poorly

Taking out the exterior door.

And removing the sliding glass doors between the office and the dining room.  This was a chore and a pain.  Thankfully, Christian did half of it while the rest of us were away.

Taking out the sliding glass doors (and the bookshelves behind them) brought a lot of the morning light into the dining area.  Good morning, Silas!

Another view of how it opened up that room.

Hi, Eli!  More morning sunshine.

After that, we removed the rest of the bookshelves and got to work on the desk space.  It was just too much and took up a lot of square footage.  It also created these vast spaces underneath that were difficult to get to and clean, but perfect for little boys to crawl into and get covered in spider webs.

The mess!

Insulation in the door, to help maintain the temperature a little better.

No more exterior door!  After that we mud and taped (ugghhh!) and re-painted the entire room white.  We also took down that wallpaper.  Silas was really good at picking up the pieces I pulled down.

Onto the bookshelves.  We reused the ones we had, just pulled all the old nails out and repainted.

Silas was good at hammering out the nails, as well.

Eli was good at playing on his own.  For a little while, anyways.

Then Christian started laying the flooring.  This is the same stuff we put in our kitchen and dining area in May.

AFTER!  

We still have to lay the rest of the flooring, but otherwise it's done.  I used some chalkboard paint we had from Silas' room to make a chalkboard.  Now we have plenty of floor space for Eli to play around on while Silas and I focus on schoolwork. 

The books are up and out of the way and everything has a place.  There is still plenty of desk space for the boys to grow into.  It's been a lot easier to keep this room cool, even in 100 degree weather.  It's also a lot easier to keep clean.  

This is still a bit of a mess, but it's actually pretty handy.  Eli's toys are accessible to him, as is scrap paper and the crayons.  Silas' games and puzzles are a little too high for Eli to reach, but just at eye level for Silas.  Their art supplies are higher up, ready for me to grab.  And the more grown up games are way at the top.

By reusing things we already had, like the wood from the bookshelves, we only had to buy a few things.  In all, with the flooring, paint, and few bits of construction materials, we paid around $200 to completely transform our office!

Road Work and Goats in the Garden

We were able to make some improvements to our road.

What kind of record would I be keeping if I didn't post the pictures of the great, huge, loud bulldozer that came to our house today?

Silas enjoyed playing in the freshly turned up dirt.

The goats are in my garden!

They came to say hello, but ended up eating my bushes.

Naughty Onion!  Get down!

Rotten kids.

Silas and Christian tried to herd them in a different direction.

But they ended up on my porch!

Which actually just made me laugh.  We finally got them back down into their pen without too many munches on my flowers.

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.