Bathroom Remodel

Bill and I decided that the downstairs bathroom was in need of a remodel.  From a quick look, it actually was not that bad, but there were just a lot of little details that added up to the need for a major makeover.  Last night and today we finished up demolishing the whole thing.  We found a gaping hole in the floor so had to take all 5 layers of flooring off to basically start from the beginning.  We will be doing most of the work ourselves, even though we don't know how to do it all yet. The most difficult thing will be the shower. It is a glass shower with a pan; two walls will be tiled and the other two are the shower glass. I'll post some more pictures as we get things installed.

Finally Painted Grant's Room

It has been pretty cold and rainy this week so I finally tackled an inside project.  When we first moved into the house Grant's room was a "Superman-Spiderman" theme with yellow, red and blue paint on the walls. I completely disliked it, but other things took priority so I didn't get to it till now. It is a thousand times calmer in that room. Amazing what a gallon of paint can do!  

The Primary Colors are 1, 2, 3...

 ...RED, YELLOW and BLUE!

Calmer place to sleep:

The outside of our house!

I know we don't have a lot of readers, but I wanted to let the few of you see pictures of our house.  It was built in 1890, has 4-5 bedrooms and 2 baths. There are 4 fireplaces, but I doubt any of them work. We have lived here for almost 5 months, and although we have not done any major projects, we feel like the house is beginning to look nicer already.  Here is a list of what we have done to the outside:

Tore down old wood fence
Pulled tons of weeds
Planted grass in backyard
Power-washed garage
Painted garage door and trim
Hired tree guy to cut down 6-7 trees
Cleaned a billion spider webs off the house
Attempted to fix leaking gutters
Successfully patched a hole in the roof of the porch
Started painting the trim on the house

I still want to figure out how to successfully fix our leaking gutters, replace the gutters on one side of the garage and finish painting the trim on the bay windows before it gets too cold. Then it is indoor projects until spring!

After the cleaning, scraping, caulking and painting:

 Before:

 Backyard and garage:

 Side of the house:

 View from the front/side:

 Front porch (obviously an addition that does not match the style of the house):

A couple of weeks ago Steph, Grant and I went to Utah to visit my family.  I am from Ohio, but bit by bit my entire family has migrated to Utah.  Mom is ecstatic.

On Saturday night we decided to climb Timp.  Everyone was invited.  The group who went was: Steph, my sister Catherine, Steph's Sister Kim, Kim's boyfriend (and soon-to-be fiance!)


David was about to come, but this happened:

We started climbing too early, or we climbed too fast.  We got to the top of the mountain at four in the morning.  It was freezing cold when we got there, so we huddled in the tiny shack on top of the mountain and waited for the sun to rise.

Good times!

Got up this morning and went for a bike ride at five.  It was dark until about ten to six.  Good clean fun.

Yesterday Steph and I cut down some branches from a tree that was brushing up against the eaves of our house.  What we should have done was rent a chainsaw for a couple of hours and chop the tree down that way.  Instead, we bought a handsaw and climbed the tree and cut the limbs down that way.  More exercise.

Here is what our porch looked like afterwards.  The gaping hole in the roof was there before, and was caused by someone trying to patch the metal roof by laying a piece of plywood on top.  (note to self)

Steph and I are planning on fixing this porch area.  We really have no idea how we should do this, but I think the first step will be to clearly find out how extensive the water damage is to the porch.  This will likely involve some deconstruction of the porch, getting the roof off, etc.

This is a side view of our front porch.  You can see I patched this one up as well.  It is really just a patch though, to prevent cats and things from coming into the porch area thorough the gaping crack.  Eventually Steph and I are going to have to fix this porch as well... probably by tearing it down and building a new one in its place.

This is Bill writing.

I woke up this morning at 5:00 to go for a bike ride.  It was waaaay to early, so I went back to bed for an hour.  At six o clock I dressed in spandex and rode to Montrose. It had been raining all night long, and the clouds were low and ragged.  Foggy and cool.  

The Mississippi is pretty slow moving and flat where I ride, and there are acres of lily pads along the shore.

A few leaves have started to change.  Fall is coming.

I am feeling a little frustrated with where I am.  I want to be great at something, instead of tolerably good at a lot of things.  In order to do something very well, you have to do it intensely.  That is why I woke up at five... to start being intense.  But instead I went back to sleep.

That is ok.  I will be intense tomorrow morning.

We are all moved into our new house! And we have internet! Yeah! Now I can start blogging again.

So far: Bill is loving his new job. I am loving the new house. And Grant is loving swim class, swinging at the park, drawing, reading books, and watermelon!

I have not started any big projects on the house yet, but when I do I will post some pictures of my handy work. For now, here is a picture of James and Grant (the Kannas' visited us in Keokuk a few weeks ago).

We moved to Iowa!

It has been a very busy month. Bill graduated from Law School with honors. He accepted a job in Iowa and started work right away. Steph wrapped up her job in Minneapolis. We packed the house and moved to a small town in southern Iowa called Keokuk.

We have been here for three days and so far we like it. We already bought a house here and are excited to move in next month.

I will try to update this blog more often so you can follow our new adventures in Keokuk.