There is Hope

There is hope . . . There is hope that summer will really come.  I enjoy all seasons, but summer is definitely my favorite.  I guess it is the Californian coming out in me.  And the first thought of summer is swimming.  You should have heard the squeals and yells when the kids found out I picked up the Scera Outdoor Pool Summer Punch Pass this week.  What does that mean???  That means we WILL be going to the pool to spend lazy afternoons splashing and relaxing.  And this year I remembered to pick up the punch pass while it was still at a discounted price.  Anyone want to join us?

One goal I have for this summer is to document our yard.  I thought of it several times last year, but never did it.  We have an incredibly beautiful yard that blooms all spring, summer and fall.  I can say this because it does this without any help from me.  Before we purchased our home a crew of professionals maintained our yard for the nice elderly lady that lived her.  Trust me when I saw Mark and I DO NOT equal the crew of professionals.  Our goal at the end of the year is to have everything still alive.  We achieved it last year, so here is hoping for this year too.

Yesterday was the first of what will be many hours spent working in the yard.  And I only did it because they are now picking up our green waste trash and dang it all, if I'm paying for it we had better use it.  So I filled up the can with the leftovers from Fall.  And while cleaning out the flower bed found this . . .

 

Our very first bloom of the year.  It is so small and delicate, but brings so much hope for what is to come.  I am no gardener despite the Horticulture class I took in High School from Mr. Whetten.  All I remember from that is you are not supposed to water your lawns at night because the water will sit and rot the grass.  So forgive me if I can't tell you the name of every cute flower.  All I need to know is that they are pretty and how to keep them alive.  And it is questionable whether I even know that.

Well today when I went to take the picture of our first flower, right next to it I found this . . .

 

Another sign that Spring is coming.

New Cabinets in the budget???

When we moved into our house just over a year ago we did A LOT of work on the house to fix it up.  But one thing we could not even begin to touch in the budget was fixing the water damage on the kitchen cabinets.  They looked like this.

And like this

We wondered what to do and how to fix it, but never took the time to research it.

Then someone came into our home and kindly suggested a product to use. . . Restor-A-Finish 

We were sent to an Antique Store in Springville, but when we finally made it they were out and it had been on order for awhile.  Then thanks to the miracle of the Internet we discovered Home Depot carried the product.  So $20 later and about 30 minutes our cabinets now look like this

And like this

We could not believe what a difference it made.  Hopefully you can tell by the pictures.  Unless you knew to look closely you would never know there had ever been water damage.  And there was no painful stripping of finishes, sanding and restaining.  Just wipe and go, yipee!!!

So if anyone else out there is struggling with water damage on your cabinets, here is the solution.

Enjoy!

Our Forever House

As I mentioned earlier we sold our Townhouse a year ago and bought a house in a cute little neighborhood just 2 miles North of where we were.  We have fallen in love with our house and feel like we will be here the rest of our lives.  Our house was built in the 1970's so we wanted to do a few fix ups before we moved in.  So I thought I'd share some of our before and after pictures of what we did.  But as I'm looking at our before pictures apparently a child was in charge of taking pictures that day.  I don't have as many as I thought we did.

Here is what the outside of the house looked before and after.  We removed the white thingys on the front even though they were one of Mark's mom's favorite accents to the house!  And as I posted before we have painted the shutters and door to remove the baby blue.

The biggest change we made was removing all the old carpeting, stripping wallpaper and painting EVERY wall in the house.  Don't you just love the Teal carpet and the 80s wallpaper that was here!

And the baby blue bedroom with rose carpet!  Trust me when I say NONE of the wallpaper was easy to strip.  Lori S can testify to that.  She was such a gem and helped with so many hours of stripping.    And I now realize we never got pictures of the half walls in the living room that we took down.  I think that was one of Mark's favorite projects.  Who knew he had so much pent up aggression in him?  Of course that project was not as easy as we had hoped and required an Electrician to come in and move the light switches to the wall.  But we do not regret that choice.  It really opened up the living room.

And here are some pictures of our house today, literally!

We have so many compliments on the color of the living room.  I'm no decorator, but I do really love this room.  And someone else did pick out the colors for me.

And our kitchen is just a little bigger than the townhouse kitchen, by about about 3 times.  We took out the light over the table and installed the ceiling fan which was great during the summer months.

I'm not good at visualizing things that aren't there so I was really excited when I came up with this idea.  The bathroom off the laundry room and kitchen had this not so beautiful tub in it (picture on the left)  Since we had two other tubs and another shower we didn't see much use for it.  So we ripped out the tub and installed these lockers on the right.  You can't see in the picture, but there are 3 lockers where the tub used to be so each child has their own spot.  It has turned the bathroom into a great mud room for the kids.  We were able to customize the insides with shelves and baskets.  Don't look closely, they all need cleaning out.  But you have no idea when the doors are closed how messy they are inside.  I LOVE it!

And I love my yellow office on the main floor.  Especially the built in shelves in the closet left from the last owner.

And we don't miss the blue master bedroom.  We think ours is a little more calming.

And if you have ever toured the house with John you know about his Captain Midnight bedroom.  We were at the paint store and I was trying to convince him he did not want a black wall and when I told him this color was called Captain Midnight he fell in love with it.  I think I had to put 4 layers of paint on the wall.  And I'm sure the day I want to paint it lighter I will have to put another 4 layers, but for now it is a fun accent wall in a little boys room.

And the girls have a fun Lilac room.  One day they may have doors on their closets (but don't ask Mark about it).

We didn't do much with the basement besides adding our hand me down couches to the family room.  

But you can't tour the house without seeing our incredible food storage room.  We are grateful for the rolling shelves for cans on the one side and narrow shelves on the other side of the room.  We only pray the toilet above this room never breaks and floods the house.

I hope you enjoyed the tour.  We love our little piece of heaven on earth.  And I'm glad the pictures don't show ALL the projects still waiting to be done on the house.

Timber

On Wednesday our Lilac Bushes went from looking like this

To looking like this after six long hours and a lot of sore muscles

I think Mark's claustrophobia was getting the best of him.  And I don't think these bushes have ever been cut back.  They were probably 14 feet high with lots of little starts at the bottom.  I didn't get a picture before Mark started thining out the bottom, so the first picture already had a bunch of stuff removed from down below.  He started the project and then found out this probably wasn't the right time to trim them, but he just could not stop.  So he took a day off work to get them done.  Of course I could not let him do it alone, so I pitched in and helped.  And our sweet neighbor helped out too.  We had to ask permission to go in his yard to reach some of it and he came out and helped us load up the truck and trailer, thanks Karl!  It took THREE loads to the green waste dump to get rid of it all.  Now lets hope the grass doesn't go into shock from suddenly seeing the sun again.

We found the bird house again in all our trimming.  When we moved it we did not know this exsisted and didn't discover it until the Spring after the snow had melted away.

Sorry to the other 3 neighbors behind us who probably hoped it was the Chinese Elm on the other side of the yard that was coming down when they heard the saw.  It is probably 40 feet high and dumps trash on the yard in Spring AND Fall.  But when the first bid we got to remove it came in at $1800 we have kept looking around.  Now no one will even come bid on it and they haven't even seen it.  I'm afraid one of these days Mark is going to rent a lift and we may end up replacing everyones fence when he is through.  That could cost more than the original bid.  So if you know of someone who likes to cut down trees for cheap, let us know.

Help, my kitchen turned pink!

Okay, I woke up on this beautiful Saturday morning to my nice taupe kitchen. By this afternoon it had turned pink all on its own. The things you don't think about during home repair. This weekend we decided to restain the front and back decks along with the picnic table. Basically because sitting at the picnic table with shorts on was risking the life of your legs. Something had to be done. I know you are all asking yourself if the home repairs will ever stop, trust me we stopped asking that long ago when we realized the answer was NO!

Friday we spent power sanding the main surfaces. I also spent a little time with the power saw (you know the one I make fun of my husband for buying) attacking the bottom of the pine tree. Amazing how using a few power tools will make you feel better. The kids were much better than the day before. Not sure if the saw had anything to do with it!

Saturday Mark opened the 5 gallon bucket of what we thought was stain that was left by the last owner. I'm sure it was stain at one time in its life, but not anymore. So off to Home Depot for our first trip of the day. It always takes us two to four trips to Home Depot per project. Good thing we live just up the street! He took a board with him to match the color and they did a great job. So we began the LONG process of applying the stain on the wood, cement and everywhere else it wasn't supposed to be. The front was a piece of cake because it is under the porch and never gets the sun. The back took twice as much stain as planned (hence the multiple trips) and much longer. Several hours later we came into the house to discover our lovely PINK kitchen. The stain had faded so much on the back we had never noticed it before. But with our new coat of redwood stain the sun reflects off it and casts a lovely pink hue into the kitchen. I guess in a few years it will fade again and we will be back to our original kitchen color. I'd show you a picture of our lovely deck, but I don't have it in me to find the camera!

Death to the Powder Blue

The powder blue shutters and door are finally gone after nine months of our ownership. I feel bad that Edna had loved the color so much and we wanted to get rid of it so much. I'm sure Gail H is sad every time she sees us change the outside of the house because I know she misses her good friend. But the powder blue just really wasn't us. Nor was the wagon wheel (sorry!)

We always wanted to paint the townhouse door black, but when the neighbor painted hers we didn't want to seem like we were copying her. So when we moved in we planned on painting the house door and shutters black. When the L's just to the East of us painted their door black last Fall we were a little sad, but decided since our walls are not connected it wouldn't seem so copy cat. We hope they don't mind!

Mark worked hard last week on removing the shutters, spray painting them, and putting them back up. Somehow painting the front door is always my job. So I decided today was a good day to have the door opened all day. My painting arm was out of practice. The scary painting clothes came out and I began to conquer the door. Three coats later most of the blue is gone. We still need to paint the door jam, but I think it is going to be white to match the siding. We think it makes the place distinguished looking!