Before and After

At last, my internet is working! I've been living here for almost a month now with no internet... not fun! I dedicate this whole post to before and after pics. I am not going to put up all the pics, but here are a few of the high-lights. We are definitely not done with everything, but there has certainly been a lot done around here. I am still amazed with all the changes, and am in love with my new house! I honestly never thought it would turn out this well. Enjoy!!

Breakfast Nook

Kitchen

Powder Bath

Hearth Area

Living Room

Master Bath

My bedding turned out beautifully!!

Update

I still have no internet at the new place, so new pics to post yet...sorry! I finally have kitchen cabinets, wahoo!! The painters finished them yesterday and I put on the knobs last night all by myself! (I'm not gonna lie, I was proud of myself...all of my HGTV watching has paid off!) My parents were in town last night so we worked for a few hours cleaning and organizing my kitchen. I can finally use my dishes!! The cabinets are white and I think they look amazing.

Everything is slowly but surely coming together. My couch is still MIA, so it continues to be just the crazy creek chair available for seating. The painters are getting closer to being done...when I left the house this morning they were working on the front door, the molding, and my fireplace. Mike added some molding to the fireplace to kick it up a notch. Once the addition is painted, I think it will really make a difference. Also, my TV got mounted...Hallelujah! The flip-side of this is that I now realize it is really small! I definitely need a larger one, but that is not in the budget right now.

I love antique stores! A few months ago, while visiting family in Huntsville, we ran in Railroad Antiques (if you've never been...it's great!) While looking around I found an oil painting with bunnies that I almost had a fit for...but it wasn't in the budget then. Ever since then, I have been talking about it and asking if we can go back so I can buy it, but my parents always said no. This past weekend they surprised me with it! Apparently they bought it that day and snuck it by me! I was super-excited when I opened it and I can't wait to find a place for it at my house.

My summer is officially coming to a close. I start back to work on Monday...boo!! I have spent the whole summer working on my house and hanging out with my sister and niece. I am going to be in withdrawals next week when I can't spend the day with them anymore. I mean, right now, my sister is at the grocery and I'm here with Katherine....Oh how I will miss this next week. Katherine has really grown over the summer and has hit some major milestones. She is crawling all over the place, pulling up, clapping/waving/pointing, and jabbering all the time. (Which of course thrills me!) I can't believe she will be 1 year old in a little over a month! Although I enjoy having my summer off, I have really missed my kids at school. I am anxious to get back to work and get into the swing of things again. As my mom says, "It's time to sing the money song Virginia...I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go."

I am very excited about this weekend. Two of my very good friends will be in town!! Caroline (she lives here in the Ham but is in Tampa for business until October) and Chelsey (she lives in Aliceville and is coming into town to shop) will both be here. I am ready to see both of them and can't wait for all of us to get together!

Alive...Barely

Well I have officially moved into the new place. Sorry for not posting for awhile, but I went with the fam to Sandestin for a week and then moved, so have had no internet, and actually still don't. (I'm at AK's house right now and praying AT&T will be calling me very soon to fix this problem.) I have decided there is nothing fun about moving...it is one of the worst things in the world. My body is aching all over right now from this past week-I really understand the term "sweat equity" now. I have never worked so hard on something in my whole life.

Thank goodness for my mom. She came down on Monday night to help me start getting the place ready for the move on Tuesday morning. She is a life-saver and the best cleaning lady ever! I think I have worked her a little too hard, but I honestly couldn't have made it through the week without her. I knew the place was dirty when I bought it, but after all the construction it was even dirtier....or disgusting might be a better word. Two Men and a Truck (it was actually 3 young guys and a truck! haha) came out to the old place Tuesday morning and very quickly hauled out my furniture. I was kind of sad to leave the condo and my roommate Brittany, but very excited to be moving into the new place.

I finally got the carpet installed and I love it!!!! I still have no cabinets, so all my kitchen stuff is sitting in boxes around the house. I am eating off of paper plates/bowls and using plastic silverware! Also, my couch has yet to arrive from Pottery Barn, so all I have in my living room is a Crazy Creek chair!! That's right, I've had to pull out the old college chair...thank goodness I had not thrown it away. I had a wingback chair, but I had to send it to A'ville with Mom yesterday to get re-upholstered. (I found a beautiful French country toile in chocolate and blue) My new bed arrived on Wednesday and I LOVE it...it is sooo comfy. 61-it might be as wonderful as y'alls "heavenly bed". Mom and Dad are coming down tomorrow and we are going to pick up my new headboard and hopefully my new bedding will be done next week.

Do any of you ppl out there have a mounted TV in your living room? What I thought was going to be no big deal has turned into a nightmare. Due to the layout of my living room, the TV has to be mounted-no other options. The DIRECTV ppl came out on Tuesday and stayed for 5 1/2 hours!! They were incompetent and just couldn't seem to get it working. My contractor Mike told me to have them drill a hole through the crawlspace and to run the cable through the floor. The workmen tried to tell me it couldn't be done....but as I like to say, "If Mike says it can be done, it can be done!" So after shedding a few tears to the guys, they drilled the hole and what should have cost me a bundle, I got for free! (Crying always helps!) Now my electrician just has to come out and wire everything through the wall.

I'm in the middle of a little drama with my painters. They are charging us a fortune for the painting and it looks awful. There is TONS of touch-ups that still need to be done and not to mention they haven't painted the cabinets. I am NOT a happy camper with them right now. I can't use my kitchen or any of my vanities in the bathrooms because none of them have been painted. I'm sure y'all are getting a mental image of what my house looks like right now! Maybe by December it will all come together.

A big shout-out to my whole family for all of their help this week. My cousin Connor was here for a few days, and my Aunt Jen came down and fixed up my flower bed in front of my house. It majorly upped my curb appeal!! Sorry, I have no pics to post because I don't have my computer up and running at the new place yet. Hopefully I will have another update soon!

Weekend=Time to Work

This weekend, my Aunt Vicki, Uncle Dan, and cousin Bret came down from Chattanooga to help me do some work to my house. They can do everything! I wish I could hire them to help me finish my house and I am forever indebted to them for all they helped me do. We worked ourselves to death Friday and Saturday. Well, Aunt Vicki and I mainly delegated and did odd jobs (going back and forth to H.D.), while Uncle Dan and Bret did all the electrical work. We changed out every switch and recepticle (didn't know what that was until this weekend) in the whole house. We changed my old-school toggle switches to pimp/modern rectangular switches. My Uncle Dan is "The Man". He can do anything and everything. I think the grand total of visits to Home Depot this weekend alone is about four. People began waving at us on Saturday...that is a major indication that I spend too much time there. Here are some pics from our weekend.

Every girl has to have a pink tool belt!

Katherine wanted in on the work too!


Uncle Dan and Bret are hard at work!

So pumped about my new switches!

My new microwave got installed!


Aunt Vicki bought me "Hooty". My first addition to my house! (Of course it had to be an owl!)

My parents were also in town this weekend and helped out a lot. My dad repainted my house numbers and installed some new shower heads. In the past couple of days I have learned a lot about renovations and tools. I am now familiar with channel locks and crescent wrenches. In my last post, I mentioned how the fridge that was delivered was too large and we were going to have to do repair work to make it fit. Mike (my contractor) called me Friday morning and informed me that it would NOT fit...Of course I burst into my tears and called my Dad. He ripped me a new one and told me to get a grip and immediately go to H.D. to try and rectify the situation. (My Dad and I obviously handle stress differently! haha) I spent an hour with the store manager and got everything handled...or at least I think so. I have a new smaller version of my original fridge arriving on Tuesday!!

Drama, Drama, Drama

Let's start with yesterday. I was out at the house because the guys were installing my granite vanity top for my bathroom. I was standing in the kitchen writing something down and all of a sudden I began to hear running water coming from somewhere. I looked in the room that has the AC unit and hot water heater and find gushing water coming from a pipe in the wall. Panic mode set in. The plumber had just left about 15 minutes prior to this happening. I of course began screaming and tried to fix the pipe myself...I know you all are laughing right now..but I at least tried! Thank goodness I was able to get the plumber back out to the house to fix it. Apparently one of the granite men turned on my shower upstairs and that's what caused the leak. I'm just glad I was out there when it started leaking or we could have had a nightmare situation. Here are some pics of my new kitchen sink and my new vanity top in the master bath.

Today is the biggest day we've had thus far in the renovation process. My blinds were installed ( a week ahead of time and they look amazing!!!) and my appliances were delivered. I get a phone call around noon saying the appliances would be delivered in 30 minutes, so my mom and I decided to run to Chick-Fil-A to pick up some lunch before they arrived. We get there and they are closed!!! When is Chick-Fil-A ever closed??!! Very annoyed at this point, we head to Roly Poly. Did I mention we look super-gross and have on work clothes and no make-up?? Of course we run into someone from A'ville...there are Sand Mtn. ppl everywhere! haha While there I get a call from the appliance men saying they'll be there in 10 MINUTES! We are at least 2o minutes from being back at the house..and then, it begins storming. It hasn't rained here in weeks and of course when my appliances are being delivered, the bottom falls out. Thank goodness my mom was with me because I was about to have a breakdown. The workmen had a huge GE truck filled up with goodies for me. When we saw the fridge, I was like, holy cow-that thing is huge. My mom said, "That's not going to fit".

Will the fridge fit????


Nope, it won't fit!!!!

At this point, total breakdown mode was about to set in. The guy said, "Ma'am, it's not gonna fit." !!!!!!! He said the problem was when I measured for the fridge I had linoleum on the floors and now with the hardwoods, it just won't fit. So now I have to trim down the cabinets and remove some molding along the floor. Eventually it will get installed, but for now my monster of a fridge is sitting in my breakfast nook.

Dishwasher and Microwave

The oven looks great! Well, it will once the granite men come back out and remove the piece they put behind the stove. Did everyone know that some ranges don't go flush to the wall? Well, of course mine does and now it's sticking out farther than the cabinets because of the granite running behind it.


We were worried the washer and dryer wouldn't fit through the kitchen and into the laundry room but thankfully, they did! They're up and running and ready to tackle dirty clothes!

Also, Happy 10 month Birthday to my niece, Katherine!! A huge thank you goes out to my Aunt TT (she's the bomb) for making my new header for the blog. I am a blog retard and had to call her for help. I thought I'd represent my Chi-O roots and put some owls up. For those of you that know me, you know I LOVE owls!! Hooty-hoo!!

OOC Weekend

Every summer my group of friends from college get together for a weekend of fun. We used to call ourselves the Fockers (we don't remember why we named ourselves that) but we have recently renamed ourselves the 12-pack. We all live in different places, but for one weekend we all come together for good food, great drinks, and hilarious conversations. We congregated in Gulf Shores, AL at Mrs. Alex Robinson's beach house, where we got to meet baby Jay, Alex's precious son. Things have definitely changed since we graduated from college, but when we all get together it's as if no time has passed at all. We had an amazing time and I'm so sad it's already over. Here are some pics from our weekend.

We love a day on the beach-Casey, Sydney, and Chelsey, we sure did miss y'all! Looking forward to the 12-pack reunion '10!!!!!

I'm so Excited...

And I just can't hide it!!!!! This is what I saw when I walked into my house today.

Hallelujah!!! Hallelujah!! I have BEAUTIFUL granite countertops and my hardwood floors are being installed this weekend!!! Life is great.
I hung out with the workmen for awhile while I was there..5 men and me..haha! These guys are really good at what they do, my granite looks amazing. And hopefully the man who we purchased the granite from is going to hook me up with a remnant slab for my vanity top in my bathroom. I'm heading out to his store in Trussville in the a.m. to see what he has!!