The Demolition: er, Remodel...Making it Ours

This post was going to to wait until after I returned to Michigan and took some more photos of the work Matt has done while we are gone....but, due to illness (Matt) and an exorbitant amount of "regular", paying work (Matt) and some impatient friends; I am going to post what has happened up to this point.

KITCHEN:

Here you see the kitchen as it was in November, just after our offer had been accepted. Notice the large center island and cabinets suspended from the ceiling. When I stood at the kitchen sink  and looked to the bar area, all I saw was cabinets. Matt and I dreamed of removing them and talked about recruiting my Dad this summer to help. Once we'd closed our good friend Dave offered to help paint the house. He came by to have a look at the house and get a good idea about work load and prep work, etc. He talked us into jumping in full boar and doing basically everything we want to do now, while the house is empty.

Thus we began removing the cabinets. The cabinets were installed in 1960, as we learned from an order slip taped to the top

of them, by the Amish. The Amish apparently make up for lack of power tools by using extra strong nuts and bolts and screws! It took us the better part of a day to remove the cabinets! Of course we had a dog and kids running around, but nonetheless it was a job. We removed the cabinets one at a time and then removed the framing.  Once the cabinets were out the amount of light in the work areas of the kitchen greatly increased and I didn't

feel like I would be cooking in a cave! We will repaint the walls and eventually (way down the road), we'll redo the floors and have the cabinets refinished. For now though, it will be the nicest kitchen I have ever owned!

DINING ROOM:

This is the wallpaper that was on the walls

in the dining room. It is actually quite pretty and I have thought 

many times that my mother would have liked it. The striped paper 

was on the lower half and the flower print on the upper half as you can see in the full room shot. Again, we weren't going to remove the paper originally because it still looked ok and I thought the removal would be horrific. However, the paper pulled off very easily and in a matter of 10 minutes it was completely removed!

Now there is a lot of prep work to be done if we want to paint it. I am not convinced that I want to. I think we'll explore some wall paper for the upper half and paint on the lower half, though you never know what will happen once the creative process begins.

Other than removing nails and spakling holes, we haven't done much. The whole house painting is planned for the 23rd and before then we have a lot to do!!! After that we have a lot to do!!! I am just feeling very thankful that it is winter and we can focus on the inside of the house before things start growing and need attention outside of the house...

A True Vacation

We've once again packed our bags and bounded off across the country to sunny California! Sam, Arlo and I braved the below freezing temperatures of central Michigan to fly (on two flights, one of which was 5 hours long!) here and visit my mother and father-in-law or a.k.a, Grandma and Grandpa for a week. The weather is amazing here! 65 degrees and sunny! I wasn't even sure how to pack for such warm temps. I am not complaining, in fact, I am so relaxed and the boys are sleeping so well from all of our park play!This afternoon, after more running and climbing at the park, Arlo is

 napping and Sam is having quiet time, Pat, my mother-in-law, is working and I am sitting by the window enjoying the sunbeams, a cup of coffee,

 and my knitting blogs. I had planned on knitting while the boys were occupied, but have since been inspired to post about my recent knitting projects and a few other things.

I finally finished Andy's socks! It was my goal to 

complete them before we left for this trip so I would only have to bring along enough supplies for one knitting project...and sure enough the library had Season 3 of the Gilmore Girls just in time for me to knit like a mad woman and finish two days before we left. I am very happy with how they turned out and they are in the mail on their way to my dear brother-in-law. And onto my next project....Playground Mittens for Sam! I am using some left over wool from a variety of sock projects past. It should be a quick knit and lots of fun as they will be my first mittens ever!

If you haven't figured it out already I finally got my Ravelry invite and have been adding to my notebook as I get pictures taken and time to do it. I am called 

NaturalKnits...come find me!

In between my homemade chocolate biscotti binges and park play outings I have been trying 

to help with the little bits of house chores here...including laundry! I took this photo yesterday morning and realized how big my first baby is

 getting. Even though he's been in underwear for months they look so small in amongst the heaps of adult laundry at home...here hanging on a laundry line, I realized how big they are...how big he is! The photo on the left I took in Washington. Arlo had grown out of his newborn cloth dipes and into the medium size dipes and I had a little teary realization that he keeps growing too...ugh.

I have many realizations while hanging laundry. I guess it is a sort of meditation time for me....

So a real vacation for me. We closed on the house the demolition began very soon after. It is chaotic there with our hearts in the new house and wanting to be there all the time, but our things in the rental and it is necessary to be there at least a couple times a day. I was packing lunches and dinners and toys and spending all day at the new house. I feel very relaxed and removed from what is happening there and I am going to enjoy it! I have some good photos of the progress, but I'll post that later with good descriptions of what we've found our plans for the Forest Road house...