Christmas Movie Character Party - Take 1

We hosted our first Christmas party this past weekend. And we themed it to have guests dress up as movie characters from their favorite Christmas movies. There were quite a few creative costumes....and I think Eddie from Christmas Vacation was the hands down winner.

Enjoy the pictures, and maybe soon we will actually have some pictures from progress made on the house, as we hope to tackle a project or two very soon.

Painting all Labor Day Weekend

We were busy preparing for Bella's big birthday party, and we decided to paint the family room. We didn't realize it was going to take 5 days of painting to get it done. It looks so much brighter now. We aren't completely done, but then we have we ever finished everything in a normal amount of time. We still need to change out the ceiling fan, and at some point I want to replace the mantle on the fireplace, and re-stain the bookshelves. But here is what we have so far.........






The after pictures are courtesy of Bella's birthday/Husker football game party. I'll post final after pictures, once we get the lights finished and all the decorations done. But who knows how long that will take.

And............

We are still working on the garage doors. Granted we haven't had a lot of time to do any work around the house. I was in Minneapolis, we had birthday parties, we travelled to Nebraska, and we had company. Which pretty much took up every weekend in August. This weekend we just traveled back to Nebraska for Erin's bridal shower, and it seems like this next couple months will be packed with things to do.

We are having a 2nd birthday party for Bella in two weeks. Before then we would like to get the house in order and maybe tackle painting the family room. The family room has all the paneling, so it will be a long process to prime and paint that, but luckily next weekend is labor day weekend. So while everyone else is making plans to go to the lake, or get together with family and friends, we are trying to get more done on the house. Sounds like fun.

Bella in the dark family room

Beautiful Garage Doors

I think these are the best looking garage doors I have ever seen. I don't know why we decided we should replace them. Not to mention the one that you see down, is down becuase it quit working right before we moved in.

But three weekends into the process we have one garage door complete. Now let's hope we can learn from all the mistakes and it only takes us one additional weekend to get the other one up and running (or maybe only two weekends).

You may be asking why it took us 3 weekends to put up one door. Well that's because we have actually put up 3 different doors. The first door had a torsion spring, which couldn't be installed because of side clearances in the garage, this wasn't figured out until it was completely installed. The second door was too tall for the space, and we had to buy a ceiling clearance lowering kit. This again wasn't figured out till it was all installed.

So the second weekend we installed the third door, and it took longer than normal because of the tight side clearances and low headroom.

The third weekend we installed the garage door opener. Which actually didn't go bad, except we still had problem with the door opening because of the tight side clearance. But by the end of the third weekend we have a functioning garage door. Except we can't seem to get the keyless entry pad to work, but then it's always something, and that can wait for another weekend.

Bella was gracious enough to hang out with us, as we put up the door. She had a comfy little spot on a sleeping bag with the fan blowing directly on her.

First on the agenda

Colby and Elle on the new carpet.
I'll start this by saying, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of this event. But thought I should mention it, since it really was the first thing we did.

The first thing up was new carpet for the house. The old owners had a cat, and I'm allergic to cats. And even more important than that, each room had a different kind/color of carpet. We like things to flow a little better in our house, so we set off to Nebraska Furniture Mart to purchase carpet. Even after finding a "super buy" carpet, we were hit with a $10k cost to re-carpet the whole house. We decided to take off the dining room, we will be changing that to hardwoods eventually. We also removed the rec room, since it will eventually be converted into a bedroom and bathroom for Bella. And lastly we removed the main entry stairs, as we have grand plans to do hardwood treads with a carpet runner. So after those deductions it was a little easier to swallow, but still a large chunk of change. I guess some of the additional projects will have to wait a little while until we pay off some of the carpet.

We also decided to pull up and haul away all of the existing carpet. This meant we had to leave our furniture out in the pod storage units until the new carpet could be installed, which was about 1.5 weeks after we moved in. Jesse and I spent every night for a week ripping out carpet, tack strips, padding, and screwing down the plywood subfloor. I even got more ambitious and painted some of the floor trim, since it was easier to do while the carpet was gone. All in all it went well, with a little help from our friends in watching Bella and ripping out carpet. There was only one night where we got a little stressed in trying to finish it up and had to "stop talking to each other" for awhile.

The carpet guys came in and installed in one day, and then finally that next weekend we could move all our things in. It looks good, now we just need to get the dining room, and main stairs done, so it doesn't look so disjointed. Because sadly, it doesn't look much better on the main floor than it did before we moved in. But the upstairs is now one continuous carpet instead of 5 different types.

A new beginning

We bought a new house in June of 2009. It was a whole mile away from our existing house, but seems like a whole different part of town. Here are some pictures of the house and the condition it was in when we bought it (including the old owners furniture).
Our acre and a half lawn.....only took 2 hours to mow the first time, on a riding mower.


Big back deck, patio from the walk-out basement, and balcony off the master bedroom.

Front of the house, not a lot of curb appeal, and don't mind the ladder from our home inspection in the picture.

Finished basement, but not finished well. We have plans to tear it all out and replace it.

Extra bedroom in basement. We won't be needing this room, so we plan to tear down the walls and make a larger living area/rec room.

Master bedroom balcony.

His walk-in closet.

Hers walk-in closet.

It's hard to get pictures of the master bathroom, but here was one of the tub.

Master bedroom sitting room.

Master bedroom, it's been a long time since I have seen a water bed (again this is all the old owners furniture and belongings.)

1st bedroom - to become Bella's room. There are a total of 4 upstairs bedrooms, but I didn't post all the pictures.

1st floor rec room, with pool table that was left for us.

Family room.

Kitchen.

Dining room.

Formal living room.

Main hall entrance.