Backyard progress

 You may have seen the video I put on the blog a few months ago of my husband's red neck trenching. Here is the reward for his hard work. We put in grass. I love looking in the backyard and seeing color now. It has been so much fun to play in and lay in. We wanted to camp out there one night but couldn't get our daughter to settle down and ended up inside. But we love having a big area to play in.

Chickens

 One of my biggest fears in my life are birds! They scare me, they don't have eyelids and they are fast and don't have arms. They are just weird looking and I am afraid they are going to peck me. My husband's sister called us one day and told us one of the classes at the school she teaches at was going to be hatching eggs and wanted to see if we would like some of the chickens. The thought of healthy farm fresh eggs sounds so nice but I wasn't sure I wanted the chickens that came with it. My husband was very excited at the idea. I have to say the baby chicks were cute. (I pet one or two of them but could not hold them) but the adults are ugly. There is one rooster in the group and he is learning his voice. He sounds like an ahooga horn and is trying to compete with the other roosters in the morning around 5am. It does make me laugh. I am proud of myself though, I have helped feed them and corral them every morning as they have been flying out of the pen my husband made. They still terrify me though.

Moving the Kitchen Entrance

One of the things we didn't like about the house floor plan is it really felt like two different sides of the house. Which was one of the reasons for moving the kitchen entrance. We wanted to help the flow of the house. The first picture is looking into the family room from the bedroom hallway. This wall is the wall we opened to the kitchen.

This is the view from the family room looking into the snob room where the front door is. You can see the original opening to the kitchen right next to the front door.

This is how the view is now from the family room. We have the original opening closed off, and we used one of the old doors from the back of the house and a coat rack, and now have our new opening to the kitchen.

One of the treasures I left off our kitchen update is we now have a chandelier of the kitchen table.

The Kitchen

Here is some of the transformation/work in progress for the kitchen. This first picture is the way it looked when we first moved in. The washer and dryer in the kicthen, no water hook up for the refridgerator, drop ceiling with the old light and really closed off.

Phase two of the kitchen started to look like this. We moved the cabinets around and made plans to move the sink into an isle that would be parallel to the cabinets on the back wall. We still weren't in love with this idea and we would have had a very small island to fit in this space.

We then decided that we HATED that you walk into the kitchen right from the front door. We then had the idea to move the whole kitchen. So we moved the cabinets again and started opening up a new enterance to the kitchen.

As we removed the old cabinets I found this scrap of the original wall paper. It was very stylish in the 80's which makes me laugh now. I think I had something similar in my parents house growing up.

Once we opened the new entrance we had to move a bunch of electrical and then boarded up the old enterance. This was so nice to see closed off! I really did not like that if you looked through the front door of my house you could see most of the house.

 This is the view from the snob room.

 Next my husbands favorite part. Electrical! (I hope you caught onto my sarcasm there) He does a great job but does not enjoy this headache. We moved all the outlets that were on the wall, and had to run new plumbing. Luckily our house has a crawl space underneath which made it a lot easier to replumb. (Have I mentioned my husband can do anything?!) A special thanks to my husband's brother-in-law also for spending one of his days off helping my husband run a new line for our internet also. I am sure that is not how he wanted to spend his day off. And thank you to his wife for letting him help.

Next more dry wall. Seeing that I was 7-8 months pregnant during this project I have not been much help. The dry wall was about the only place I was useful. I have learned to mud and texture in my sleep.

Next, talk about blessings. A couple of days before we really started digging into the kitchen I had a friend stop by to visit. I started telling her about our plans for the kitchen and what we were going to do. She mentioned that her brother was doing some work to his house and would be getting rid of some cabinets and asked if we could use them. I wasn't sure what they would look like so I said sure thinking I was positive we could find a place for them somewhere. She brought them by the next day and they looked great. Especially compared to our 27+ year old small cabinets that I had poorly painted. Her brother had removed just some bottom cabinets, we were luckly and easily found some places that sold the matching cabinets and ordered new top cabinets. It has been GREAT to have the extra cabinet space. These have so much more room than the old cabinets we had planned to use and look so much better.

The wood behind the island and the counter tops are still from the old kitchen. We cut them down to use them until we can get new counter tops ordered and the rest of the island built. We still need to hang up the microwave but the kitchen is usable and I have space. So I am not complaining a bit!