It sheds, big time- these weird little squiggly things that get on and into everything

They stick to the dogs when they go out and they bring them back inside

And it doesn’t drop all at once.  It’s a little each day. For a couple weeks.

It makes me crazy.  It’s everywhere.  All through the house.

I just leave the vacuum out, don’t even put it away.

Until the tree is done pooping.

This year we also decided to stain the concrete floor.  I have never stained concrete.  It requires a major wash down with concrete cleaner, then you wait a day before you can stain.

Yesterday we did the cleaning

Before

dirt and cobwebs everywhere

dead plants

trash

She didn’t help- so put on some music

She didn’t help either

After the concrete wash

I set the girly up to hang out here

And she ate a lot of grass

Hopefully we will get the stain on in between Sunday Lax games and I will after pics tomorrow!

I love my little town
These pics were taken with iPhone

For those of you having a hard time picturing the lay-out of the house, I thought it might be helpful to post the architect drawings.

I don’t know if you can tell, but I LOVE home remodels.  I love the thought process behind taking something not so great and turning it into something wonderful.

Our house was a basic rectangle, center hall colonial

This is the first floor, after. Here you can see where we added the new family room where the screened porch had been, and the new porch was added.  A few changes were made after these prints were made- we decided not to do the peninsula in the kitchen, added the dog shower, moved the stove, etc

Here is the 2nd floor.  Blake’s old room became our master bath.  The house stayed 4 bedrooms, even though we added another one.  We changed a few things here too, the entrance to the master bedroom closet was moved to the little hallway by the master bathroom door so we would have more wall space for a dresser.  We took out the window in the bathroom in the hall because it looked a little weird (too small).  That bathroom used to have a really big window but when we added the new master bedroom it became a wall.

We also left the old master bathroom alone, so Austin has his own bathroom.  The blueprints shows it as a closet.

This is what the master looked like before.  It was all pink.

It was one giant room, walk-in closet on the right (which is now part of laundry room) and bathroom.

Here is the other closet in the room that stayed.

I won’t post the pictures of this how this room looks now since I posted them not too long ago (it’s Austin’s Ohio State room).  If you want to see the after, go here.

I put all kinds of ideas in my book- and I am still adding to it.

oops sorry for the sideways pics!

So you get the idea!

I can’t remember the paint color- I think I went to Benjamin Moore and tried a few (I think it was some sort of coffee?) and then I had the painters match it in a less expensive brand.

The floor in the study is the only peg floor, all the hardwoods just have a poly coat, no stain.

The lights in the last post are Ikea (the hanging ones) my husband wired them into the can lights but I believe they can also just plug in.  The hallway lights are schoolhouse lights from Lowes.

I did not hire a designer, I kept a scrapbook of everything I liked- I will show that tomorrow.  We pretty much designed it ourselves.  Except for the structural- an architect did that.

Ok so here we go.  Here is our kitchen before

I don’t even know where to start.  The wallpaper, the floor, the aluminum slider to the right…

See that wall where the stove is?  On the other side of that is the dining room.  We knocked that wall down.  These pictures were taken the day we looked at the house (when it was for sale)

Our family (even before Eva and Cole) had a hard time fitting around the table in the “eat-in” kitchen.  It was perched in front of a slider.  It was awkward.

We bought this house in March of 2003.  We didn’t do out major remodel until August of 2007.  That said, we didn’t live with it like this that whole time.  We made changes ourselves (we took out the wall, changed the floor, took out the slider and added french doors, made the “U” shape bigger by getting rid of the eat-in area.)  During that time we continued to look for a different house.

Here is the dining room

Another slider here going out to the screened porch.  When we added on, we knocked down the screened porch (I will show pictures of that when I show the outside- all the kids helped!) And where that screened porch was, is now our family room.

Here is Blake and Astro looking out that slider when were digging the basement

And Cole while they were starting to frame it- and below the dogs trying to figure out how to get back in the house (there was a huge hole between the house and where they were

Ok back to the kitchen

Gutted

look at all the dust showing up in the air

See the french doors on the left?  That was built out and became our banquet.  The next door (which used to be a walk-in pantry) became our back door.

Here is the drywall phase- and you can see where they put down the new wood floor and matched it up to the old wood floor in the old dining room

another picture of the floor and new cabinets

And then a few from yesterday.  Once again I didn’t clean- and notice the Lysol on the counter- puking kid.

the fridge- I love this thing!

the carve-out over the sink. Through there you see the new family room and then the new screened porch beyond that.  Please ignore the mess!

docking station- I just bought that.  Love it.  Oh which remind me of another question- where I got the cabinet in the last post (the white one).  I find all of these cool little things at Home Goods or TJ Maxx.

Mess.  And a big stack of more idea magazines.  We are doing the dining room next.  It was the room we lived out of while the rest of the house was destroyed.

I think I have shown the rest of the kitchen lots of times but I will show it again.  Door to basement.

Banquet on left, back door after that, bathroom, garage door, dog shower on the right where all of those lovely boxes are stacked for recycling.  But first, this closet used to be where the white bench is now (and the area where the white bench is will eventually become built-in lockers)

My inspiration for the banquet

The bathroom before (their last name started with a K too )

I don’t even know what to say.

And here it is during

We have hardwood floors in that bathroom, the tile was for Blake and Cole’s bathroom upstairs.

And here it is complete with toilet paper rolls

Whew, ok that is probably enough for one day.

I will leave you with a picture of my little puker

Who is feeling much better today.

Andy and I have owned two very cool old houses.  Our current house is not one of them.

But I am also picky old house.  I really prefer 1910-1930 with my preference being right around 1920.  I know.  Picky.  I love arts and crafts but not dark arts and crafts.  I like nooks and built-ins.  Walking into a cool old house gives me goose bumps.  I’m not kidding.

So what happens when you find the perfect little town where you want to raise your family.  You can walk to church, the library, the quaint historic downtown, and the kids can walk to school.  Only probably is you have two little boys, another on the way, a couple of dogs, and all the cool old houses are either nor for sale, not big enough, or there is no yard.

We did the next best thing.  We found a cool neighborhood where the houses were a bit bigger, the yards a lot bigger, yet we could still walk everywhere plus have trail access to the bike path along the river.  The yard was perfect, big and full of huge old trees.  The house, well not so much.  1960’s colonial.  You know the kind.  Red Brick on the bottom, and white aluminum siding on the top.  So not my style.   But it had good bones- and really we decided it was going to be a temporary house- until a really old house came up for sale that was big enough for our family of 5.

Because Cole was due in 3 months, we didn’t tackle a ton of things right off the bat.  We did pull up all of the carpet, and pretty much the whole house had carpet.  Underneath we found wood floors.  Lots and lots of wood floors.  We had them refinished.  The whole house was wallpapered.  I’m not kidding.  Everything.  I will never wallpaper a house.  Ever.  I stripped it all with water and fabric softener. NIGHTMARE.

Andy and I have always remodeled our own houses- so we tried to remodel this one on our own.  But with three kids, our free time just wasn’t what it once was and eventually (a few years ago) when we decided it was time to bite the bullet- we put on an addition.  But not only did we put on an addition, we remodeled the entire house.  Top to bottom, almost every room- even the outside.

I thought it would be fun to show you how we took a 1960 colonial and transformed it into a house full of old house character.  We aren’t done.  I am planning part 2 right now.  Nothing as major as the first, but fun for sure.

Today I will show you what the previous family (who were the original owners and only had two kids- oh and the parents didn’t like dogs (ha!) and both sons grew up to become vets) where was I going with this?  Oh yeah- their family room.  Which we turned into a study.

Before pictures

Lots of dark.

After

Before

After- as you can see in the after picture, we painted the built-in, beams, changed the trim, new windows

Cole leaves me little notes.

I love this little firewood door- it goes to the garage where you load it up.

This space is now my office/study. I used to hate this room, the size was awkward, I hated the brick wall, now I love it.   It has become one of my fave rooms.

My big red E- a gift from Aimee.  A drawing of our historic downtown.

Love the peg floor.

Here is what the hallway used to look like

Look how little Blake was!

We pulled the wall back on the stairs- you can see how far the wall comes down on the left side of the pic- the stairway was like a dark cave, changed the railing and newel post, bumped out the front door- it used to be we would enter and all pile up when the first person stopped.

About to change this front door.

I will try to pick a new room to show tomorrow but Cole has the stomach flu so it may be tough.

As many of you know that have been reading my blog for a while, we did a major renovation on our house a few years ago.  It is still a work in progress but I get asked about the laundry room a lot.

And I should tell you- it is not terribly impressive.  It is small, but it is functional.

First I should probably show you where it was.  Many of you that live in older homes know that the laundry is usually located in a less than ideal location.  Usually the basement.

Ours was on the first floor, and it did have a laundry shoot that dumped into the “closet” where the laundry room was, but it was in a horrible location.  In a hallway off the kitchen.  With horrible accordion style doors.  There was no room in there for laundry baskets so they had to be put in the hallway, which meant you had to walk over them to get to the bathroom.

The hallway had a walk-in pantry on the left (which was quite a distance from the kitchen) a coat closet on the right, the long laundry closet on the right and a bathroom on the left.  It ended with the door to the garage.  So we ripped out the entire area, all the closets, pantry- just left the bathroom.  The laundry closet became a dog shower.

Also used to water plants and dirty boys.

the tall pantry was added for mops, vacuum, etc

the coat closet became an open area where we will eventually add built-in cubbies and places to hang backpacks.  For now it holds sports stuff, light sabers, etc

opening all this up was huge.  It was very dark before

` this used to be a walk-in pantry- and our backdoor was the area that is now the banquet (to the left)

look there goes a boy

So after we cleared that area out, we moved the laundry room upstairs.

Previously when you came up the stairs our master bedroom door was where the floor changed direction.  We took some of that room and created a hallway, the (old) masterbath on the left didn’t change, and the master walk-in closet became the laundry room

It’s small but does the job.

Our old master bedroom became Austin’s room

He doesn’t keep a level and ironing board in his room- Andy left those in while finishing up the laundry.

Austin now has his own bathroom (the old master bath), but we won’t go in there.

At the top of the stairs was a cedar closet that we never used so we took it out and added a homework nook.  I love how the stairs are now open a bit on the top.  That used to be solid wall.

Ohh I hate that lamp, it’s gotta go.

Ok, so that’s a bit of the changes that were made to our house.  I will try to do more in the future.

Pictures to come, but for now here is my inspiration.

Cole had a friend over and they played Plamobil the entire time. No video games.

Dinner was a different story. We all ate some mac and cheese at various times, but hey- Andy is out of town and I am doing the best I can. Right?

And reminder to self- no one likes the Whole Foods Brand organic white cheddar mac and cheese. The last time I made it Cole said it was horrible, I tried it again last night and Blake said it tasted like soap. So back to Annies.

I am trying to get our dining room put back together. I finally got the farm table that our family needs. 10 feet long, seats 12. Bad thing is I only have 4 chairs left over from a different table. I am looking for a big long bench for one side.

Our dining room was the one room we didn’t touch during our remodel. We lived out of one room downstairs. Insane.
So it needs a lot of work. Maybe it would be better to line the table under the light, no? Anyway, working on gathering pictures and art for the back wall. Lots of kid art and black and white photos.

And do you like my centerpiece? I got it at the CL Fair. So fun!

Here is the chalk board- Cole and I left a message for Andy. Not working so far.

Doesn’t everyone have a beagle laying on a couch in their dining room?

She loves this lookout spot

And check out this cuteness- Cole got his first hockey helmet from my friend Rob

Love It!