on a (constructive) rampage

Michael has not been to work since December 23. Don't be sad, this was a planned vacation! Hallelujah, praise the Lord for paid vacation! Well, a week of it, anyway. The first week was spent celebrating Christmas here and in Ohio, and having a day or two where we tried catching up on any relaxation we'd missed.

Then, this week has been a busy one here in our house. I'm so thankful for a handy and hardworking husband! Here are the highlights - so if you are not into reading about home improvements, well, you are out of luck today!

When we first moved into our house, the floors were nasty. Stained old smelly matted down with dirt and goodness knows what else carpet on top of (drumroll please) asbestos tile. A joy to us all. So in the first months of gutting this place, we scraped up everything and took it out to the road. Leaving us with glue-stained concrete as our flooring choice. Before Aaron was born, mom and dad helped us paint the floors a nice neutral color. It wasn't my favorite choice, but it did the job of making our house look cleaner. I say cleanER because the texture of the concrete and glue under all that paint really made actual clean nigh unto impossible.

About the time Aaron was starting to crawl, God provided a sale and the money and we put laminate flooring down in the main living areas - and the bathroom. It said right on the box not to do that, but we gave it a go anyway. Little did we know that there were issues with the wax ring seal and then we had leaking going on, leading to a full ripout of the laminate flooring in the bathroom. Squishy floors = not good.

All that to say, we (ok, Michael & dad) have laid the final flooring (hopefully) in our bathroom this week, and there is actual trim around the door. And there are baseboards, too. Trim is one of those things that you don't really think is important or that you will miss it, but once it is up it's like the difference between antenna TV and cable. The edges go from fuzzy to sharp and the house is transformed.



I had gotten a green shower curtain on uberclearance at Target a couple months ago, then at the Menard's Black Friday sales we scored a curved shower curtain rod for $20. Worth every penny for that extra room in the shower, might I add. So we are enjoying a new looking bathroom!



The living room and the kitchen are divided by a wall and our weird fireplace, so when we deconstructed the kitchen, we put a window in the wall between the two rooms so that we could be in the kitchen and not feel separated from those in the living area. We've loved having it there, but it has been untrimmed and looking like the rough opening that it is.

Michael trimmed that this week, too. It looks so much nicer. I can't wait to re-arrange our living room back to its original state (we have a different format for Christmas) and see how it all looks.

Still hoping to get done this weekend, a couple doors for closets which have been hidden by curtains (which work just fine) Michael is at Home Depot even as I type. (Looky, looky! Those are the doors!!)

Just for those of you wondering why I can't just live with the house I have and be happy - I CAN! We are pressing on because our goal is resale - we hope to have the house refinanced later this year in order to increase our equity on paper, pay off some things, and become free from PMI, and then we home to sell this house (hopefully at a profit!) sometime in the next 3-4 years. It's not the "conventional" way, but we are confident that God has directed us this far and will continue to direct.