KCparsons

Grandma & Grandpa Cramer were with us this year over Valentine's Day. Eva & Owyn loved baking and decorating Valentine cookies with Grandma.

Here are a couple of close ups of the tile & trim. The trim will be painted white, eventually.

In these pics we see the trim that Ken made and put up around the windows and doors as well as the newly tiled backsplash, completed by Carrie and her dad. Other new finishes include the peninsula (with a temporary counter top), the 4 stools and the lighting above. We love having an eat-in kitchen now.

I'm hoping to get more pics from a friend, but here are a couple of pictures of Eva & Owyn singing a beautiful song for their Christmas program at church this year. Eva sang every word and smiled proudly the whole time while Owyn smiled and waved at Mom and swayed to the music. Sometimes when he waved, an older girl in the back row made hime lower his arm - she knew this was not part of the gig!

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!