Ping Pong!

 Our landscaping is finally complete! We LOVE our new ping pong table, and we know we will spend a bajillion hours out here playing!

Worth It!

 Finally, after almost 4 weeks, our kitchen is FINISHED!

It's beautiful. So beautiful I want to cry.

It's been 17 years of me begging for a new kitchen. 

And now, it's perfect.

I have never lived in a beautiful home. Practical, yes. Functional, yes. But beautiful? No. But this is absolutely beautiful.

Before:

After:

Last Day

 We were so sad to leave! It truly was a perfect trip. I wouldn't change a thing. Disneyland Hotel was so magical and perfect. 

It was made all the worse to come home because we came home to this:

And, to top if off, the AC was broken with 100 degree temps outside.

We should have stayed at Disneyland!

We ended up spending the night at Ben's parents house to escape everything happening at home.

CHAOS!

 Our house has been in absolute CHAOS! We are remodeling the kitchen- a remodel I have begged for for 17 years! If we are going to stay in this house, I need a new kitchen. It's no longer optional. There are/were drawers that weren't working, doors broken off the island, it's a TERRIBLE kitchen- and always has been since the day we moved in.

But...it's a lot. Kitchen renovations are so hard! But, we knew it would be and were prepared. I bought a ton of paper plates and bowls, had a lot of food that could easily be heated up in the microwave or Crock Pot, and we were prepared to eat out as much as needed.

We also threw in painting the whole main level of the house. It's been 17 years, and the dark brown was outdated, dark, and dreary. I was ready for a change.

But, of course, it meant a lot more chaos.

It's been a lot. Thankfully, we have a trip to Disneyland scheduled at the perfect time, when the worst of the painting would occur. We were excited to escape!

Basically, our entire main level was useless. We were glad to get away!

Dining Room Table

It took about 6 months, and several arguments, but we finally got our new dining room table! I LOVE it! We got it from Ethan Allen, but the chairs we actually got from Target. Ben and I had to assemble the chairs, but Ikea has prepared us for the task.

Now I feel like we live in a magazine.

Remodel

 Sadly, I don't have a before picture. But, imagine a dark brown, boring, ugly bathroom where the mirror frame and shelf are rotting and it is overall just yucky and you can get a taste of what the bathroom looked like before.

I decided to redo it. It took three days, and I think it turned out awesome. I LOVE it.

And, Camille helped!

New Staircase

 After Camille put her head through not one, but two, spindles, we knew the handrails needed to eventually be replaced. We finally decided to do it.

I talked Ben into tearing out the carpet and installing hardwood stairs. The carpet was SO GROSS and it seemed like we might as well get rid of yucky, gross carpet while we could.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a MUCH bigger job than we ever expected.

We honestly thought the job would take less than a week- which was good after the bathroom remodel.

Instead, it ended up taking close to 7 weeks, and WE had to do much of the work.

The stair guy literally only did the install. We had to hire out someone to tuck in the carpet, stain/polyurethane the stairs, and do the paint.

Ben thought we could do the staining. I thought, "no way!" We hired the staining out, but after there was a death in his family and the job got pushed back yet another week, we decided to just do it. We went to a store that specializes in wood and they walked us through everything. They were beyond helpful and gave us a lot of confidence.

But, it took our entire Thanksgiving break. Between our whole family we put in over 40 hours to polyurethane (we actually ended up keeping the natural color and not adding any stain), paint, and then caulk.

We estimate we saved over $2,000 and it does feel slightly good that we did it ourselves, but if we knew what we were getting into, we probably wouldn't have done it- even if we do love it now.

But, really, we paid the stair guy WAYYYYYY too much money to have to do so much of the work ourselves.

Bathroom Remodel

We FINALLY decided to give our master bathroom some love, and boy did it need it! It was ugly builder's grade materials. Ben's sink faucet was literally disintegrating. Yes, we could have bought him a new faucet, but I didn't even want to spend $20 on that awful bathroom.

We hired someone who does this on the side. There was a crew of 3 guys. We had to be on their schedule/timeline, which was difficult at times. It ended up taking 11 days, which isn't terrible, but is a long time to not have a master bathroom and to have to use the kids' bathroom (yuck!) for that time.

But in the end, it's GORGEOUS, and I am so glad we did it! Ben isn't, but he's a tough man to please, so I'll just bask in my happiness at our beautiful new bathroom! In fact, if you can cry over a beautiful bathroom, I will. I absolutely love it. And compared to our nasty old bathroom? It's a night and day difference.

Now I want to redo the rest of our house.

Basement "Reno"

 Ben: I have an idea, and it solves two problems.

Me: Well, I started out with zero problems and now I apparently have two, so I don't like where this is going.

Ben: What if we take the deck furniture and move it into the basement for our basement furniture for the winter instead of getting a new sectional for the basement?

Me: Please tell me you're joking. I'm really, really hoping you are joking.

Ben: This saves our furniture from the winter elements without having to find a place to store the cushions AND gives us nice basement furniture for free.

Me: So, this is a real thing you are considering, not a joke?

Ben: I'm a freaking genius!

Back Story: For the past year, I haven wanted to convert our basement to a more tween/teen friendly space. I have a friend starting a new organization business, so as her first customer I hired her to come and help me.

We got rid of a lot of stuff- including putting a lot in storage- and moved the cream rug from upstairs to downstairs.

Now I think we have a very cozy space, even if I would prefer a real sectional instead of deck furniture.

Here's before and after pictures. Note: The before picture is REALLY bad. The basement has always been a disaster because it's the one room I just don't care about (until now), but it's even worse because the picture is taken right after we changed out the summer for winter clothes, which always creates a disaster, as evidenced.

Yeah, I know, it's GROSS. But, not any more! Now it's a place we can be proud to show off!

New Deck

 It took 7 months and way more stress than we thought, but we now have the deck of our dreams. I can't tell you how much I love this deck- how much we all love this deck! Camille will go out frequently and take naps. We all go and read out there almost daily.

Ben and I designed every piece of this deck, and we are so happy with how it turned out- I just want to show it off to everybody!

Here is our deck before:

And after:

I would say they spiral staircase if my favorite, but honestly, how could I choose? We definitely LOVE the spiral staircase- we decided to go with it because our backyard is so small that having this smaller footprint from the spiral was necessary.

But then, I LOVE this fan, and the cover, and the white ceiling with a cape cod feel, and the super comfy furniture, and the gas fire pit table, and the cute rug to really create this super cozy room, and just absolutely everything. I LOVE it all so, so, so much!!! It is now pretty much all of our favorite place in/out of the whole house!

1424 Work

 I needed to go do some work on 1424 to get it ready for showings. I wasn't planning on taking the kids, but in the end decided to. I'm so glad I did- they were great helpers! Audra weed whacked, Claire weeded, Camille picked up trash, and they all helped paint the front of the house. It looks a thousand times better.

But, in the end, we didn't need to do showings. I had over 30 showings scheduled (which is insane, usually I have about 12-15), but one couple came while we were working and they decided to sign. It was perfect! Hopefully they will be perfect tenants, too. We shall see.

Renovation

 A couple of months ago I posted this picture on Instagram to get some advice on how to add a few shelves- nothing big, just a couple of shelves to add a little more storage:

The answers were unanimous: Ditch the red and do way more than just shelves. I was told the credenza (which Ben and I LOVE as it is a beautiful piece and it was the first piece of furniture we picked out together) was too small for the space and I needed to think much bigger.

So, off to Ikea I went. I walked around Ikea and I fell in love with this piece the second I saw it. I loved the doors, the look, everything about it. I wanted it to be taller and with drawers, so I said to myself, "if I can get it with drawers, then that is what I am getting."

Originally going into Ikea I thought I wanted Kallax bookshelves, but when I saw them they looked really cheap. That's the thing with Ikea- some of their items look as cheap as they are, but others look really nice. These Besta units that I fell in love with were quite a bit more expensive, but they look so much better. I didn't even call Ben to tell him how much money I wanted to spend (well, actually, I tried but I don't get cell phone reception there, so I had to just make a decision). I really just knew that as soon as I saw the Besta unit, I loved it.

I went over to the Besta section, and low and behold- the employee built me the perfect, exact unit that would fit perfectly into my space and provide tons of storage and look beautiful on the computer. He gave me a long list of things to find in the warehouse, and I got shopping. Sadly, most of the items were not in stock as supply issues have been a major problem because of Covid.

But, we still had a ton of work to do anyway.

Painting the red wall took two days. This is Ben painting, but really it was me who did it- he did the top two inches of each side of the pillar because that's what I couldn't reach. The hardest part was we had to rent a 12 foot ladder from Home Depot. Minivans are amazing and somehow we were able to fit the ladder in the car, but moving that ladder around- wow! It was a pain. But we are very, very happy with how it turned out. 

Camille loved climbing the ladder!

Then, I built a base for the cabinets to sit on. I didn't want the cabinets sitting on the floor, and this way they would look like custom built ins- always a plus. I borrowed power tools from some wonderful friends and used all those skills I honed back in my Habitat For Humanity days.

I had to make several trips to Ikea to get all the parts! In fact, I started this project before Halloween, and just barely finished it today because that's how long it took for the base cabinet doors to come in. It took us an entire day to build the cabinets and secure them to the walls. That was a pain!

Then, I spent an entire day finding studs. I built the shelves- I bought pine wood and stained it. 

Then came the fun part- decorating! Thankfully, the shelves can hold a lot! On the top shelves we were able to put Ben's grandpa's China. His grandpa bought it in Japan a very long time ago, and it's pretty cool to have it on display.

Then, yesterday the doors came in. We put them on last night, and today I placed the final pieces- a glass top- on the top.

It is officially finished, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I can stare at it for hours. It's my favorite part of the house now. There's tons of storage space, it looks stunning, it is just....perfect! It is absolutely everything I ever wanted!

In the end, it was way more money and a much bigger project than I originally bargained for. But, I'm so glad we did it and that my friends talked me into it. This is not a stop gap, this is a long term solution that I think really adds value to our home. At any rate, it makes me so happy!

We ended up selling the credenza for $100. While it was sad at first, I no longer miss it. This is just so much better.