Leavenworth, WA & Brookings, OR

We have been on vacation since last Thursday and we are loving every minute. This is just a quick blog with mostly pictures :)

We went to Leavenworth for Erin's cousin's wedding and spent some great quality time with his family in WA.

This was a Bavarian themed town tucked way up in the beautiful mountains. It was surreal having them that close to use. They also had great german food and beer :)

Then we headed to the coast. The ocean has been pretty rough so no diving really for Erin, except one dive where he grabbed us huge scallops. And lots and lots of crab!!!! Every day we are pulling in pots full of them.

 Erin caught a lin cod his first day here, what a beauty! And that is me just trying to hold that big thing, it was really heavy.

 This is a dear friend John and this is his fleet! They are great boats and we are blessed to be with him and using his boats on this trip.

 Brit was with us for a few days and this is her actually touching a crab!!

 Me, Jeannie (Erin's mom if you can't tell) and Erin.

 It's a rough life :)

And then these are pictures of the giant sea scallops and some fish.

And of course, it wouldn't be a beach trip with out the seagulls. Literally it's at our kitchen window.

Inside is almost done!

There are so many projects we have going, it's hard to notice any progress when you work on one a little at a time, yet they are all incomplete! But, we are getting stuff done. I am going to paint our dining area ceiling today. I've already put 2 coats of primer on it so it should be looking good. Then I can paint the walls in there, which I have already washed, puttied and sanded in areas. I painted the cabinets in the kitchen that we took from the kitchen we are tearing down and they turned out great! Now I am going to strip the doors so they look good, too. And put all new door knobs on them eventually.

 Before

 What they looked like when they brought them over

Now! Minus the doors :)

Erin and I have been working on getting ready to tile our kitchen/dining area floor. It took us a whole week of working until 9 each night to do what we have finished, and hopefully tomorrow night we can bust out whats left. We thought tile would look nice and be a good idea to put in the kitchen. But, we seriously had every problem you could have with your floors, so we took all the precautions in getting it ready. We tore up the linoleum, and under that were these 9x9'' linoleum tiles (fyi they were under every surface in the house, the bedrooms and the living room and bathroom. And they are so ugly I  can't imagine why they wanted them in the whole house!) and they were not that easy to get off. They were sealed to the sub-floor with tar. I started to break them off with some kind of power tool our contractor handed me and went at it! 

So once we were down to our sub-floor, we put down plywood, thin set, hardibacker...and now we can tile on top of that! Phew! What were we thinking?!? We should have just got new linoleum :) But it's going to look great.

As far as the outside, there is a lot that had to be fixed on the back side of our house. There was dirt laying against the house for who knows how many years, and it rotted out the entire bottom half of the siding against the back of the house. So all new walls/ siding are going in. They are fixing the foundation a little bit, too, while they're at it :) We got a new basement door. We have a new back door waiting to be installed and we are so excited! We also bought some security screens to go on the back doors so we can have better air flow.

Also, they are getting ready to prep the house for our paint job! So, my house is covered in scaffolding. The metal walk-ways and stuff they put around the building to walk on while they paint it. But, since our house is so special and has lead based paint outside, we get to have the lovely black screen wrapped around it too. We are quite the eye-soar of the block right now but know it will look great in just a few more weeks.

 View from the street

This is on the steps looking up, basically you have to walk under this to get to our front door. It's like living inside a giant fort of something!

I put of the blinds in the back room, front room and bathroom all by myself! And I say they look pretty good :) I also found these two things while antique shopping with my mom. A glass jug we are putting our coins in, and an old hair spray container thingy that I am using to hold cotton balls and q-tips in the bathroom.

 The lady at the store told me that the piece on the right is the top for the left piece, and they hide a bottle of hairspray inside it! That's super cool, I would have never guessed that's what it was for. But I like this way too, with the cotton and q-tips :)

Erin also stripped the bedroom door hinges and hardware! What a messy project but so worth it!

Nesting...and painting!

The painting is never ending in this house. I used to love to paint. Ha! It's not even actually painting the room that takes the longest amount of time and energy, it's 90% prep work! Washing the walls, sanding, taping, priming, and then painting. And then touching up! But, I am so satisfied with the way the rooms are looking compared to the shape they were in when we bought this house.

I have been buying little treasures. There are 2 stores down here in Midtown that I love. One is called the Summer Porch, it's on J and 33 I think. And then there is another antique store that I don't think has a name and that is on J and 23. I bought these two pieces of furniture, and love them! I guess I like wicker furniture hehe.

This shelf will go at the end of the kitchen to hold my cookbooks and platters, ect.

This will go in den/office room. I plan on putting my arts and crafts tools in it or something along those lines.

This is the before and after of our bathroom! It's coming along.

 

I also found this sweet sewing table in the basement! It was just sitting there stored amongst other stuff and I new exactly what it was when I saw it.

I'm sure it still works, the peddle is there and the cord too. It's not a really old machine but it's still neat. And it will look nice when I dust it off hehe.

For the 4th of July weekend, we went floating down the American River Sunday afternoon with a some friends and it was cold water! Then headed to a bbq after that. It was at one of Erin's friend's parent's house and they have the coolest old house! It was built in the late 1800's. We did a lot of talking and discussed the joys and hard work in owning a old home. There house was beautiful and inspiring. Then on the 4th we visiting family in Applegate for the day and headed to our usual spot, Davis. It was a lot of fun seeing old friends and watching their families grow up! Good fellowship and great fireworks.

I love the summer time but really miss living in our little apartment where the one AC window unit cooled it down fast. Our house is hot! But we are usually working on it and getting hot and sweaty anyways, so it's not too bad but we have a AC unit in our room to help us sleep at night. And in the kitchen so I don't die of heat stroke while trying to make dinner for my hubby :) Since we are getting rid of the kitchen on the other back side of the house, we have an extra stove and fridge. Erin likes the idea of me cooking in the basement so our kitchen doesn't get hot. He thinks he is so funny :)

What a hard worker :)

Hello Summer!

We have been enjoying the cool summer mornings and even the afternoons, but this house can get hot at night! We can not wait until we have HVAC. A few of our windows are missing the screens and we are not going to replace them until after we paint the exterior of the house. So we either stay hot or get a few bug bites :)

Progress wise, we are doing great! The work is done inside our side of the house, except for what Erin and I need to finish ourselves (paint some more and tile). We had some door jams fixed this last week, so there are no more gaps above the doors and they all close properly. I didn't really notice how bad some of them were but am appreciating how great they are now.

This last week, my sister had her surgery so I spent some time with her while Erin began ripping up the floor in our dining room. I also reupholstered our dining room chairs. The set was given to us by a good family friend whose mother passed away. It is the perfect size table for us and it has a built in leaf, but the cushions were very out-dated and not really in style, so I gave it an update and made them more shabby chic! We also hustled and got the back bedroom completely finished! YEAH! We removed all of the old paint on the window frame by using a heat gun, BEST THING EVER! It's like a little blow dryer that gets extremely hot and the paint just bubbles up and you scrape it off. Why did we just now find out about this!!?? The only down part is how hot the room itself gets, so I pretty much had Erin doing all of that hehe.

From this

To this!

It's going to be a little library/den for Erin. He can have one room right?? :)

This is a before picture of the chair cushions. And these are the during/after. I also really liked doing this and can't wait to do some more projects!

I also started painting our bathroom, so I can finally have a mirror in there!

The back unit is going to become 2 bedrooms so they are framing and going to town!

Here are some random pictures of Erin and I at Amy's Cal Poly graduation and our camping trip last week.