Goodbye Chicken Wire - Hello REAL Fence!

Joe and his dad took on one of the biggest eye-soars of the outside of our house - our fence. This was a project that Myra was REALLY crossing her fingers would get done. We had this old rusted wire fence that was just begging to be ripped down (although, some of the posts just didn't want to leave the backyard):

Then they replaced it with a beautiful cedar fence! This of course involved a lot of digging with the pic ax, cutting, and back-breaking sledge-hammering since it wasn't 'worth it' to rent a hole or trench digger...We had a nice 'hump' right where the fence needed to go to assure it wouldn't get taken down by the county if they widen the road (hence extra digging). They were 'lucky' that they 'only' had to do one side of the yard since our back neighbor had a fence already that he said we could connect too and our neighbors on the other side already had one too...Here's some pictures:

More 'Random' Updates

Well, there's no stopping them. Joe and his Dad crawled under the house (we won't say through what - I think the picture speaks for itself). This was all in the name of splicing off a pipe so that our automatic ice maker would actually get water to make ice!

They also worked on installing a couple new fans. One in the living room and one in the bedroom. Ahhhhhhhhhh.....our own version of 'air'......

A new mailbox ended up on the list as well, I know, I know - not really exciting - but the pictures were taken so here you go!:

More Doors!

Well, Joe and his dad are suckers for punishment. They moved on to the front door and our 'non-swinging', swinging door (it should've been a swinging door but was all crooked and just sort of shut from one side.

Here is a picture of the front door (old and new) and the threshold dad made for us:

And pictures of the old and new swinging door - this goes from the dining room to the kitchen:

New Interior Doors - was that on the list?

Well, Joe's parents arrived late last Friday night and Joe wasted no time in putting his dad to work! :-) They went out on Sat. with the mission of finding a new EXTERIOR door since the list for when his dad was here included replacing the exterior doors. While looking for this at the local Habitat Restore his dad found beautiful solid wood panel interior doors - our interior doors were all these flat ugly white doors that had peeling paint and highlighters on them. Here's a couple pictures of the old doors:

So, the plan changed! Of course, it wasn't so easy to replace (nothing is!) since we have metal door frames that have the hinge location set to a specific location - this meant A LOT of 'tweaking' the doors (moving hinges, shaving, sanding, painting)...

BUT, in the end, we ended up with beautiful interior doors!

We have a FULL Bathroom!!

Well, it has happened - we now have a half bath and a full bath. Joe finished up all the 'major' parts of the bathroom and now there are just some details left. Since this is Myra writing this - I can brag about what a FAB-U-LOUS job Joe did (the bathroom was completely his project). As you saw from a previous post he tiled the shower and did textured paint on the walls. Since then, he also tiled the floor. Moved the vanity from our half bath to this the full, fixed a leak in plumbing under the house and installed the new toilet. Not to mention all the little details...okay, enough of my bragging! Here are some more before/after pictures of the near finished bathroom...

From grafitti and holes in the wall (not to mention old toilet) to new textured paint, tiling and new toilet:

From layers and layers of wallpaper and an old light and sad looking vanity......

To a bathroom with our own fixtures and touch of style, or lack there of...you be the judge!

Well, that's all for now - more to come soon!!

Our smelly days are over ...

Well it's offical, the tile is up, the grout is dry and has been sealed. Now we can actually SHOWER at our house! Who knew we could go so long without a shower. Now its time to finish redoing the rest of the bathroom -- any volunteers?!. Heres some before and after of the shower! Take note of how excited Myra was the day we started ripping the shower apart!

Tour of our new pad

You've seen all the scary before pictures (if you don't remember just search through our old posts). Thought is was time to see some 'it's finally starting to get better' pictures after we are semi-settled in. Our low-tech virtual tour starts in the kitchen (the laundry room is actually through a door to the left by the fridge - but its not very exciting).

Next we bring you into our dining room/living room:

Going through our dining room leads us to our hall (the bookshelf is to the right as you walk through the arched doorway):

The green room is the baby's room (not really too much in it right now - more pictures in the future). Then our guest room is the chocolate/vanilla room (the ice cream room):

We'll skip the full bath for now....Here is a couple pics of our bedroom, the door is to the half bath:

A picture of the side yard and the backyard - see the New Windows blog entry for the front of the house.

That's the end our our tour of our new kick'in pad!