Weekend whirlwind

How many family members does it take to reorganize a house? In our case, five, as Cortney's parents and Curtis joined us to tackle a broad range of fixes and furniture moves toward getting the house baby-ready. Jon started by installing a new shower head. Next up was the unexpected necessity of fixing the drainage hose for the dishwasher. This required a major battle with the floor to pull the dishwasher out (and we thought that with this trouble was behind us with the new linoleum!). After that was done, we could get down to the real business of hauling Cortney's office furniture downstairs, and the crib furniture brought in from the cars. Cortney's dad installed classy corner shelves and a key rack in the laundry room, and helped Jon assemble the new nursery furniture. Meanwhile, with the kitchen sink now available post-dishwasher-fix, Cortney's mom taught her how to make the family recipe for hand-made noodles that go into Bot Bie. After dinner, the crowning glory of the day was in hanging a special piece of metallic artwork over the stairs. This was definitely a team effort, but would really not have been possible without Curtis' Spider-Man moves. Affectionately known as "Ray," the artwork was courtesy of Cortney's godmother Lonnie. It was a favorite of Cortney's godfather, Bob, and its reddish-bronze hues are a perfect match for our maroon living room accents. It was a productive weekend. Still on the docket for March: wiring a light in the basement, taking a look at the weak water heater, and painting the nursery. We don't want to give away the nursery decor too early, but we've included a picture of the crib mid-assembly in the empty room and we'll give you this hint--we had to buy two colors of paint! More nursery info coming in three weeks. Thanks, family!

Preparation underway

Even though it's snowing outside, we're doing the spring cleaning now. The dust is flying as we cross paths, carting boxes for recycling upstairs and piles of office gear down. Even the front room is getting attention as it will be the new scrapbooking zone, with attached games closet. Though you wouldn't know it from this picture of the nursery pre-clean sweep, we finished emptying the room and couldn't be more excited to be picking up the crib set from Babies "R" Us this weekend.

Speaking of Babies "R" Us, we had a great time registering last week. We'd been to a few different baby stores and baby sections of department stores, and found there's really nothing that compares to their layout and selection. Sadly, they did not carry any Cap'n Crunch, so we couldn't match what we had on our wedding registry (sorry, Curtis). It took us the following week to make changes to the baby registry online, and now we're very happy with our cute, educational, and essential picks. Who wouldn't be excited about Bugs on Board?

Voila

Well, here it is, our new kitchen! We finally got everything cleaned up and put back in place after the floor installation, although there was so much dust from the whole process, we'll probably still be Swiffering it up months from now (just like finding Christmas tree needles around the house in July).

We completed straightening in time for a wave of Halloween trick-or-treaters, although we were disappointed that we didn't get many kids at all compared to last year. We even watched them cross the street in front of our house without stopping here for candy! Even though all of the lights were on, and we had a ghostly flag flying, we'll just have to chalk it up to our lack of jack-o-lanterns. Next time, we'll remember the essential step of pumpkin carving. 

Extreme Makeover: Kitchen Edition

Let the renovation begin! Last weekend, we started the kitchen transformation, beginning with a "lighthouse blue" coat of paint. But first, we had to do battle with the dust bunnies, scraps, and screws on top of the unfinished laundry room ceiling (the construction workers never cleaned up any surface too high up to see when they built our house). Then, we moved the furniture and laundry baskets into the living room, instantly turning them into accessible pet beds.

This weekend, we needed all the help we could get from Cortney's parents and Curtis, as we tackled the major work of ripping out the tile down to the subfloor. We tried every tool we had in search of the most efficient way to get it done in time: sledgehammer, crowbar, even hand axe! The chips were flying, and we didn't make good headway until Dad H went out and bought a masonry chisel which, when combined with the crowbar, finally lifted out major sections at once.

At the same time as this destruction was going on, constructive work was getting accomplished as well. Jon learned how to install a new faucet from Dad H, and Curtis and Dad H engineered a brilliant solution to the challenge of mounting a long string of three lights from a single, off-center electrical hole. By adding a board and running the wires along it to the middle, they made it look like it was part of the lamp all along.

Meanwhile, Mom H put on her green thumb and trimmed back our garden for the end of the season, including our eight-foot-tall coneflower. She even took care of the last lawn mowing of the year. Thanks for all your help, family! We couldn't have done it without you. 

Necessity is the mother of invention

When we first moved into our house last year, we really enjoyed the tiled floor in the kitchen. Over time, however, we have found it hard to keep clean, and the homemade job has shown its weaknesses at last, with a few tiles cracking, and others breaking loose from the blue grout altogether. So, it's time for a new floor! We got a great deal on a material that's a descendent of linoleum. It looks very classy, something like slate, and has a slight texture. We're still trying to decide whether it is more worth it to save money (tear out the floor ourselves) or save our backs from injury (and let the workers handle it all). This one change is inspiring a host of other customizations in the kitchen and laundry room, too--we'll spice things up with a new color of paint on the walls, get a better valance for the window, and spruce up the shelving system over the washer and dryer. Now if we can just manage to keep the pets from walking through the work area too much, we should be in good shape.