It's the MOST wonderful time of the year!

I've been enjoying every single little bit of eye candy I've been seeing everywhere, haven't you?  So many wonderful crafts to try, and gorgeous decorations for inspiration!  Because we're on an adventure remodeling a recently purchased home, it was with a mix of sadness and relief that I decided to forgo decorations this year.  I know, how can I live with myself?!  It wasn't an easy decision for sure!  Our new house is a demolition zone, and our current 'temporary' apartment is tiny and crammed full of moving boxes so I thought it was the most sane decision. 

 

One day in a bout of nostalgia, I found myself looking through pictures from Christmas Past and decided to share some of my favorites.

This little tree was in our game room.  I just love the card-themed ribbon I found in a little Christmas store in Midland.  I made bows with it, and wish I had bought more! 

 

 

 

My first time to do a brown tree, as I'm mostly a red, green, white, and silver kind of girl.  I really liked the way it turned out, with it's more understated feel.  This first picture shows the tree through an old mirror that used to belong to my grandmother.

 

 

 

This is my first flocked tree.  I'm so happy with it and can't wait to use it again.  It's my master bedroom tree and I used only reds last time.  I can picture all kinds of different things to do with it in the future.

 

 

 

This is one of my favorite Christmas crafts.  I made this using 2 glass blocks from Lowes.  We got a special drill bit for glass and drilled a hole in each glass block.  I then just put a small string of lights in each one and wrapped them up with sparkly ribbon.  They add just the right amount of bling to any corner!

 

 

 

This little tree in my antique trunk is my kitchen tree.  It holds some of the old ornaments from our kids childhood days. It's such a treat to get out the old handmade ornaments that the kids made in church or in school and relive the memories.

 

 

My Spode teapot was a gift from my dearest friend, and it was displayed just out of reach of the grandbabies precious little hands.  It will need to be placed a little bit higher next year:)

 

I made stockings for everyone, including the pups!  It's such a delight that almost as soon as they were hung, they were out of date.  We've had 2 new grandbabies in a little over a year!! 

 

 

 

 

 

A very simple mantle with just a bit of red and my favorite Santa.

 

Some of my other Santas adding some HoHoHo to the top of the refrigerator.

 

 

In honor of some old friends from Germany who visited just after Christmas, we were excited to find Gluhwine at our local HEB!  They taught us how to make a lovely warm drink.  Living in West Texas, I can only imagine that would be even more amazing if sipped with a couple of feet of snow outside!

 

And now, my 12 ft tree.  I love it!  I got it on sale after Christmas one year while shopping with my bff and fellow partner in crime.  She actually bargained with the owner of the shop to get me an even better discount!  I love the memory of snagging it as much as I love the tree!

 

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

 

I can see the light!

This remodel has been going on for 3 months now, and most of it has been tedious, dirty, and frustrating.  But I do believe we've turned a corner!  The back half is really coming along and I'm getting so excited!

Here's a reminder of the laundry/mud/craft room, when it was still the master and bath.

And now...just needs some paint and then we'll be ready for tile!  The vanities I ordered from Lowes are here and I can't wait to get them in place. 

 

 

This is the demolition of the old, homemade door to the backyard from the laundry room.  It was probably supposed to look like a french door, but the glass was 2 different sizes, and it was just a messy installation all the way around.

We also removed the little ramp outside the door.

 

 

 

 Here's the space ready for the new door.  (You can see the beginings of the dog shower on the right.)

 

 

 

And by the end of the day the new door is in!  This will be our preferred access to the pool (tile floor, bathroom access), so I think the sliding glass will be perfect.  Plus it will (eventually!) have a good view when I'm doing laundry and stuff.   

The great room has new sheetrock on the ceilings, with much improved support in the attic.  The tape and bed and texturing has been completed, and hopefully tomorrow we will get a coat of primer on everything!  Our son is happy to suit up and man the paint sprayer, which is a huge blessing.  I originally thought I would be happy to do it, but after watching him the first time I decided it would be a lot of work!  I'm happy to just do the prep work:)

This is looking toward the kitchen.  I'm super excited that the pantry shelves are cut and ready to paint.  I can't wait to get paint on the walls and install them.  It might just be our very first completed space in the house!

We added a new project today, because, well, we just didn't have enough to do already!  I knew I wanted new trim around all the doors, and new larger baseboards.  We planned for that.  But then I looked at these underwhelming dining room windows and decided that they need some help too.  I would love to do all the windows in the house, but we'll see how it goes.  Here they are, the shy little timid windows before....

 

 

And here they are in their new finery.  I can't wait to see them painted white with a nice warm color on the walls.

 

I've finally made some decisions on paint!!  I can't (won't!) tell you how many cans of Benjamin Moore samples I have.  Goodness!  It's been a process for sure.  I should have the hall bath painted tomorrow and will be calling the tile guy to see when he can get started!

 

Thanks for stopping by.  I'd be so honored if you would leave a comment letting me know you were here!

Much Better!

I'm totally out of my element when it comes to blogging, blog design, and most anything technological.  Logical?  Not to me!  In spite of this, I finally decided to tackle my blog layout.  Yay!  Isn't this cuter?  Now I just need to customize my snippet, configure my script tag parameters, and about a hundred other things that make absolutely no sense to me.  I'm pretty sure I was supposed to get this all figured out and in place before I ever made this public, but alas, it is what it is. Please bear with me as I stumble through this, and leave me a comment with any helpful hints you might be willing to share! And thank you for stopping by:)

Fifteen days until Christmas!

One (seemingly) Simple Project.....So many layers!

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post!  It seems that I've spent the time just trying to make sense of everything that needs to be done, decisions to be made, and purchasing the items that the Mr. needs to either cut a place for or install so he can finish up one of his many projects.  Oh, and there's always office work demanding my attention!  Soooo....I don't have much to show for my time!  That's ok.  (this has become somewhat of a mantra for me.  Everyday there's a new roadblock, hurdle, change of direction, or error to deal with.  I just say "That's ok" and move on!)

I did start working on the doors that need to be painted.  I think I have 13 at this point, and we still have 4 interior (I think) and 3 exterior doors to purchase.  I want to finish the ones I have in my possession since they all belong in "The Back Half" of the house, and that's my area for now:)

Here we go with a little bit of what I've done.  First of all, I learned how to remove a door knob!  There's a secret little slit that you stick your screwdriver in while pulling up on the knob.  Voila!  The knob comes off! 

Then I removed the screws,

and the latch that holds the door closed, and then it all comes apart!

Here's where the layers begin....I originally pictured myself just going from room to room slapping new paint on these doors right where they live. We had already decided to hold off on buying new hardware (budget. time.) so it seemed easy enough to just start painting. However, in the course of pulling up all the laminate flooring and tile our helper took all the doors off! That's ok. I can paint them anywhere. But then as I looked them over I decided that while they're all down I should sand them. So I took them all out to the patio. Of course when I started sanding I discovered how banged and dinged and mistreated they all were and felt that since I've gone this far I might as well go all the way and make them look the best I possibly can.  And I have to say it's kind of exciting to try to reinvent a smooth surface out of such damaged wood!

 

 

And while they're all down, shouldn't we just go ahead and remove the hinges now instead of risking damage and lots of clean up if we replace them later.  Sure!  (Another layer!)  So with a screwdriver and a lot of elbow grease, I got busy and removed a ton of hinges and striker plates.  I feel very grateful that I won't have to clean all these!

 

 

Here's a little footnote....I don't love my doors.  Really.  What I love are old doors.  With character!  Like these.  Aren't they lovely?   I drool.  (Photo from Rachel Grace @ raenovate.com)

I initially thought I would just replace all mine with some like this.  I hoped I could score at our local Habitat Restore but either they don't ever get good doors, or someone is beating me to them!  I've found some really nice old ones online - mostly in New England - for very reasonable prices.  Too bad I live so far from there.  In the meantime, I'm looking forward to making the most of the doors I have.

Next layer please.  Removing the rest of the molding since it will be replaced with a different style. 

And finally I have a pile of doors ready for paint.  Yippee!!  And the stuff laying on it's side?  Beadboard for a project involving a saw(!) that I hope to whip out by myself:)

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to be able to show you a bunch of finished doors soon!

Progress is being made!

It's so exciting to see how far we've come, and to be able to actually see some ideas coming together!  Remember the entry?

 

You can see Brad standing between the old wall and the new, and the closet in the background.

 

 

And now...

The big eyesore/water heater closet is gone!  The entry is so much more open!  It was a much bigger job than I thought it would be when I asked to have it removed, so I'm especially thankful to have it gone.  Also the living room wall is now 2 feet from where it started out, making it nice and even with the wall across from it.  I love it!  I'm tossing around an idea for the hall.  We'll see:)

 

Looking pretty nice, right?  Uh Oh.  Slam on the brakes!  The ceiling was very saggy, and we had been assuming it could be repaired easily.  Either that or we were just ignoring it and hoping it would go away.  Reality hit and it was all removed yesterday.  Yikes!  How far behind schedule will this put us?  There is a nice, bright silver lining.....it will be much easier to replace all the lighting from below instead of my 6'5" man having to do it on his belly in the attic:)

 

Moving on.  The next big change is the former master bedroom and bath. Looking from the bedroom into the vanity area and the closet beyond as work began.  In the picture on the right below, there is a closet straight ahead, and also one barely visible on the right side of the picture.  (And even further to the right is where the toilet and tub are.)

 

 

 

Now the closet is gone and there's a door to the bedroom beyond.  It's ready for a coat of paint and then we can install 2 cute little vanities I found at Lowes.

 

And there was the cramped tub/toilet area with it's lovely green tile flecked with gold:)

 

 

We removed the closet that was on the left wall and moved the entry to the shower area back some to give more space to that little room.  The new tub is installed and it's all ready for me to make tile decisions!  And the rest of the area where the closet used to be is a perfect spot for a cute little antique chest or something, with a mirror above and a lamp and and and....:) 

 

I can't wait to get the 'back half' of the house cleaned up!  I took the vacuum over this morning but the tape and bed/texture guy was finishing up and making quite a mess so it will just have to wait until tomorrow.  Hopefully I can start painting some bedrooms next week! 

 

 

 



During....

Now for the fun stuff!

We said goodbye to the laminate flooring. 

 

And the wallpaper in the hall is coming down. Slooowwwwly but surely:)



 

 

We knocked off all the bricks that were sticking out, and dismantled the mantle.

 

 

This is the living room wall that we're moving over 2 ft into the new laundry room.  It doesn't look like much, but getting the walls to match in the entry once the large closet is moved back is going to look a lot nicer I think.

 

 

The closet is almost ready for sheetrock!  I'm so happy to have that bulky thing out of the entry.  It was just an eyesore!

 

 

 

Progress in the kitchen, too!  We'll leave one side standing so we will have a space for all our lists and the coffee maker.  And we really need the sink for now as well.

 

 

Duke claimed an electrical box as his new toy:)

 

 

Here's the little closet that housed a stacked washer/dryer.  It will soon be home to the water heater, and a lot of storage space.  I'm giddy!

 

Remember the little green bathroom in the hall?  Here she is today.  Oh the possibilities!

 

These are the bedrooms.  We have removed all the popcorn from the ceilings throughout the entire house.  Who in the world decided that popcorn was a good idea?

 

Still working on the wallpaper in this one.

 

And this is the bedroom that will now have access to the former master bath.

Here is the vanity area of the bath that will be shared by the bedroom and laundry room.  We've removed the wall to the closet and opened it up all the way from one room to another.  One day there will be a vanity with 2 sinks on this wall.  I can't wait!

 

Thanks for stopping by!