Is it wood!? Is it tile!? It's Wood Tile!!!!!

Yep we finally did it!! We are right in the middle of re-tiling our front entry way, hallway, and office!! Whoopeeeee!! Bye-Bye ugly sky blue tile with nasty grout!!! Next stop, kitchen!!!!

We have been wanting to re-tile these areas since before we moved into the house. Before we decided this was the house for us, we felt bad for whoever it was that was stuck with such hideous tile! We lived with that tile for nearly four years, and this-years tax return helped out immensely!! We paid off a couple of student loans(one more to go) and treated ourselves to tile flooring!! Sometimes I wonder what took us so long, and then I realize how many other things we have improved in the meantime!

We also decided we wanted to raise the floor in the office roughly 6 inches to better define the space. We built a floor out of many many many 2x4s, two layers of 3/4 inch plywood, and a layer of cement tile board. Such a CHORE!!! We spent nearly two weeks just getting that subfloor put in to be sure there wasn't a single spot that flexed or creaked. Finally when it was aaaaallllll done, it looked ridiculous... I was so eager to get the tile put down to cover our odd cement board floor!


So a little background... You know how we got rid of our living room popcorn ceiling recently? That was the product of a deal I made with B... He called my bluff and went through with it... The deal was that if he removed all the popcorn ceiling and cleaned up the mess without my help(because i HATE that job), then I would let him rip up the tile in the hallway and live with bare concrete floors for however long it took for us to retile.... Biiiig mistake... I truly did not think he would take me up on it!!! Nearly four months later, we are finally covering up my mistake!! Hahaha I love that man.

Okay so imagine a concrete floor that had stain on it from when they originally stained the trim in the hallways, with a raised cement board floor... So ridiculous looking! I hope you enjoy the pictures!!!

We haven't completely finished because we still need to seal up the baseboard trim with caulking and repaint the trim etc, but i put up some pictures anyway to give you the gist of what we did :)

New Car --- Finally!!!

Well crazy times call for crazy measures!!

Things have been crazy busy in this crazy house over the past month or so. After B's visit, he decided that being away was not going to work out for us anymore! He is home now and starts a new job on Monday.

In the past month we have taken the popcorn crud off the last of our ceilings, replaced a hall door, and put tint on our big sliding glass door. Not a whole lot going on in the home improvement department, but man have I had car issues!!! Ugh its been rotten!! Well tonight we finally got our old SUV going again but its only a matter of time before something else decides to give us trouble. Sooooooo... I got a new car!!! Yaaaaaayyyy!!!! Lets just hope things work out with the newest addition to the family! His name is Nixon and he is a 2012 Kia Sorento!! I am a little peeved though because when I asked about rebates yesterday, while we were signing papers, they assured me there were none... I looked it up on the KIA website today when I had the chance, and lo and behold I am entitled to a nice cash back bonus!! It was valid yesterday!! So tomorrow Kyle and his finance buddy are going to get an ear full from me if they don't hand over my pretty little(big) check!!

I wish I had more fun stuff to show you... I haven't painted the ceiling yet but that is next weeks job since B will be at work on my day off.

-S

A doorway you can't use???

Things have been pretty crazy since B has been back in the country. I have had to be much more thrifty in my projects because our income has shrunk considerably(worth it to have him home). So the projects have slowed a bit but the ones we have done are amazing!

Lets start with the popcorn ceilings!!! Sooo ugly!!! But so nice now! We spent days(weeks) sanding and compounding and sanding and compounding and sanding and and and oh man it was a lot of work to smooth out the ceiling. Ill admit, though, it was only one part at a time with a day or two in between. Our living room had so much dust in it that I had to vacuum our couches, then run a swiffer over them, and THEN wipe them down with a wet cloth. We tried covering them but it didn't always work. Anyway, Id include pictures but its just a boring old ceiling and I'm sure you'll catch glimpses of it in the next projects picture bank.

Next we got rid of those awful looking doorways we had...
As you can see there are big modern walk through openings that we normally use. Next to them, however, are the remnants of old doorways. Real doorways... minus the doors. Who, might you ask, would modernize a house by making big grand openings next to old doorways and then neglect to close up those old openings? A crazy person, that's who! We have been wanting to fix this for every minute of every day of the three years we have owned this house. We finally got around to doing it! (So for three years we were the crazy people)
The two openings are referred to as the kitchen opening and the hallway opening. So we did the hallway opening first, and I would totally post an "after" picture but I didn't get one before we started in on retiling the hallway... Suuuuper messy!!

But anyway, we ended up working with an architecture to make sure our house was not going to fall down when we closed up the openings and made the hallway opening a little wider.

The pictures at the bottom are the "after" pictures for the kitchen opening and on the other side of that wall we put in that custom shelving unit instead of closing it completely!

Curb Appeal

We had such a fun time when B came home for a visit! The major thing we did together was weed cloth/ rock in the front flower bed!! I get soooo tired of pulling weeds and nothing ever grows in there except for bushes because they get drowned anytime it rains!! So to make things simple and clean looking, we replaced the top 6 inches of with rocks that we lined with weed cloth!

-S

Before

Before... again...

Progress!!

Still workin on it!

Such a hottie ;)

Lookin Good!

Yaaaaaaaaay! All done!

Recap!!

What a crazy few months!

Let me catch you up on all that I have been doing!

Finished the rock wall.. mostly!
Laid sod in the back yard
Made the pond functional
Got a Kitchen Cart!!!!
Planted a ton of flowers
Saw some of last years bulbs come up!
Spray Painted some stools for the table
Built a table
Planted and harvested some onions!
Planted Potatoes, Carrots, and Lettuce
Framed a few more of my pics for the walls
Rearranged the living room furniture
Made Red Velvet Cheesecake
Made Carrot Cake Cheesecake Cupcakes (that was a mouthful... pun intended lol)
Planted some Roses
Planted Raspberries, Blackberries, and Blueberries
Organized my office.. mostly lol
 Shampooed my carpets!



-S

Jet used to be so tiny!!!

Just another day in Paradise

Got these at a greaaaaaat price ;)

The tablecloth was also a home creation :)

Reinforced the legs with angle braces!

The battery cables were suuuuper corroded!

Workin on the battery cables in my car!

Old Pallets

Surprisingly comfy

To hold ice and drinks!

I replaced a bunch of old outlets because they weren't holding the plugs in!

Kiiinda organized!

My first rose!

Yay for lilies!!!

First tiny little raspberry!

Such pretty flowers! Half of which were planted 2 years ago :)

Made a shelf because R doesn't have enough room for her stuff.

The table I built is bar height!

The beginnings of the onions!

Harvested onions

Ready for the freezer!!

"Fruit Basket" cake lol

RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS Red Velvet Cheesecake

Chocolate Cheesecake: Used my moms recipe but added some cocoa powder :)

I love thick graham cracker crusts!

Fudge Brownies

The brownies baked up and around the fudge... oooooo yummy!

Brandt figured this out! Waffle iron quesadillas!

Brownie cake... seriously just two layers of brownie with frosting in between...

Shortbread with strawberries, marshmallow cream stuffs and raspberries(half frozen lol)