My Summer Project

I'm one of those people that always has a list of "projects" I'd like to accomplish in my spare time. Some of them sit on that list for a long time because daily life and other things usually are a higher priority. This summer, I decided to tackle a project that's been on that list for about 5.5 years now. It was about that long ago that we acquired some old furniture from my parents' house, including a bedroom set consisting of 2 large chests of drawers and a nightstand. They had an oak finish which I do not prefer, and the hardware was in need of some updating. It took me about 6 weeks from start to finish to do all 3 pieces, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. The worst part of it was stripping the old finish off. It was a messy, smelly job that was then followed by a light sanding. I used a gel stain (only because the color I liked best only came that way), and it took 10-12 hours to dry in between coats which was partly why it took me so long. I had to do 3 coats, but the difficulty was that the sides and top were a veneer and didn't absorb the stain as well. Most of the veneer took 4 coats.

Here's a before shot of one of the dressers.

Here's what the drawers looked like after just one coat. The bottom drawer is the bare wood.
And here's the finished product. It really looks much better in person - especially since our camera is not the greatest.

Here's the other dresser (sorry no before shot).

And here's the nightstand.

It certainly took much longer to do this than I originally anticipated, but I'm very pleased with the end result. And I'm happy to check this off my project list.

Home Improvement Projects

This summer we had three major home improvement projects we hoped to tackle, and now that summer is just about over, we're happy to say that we got them done!

As I mentioned in a previous post way back in July, Nate and his dad built a shed for us. Nate had to do a lot of the finishing touches himself (shingle the roof and install the door and a vent), so it wasn't actually completely finished until a while later. But here's the finished product:
It's nothing fancy and only 6'x8', but it meets our needs. And now our garage doesn't feel so cramped. :)
Labor day weekend we decided it was finally time to stain our deck. I wish I had a good before picture, but let's just say that most of the previous stain had worn off and ugly, gray wood was what remained. This definitely turned out to be a huge project, and it's not something I ever want to do again. Now our deck doesn't look so ghetto. The only downside is that it's now even more evident how much we need to paint the exterior of our house. I don't even want to think about that project.

Our final project was to have a new front door and sidelights installed. Our old sidelights were ugly yellow 1970s stained glass and the last bit of the 70s that remained in our house. I also HATED the front door.
And here's the new one:

BEAUTIFUL!! We love it!

Bathroom Renovation

On the 1st of July, we finally got around to one of the main remodeling projects we've had on our "to do" list since we moved into our house a year ago - completely renovating our main bathroom. I had all sorts of plans to take great before and after shots, but Nate got a little carried away in the demo process and started tearing things apart before I had a chance . Luckily, we did have one shot among some photos we took after we moved in, and here it is:

I have to point out the hideous wall of mirror tiles behind the tub and the not so attractive lighting and medicine cabinet. When we moved in, all of the walls and the ceiling were an extremely ugly peach color, so we painted everything white as a minor improvement until we could get around to the remodel. The sad thing this picture lacks is a view of the nasty vinyl floor tiles that had huge gaps where the sub floor was showing and they were chipping and peeling away in places.

Here are some after shots:

This was Nate's first tiling experience and he did a fabulous job on the tub surround and floor (with a little help from a couple of his coworkers). Notice the beautiful accent tiles in the tub surround. We did keep the original vanity but sanded it down and stained it a different color and replaced the vanity top and faucet. There's also a new mirror, lighting, towel bars, and toilet. The walls are now a light sage green color which we then accented again with the rugs on the floor.

We originally estimated we could do the remodel for around $1000, but the grand total ended up being closer to $1400 which is still cheap for a bathroom remodel. It's not super fancy or high end, but it's a major improvement from the eyesore that it was. The project is now complete except for a little accessorizing (something to hang on the wall over the toilet and on the opposite wall over the towel bar). The whole project took just over 2 weeks to complete since we lost a little steam at the end and it took a while to get around to finishing little things like caulking and paint touch ups. But we're done and very happy with the overall results!

First Snow Fall of 2008

We all awoke this morning to the great white stuff falling from the sky. Bridget loved to just sit by the window and watch it fall.

By the time we got done with church (4:00 PM) the snow had stopped and it was looking much nicer. Now Nate just has to clean up the mess from the two branches that broke off our tree in the front yard.

Resolution of a Nightmare

So much has happened since our last post, and I'm never one to tell a brief story but I'll try to be as brief as possible in explaining our nightmare of an experience with closing on our home.

We closed on Wednesday, August 6th (my 28th birthday by the way), and everything went very well at closing. Bridget was well behaved and the paperwork was all signed in about 30 minutes. The nightmare didn't begin until we were finally able to get a key to the house and get in on Thursday evening. One of the first things we noticed besides the filthy condition of the house was that the seller stole the refrigerator which was supposed to stay according to the contract. After contacting our agent we found out that the seller was out of town for an unknown amount of time and no one seemed to be able to tell us when we'd get it back for sure. This was extremely irritating because of how much of a necessity a fridge is, and that no one could give us any answers. We kept being told it would be returned by a certain time, and then it wouldn't happen. It was getting to the point that we were feeling our only option was to buy a fridge and hope that the seller would pay for it, and that's an expensive risk we really didn't want to take. At some point in the middle of the night Saturday night, part of the filthy dirty refrigerator was returned to our garage where we discovered it on Sunday (missing doors, shelves, and trays). I should also mention that the seller had failed to give us garage door openers and the gift cards we'd been promised as a credit for some other issues we'd been having with the master bath remodel. Anyway, here's what the fridge looked like:

After several more phone calls and still no real answers we were starting to feel like our only option might be to take the guy to small claims court. I ended up calling his fiance who happens to be a girl we know from the singles ward we attended. Things got more and more heated and emotional as we talked until she wouldn't talk to me anymore. She said she would have the rest of the pieces delivered Sunday night, and I told her I just wanted a clean, working fridge put back where it's supposed to be. Monday mornning I got a call that the agent was at our house with the rest of the fridge, one garage door opener, and our gift cards. Then he called me a while later to say that this girl wanted to come over with some guys that night to clean the fridge, move it into the kitchen, and put it back together for us. She even brought ice cream and root beer as a peace offering. So we now have our fridge and most of the other details sorted out.

The other stressful thing that happened right after we got into the house was discovering that the swamp cooler was leaking into the master bedroom closet. Nate discovered it Friday afternoon, fixed the leak, and tried to clean up the water as best he could. Sadly, when he got to the house Saturday morning the ceiling had completely fallen in because of the weight of the wet insulation and sheet rock, so there was a giant mess all over the bedroom. Here's a picture of the closet. So now we have to get that repaired, and hopefully we won't have any more problems with the swamp cooler until we take it out in 3 weeks to put central air in.

Another piece of good news in addition to the fridge problem being resolved is that we had amazing help from family and friends on Saturday getting most of the upstairs painted. The entire upstairs was in great need of a paint job, and all 3 bedrooms and the living room got painted on Friday and Saturday. Now we have just the dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and hall to do. Thanks so much Desaray, Sabrina, Megan, Corey, Emily, Andy, Candice, Megan, Jessica, and Matt for all of your help over the weeked!

More House Details

Since Nate failed to post any details about the house, here you go...

The house is 1792 square feet and has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The basement is a finished laundry room/bathroom and family room. The yard is just under 1/4 acre and has a garden for me to spend my afternoons and evenings.

We are close to a golf course and the Roy aquatic center and in what appears to be a quiet neighborhood (we hope this holds true).

Our House...

So, we finally did it--we bought a house!

When all is said and done (and everything passes inspection, etc.) we will close on August 6th (Kimberly's birthday) and hope to be able to move in during the next week. We are excited to start this new adventure and scared to death to be putting down roots, no matter how shallow, in Roy.

Although we don't have an exterior picture (one will be added soon), here are some interior ones Kimberly snapped during one of our quick visits: