Colin's Drawings

In afternoons, before the time change, the kids were going up to the court at the top of the hill. Kevin and Gwyn would ride bikes while Colin would draw. He is so proud of his drawings and I can understand why! They are awesome!

This is his farm. There is a barn with a farmer and scarecrow, some corn, pigs in a pen, pumpkins, a horse and cow, and some grass.

A few days later, he drew Santa, and a house with Christmas lights on it.

So this is still happening.

Every now and then I snap a picture of the two of them sleeping together.

When Kevin was out of town last week, I had all 3 kids sleep in bed with me. They were so stinking cute. Loud, and tossed and turned enough to wake me up numerous times each night. But adorable. I loved it. And so did they. I found out that Gwyn grinds her teeth at night. She slept next to me twice, and that girl does not share a bed well. So when Colin spelt next to me on the third and last night, he woke up and excitedly asked me if he was good to sleep next to. And he was wonderful. He gave me plenty of room. And even though Gwyn snuggled with me most of the night, Colin still snuggled some. (Kevin wanted to sleep next to me the last night, but he graciously offered the spot to Colin. Seriously, the kid is a better person than most adults I know.)

Kitchen Update Week 2

Here are some pictures from earlier this week. It may not look like a lot, but the work is all electrical and plumbing this week. I see it all!

We (Kevin) has to saw this cabinet in half to get it out. The cabinets were just wedged in there too tight to get them out in one piece.

We had the dumpster for one week, and we never imagined we would have filled it. Since we had the opportunity, we cleaned out some junk out of the house. (That chair had been broken since Colin was 3 and fell backward in it. Why did we still have it??)

The awkward step is gone! I am so happy.

This is going to be the new pantry. We don't need as much space as the old one.

Looking from the kitchen through the old pantry, into the mud/laundry room.

Waling straight forward, this is from the mud.laundry room into the dining room. The opening is moving from the left to the right.

The bathroom is being made smaller to make room for the pantry. (I never liked the shape of this bathroom. So I am happy it is changing!)

The kitchen. We still have a stove top, but we don't know for how long.

We ripped up the rest of the wood floors in the entryway, and all the carpet except in the family room. We left some scraps to walk on, like in this room. It allows the kids to get ready in the morning and not worry about shoes. (Those black spider webs are remnants from our Halloween decorations.)

This is our current family room. It is storing our pantry items, our dishes (which are now moved over by the table), our microwave, our catch-all drawers that we don't really want to pack up, our large dry erase board, lunch boxes, tupperware, some cooking supplies, and so. much. more.

Halloween 2015

I don't have a lot of pictures from Halloween. (I only have 3 total.) But I do have costumes.

Colin was a ninja (again), Kevin was Hawkeye, and Gwyn was Elsa. The weather was amazing. The kids just wore two t-shirts under the costumes, and they were fine! It drizzled a bit for the first 30 minutes, but we didn't even need an umbrella. And Gwyn actually trick-or-treated! Last year she was bored after our street. This year she was about for almost 2 hours!

Gwyn and Colin walked around with DTG and me, while Kevin walked around the neighborhood with friends and their moms. (We ran into them only one time.) After a candy drop-off, Colin went back out with daddy. All the kids had a great time. And our neighborhood use to have so few kids out, but over the past three years, more and more young families have moved in. It is nice to see so many people walking around. (Although they still avoid our street. We barely get any kids knocking on the door.)

Both Colin and Gwyneth froze up when it came time for jokes until the end of the evening. Then they heard jokes they liked and started talking. Colin's favorite was "What do you call a witch on the beach? A sandwich." Gwyn heard a Frozen jokes and is still telling people. "Why should you never give Elsa a balloon? Because she will LET IT GO! LET IT GO!" And then she gets to sing.

Oh yea, Gwyn also wore her Batman cat ears all night.

Tuesday Night

Not much tonight. Some flooring ripped up. Some new holes in walls. Trim removed and de-nailed. A toilet removed. But I thought I would update anyway. Why not? It is not like I have a blog to write about someone doing something awesome, like running a marathon in 2:48:31. Nope, nothing to do at all.

Some of the lovely* wall paper still lurking in places in out kitchen.

Gwyn helped out while her brothers watched The Flash. She fed us pretzels. (Our hand were dirty or busy.) She got daddy a band-aid when he started bleeding. It was a Frozen Elsa band-aid. She also helped sweep up, as well as open doors for us when we took stuff to the dump! And she talked the entire time, kind of like Colin.

She loved the "window" in the bathroom. She wanted a picture smiling...

then one with a silly face...

then one dancing.

Sweeping. Although at this point the boys were brushing teeth and I think she was avoiding bed.

Kevin was most mad about the toilet tonight. The previous owner (who flipped it in the cheapest way possible) just attached the toilet to the floor with screws. The toilet ring was busted on one side so there was no place for the bolt to go. So they took a deck screw and just attached it to the floor. We despise him more and more each year. The wood will have to be replaced there.

The hole in the bathroom wall will be our new pantry, and the hole in the background, from the laundry room into the dining room marks where the new door will be. The current walkway from the kitchen to the dining room will be closed off.

We also see water damage by the sliding doors. We knew that was there, as we found it when Kevin replaced the siding. (3 years ago) Basically the beams holding up the back of the house were completely rotted and had to be replaced immediately.  Kevin ripped up the linoleum there after I loaded the pictures up tonight, so that will be in the next post. Maybe. I just told you about it so why read about it again?

Off to bed for another exhaustive night of sleep! And I think it is at least once a day, one of us tells the other "I am so glad to be doing this with you." It is exhausting and fun and stressful, but most of all an adventure together. :)

*hideous

Monday Night

Our part is almost complete! We are only doing the demo. (Well, and some painting and little things. But those are smaller projects.) Kevin asked us how long this kitchen was going to take, as he didn't know that there is only one night or so left. (Yea!)

As for tonight, we finished getting up the tile and backer board. That stuff sucks. I have a hurt shoulder, and can't do much, but I can remove tile since the hurt arm only holds the chisel. But that tile goes flying into my face a hair. I think a piece sliced my arm and that is why I bled the other day. Then the backer board is difficult to remove because there are so many nails. THEN you have to remove all the nails. Just to get to the linoleum.

But the worst part is the dust. It is every where. We opened doors and windows to clear it out, but it. is. everywhere. Every surface in the kitchen, the coffee table in the family room (yes, even with the tarps), even in my teeth. Ugh. Butwe are finished!
 
I also had to talk to the kids about being careful and not to get too messy, as there was spaghetti sauce on the tarp into the kitchen.... only to have husband tell me later it was him.

Here are pictures from tonight. Oh, and we take back the comment about the linoleum. As much work as this is, I am not sure we still would have rather had the linoleum for 8 years. That stuff is ugly.

The kids even helped tonight. As we removed tile, they filled up buckets and then dumped them in the dumpster. We have a giant one in front of our house until Friday. Yesterday Kevin tried to play in it with his friend, which meant they were climbing on top of the highest piles. I had to stop that as there was BROKEN GLASS AND METAL IN THERE! But when it was emptier, Kevin and Gywn did love to stomp in it. That was fine.

This was tile last night! Here is the last lonely piece of tile. Kevin left it for me to remove while I put the kids to bed.

The kids had already been in be for a few minutes when Kevin starting ripping up the backer board. Colin had been saying how much he wanted to help, so I yelled up for them to come down. They look grumpy in this picture, but they volunteered to come down! They were told they could return to bed as soon as they wanted. After about 20 minutes of pulling up backer board and nails, they returned to bed.

Here is a small section of the nails from the backer board. This is after we swept up. Most of the time we just looked in the dust and debris, which made me feel like a niffler.

It is gone! Now tomorrow we just finish the linoleum, and the carpet will go next week! Man this stuff is ugly. And oddly stained.

Demo Weekend - Sunday Night

We are tired and sore. More so Kevin, obviously. But very very tired. And we have one more night to get stuff done. Tomorrow we plan on finishing the removal of the tile, which is pretty easy now. Some areas have the tile, the concrete backer board, and some areas even have the linoleum and the plywood layer up. (This plywood is what the linoleum is glued to.)

We still have a working sink and dishwasher, as well as the gas stove. But the stove will go soon.

This is what the linoleum looks like. Honestly, I would have rather had this linoleum for 8 years, more than the tile, so I would have had 2 fewer layers to rip up.

Colin and Gwyn returned around lunch time. Colin jumped right in to helping out! He took out most of the nails in the floor, ripped up the backer board, swept up, and hammered holes into walls. He was a great helper! We also had some friends come over to help - Kevin and Mary Beth, whose son Braeden is in Kevin's (son) 3rd grade class. Kevin (husband) said Kevin (friend) did a lot of work today. I don't know if I said thank you enough times to convey how much we needed their help!

Colin was given the first blow at the soffit. Unfortunately, it was the toughest-built soffit any of us had ever seen. It is still standing as I type this. Kevin really isn't sure how it will come down since it is built into the framing of the walls. But it will, or we have a lot of cabinets to reorder. (Don't worry, husband was holding Colin on the ladder.) And Colin still has his work gloves from when he was little! They fit now.

Strongest soffit ever.

Looking from the kitchen into the family room.

Into the kitchen and old laundry room.

From kitchen into the hallway. Just a little more tile to go!

From kitchen into laundry room and dining room. All the flooring is up in this area.

From laundry room into kitchen.

The fitting for the oven was also well-built. This took more time than anticipated.

From hallway between kitchen and dining room into dining room. Some of the carpet is up!

From entry into kitchen. Some of the wood flooring is gone!

Bathroom, minus most of the flooring.

I got to rip up the awful step from the entry/hall into the kitchen! Here are the four layers we are ripping up. It doesn't look bad from here. (But it is worse than it looks.)

Plumber and electrician come on Tuesday, so we may not touch the rest of the carpet for a week or so. Flooring starts in about two weeks. Right now, our kitchen table is in the living room. But for most of the day it was over the coffee table. Which was weird, and there were layers of tables and dishes.

Found during construction...

 ...underneath our dining room table.

Sometimes having kids is so much fun. And based on the superglue-like stickiness, I guess these Scooby-Doo stickers have been here a few years. :)