KCparsons

Eva, Owyn and Mom had fun making gingerbread Christmas ornaments for our tree this year. Later that week the kids bundled up in their gear and headed out to the yard to play in the snow for the first time this season. After many snow angels and trips down the slippery slide were made, they warmed up with hot chocolate and some of Daddy's scones.

Here are some pics of our Tiger and Kitty Cat. They had a great time trick or treating in downtown Brookside and then, later, on our own street - and Aunt Shelly got to come along!

Here's Owyn on his first day of school with his new lunch box. His classroom is right next to Eva's room and they get to see each other on the playground. With both the kids in school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, we find ourselves in a new rhythm!

Here are some pictures of our kitchen after I painted it a dark gray-blue. Still wondering if it should be a shade of green, but we will wait until our white subway backsplash and white trim are installed to make the call. Still missing some hardware and some inner shelving in places. Also still need to set up the peninsula, but all for a later date. After getting this far, we've put ourselves on a spending freeze, so what we've got is what we've got! We are really enjoying having a spacious kitchen.

As we've taken a bit of a break from "project mode" around our house, we've noticed that life just keeps on moving. We've really enjoyed celebrating with Eva & Owyn recently as they each made their own achievements. Eva decided to kick her habit of sucking her fingers and Owyn stopped wearing diapers, both within a week of each other. As a reward, each of them graduated from tricycles to bicycles with training wheels. We are so proud of them and they are rightfully proud of themselves.

The picture of Eva with her lunch box is her first day of preschool here in KC. She attends 3 days a week and packs her lunch each day. This girl loves school. Owyn and mom are enjoying some time together on these mornings and are starting to attend a playgroup every Wednesday.

Another fun moment just occurred tonight, thanks to a tremendous deal on craigslist and the contributions of both sets of grandparents. In honor of Eva's 5th birthday next week, Eva and Owyn now have a swing set in the back yard. We are looking forward to hours of play for the kids right in our own backyard.

So, here's to our sweet kids. They have endured the torn up house and the busy parents this summer as we threw ourselves into house projects. It's about time we paid them some much needed attention on our blog!

It's been a while since our last post and the long gap in between means we've gotten a lot of work done! Here are some pics of the cabinetry we installed. We actually have more done than these show here, but the camera is dead, batteries need charged... More final pics to come. These should give a good idea of where we're headed with our kitchen reno. Currently, we have everything installed. We just need to order a couple of odds and ends to finish up and then add things like trim, backsplash, etc.

Here are some pictures of our kitchen floor. During the original demolition, Ken pulled up a couple of layers of linoleum which left about 3/4 of our kitchen covered in black adhesive/old finish residue. Part of it came up with some gentle scraping. The rest had to be sprayed with Krud Kutter and scraped. This was mostly Carrie's job, but thanks goes out to both of our moms who put their energy into this as well!

We rented a 4 Disc Orbital Sander and Ken sanded the floors. Carrie then stained them to match the rest of the house. The color was a perfect match. Next step will be to put a few coats of polyurthene and then we will set our cabinets...which are completely built and sitting in our living room. Good times.

Drywall was completed on Tuesday and Ken had a window installed that night! Wednesday he completed the 2 window installations, trimmed out the outside views and began the 1st of 3 layers of stucco under each one. By Thursday, Carrie had 2 coats of primer on the ceiling and walls, leaving us with an empty shell just begging for cabinetry and appliances!

On and on we go about our kitchen progress, but we have hardly said a word about one of my favorite changes we made to our house! Knocking down walls in our kitchen meant losing our interior basement entry. Since the washer and dryer were in the basement, we decided to relocate the laundry room. Our master bedroom has 1 closet - a very deep, narrow closet - and we thought it may be better used to store a stackable washer and dryer. I LOVE having my washer and dryer on our 2nd floor. This is so much better than descending into the basement for every load change. Not to mention, it meant we got to splurge on a new set of LG appliances. :) Thanks to Sid and Ken for re-routing the plumbing and setting up the new room!

I just returned from the blue/yellow store (don't want to attract spammers or searches by naming it) w/ all our kitchen cabinets, hardware, etc. Long trip (8 1/2 hrs), but the 10' moving truck drove quite nice and is very clean. Sheetrock guy (Andy Kitchen) will be here tomorrow to sand and hopefully tomorrow night Carrie can sand/prime the walls. Then, I'll install two of the lights and we'll start to address the flooring. We may have mentioned it, but we are keeping the original wood, but some patching, sanding, and sealing needs to be done. On Wed/Th, I'll install the two windows that are going in and then on Friday, if we have time, install the sink cabinet, in a temporary fashion, so we have that functional when I return from Seoul on the 7th of August (which I leave for this Sunday). Carrie will be at her parents starting this Sunday, so we won't need the cabinet necessarily installed.

Here are a couple of pics of our Living Room after we unloaded the truck with all of our cabinets!

This is our only bathroom, located upstairs with the bedrooms. We considered trying to fit in a new 1/2 bath with our kitchen renovation, but got greedy when we saw how large our kitchen could be without one. Maybe if we stay here long enough, we can add a bathroom onto the back of our house someday. Until then, we're happy with the one we have! It was dark turquoise when we moved in, now a pale blue to match one of the variety of blue/green swirls in the bathtub tile. (Not my first choice in tile, but it is clean and new - and is hidden most of the time with the curtain drawn!

Here are a couple of pictures of drywall in progress. We hired this out and are glad we did. Should be done by Tuesday, July 23, the same day our 2 new windows should arrive.

Here are pictures of Eva's and Owyn's bedrooms. After sharing a room last year, it is nice for each of them to have their own space. So far, they do a good job of allowing eachother to play freely in either room. Eva chose purple for her walls and Owyn decided on green. Feels good to have a couple of organized spaces in our house!

Tonight we are celebrating w/ some ice cream that we are done w/ the dirty work for now (when we redo the floors, I'm sure we'll get a little dirty). I am so relieved to be able to have someone else now cover the studs w/ 1/2" sheetrock. I finished foamboarding and all the prep work today, so now we are hoping this week that the promise the drywall guy made comes true: that we can prime the walls on Friday! We'll see...

I did forgo installing a pot filler faucet over the stove - would have been cool and handy, but not really all that necessary and wow, they are expensive faucets.

These pictures are 2 of 135 I took over the last few days as a way to catalog the wall cavities and stud locations (in addition to meticulous measuring and recording of that). A bit overboard, but if we want to put anything on the walls, I don't want to guess if the screw/nail will hit wood (and not wires). For example, we are going to support the peninsula countertop (5' x 4 1/2') w/ a rail along the wall and thankfully, there is a big header that will be great for that (esp if we go w/ a quartz surface ;) ).

I'll leave two more pictures here - one of a foam-face and the other of the Owyn and Eva on a day when they played very sweetly together.

Here is the screenless porch and new landscaping. Carrie and her mom worked tirelessly for a few days and wow, things are looking quite beautiful.

Last night we finished up the kitchen wiring and Jerry (my father-in-law) thankfully tackled the most difficult section. It involved wiring up two light series w/ the ability to switch them on/off from three locations in the kitchen. We also wired up 12 receptacles, a sink light switch and wiring overhead, a garbage disposal switch, all on 4 breakers. Also, we spent a good deal of time cleaning up tons of wiring in the basement and making sure other circuits were properly wired. For example, we found out that the basement and 2nd floor were all on the same circuit, so we split the circuits and wired a new switch in the basement. Oh yes, and we also wired up a light and GFCI switch out back on the deck so I can now charge my car close to the driveway! Thanks to Connie too for all the help w/ the kids and outdoor labor, as Carrie too was busy beautifying the outdoors (unfortunately we are in a hurry to go out and blogger isn't allowing me to post a picture of the front of the house).

So, my previous prediction was a bit ambitious, but I think that we are still on track to have the sheetrock hung in about a week.

The other project we have been involved in - squarebackev.blogspot.com - involved lots of wiring and now this week we'll be wiring inside the house. Carrie parents are here and her father and I will be totally rewiring our gutted kitchen. We will also be putting in a GFCI receptacle on the back deck in order for me to recharge my car and replace some knob-tube wiring in the basement and going upstairs. The plan is to get wiring, windows, and framing done by the beginning of next week, get someone to do the sheetrock hanging-taping-mudding (b/c my skills are next to nothing in that department), then hopefully get the cabinets (either ordered or pickup from the big blue/yellow store), set them, all before I leave for Seoul at the end of the month.

More will follow here, and this time I will post some pictures as I'm sure this workweek won't be like the previous one's as I totally cleaned out the basement over the weekend and got the car running, and the kitchen only has minor tear-out left. Carrie has been busy painting (both our kids' rooms - a 'dill pickle' green and a 'violet-ish' purple), landscaping, and keeping us all afloat w/ bills, laundry, food, childcare, cleaning, on and on......

We've been so busy w/ stuff around here that I've had no computer time to post updates, much less pictures. Our kitchen is now totally down to studs and Carrie has scrapped glue/laminate tacky stuff from about half the floor (w/ some help from my Mom too when they visited). I just installed a new a/c-heater duct to Owyn's bedroom (which will also function as a guest room) as the old one ran up one of the walls that we tore down w/in the kitchen. I've installed a lock on our basement door (now that from outside is the only entrance and it cannot be locked from w/in), torn out all insulation, ducts, most wiring from the kitchen, and am now going to do some electrical, framing, plumbing, and gas-line reconfiguration for our new design. We are going to look at windows tomorrow as we are planning on shrinking two of them, opening up another that was closed off, and closing off one where the fridge will be going. Pics to follow at some point. Hopefully sometime in the coming weeks we'll be able to get someone to hang, tape, and mud drywall b/c that is something I don't think I can do well enough yet (especially in such a visible room as the kitchen). Carrie has been working hard on the design and I think we are really going to be satisfied when it is all said and done...whenever that might be.

We are quite busy tearing off the paneling, lath, and plaster from our kitchen walls. Sid has just left today after a week of helping us and wow, he was a huge help. We plumbed and wired our laundry up on the second floor (a small 70" x 29" closet), tore out 3/4 of our kitchen, and most importantly, figured out that we can have a totally open kitchen layout (long story) since the center kitchen wall turned out to be a non-load bearing...so far, at least it appears so...

Once things settle down I'll post a long note w/ pics about the progress.

We are currently in Indiana, waiting to close on the house. We will move in hopefully on May 31st and then start some landscaping, kitchen remodeling, garage building, gutter replacement, and a few other "small" projects. This time around we are keeping things manageable and not getting into the 7 week, nothing-else-to-do type project mentality. As of now, C is busy uberplanning the kitchen w/ the blue/yellow store kitchen planner and wow, some great designs without having to move a load-bearing wall. As I'm a bit busy (mentally and phyically) with my EV conversion, I'm hoping to get into this come June when Sid and Kate visit to trade house labor (well Sid, as they are moving and could use framing assistance). So exciting, more to come as things develop past the research stages.