Shout out

So, over the weekend, while discussing house progress, I was informed that David has not received the credit due throughout my rambles.
I wanted to dedicate this blog post to both of the guys who have made a lot of the house progress possible: Mr. David Douglas and Mr. Matt Cox.
Without you, we would have had to spend much more money and that's not cool. I appreciate all of your hard work and will be thanking you for hard work in the future because it will be needed.

Here's a picture of them in action. What a duo.

Found some more cool stuff!

So the last time we were at the house, we found saw some more 'house originals.' The first thing is an old shoe polish container, and the second is a letter that was found. It has a lot of holes in it, and it's not the complete letter, but it was so neat to find. It was basically just a letter from one lady to another person (sounded like to another lady), and she was asking how she had been feeling since she hadn't heard from her in a while. She also discussed a machine that had been broken down, and and orchestra show that was going to be in town that night. The monogram was LPN, so her initials were LNP (or I guess it could have been her husbands, maybe...probably hers). I'm on a mission to try and figure out who she could be. I'm assuming the recipient lived in the house, so not the LNP lady.

The mantle on the left is a Christmas gift from Matt's sister, Kristen, our nephew, Will, and Matt's brother, Charlie and his wife, Joy. It was so nice of them. They also got us the newel post in the picture below. I had to google how to spell that. We loved those gifts, and can't wait to get them in the house. I love how they're originals (they got them from a place that has pieces from old houses that need some restorations). The other mantle in the picture is from my brother's house (my grandmother's house). We're going to restore both of them and put them in the house.

This is a couch that we're storing for David and Erin right now. It's my grandmother's and was in the room that is now Harrison's nursery. I let David know that he probably wants to cover it...looks like a cat has gotten into the garage and has enjoyed playing on the couch.

Picture of garage in our backyard.

Inside of the garage...to the left is where we've been able to store some stuff for now.

Off the subject

This has nothing to do with the house, but I just felt like posting. So, I've been obsessed with The Killers for a few months now. I've liked them since they came out several years ago, but never really listened to all of their songs. Now I own all 4 of their albums, and just really like their music and the lyrics are great. Anyway, Matt got me the DVD for Christmas, and I can't tell you how many nights I sit and watch it and sorta pretend I'm at the concert. I even know the lead singer's moves to the songs...yeah, it's ridiculous. I can be in the other room doing laundry and acting out what he's doing while the song is going on. It's really a sad scene...but, anyway, I was watching the DVD tonight, and then decided to look at Pollstar.com for their upcoming concerts (even though i've checked many times and know they're just wrapping up a year long tour)...so I check it and find out they cancelled their Asian tour, and have just announced that after their Australian tour they are taking a hiatus indefinitely. What? So, here I've been dreaming of when I get to finally go to their live concert, and they're taking a break? gah. I thought it was bad enough I'd never get to see the Beatles in concert, and now this just got taken away from me.

Obviously, I'm being dramatic, but I just wanted to express my sadness over their indefinite upcoming break. I'm hoping it's a bad bad rumor.

So, anyway, Killer's, if you're out there listening, this fan would really like to go to a concert, so if you could please stick it out for a while longer that'd be great, thanks.
If you've never heard them, or only heard their radio songs, you should check them out. These three songs I think are really good, and I especially like the lyrics and string instruments in the second one. The third one is a little faster. I just copied the links from youtube so I hope they work.

The first link is one of my favorites (love the piano)
"Sam's Town"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVbFMoimgM4

Second link is a song about his parents' marriage and then his mom's battle with cancer...really sweet, but sad, too. Be sure to listen until the end--it takes a second to get going. "A Dustland Fairytale" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwPATgFcRKA

"All these Things that I've Done"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tEtViUBzXo&feature=related

Amazing

That's all I could think when I walked upstairs in our house this weekend. I couldn't believe it. I can't remember if I've said this before, but the ceilings upstairs were barely 7 feet tall (more like 6 ft. 10 inches), so you can imagine, if we ever have kids, and they don't stay perma-short, they might have some trouble with ceiling fans and doorways. Matt could just barely walk under a doorway without hitting his head. Lights would have all had to be recessed. We were cool with that if that was the only option, but we asked Leon about raising the ceiling (it'd have been cooler if I could say raising the roof right there, but no, just the ceiling). Raising the roof, while fun, would have been extremely expensive.
Well, he promised he'd get us as much height in each area as possible, but that they would have slopes. I thought that could look cool anyway, so we told him just to go with what he could.
This weekend was my first day over there since then, and WOW... It was a whole new upstairs. They did an amazing job.
What's more (and really neat because I sorta had this idea--that's not often with the structure stuff), I had asked if they could floor in more of the attic/unused space and just take the closets back as far as possible, even if only 3 feet existed between the floor and ceiling. The closets were TINY, and I would hate for our future children, or Larry and Wally, to be forced to live out drawers only. Again, we would have been fine if that was the only option, but the closet space is awesome now--you can actually walk in. Also, there was a little squared off section in one of the upstairs rooms that I asked if it'd make a good long closet, and they studded it in, and it looks great. ONE more thing is we asked about pushing out a little cubby area in the bathroom (which is a little small) so we could at least recess the toilet, and it looks awesome, too! As you can tell, I was all smiles (more in shock) at everything they were able to do with the upstairs. It is night and day from before. I now regret not taking a million pictures of the before. I did take some, but not nearly enough the capture the remarkable difference.
I'm a little sad we had to get rid of our glass doors that sectioned off a room that overlooks Main St., but with those doors, the space on either side became unusable...so we sacrificed the doors (saved them, though, for something else, maybe) and so now there is one large room where those doors once made two small areas. It'll make a great play room, or if necessary, a third bedroom.
Here are some pictures. I really wish they did justice, but it's hard to capture it all.

The picture on the left is the closet now that they knocked down the drywall and filled in the floor some. It's so much bigger. The picture on the right sorta shows how it was before.

This is that same room where we added the closet. The closet is in the corner you see in the right. Below it shows a little more detail of where we added the closet.

This is sorta hard to picture, but the top picture was the little squared out area that you see in the directly above picture. Where the door is on the picture right above is still there, we just added a long closet as well. So there are basically two closets in there now.

This is where we opened the two small areas into one long room. Like I said, sad to see the doors go, but we saved them. And, now the space is more usable. The ceiling height makes the rooms look so much larger.

Basically, where the vanity is, we recessed the wall to put the toilet, now. This really opened up the bathroom.

Where you see my mom pulling off wall, is pretty much where the the other picture is taken..now all of that is opened up as a landing.

You can see how the ceilings have been raised. (don't worry, floors are being preserved).

This really isn't a great before/after, but this is the same room. Straight ahead on the picture to the left is where we added the closet space. It was so small you couldn't walk in.

Just another bathroom picture.

Fever is no fun

This week I've been sick. I haven't really been sick in a long time, and I was quickly reminded how bad it is to not feel well. It's not the same when you don't have mom to bring you your orange juice, kleenex, remote control, and tylenol. I've had to miss work for two days so far this week, and that's not fun either. It'd be cool if I felt like doing stuff, but I've pretty much stayed in bed with the animals.
I've been running 100-101 degree fever, but today I started a z pack, and am hoping that will do the trick. I knew it was bad when I didn't want to eat everything in sight (not even Mexican food was tempting....I even said no to guacamole...weird) and I had to miss wine night tonight.

Here's a picture of my support system while Matt was at work:

Sorry, it's a picture of Larry's behind, but that was the view from my angle:)

Wally was watching Finding Nemo with me. She would go over and grab a kleenex for me every now and then. Thanks, Walls.

Anyway, on to house news. We've had some quotes from HVAC people, so that's the next step. We're trying to decide between gas and electric. I'm not sure what we're going to do.
I can't wait to post some pictures of the upstairs, now. I'm so happy about how it looks. With the ceilings being raised some it seems so much bigger up there.
We're hoping to be able to move in by April. The biggest things left are plumbing, electrical, HVAC, insulation, drywall, and floor refinishing. There will be PLENTY of small project things left (woodworking details, cleaning up windows, etc). I'm guessing the smaller things will take the longest, but at least we can move in while that stuff is being done. Oh, and painting. Matt and I want to tackle a lot of painting ourselves, so once we get to that part, people might want to start screening their phone calls from us because it might be a request to come join in on some painting fun (woo!).


I guess that's all for now!

Not much to update on

The house hasn't changed much in terms of looks, but some details are getting completed. I will try to post some pictures of the upstairs after the weekend because that is where most of the change has happened. We're in a waiting phase of getting quotes from HVAC, electrical, and plumbing people, then we'll get going again! For now, here's some pictures of Wally. She cracks me up.