Aziz - Light!

Okay, who knows the movie this posts title comes from? One of the best movies ever? Google it and make sure you add it to your NetFlix queue if you haven't seen it!

Nick and his dad tackled a major home improvement project over the Holiday. They installed windows on the east side of our living room. Wow what a difference! It is one of those improvements that you can't believe you ever lived without. What was once the dark 1/3 of our living room is now bright and sunny with a view (soon to be improved) of the woods.

Beginnings of window #1:


Cutting through the sheet-rock to begin window #2:


Gunnar enjoying some hummus and pita while taking in the show:

It was my job to keep my danger seeker away for the construction and he was such a trooper! We went to the park in Sandy, grocery shopped, picked out blinds etc to try and stay out of the way.

G watching papa put on some finishing touches:


They are in!


We are still putting on the finishing touches of trim and blinds but they are in and wonderful! Thanks so much Nick and Jeff!

Truck and Luke enjoying the fruits of their owners' labor:

Rock and Roll

With Grandma Janice here to help with the kiddo Nick has had a chance to tackle some projects around the property.

With some of the river rock he rocked off the front "flower bed" area of the house:

And just for fun we now have a new rock stack by the driveway:

Miller Time

Last year about this time Nick and a friend fell the enormous fir from in front of our house. Here is a shot of the logs we salvaged and have been waiting to have milled:

Squaring it up:
Second cut for tabletops and beams:
Here is the largest log (41") that Nick and the miller had to jack by hand onto the mill. That took a while!
It was so large they had to cut into it make it fit:
Two logs down. The milling is resuming today as they tackle some fencing for a friend. Today will be my first time to see the mill in action and I am super excited. Apparently it has been quite the happening as Nick says half the day is spent talking to everyone who stops by to see what is going on. Love small town life!

Viola!

Nick has finished the nursery and took some great panaromic pics with his phone. Now the hardest part is fiuring out where to put the furniture and not cover anything up. Gunnar is a very lucky boy!

Nursery Evolution

Nick has been super busy these past few days transforming Gunnar's nursery. After painting the entire room white he is now doing a nature mural across all four walls. Here is a shot of the tree in its beginning stages:

Then he moved onto the sun:

Here is the tree in its current state with a few leaves:


And the sun's rays are in full effect:
Next came the mountain:

Now it even has snow:


I am on my way to Tulsa to visit family and friends and I am sure there will be much more progress while I am gone.

Under Construction!

Nick has been very busy these past few days working on several home improvement projects. Maybe he is nesting....

Late last winter we painted and put up wainscoting in half of the living room. This week Nick got the framing up on the second half. It still has to be spackled and painted but this is a huge improvement. Baseboards all the way around. Of course now our front door looks TERRIBLE next to the beautiful trim work!


He has also been working on transforming our hallway. Here is the original before:


When we painted the living room and began the living room wainscoting we painted half of the hall in anticipation of continuing the wainscoting. Well a year later, that and much more is in store. Here are the current construction shots:


Notice that the end closet is becoming a bench seat with storage underneath. Nick is a genius!


Of course the baby's room is being transformed as well. Here is a before. Note - this is the one room we had never done ANYTHING to, hence the awesome burnt orange? trim.

Nick hard at work painting:

Current state:

We always thought this room was just darker due to its location and the back porch covering. Now that it is white it is sooo much brighter. Nick had the great idea to tape off the old closet doors and they are now painted to resemble a shoji screen. Nick plans to add cubbies in the wall (there are stairs behind the closet wall) and paint images from each season on all four walls. No one will have to wonder whose daddy is the artist!

More to come.....

Baby Stuff

Nick and I have been tossing around ideas of what to do for the nursery: decals, modern abstract bedding etc. The one common theme is that we do not want a "theme" and I am not up for painting.

So, the walls will remain tan/brown/mocha. However...I recently dicovered this awesome artist on etsy - Udonchow and think her prints would be wonderful in the babies room. This image below is an example of an original from her store but she has lots of great prints that are cheap.

What do you the internet audience think? I am thinking a group of her prints to hang and that way we can do just some colorful bedding and curtains. Help!

Let There Be Light

We are constantly fighting the ever diminishing daylight this winter so to get the chickens more light Nick put in yet another window. Our neighbor was kind enough to donate the window and Nick did a great job of getting it in. He also added more lights so it is really much brighter in the barn and the animals do seem to enjoy it.

The Family That Shakes Together....

The final piece to prepare the barn for winter was to finish the windows for above the barn doors. You may remember that Nick framed out the glass panels a while back, so we just needed to complete the actual install.

The only problem once the windows were installed (there is always ONE MORE thing) was what to do about the space to each side of the window. Plywood panels? That would be way too plain for our barn! That is when Nick came up with the idea that we could make our own cedar shakes and do shake panels on either side of the window.

Here is a shot of Nick surrounded by the cedar shakes we had axed off of our cedar log and applying them to the plywood:


Here are the finished panels:


Here is everything installed:


It is much warmer and a little dryer inside now, not that the animals have thanked us!

Barn Beautification

The overnight lows will be dipping into the thirties this weekend and Nick has been working very hard to tie up the final loose ends of our barn beautification project.

We were very blessed by the fact that our property came with a two stall barn already on it but it had not been upkept very well. There was no front door at all and the stalls were completely open which is just not safe for our smaller livestock (the previous owners had horses).

Nick and I have enclosed the side alcove so the animal can be "outside" but protected from the elements and predators. We modified one stall into a chicken coop with nesting boxes built in and wire enclosing. Then we put in additional windows to provide more light.

Nick built the most beautiful (and HEAVY) cedar doors for the front which are my favorite part:



Now he has purchased glass panes and made the frame for the windows that are going to go up top above the door to help keep it warmer inside.

Wainscoting - the poor man's way!

One of the many mid-way completed projects around our house is the wainscoting. We made some major progress this weekend by getting all the frame pieces cut as we gear up for winter interior project tackling. In our defense we have made some major progress in the 11 months since we moved in!

Here is a shot of the living room before:



We tore out the carpet and laid laminate, took down the entry way wall, removed the pellet stove, installed a wood stove, re-painted and have half of the room covered in handmade wainscoting.

An "after" shot (before wainscoting):


How does one obtain "handmade wainscoting" you ask? Well, you start with sheets of mdf that you cut into the baseboards and framing pieces:



Inside the frame you install thin drywall as backing and then edge the interior of each rectangle and the entire top rail with trim. To add an extra level of fun do all this without a mider saw!

The "finished" product (note Nick's glass sconce):



It is a major feature of the room that we love. We do now own a mider saw so hopefully this winter will see to the completion of this project. We have the other half of the living room, kitchen and hallway to complete. Wish us luck!

New Lawn Ornament

Last winter I was home after a busy day, trying to fix dinner and Nick was driving me crazy! He was on the laptop at the kitchen table and kept pestering me to come look at some video. Finally I peered over his shoulder to watch this video:




I watched for a few moments and then realized - that is MY house and that is MY tree. I immediately ran to the front door, flipped on the porch light and sure enough, the huge fir in front of our house was on the ground. It was so dark that I hadn't noticed a thing as I whipped the Geo into the garage that night.

The tree had been dropping limbs like crazy and really crowing our cedar so I was glad it was down. The only problem was that it was down, but not gone. Since last winter that huge tree has been taking up a large portion of the plot next to our house. It has been impossible to mow all of the cleared area to that side of our house and it also blocked the spot we used to access the side portion of our property (the rest is too grown up to battle through).

Beggars cannot be choosers though and since our friend fell it for free and offered to move it at some point for free, we have waited. I had been hearing rumors that the skidder was making its was towards our house but by now I know better than to hold my breath. Thursday night Nick told me he had a surprise for me. When I came home I saw that the tree had been MOVED! The huge logs were by the driveway. Finally!

Then the kicker....the skidder punctured its gas tank and is crippled on my lawn. So now, instead of a big tree, we have a large skidder out front. Trust me, no one ever gets lost looking for our house!

Idle Hands

Nick and I recently wrapped up an amazing semi-staycation. We went to a beautiful wedding in Poulsbo WA, hung around the homestead with an old friend and fished at Lake Billy Chinook. The last weekend I took advantage of the time off to tackle one of the larger home improvement projects we had been putting off...re-finishing the metal cabinet in our kitchen.

Here is the "before". As you can see the cabinet was painted our former home owner's favorite color - dirty/muddy bluish gray (the entire kitchen walls and all used to be this color). Wonderful taste!



After MUCH stripping and scraping and sanding and buffing and sealing.....here is the finished product. To quote Nick "It looks like a thousand dollars!". I am very pleased with the outcome and glad to have literally survived the project (that stripper is AWFUL)!



Here you can see the metal detailing a bit better: