What is that hunk of junk?

So, for a little over forever I've been wanting a zero turn mower. An opportunity came up last week where I could get the ultimate in zero turns, a front deck commercial Grasshopper. Granted, it is used as it was owned by someone that had a lawn business on the side so it is not nearly new, but it is solid and functional, and with some care it will look as good as it runs.












When Kristina saw it in the garage her first comment was "we paid how much for that?!" I assured her that we got a great deal, so now I have to get it fixed up to show it.

I needed a project.

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The room is finished!

We were able to find a picture of how the living room looked before we made any changes. A little dated.




I think we brought it forward a few years.




The furniture fits better now, especially after extending the wall.




And the end tables and coffee table that we redid fit the room.




Our first attempt at granite. We made templates and had a local company cut the pieces for the countertops. Then we picked them up and installed them and the tile backsplash. For the record, even a piece of granite that is just barely over 4 feet long is still heavy. Like 170 pound heavy. Very thankful that I have a great helpmate.




After it's all finished we love it and can't think of anything we wish we had done differently. This is the first project that we have taken this much time on and worked on the details as much as we did this time. There's no telling what we could do with a room with actual plumb walls, a level ceiling, and 90 degree corners. I do know what we can do now - we can take a break. This six week transformation deserves a rest from renovations.
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Braces off / Braces on

Over the past three weeks, a couple of smiles have had transformations in our household.
Joshua got his braces off,




And Jacob got his on.




Jacob wasn't as excited about it as Joshua was for some reason.
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Living room update

It's been two weeks since my first post about our living room project. Did I mention that it started out with us just planning on painting? Here's a pictorial update.




We decided while we were at it we would take out the outdated "can" lights in front of the fireplace and put new LED recessed lighting at all four corners of the recessed ceiling. And while we are at it why not knock out the corners and make the octagon a rectangle like every contractor since 1980 has done.




I've been told by a reliable Facebook friend that duct tape is up to code to be used in place of wire nuts. Regardless, I went the UL approved route.




A lot of drywall work causes a lot of dust.




We have 90 degree corners!




Oh yeah, we decided while we're at it we wanted this wall longer so we brought the opening in about a foot. Why not?




Look, our garage received a delivery of cabinets!




My finished masonry project. I had to measure in for the cabinets and cut bricks to build up the top two rows and then did a mortar smear application on all bricks except for the top layer on the hearth. It's now much lighter after drying.




Top cabinets mounted, bottoms just sat in place. Still have to frame in above the fireplace and drywall it.




All cabinets installed, templates for the countertops made, outlet and conduit for TV installed. Now I can try to find someone to cut some countertops for me. And start the fun process of installing baseboards and crown molding.
Someday we'll be finished.
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Last year I had intentions of getting back into this blog and we see how that worked out.
Lets give it a other shot.
It works out well that we are also in another home improvement project (granted the way it looks and feels right now the "improvement" part is up for debate).
We are working on our front living room. If you look back to the beginning of the blog you will see it as it was right after we removed the paneling, but I have yet to find any pics with the paneling intact.
Here it is from two years ago showing the room pretty much as it was when we began two weeks ago.




We decided that we really needed to paint and touch up some rough spots in the wall.
This is what happened next.




Unfortunately it got a lot worse than this but thanks to my lovely wife's help picking up we kept it to a mild disaster at any given point.
We decided the fireplace needed updating, the cabinets needed replacing, the corners in the raised ceiling needed to be squared off, one wall needed to be expanded, four outlets moved, two more installed, and the two recessed lights needed to be replaced with four new LED ones.
Hard to picture now, but it will come out very roughly like this:




We will smear the remaining brick, and install a capstone on the hearth.
As it is tonight all drywall is in and the second coat of compound is on. (So is the dust). I have several rounds of sanding and feathering out more compound, and then the texture process.
Then, finally, the paint.
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Location:It's been a year, so it's time for a project and another shot at this blogging

Summer Transformation

Before

After

Before



After

Over the past four years we have spent countless hours transforming the interior of this old house. We finally got around to doing something on the exterior. What a difference a few months can make. We learned several things on the journey this summer. First, hiring a painter, someone to install gutters, and a landscape architect are all great ideas. As much as we love do-it-yourself projects, time has become a luxury in recent months. As of December I will be done with school. I am looking forward to reclaiming my evenings and weekends and getting back to projects. For now, I will just enjoy the benefits of someone elses labor.

What happened here?

It's been eleven months since we last posted.  Yes, we are still alive.  No, I do not have false precepts that anyone still follows after this time, but I'm writing anyways.  I'll have to catch up with a montage of pictures of what has happened in the last year, but for now this is it.  More to come.

So, what have we been doing?

We have allowed this blog to fall horribly behind.  It gets to a point that you don't want to post because its been so long, but we need to post to remind ourselves why we've been so busy.  There's not enough space or time to write about it all, so I will have to rely on pictures.

Joshua earned his Arrow of Light award and crossed over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.  He quickly became active with a local Boy Scout Troop and a week later was visiting Stennis Space Center and camping on the coast.  Just a few weeks later he was off to northern Arkansas for Scout Camp for seven days.  (Mom did ok).

We have had the opportunity to raise a garden with the help of our neighbors.  They graciously offered to plow up some land and to give us a section to give it a try.  The boys have been really enjoying it and it is exciting to see so much come from such little seeds.  So far we are getting okra, yellow squash, and corn.  We have about one more week and the cantaloupes will be ready, and our acorn squash will be behind them.

Now then, our squash is quite prolific, so if you are around and need any please come by!  We are eating it like crazy, freezing it, and giving it away, but it keeps on coming!  The beef, chicken, squash,  pineapple kabobs turned out good, but one can only eat so much.  We will have the same issue with the cantaloupes and acorn squash once they are ready.

We have also been busy just working in the yard.  We cut a tree on the side of our yard and just a week later a storm came in and took out a large oak next to it.  Two trees out really changed that side of the yard.  At least it helped me have an excuse to buy a new chainsaw.

We have also had the opportunity to discover a few new places around the area.  One of these is Brent's Soda Fountain.  It is the old Brent's Drugs founded in 1946 that they kept the soda shop and converted the rest into a burger joint.  It is a neat place and the boys really enjoy it.

This past week we had dirt and six pallets of sod delivered to try to get areas that have never seen grass covered.  It looks like it will take about two more pallets but it will look really nice once it is all done.  Unfortunately, as we were trying to spread dirt and lay sod Friday and Saturday we had thunder storms and torrential down pours.  It did make having mud fights with the boys a lot easier.

It has been a really busy summer with both of our jobs and with Kristina going to school as well.  She takes her semester finals tomorrow night and will have a break for a few weeks.  We are leaving for Pensacola Beach Tuesday for some down time and then we will have one week before the boys start back to school.  It's hard to believe that we will have one in middle school.  They are growing up so fast.

Hopefully we can keep everyone up to date better going forward.  No promises.

I have a blog?

I was browsing my facebook feed tonight and clicked over to my profile. I noticed the link to my blog and realized I have sort of abandoned it. I guess I should work on that, but life has been busy. As of March I started back to school. Somehow those 115 hours of credit I have from the late 90's don't mean much if I don't have the degree. Working full time and going to school a couple nights a week can be draining, but hopefully it will all be worth it.

In other news my kids are growing up way too fast. I will have a sixth grader in August, and I am not ready for Middle School. I guess I will just have to deal with it.

The picture above is from Easter. We rarely dress up, so we had to get a picture to commemorate the occasion.

Hopefully, I will find a few minutes to blog again within the next five months.

Boys and their toys

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Christmas Traditions

As John and I began putting decorations away, I remembered our longest running Christmas tradition. In 1995, John and I celebrated our first Christmas as husband and wife. To honor this special event, we purchased an engraved ornament. Being young and clueless, we didn't know much about ornaments. We went to the local Wal-mart and picked out an ornament that could be engraved. They didn't have a machine to do the engraving back then, so the nice lady at the jewelry counter free handed it. The next year we discovered the Things Remembered Kiosk in the Denton mall, and they became our place to get ornaments for many years. When we moved to Mississippi, we faced a new challenge. The nearest Things Remembered was in Monroe, LA. Not exactly convenient, but we drove to Monroe to keep with tradition. The next year we discovered New England Ornaments and began ordering online. Much easier than driving to Monroe.
This year we broke from tradition in that we ordered ornaments early. We will not be repeating this next year since John and I ordered the exact same ornament this year as last. In years past we have gotten the ornaments out and reviewed them to be sure we didn't duplicate. Oh well, it makes for a fun memory.

Christmas 2010

In 2005, we began the tradition of going to a Hibachi Grill for Christmas Eve dinner. This year was no exception. Even though Jacob complains a lot and insists he doesn't like Hibachi, we press on. This year he discovered some items on the menu that agreed with him, so the complaining was much less. I guess our perseverance paid off.In 2007, we began the tradition of including a family photo with our Christmas card. Here is this year's photo. I love looking at previous year's photos and seeing how much we change year to year.We have several other traditions that are essential. On Christmas eve the kids open one present each, but I get to choose which one. It is always pajamas. Once the boys have their new PJs on, John reads the Christmas story. This year was a little different in that the boys read the story. Jacob read from the book of Matthew and Joshua from the book of Luke. I like this new twist on the tradition.

On Christmas morning, the boys get up to tear into all the loot. Santa isn't a big player around here. He usually leaves a couple of things in the stockings, but we've never really put emphasis on him. This year the boys got lots of bigger kid toys. The go kart and doodlebug are sure to keep me on edge, but the boys love them. They also got DSI XL's and various video games. Jacob asked for Lego's, but not little kid Legos. He wanted Star War Legos with lots of little pieces. I am just hopeful he will keep them picked up and out of the dogs reach. Oscar loves to eat little toys. After the gifts are opened, John makes breakfast. This year he treated us to cinnamon rolls using a recipe from the Pioneer Woman. According to the recipe, it makes 8 servings.She must be serving some hungry people, because the above picture is what we had left after we finished breakfast. I think breakfast may last all day. They were very yummy.

Now to go enjoy more of this lovely day with my family. Merry Christmas.

It has to be close to Christmas when you hear this on the radio

Finally heard it for the first time this year on Thursday while running some errands. The holiday season must be here.

Trick or Treat

Joshua didn't have a preference as to what he was going to be for Halloween and Jacob was going to be a baseball player. After watching tv last night we got the idea for Joshua to be a chick magnet and then Jacob decided to be a letter to the Great Pumpkin.







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It's time to get home

Now on the last day of the trip all I look forward to is getting home. Back just three years ago home time was the rarity and hotel life was the norm. I don't miss those days.

With that said, downtown Tampa is a nice area, especially now while the humidity is low.









Just watch out for the iguanas.



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