Our First Home

Wanna' take a tour of our home with me?

As you know, I've been feeling rather domestic lately...

wanting to work on sprucing up the outside...

wanting some color/decor changes on the inside...

just feeling like I love our first, little home and wanting to fall in love with it all over again.

Besides that, I secretly love looking at people's houses on blog tours and am always scanning the background of pictures to get an extra glimpse into their lives.

I know. That makes me nosy.

But it is fun and lately, I've just been in the mood for a little "before-and-after's".

(P.S. Amy, I loved seeing all of your and Adam's hard work on Facebook! Great job and very nice!)

So here's way more than you ever wanted to know about our little home.

Get ready: it's A LOT.

We closed on our first home in July 2004, just a few months before our wedding. We'd just had an offer turned down on a smaller house in Genoa and were feeling majorly bummed (well, I was because you know the planner in me needed to have this rather large decision made before our wedding and preferably before our wedding shower!), so finding this house was so exciting.

Upon first glance, it looked cute and just-our-size, but with some real character as it was built in the late 20's! After touring the inside and meeting the little family (previous owners) who'd just welcomed their 2nd child, we fell in love. We brought our parents back for another tour and from there, I begged and pleaded for this to be "the one". Of course, so did my mom since it was just across the street from my parents' neighborhood. :)

The day we received the keys, the wife (previous owner) seemed rather sad and nostalgic. She didn't want to leave behind her first home. (Probably, in part, because they were moving in with one of their parents while they saved for and later built their new home in... the neighborhood across the street! Yikes! Lord help me if we ever have to move in with our parents! No offense to either of you. ;)) Anyway, I can sympathize with her now! I will be very sad when the day comes that we move out of our first home. It's where we started. It's where I became a mother. And it's where so many memories have taken place. I'm definitely in no hurry to leave... even if a little more space would be nice.

So here's an outside picture of our home. It was actually taken shortly before our first wedding anniversary. Look how lovely and shaded the front yard once was with all those big trees! And the landscaping has really grown since then too. The striped bench on the front porch was one of my first purchases for our home. I was so excited to have a front porch! I loved sitting out there, and still do. I also love the peacefulness that comes with being surrounded by fields. After touring several homes and anticipating a "starter home" that would require some work before move-in, we were thrilled that this house was nearly perfect as is. I couldn't wait to get in there and clean it from top to bottom. A few minor changes that we decided to do right away: replace the dark purple carpet in the yellow room (Sophie's current room) with a lighter, neutral color, and create a huge walk-in closet into part of the old walk-in attic space off of the master bedroom. (We still have plenty of attic space behind the closet.) Here's Marilyn (my mother-in-law) and Craig working on drywall in the new closet.

This was completed while Craig was still living there alone (before I moved in after the wedding), but this picture of my side of the closet is circa 2006. Craig's side would be behind me as I took this picture and it looks similar. I love our big closet!
Also, I should add that I have a whole photo album (and even bigger computer file) filled with photos of our home at it has progressed. I really love looking back through it every so often to see all the change.

So here's the yellow room on the first floor, which we used as a guest room until shortly before Will's arrival. You can see that honey colored wood headboard and may recognize that it matches the furniture in our nursery. We were so lucky to start our first home with two complete bedroom sets from Craig's family. This bed is currently being stored at my parents house until Sophie is ready for her big girl bed. But the rest of the furniture is still in there and we just bought a honey crib to match when we set up the nursery. We never changed the paint color because I loved the sunny yellow, and when the sun comes through the window, it is one of the prettiest/happiest rooms in the house. I also still love and miss this bedding from Pottery Barn (I have two cute, green, throw pillows not shown) and look forward to the day that we have another guest room to decorate.
One of the "must-have's" in our first home was a dining room. I just knew I'd want to entertain and serve meals in a dining room. I also knew I'd paint my first dining room red. So how meant-to-be was it that this dining room was already red?! I loved decorating my table for all seasons and would leave it set like this at all times. :)

Soon after, we had some additional furniture custom made to accompany our heirloom dining room table. I'd torn out pieces from catalogs of a buffet table and wine rack (not pictured) that I liked and the man who built them made any additional detail changes we requested. The buffet is where I store all my nice serving pieces and table linens. Thank you to Grandma & Grandpa Konesky for gifting us the money for these - they are definitely pieces we will continue to enjoy in our next home as well.

Notice the detail trim work he created at the base of each piece? They match the trim around our table. I'll show you the table in more detail in a future post since we're planning to refinish it soon. It is such a cool table with the extender leaves built right inside. I'm trying to remember how old my father-in-law thought it was based on who the original owner was in his family. Something like late 1800's/early 1900's I think?

Okay.

Here was our first MAJOR project in 2005. The previous owners said that if they'd planned to stay longer, this would be next on their list. Yes, folks. This was the original garage. You can also see the huge, beautiful, maple tree beside it that came down the following (?) year. You probably think we're tree haters at this point, but I promise we're not. ;) This tree housed a gazillion birds that crapped all over our deck and house and also prevented any sunlight from helping to seal down the NEW garage roof. Therefore, the new roof shingles were blowing off with every windstorm and we were scrubbing bird poop off our house and deck weekly. Still. It's very sad to lose any tree. Do you ever think about what the world looked like when trees that big were once small? Moving on...

Our house was once a farm house. So behind the dilapidated old garage, there was an old run down chicken coop. It was totally junky and filled with... random junk. Do you recognize this old Ford tractor? Will just took several rides in it when we were taking down the front trees? Anyway, it's one of Craig's dad's tractors and we used it to literally push over the old garage.

I love this picture. The structure is leaning!

Didn't take much to knock this baby over.

King of the mountain. :)

Early fall 2005, after burning and clearing the remains of the old garage and laying the foundation for the new, we're ready to pour the cement floor.

We are so blessed to have such awesome family and friends who helped us (free of charge!) through every step of this garage project! Craig's in the (super sexy) red, plaid flannel. His Uncle Ron is in the blue, good friend Mike is front left and cousin Jim is in the green.

Other help in this picture: another good friend (also named Mike) squatting down in the background and my dad in the tan jacket on the right. Craig's dad was there too, I'm pretty sure.

You'll never guess when they finally started to put up the framework for the new garage...

Thanksgiving Day!

I have no idea why that was the day, but there was probably a reason.

Craig's friend Jason came to help on this day (in the North Carolina coat). This stage of any new construction is always exciting because it goes up so quickly.

All I had to do was supply lunch and beverages to all the men for the three or so days that they worked. No problem! That's my favorite thing to do! I remember making a giant crock pot full of chili for one of the days.

Mike & Mike

Starting the roof.

Check out Wes on the roof and my brother Zach on the ground.

I love this picture too. Wes looks a little too comfortable for this being his first time on a roof, no? He's just up there standing on the peak with my father-in-law, Tom. :)

It wasn't until the following summer that they got around to siding the garage.

Craig, dad and Mike.

Can't believe I don't have a better picture of the finished product! I'll get right on that. This was taken from upstairs in our bedroom, looking out the big, picture window. (I don't know why.) Turned out very nice, I think! Then sometime later, we poured concrete to extend our driveway out to the third bay of the new garage.

Continuing on with the house tour...

Here is a picture of one side of our living room as it was when we first moved in.

We used an old coffee table as a TV stand and a hand-me-down entertainment unit from my aunt and uncle. :)

But in later winter/early spring 2006, our good friend Mike agreed to build us a custom entertainment center for the living room. He's the guy I've raved about for making my bread box and recipe box. Remember? You should see his house with all of the beautiful, custom woodworking.

Staining the new pieces. Oh, such fun.

Sometime in early April, the new entertainment center moved in. Ahh. So much better! Right?

Also of note, the rest of the living room furniture is all hand-me-down too. We received the leather couch from Craig's Grandma & Grandpa King. And the other sofa and over-sized chair are from Craig's cousin Julie and her husband Mike (the other "good friend" that I've mentioned above). I just bought slip covers and pillows from Target for those, which I loved and thought blended so nicely with the dining room. The coffee table and end tables are from Craig's parents, I think? Oh! And the quilt rack on the right side of the picture below was handmade by Craig's Uncle Ron. I love having handmade pieces!

Here's the other half of the living room. You can also see the wine rack just inside the dining room in this picture.

Here's our loft-like bedroom upstairs. The stairs come up from the kitchen (across from the breakfast nook) and there's only a door at the bottom of the steps. The whole upstairs consist of our bedroom, bathroom, old closet, (a smaller walk-in), new closet (see above) and attic. The walls were already painted this burnt orange color and the previous owners even left the window treatments and throw pillows! I love the higher ceilings. And I love our king size bed. ;)

Here's a small glimpse of the big picture window in our bedroom. It seems to be the standout feature of our home. When we tell people where we live, they'll say "Oh, you're the house with the big window upstairs." It was/is one of my favorite things too. I especially love seeing thunderstorms or snow falling while laying in bed at night. Only drawback is that it is very bright in the mornings. ;) But with little ones... you know we aren't sleeping in late anyway.

Here's the other half of our bedroom. A few things:

1) Love the high ceilings and that little nook up in the peak. Problem is: we've been here for, oh, six years now and I have yet to actually decorate in that little nook. I just need some creative inspiration... and a ladder. Any ideas?

2) The door on the left is our big closet that Craig built and behind it is the attic. The door to it's right is our bathroom.

3) This is the other bedroom set that we acquired from Craig's family. The bedframe is a full though so we obviously aren't using it up here. We actually don't even have a bed frame/headboard. We've had plans of making one, but it's not the top priority and I actually don't really miss it. The full bed frame that goes to this set is currently Will's bed. He doesn't have/need dressers in his room because of his awesome closet, so he just has the bed.

And a final angle of our bedroom: the stairway going down, another dresser and the TV, the original (smaller) closet (no way would all our clothes jointly fit in there), and the handmade crucifix given to us on our wedding rehearsal night by Craig's Godfather who recently passed away. I have always loved it, but it is now more special to me than ever.

Our bathroom. Love having double sinks.

The other side of our bathroom. This picture was taken at night. We have wooden blinds, which I like but are a pain to clean. And when the weather is right, I love opening these windows and enjoying the best-smelling summer breezes. Our shower is to the left in this picture and it's nothing special. Just sliding glass doors and blah. We've talked of replacing that too, but it depends on how long we stay.

Okay, another transitional period! We were just setting up the crib here in March of 2007 and getting ready to make this a baby's room. Ha! March. I wasn't due for three more months but you know I talked my man into early preparations. This is another room with great breezy windows (any room with windows to the south - this room is just below our bathroom upstairs) and it just adds to the sunny appeal. :)

This is for sure before April 14th because I can tell we hadn't had our shower yet. I was/am so in love with the shamois lambie bedding from PBK! The girly picture game down above the crib and the ugly clock radio was replaced with a cuter white, wooden clock on the side table next to the glider.

Another night time shot. I included this picture to show you the adorable rug. And, though you're not getting a full view of it, there was a great amount of bickering over the ridiculous picture hanging over that dresser. It's a long story, but it belonged to Craig's grandparents and was put there as a joke by our friends when they "redecorated our home" while we were away on our honeymoon. Craig claims it has sentimental value for him and I hate it. But he has insisted it stays all these years and it's not even centered over the dang dresser! (The nail hole was already there - our friends did not put a hole in our wall - and Craig just never moved it. Grr!) But I promise you it will come down when I re-do Sophie's room next spring!

Post shower, with a little more decor.

Ready and waiting for baby (super early of course)! I even had his coming home outfit layed out. :)

Here's a pretty early (bare) glimpse of the nursery room closet. We added all the shelving because there were only like two rods and very poor use of space when we moved in. As you can imagine, I was so super excited to start filling this closet! P.S. That jean jacket was the very first thing we bought (from Gymboree) when we found out we were having a son. :)

Major Project #2: the kitchen!

This is a terrible disservice to the original kitchen because, while it wasn't very fancy, it was definitely cuter than this "before" picture leads you to believe. I just didn't take any kitchen pictures before we tore off the wallpaper. Oh, and we don't normally keep drills and tool boxes on our counters. Duh.

Yikes! This one's even worse! Let me explain. There was an upper cabinet to the left of the fridge that fell off the wall at random one day due to moisture damage in the chimney behind it! Thankfully, Brutus and I were standing just inside the dining room and no one was hurt. So that incident obviously jump started the whole kitchen project that we were planning on putting off for awhile. There was also a cabinet above the fridge that had already come down in this picture. The door on the left that you see leads to our basement. In the background, you can see the "breakfast nook" and around the corner from the fridge is our bedroom door.

Okay, probably the worst "before" picture so far. The breakfast nook. There was not normally all this crap in there and the paper had already come off the walls. It's just an odd space that was hard to fill, especially when what we really needed was more storage space.

So guess when this project got underway...

April 2007.

Less than two months before Will was due. Ick.

Craig started by squaring off the archway into the breakfast nook and narrowing it a bit to make room for the new cabinets that would line both walls for more storage. Drywall dust was everywhere. Boo. But I'm just so thankful for my handy husband!

A look at the next bit of progress: Craig built the soffit and can lighting above the sink area. He also built sofit above the fridge area too. Oh, one other thing. We put that door that you see in between the kitchen and dining room, originally to corral the dog into the kitchen while we were at work. But it has been so helpful in many ways and we love having it there.

Painting while preggo (my doctore said it was fine).

New paint! Color: Restoration Hardware's Saffron.

Post cabinet demolition and expecting some of the cabinets the following morning.

At the same time, Craig began another project: the "mud room". This little breezeway is just off of our kitchen leading to the deck out back. I love having a drop zone for shoes and coats, but the windows and door were super old and we frequently had small piles of snow or puddles of rain that managed to blow under the door. Plus the door opened from left to right, which happens to be into the wind and was a real pain considering we don't have much of a wind block from the southwest. It's all just open field. So that flimsy door would catch in the wind and rip out of our grip.

So Craig replaced the windows and got a custom, heavier door (it's unusually short) to weatherproof the room better. He also built up the floor a little and changed the position of the door (to the left a little) so it's a straight shot into the house instead of jogging to the right. Does that make sense? We matched the tile floor out there to the kitchen and now the door opens right to left. :) So much better.

Here's a view from the outside. Since he changed the structure a bit by moving the door, he had to rig something up beneath the window, since there was no way we would be able to match the ancient house siding. I really like it. Craig did a nice job.

A view of the rest of the deck. We have the table secured to the deck and have to keep the chairs tied tightly around when they're not in use due to the crazy winds blowing everything around from time to time. I hate wind. Oh, and the lovely fake owl is no longer there to scare birds away now that the maple tree is down.

When Will was born, I didn't have counters, or a floor, or appliances. They did come shortly after though, and it was well worth the wait. I love the granite counters and Craig and his mom did such a nice job with the tile backsplash. One of my favorite parts of the new kitchen is the wide bank of deep drawers to the right of the dishwasher. Love them. Must have something similar when we build.

Ta da! The breakfast nook! What a big, awesome difference! We love the new storage and use of space. And though the counter is lower than expected, we found some cool stools and Will and I do occasionally sit there for snacks or breakfast. Maybe when the kids are older, they'll eat breakfast there in the morning before school.

Another cool feature: the mail slots. Sooo handy. We don't love the outlet placement beside the window but it was already there and we didn't move it.

The other side of the kitchen. We like the taller, narrow "pantry" cabinet to the left of the fridge and I really requested an open area for the phone and message area. Still left to do: replace the trim around our bedroom door (on the right). It's one of those projects that just keeps getting put off. Craig's got something in mind to make it bigger than what it needs to be, so we'll see...

The cabinets are Kraft Maid and we've been very happy with them so far.

Big Project # 3: first floor bathroom. Located between the two bedrooms, this is our main guest/household bathroom. This project ensued in Dec '08/Jan '09 while I was pregnant with Sophie due to frozen pipes to the upstairs bathroom (directly above). Again, this is the best "before" picture I have: heavy, cast tub... lots of wallpaper... the lower half of the wall was like a wipeable tile-looking thing, but it was just a panel... toilet is behind Craig in this picture (under that cabinet) and sink is across from toilet.

Craig and his dad had to cut into the ceiling to repair the upstairs pipes. This bathroom was another project on our to-do list that, as fate would have it, happened sooner than planned.

A couple of things:

1) There was wallpaper on the ceiling, originally!
2) You can see the curved shower curtain rod and ghetto wire that suspended it from the ceiling.

We hired Craig's cousin to do a lot of this work and it was so nice to see progress that we had nothing to do with when we came home from work in the evening, especially because Will was just 19-ish months old and I was 7 months pregnant. So you can see some major changes already here:

1) We took out the old tub and again had to custom order an unusally short tub (which wasn't in yet, here).

2) I spent six hours one night scraping all the wallpaper off the walls after Will was in bed. Thankfully I didn't have to do the ceiling because they dropped the ceiling about a foot and put in a new, beadboard ceiling. Love it!

3) Craig's cousin, Jim, built a partial wall between the tub and toilet to eliminate the stupid wire to hold up the shower rod. It also served to make the toilet area slightly more private and as a place to run a new vent up through the floor to our bathroom above, allowing forced air into the upstairs bathroom.

4) And finally, you can see the beadboard on the lower half of the wall too. Shortly after, Craig and my mom and I were responsible for painting all of it, as well as the walls.

The finished product, painted (at the time) in purple, which Craig hated. New built-in mirror and medicine cabinet. New light fixture above. New pedastal sink and fixtures/accessories. New black stand to hold some towels since we lost all the storage under the sink. (The shower curtain is the same from the previous bathroom, which was also lavender.)

Craig did do the shower tile and tile floor himself.

We kept the same toilet and cabinet above from before.

Okay. Same view. Different wall color.

Here's the shortened story: Will flushed an empty, cardboard, toilet paper tube down the toilet upstairs causing that toilet to overflow majorly before we realized it. The damage upstairs was minimal. But the water came through the new ceiling in the downstairs bathroom and somehow seeped down the walls and bubbled (blistered) the new paint in a few spots. The ceiling repair was minimal (venting it to drain, using a hair dryer to dry things out, patching the vent), but Craig decided to scrape some of the paint from the walls and add a little additional drywall mud here and there to smooth things out. Sooo... we took this opportunity to repaint the whole room a duskier (is that a word?) gray that also went with the old shower curtain. We both like it better. It no longer looks "like the Easter Bunny threw up in here" according to Craig.

Also in Jan 2009, we transitioned our 2nd bedroom (which we were using as a den/office) into Will's big boy bedroom. As you can see, this was "Craig's room" with the sports paraphernalia and leather chair. When we first moved in, this room was a kids' play room with safari wallpaper and speckled carpeting. Beneath the carpeting were hardwood floors that we brought back to life. Aren't old houses great? The dark brown walls actually work great in here because there's a lot of white (doors and trim) to break it up and there are two windows to let light into this smallish room. That door that you see is the walk-in closet with super nice built-in drawers and shelves that I'll show you in a minute.

We had two desk spaces and another mounted flat screen that had to move out along with the leather chair. The desk on the left belonged to Craig's Grandpa Riedeman and it's really cute and old. This door is the entrance to the room. It's directly across the hallway from the nursery and between the rooms is the first floor bathroom. If you walked out this door and to the left, you'd be in our dining room.

This was our main computer area. The shelves above it held framed photos of our parents and grandparents (and us!) on their wedding days, which we'd displayed around our cake table at our wedding.

So do you see that map two pictures above? It's a U.S. map that I had mounted and framed as a Christmas present for Craig with colored pins pushed into the places we've traveled (separately and as a couple). We just took that map theme and ran with it (extremely inexpensively!) as a decor for Will's new room. I ordered his bedding from PBK and I LOVE it! It's perfect for little boy up to teenager I think and it even had a chocolate brown stripe to tie in the wall color. The lamp shade matches the navy gingham sheets (also from PBK) but the lamp base is from Target, I think? Remember, this is the full bed frame that goes with our bedroom set upstairs. It seemed so strange to put our not-yet-two-year-old son in this huge bed!

We moved his letters in here and I got some navy Roman blinds with a blackout panel from PBK for the windows. They were actually a better price than most stores and I love them!

My parents got Will a small, wooden toy/book storage unit for Christmas and we put a world map on a cork board above it. The Leap Frog globe is there along with a standing globe that Craig got free from work. And I even set out a 50 States board book from my friend Jill.

I picked up a bunch of brown and white frames from Kohl's and filled them with my favorite pictures of little Will for the shelves.

Again, we added shelving in the closet to maximize storage space and add hanging space.

But the drawers and shelves already in there were a perfect substitution for dressers. Good thing, because if you look at the room layout, there really aren't many place for furniture with the locations of the windows and doors.

Then, we brought the crib back to the original "newborn" state by raising the mattress and bringing back out the quilt and mobile for decoration. (All that cutesy stuff is so pointless and short-lived, isn't it? But you'd never forego it, right?) And we welcomed Miss Sophia in April!

Ugh. There's a better view of that infamous picture. The picture itself is not the worst thing in the world. It's the totally out-of-place frame that looks like it belongs above a fire place in some rich person's library with a painted photo of their grandmother.

This is Sophie's room now. Lowered crib again. Girly hairclips hanging from the mirror. Prudence the owl sitting in her bed, waiting for her nightly "goodnight kiss".

The dining room now. No more fancy table settings... too impractical now. High chair in the corner. Don't think I showed the upgraded mirror in previous pics. It's actually a few years old, though. You can see the water spots on the unprotected table top. We're planning to refinish it soon to repair that. And I've also decided I am done with the red room. It's just not me anymore and I want a makeover. Hopefully that takes place this fall/winter, so you'll just have to stay tuned...

Also recently took down that big white swag of a window treatment and, for now, I think the room looks fine with no window covering. We have nice, thick, white trim around all the windows and doors, so that's dressy as it is. Plus, all the old fixtures (rings that hold the window swag, light above the table, etc.) are ugly brass. They must go. So we'll replace all that with the makeover.

I'm not even going to sugar coat this. This is what our couch always looks like. Slipcover disheveled with hunter green peaking out from underneath. And those slipcovers are getting so worn out. Craig's already (poorly - but he couldn't help it) patched one hole and there are others. So new couches are in our future as well. We're ready to pass on/get rid of the hand-me-downs!

Yikes! But hey, I'm keepin' it real.

Craig would like to paint the living room a slightly darker shade - but still a neutral color - because he wants our new couches to actually be a similar shade to the current wall color. And that would be too monochromatic otherwise. Also, this picture is fairly orderly, but we have so much kiddie toys/crap in ever available corner and that's getting old. We're hoping to finish a part of our (unfinished) basement this winter to create a new play room and house all these Godforsaken toys. ;)

Also, sometime soon, I'd like to change out several of the photos in the frames in our stairwell going up to our bedroom. Not all, but some. I don't have any of Sophie on this wall.

And I've got to fill that darn nook!

Again, no sugar coating. This is what our catch-all basement looks like now. Crap, crap, and more crap... everywhere. We need to sort and eliminate! We have an old hutch (left) filled with overflow glassware and decor. An old, tan filing cabinet that we'll need to keep filled with all our documents. A white shelf above it stocking all our partially used paint cans. The leather chair from the den covered in the middle of the room... that may move up to the living room when we get new couches... except for the ottoman - that won't fit. An old bakers rack filled with college text books, board games, etc. (What did you do with old text books? I think we're going to move those to plastic tubs in the attic.) And all the way to the back, as well as to the left of the bakers rack, is over cluttered desk space. This is only one side of our basement and what you can't see in this picture is the washer and dryer behind me on the right and a huge shelving area that Craig put in for overflow dry storage behind me on the left.

Here's the other side of the basement. Treadmill, some weights, furnace (not shown), etc. And ugly painted cinder block walls painted by the previous owner in (I think) Florida State colors? This is the side we're going to make into a play room after getting rid of the workout equipment. That door in the middle joins the two sides and I don't know why but I love that door. It's soooo old! The basement also connects behind me in this picture where the stairs come down from the kitchen. And we may even finish part of the other side as a nicer looking office area. Not sure how that will all work though.

Oh, the previous owner would be sooooo disgraced by this. He did a landscaping business on the side and we've totally let all his hard work fall apart. But never fear! This is what we've been working on the past few weeks and, with the trees down, we're going to eliminate this "peninsula" of mulch bed and plant grass here. The buckeye tree back there on the left will have a wide circle of mulch bed beneath it and that's it. I've been weeding like it's my job lately!!!

A frontal view of our house now with less shade and fuller landscaping.

See the patchy siding spots? It's not that bad everywhere, but here it's really noticeable. Re-siding is a not-far-off project for Craig.

And these poor trees that line the driveway are looking worse and worse. Craig insists they're "making a come-back" and that we're not replacing them. But I think they're a downfall to our "curb appeal".

And then there's the deck that needs staining (desperately) and spindles that need repainting (desperately) and Craig really wants to rebuild the steps leading up to the deck because they're getting bad and there's no railing currently.

See the deck steps? And also how the house and garage siding doesn't match exactly?

So that's our home tour!

We have a lot of work ahead of us!

But no one project as big as any of the ones we've already done. So that's a relief.

And I do really love our first home. It's a quaint but modernized old, farm house and it's ours.