Under Construction

Our accidental skylight... 

Things have been busy at our house! After the fire, we hired a fire restoration company to do all the work to fix the damage.They have ripped out the vast majority of the damaged drywall and thrown away everything that was damaged (cabinets, furniture, etc. from the garage). It looks SO much better just to have the rubble cleaned up and things stripped back to an orderly state.

These nifty machines are supposed to normalize the moisture levels in our wood floors so they can be sanded and finished. They should only have to replace the section by the door where the fire originated.

The hallway torn down to the studs. It looks sooo much better than the blackened blistered paint. You can still see the smoke damage at the top of all the doorways (I think they're cleaning everything after installing new drywall). It still smells like smoke in there, but it's MUCH less oppressive.

The view from the boys' room into the garage. Looks spacious!

Seeing the insulation in the garage walls after they tore out the drywall made us feel really good about the blown-in insulation Nathan did throughout the house! It is packed in there! The spots where it's missing in this picture it had just fallen out when they took down the walls. It has all been removed in the garage at this point and will be replaced later.

There is a MASSIVE dumpster in our driveway just filled with junk. It's amazing how much material they have ripped out of our little house.

Right now there is even more happening that these pictures haven't captured (I took these a week ago). The workers are replacing damaged roof joists, installing a new roof, doing electrical work, framing out a new exterior wall for our garage conversion, framing a pocket door, and more. It has been so fun and satisfying to drop and and see the progress these skilled workers have made in such a short time. After DIY-ing for so many months, we are thrilled and SO thankful to have these professionals working hard on our behalf! I will never stop thanking God for our amazing homeowners' insurance!

Fire

"Nathan, your house is on fire."

This is NOT how we expected to spend our Saturday night. Around 10:30 PM on Saturday, September 3, Nathan received a call from one of our church Deacons (our former Sunday School teacher, Bill). He jumped up and yelled "What?! ... What?!" I thought sure someone in our family had died. To my relief, that was not the case, but it was totally shocking to hear that our new house was on fire. Nathan left right away, and I called our friends Andy and Cassandra to stay with the kids so I could go to the house. Cassandra came to babysit and Andy drove me over there.

I had no idea what to expect, but the fire was already out when we got there. We just saw a small hole in the roof of the house and the garage door was missing and there was stuff from the garage everywhere.

Bill was already there. Andy was amazing calling our insurance company for us while we filled our parents in, delt with emotions, and waited for the fire chief to take us into the house. Seeing the damage was pretty shocking and overwhelming. The chief was very helpful and encouraging, and all the firefighters assured us that our insurance would take care of everything.

Nathan had spent the day Saturday staining all the wood floors in the house (basically the whole house). He finished around 4, put all the rags in the garage, and came home. We stopped by at 6 and I walked through the garage and didn't notice anything. Sometime between then and 10 the rags spontaneously combusted and caught the door between the garage and house on fire and it spread from there. One of the neighbors saw the smoke and flickering light and called 911 at 10:15. He and another neighbor even pounded on the doors to make sure nobody was home.

The firefighters got there really quickly and got the fire put out. The damage from the fire is mostly in the garage and the hallway in the house. There is also a lot of damage from the firefighting itself throughout the house.

We had amazing support from our church, family, and friends that night and throughout the last couple weeks. I'm SO thankful we had so many people there for us those first few days. It was incredibly comforting.

Our insurance company has been so good to us so far and we love our adjusters. We are amazed at the awesome benefit of homeowner's insurance. I cannot fathom going through this without it.

Although it was a traumatic experience and it is so disheartening to think about the huge amount of time and effort we put into this house, we have really come to have a peace about what happened. We are realizing more and more what a blessing this will be. Not only will we be given many upgrades to our house and belongings (new roof, breaker box, appliances, etc.), but we are no longer responsible for the labor. Nathan is home in the evenings now!!! I never would have guessed in a million years that a fire could turn out to be a blessing.

Please pray that things progress quickly and that the work be done well. I would love to move before Christmas. Thank you for your love and support during this difficult experience!!

The House Saga, Episode I: A New Home

This post has been a long time coming, but we've been reeeally busy, believe it or not! Why? Well...

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!

Our offer was accepted in November 2015 and we closed on March 18, 2016 (on my birthday!), so it has been a long long process. Since then we have been ripping things apart and putting them back together, and we're nowhere near done. Everything has gone pretty smoothly since we closed on the house, though it's hard to find time to work on it. We're very thankful for family and friends who have helped work on the house and watch the kids. 

Our house was built in 1965

1,000-1,100 sq ft of living space

3 bedrooms

2 bathrooms

.6 acres of land

fenced in yard, shed

crawlspace, attic

2 car garage

We're so thankful that we found a place that will work for our family within our budget and that it's our very own. We're anxious to realize our vision for it.

And now for a photo tour...

The living room has a big window and a fireplace. The carpet has hardwood floors under it.

The living room as you would see it as you walk in the front door. The wall/doorway ahead of you is the kitchen.

The front door and the garage door. There is a big closet across from the front door.

The fancy kitchen! The cabinets are well-made, but that's where my compliments stop...

The laundry area that connects the kitchen and master bedroom. There is also a side door in this area.

The master bedroom is a good size and has two windows.

The master from the other direction. There's a wall AC unit under the window. The room has a decent closet and has its own full bathroom. That was surprising for the size of the house and a nice selling feature. There are also hardwood floors under these carpets (and the other bedrooms).

The pink master bathroom! It has a full sized tub/shower.

The hall bathroom is just like the master except it has white and gray speckled tiles instead of pink.

The hall. Two bedrooms and two closets on the right, boiler room and bathroom on the left, and master bedroom straight ahead. And attic access.

The middle bedroom (AKA Cece's room).

Middle bedroom closet.

Third bedroom (AKA the boys' room).

Third bedroom closet (with strangely angled wall in the back).

Boiler/water heater room.

The garage.

The front door exterior.

The back of the house. Covered patio.

Our backyard (view from the boys' room).

I'll post before and after pictures as we finish each project, but this should give you an idea of what we started with! Big changes are happening!

Swingin Pad

Yes! These are pictures of our newly painted living room. It's actually really hard to get a picture of the whole space because it's really long and there's a lot of furniture in it, but here you can get an idea of the colors. Three of the walls are a gold/yellow, and one is red. It looks AWESOME. We love it. It really makes our living room look more like a house and less like a basement... which is a very good thing.


And here's the reveal of our picture frame project that I mentioned way back when! We bought a bunch of frames at Goodwill and painted them all black, then hung them in an asymmetrical way. I think it looks great. There are still a few empty frames reserved for Orion's professional pics. Hope we can get those soon.


Nathan artfully arranged some of our cool souvenirs that people got us from far off lands. The little wooden sword is from Haiti, and everything else is from Africa. It looks really nice on the gold color.


In fitness/weight loss news...

Here are the stats:
Current weight: 131.2
Goal weight: 115
Weight lost this week: 0.4
Total weight lost: 8.8
Pounds left 'til goal: 16.2

Slowly but surely. I also ran outside for the first time this week- I went half a mile! I'll try for a whole mile next week :)

We have college friends visiting so I'm looking forward to more awesome weekendness! Hope yours is good too!

Picture Post!

We've had a busy couple weeks, and our work is finally picture-worthy! First of all I want to make you all jealous of the strawberries you see above. These grew in our garden. Oh. My. Gosh. Most delicious strawberries ever. It's a wonder we haven't eaten them all yet. If we let them get too ripe on the plants the ants eat them, so I guess we'll have to pick them a little early.

Next is our very exciting painting projects! We painted our bedroom and bathroom lovely bright colors. The bedroom was previously kind of a grayish tanish, and the bathroom was white. I'm really excited to freshen them up! The actual color of the bedroom is actually brighter than in these pictures.




Part of the bedroom makeover project was painting the bedframe, which took waaaaay longer than expected. Priming, spray painting, sanding, priming, spray painting, sanding, spray painting, spray painting... but it's done and it looks great!! It had a pretty finish before but it was SO beat up (plus a piece was detached, which Nathan fixed). I think it looks wonderful. Picture of "before" below.


And the bathroom! ...which we started a really long time ago. Haha! But we finally got it finished. I'm still thinking about painting the trim (I already have the paint) but not sure it looks bad enough to actually get me to do it ;) Love the color!


Can you spot Charlie? He loves licking that spot of the shower... I guess water must gather there. Weird-o.


I wanted to show you my new-ish counter storage. I found these metal planters on the dollar wall at Target and thought they'd be perfect to organize our cluttered counter top. They work great and are much nicer looking than scattered toiletries!


Charlie! He's getting huge. This picture isn't from the last few days either. He's also even more monsterous. I feel bad for the other cats... he attacks them non-stop. I hope he mellows out sooner rather than later... I hope...


I'm adding a new "bump" picture to my 17 Week pregnancy post below. 18 weeks tomorrow! Wow, how time flies.

"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things"

Hello! I'm sorry we haven't written a real update in so long! I could give you some excuses, but I won't ;) Here's a bunch of stuff for you to read. Some new news, some older stuff that I've been meaning to post about for a while.

Family:

Nathan's Uncle Wendell died on Saturday morning. I didn't know him well personally, but I do know he was a hard working, big hearted, big bearded man. He married his wife, Sue, while she was still in high school and they were a "great team." They cared for 65 foster children. He owned a farm on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, complete with chickens, log cabin, outhouse, suspension bridge, and rope swing. The family loved spending every Thanksgiving there. We'll be attending his funeral on Wednesday.

Allie is in Zambia right now! She had to take a trip for school, and got to go to Zambia on a trip especially for nursing students. They've gotten to help deliver babies, observe surgeries, play with kids, and lots of other great things. Sounds like an amazing trip.

Baby is doing fine as far as I can tell! I have an appointment on Friday morning and should get to hear its heartbeat again :)

Garden:

It's all planted! It looks like a lot of dirt right now, so no pictures yet. Although now that I think about it, I really should take a picture of the herb garden- it's downright lush! Our strawberries are flowering and making fruit, which is super exciting!

Many of the plants we started died, but we got to transplant peppers, marigolds, and 4 measly tomatoes. Nathan went out and bought a bunch of nice big tomato plants, which was disappointing to have to do. A few days after we planted them, we were out surveying the garden and were wondering over a big patch of what appeared to be weeds. After taking a closer look, Nathan just started laughing! Turns out we have dozens of tiny tomato plants all over the garden that just popped up on their own. God's a better gardener than we are...

Here's what we planted:
Zinnias (flowers), Onions, Romaine Lettuce, Carrots, Green Beans, Red Potatoes (3 rows!), Beefsteak Tomatoes, Roma Tomatoes, Zucchini, Yellow Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Sweet Corn. I think that's all, but it's likely I forgot something.

Craftiness:

We made a quilt out of old t-shirts! It was really easy and it's super comfy and warm. I don't have a picture of the finished product, but here it is before it was sewn.


House:

We've decided to stop house hunting for now. We came to the realization that no, we can't really afford it, so we'd better get things straightened out before we dig ourselves a hole we can't get out of. We made some financial goals which include paying off my school loans and saving up money, so when those goals are met we will resume our search.

In the mean time, we're sprucing up our living quarters! We're hoping to build a nursery adjacent to our bedroom, hopefully soon. We painted the bathroom (and dug out our nice towels! Yay!), but I don't want to post pictures until I get the trim painted so you can see the finished product. We're also going to paint the bedroom.

Random fun:

We invented the Apple Burger.

Last year at Lebanon's Apple Festival, Nathan and Andrew decided that there wasn't enough apple themed food and resolved to change that. With the apple burger. Nearly a year later, we finally did it. We experimented with about six different methods, one of which was really bad, a few of which were OK, and one that was delicious. Fried apples + burger = so yummy.


Pets:

Our rat, Simon, died a couple weeks ago. He had a huge tumor, so that may have killed him, but we're not sure. We had a deal with Nate's dad that when the rat was gone we could get a kitten. So we did!

Nathan wrote about Charlie a day or two after we got him. We love him, and so does the rest of the family. He's pretty crazy, as most kittens are, and loves to stampede across the house and destroy things. But then he wears himself out and falls asleep on you, which is uber cute. It took a couple days, but we got him litter trained so well that he'll even use the other cats' box if he's upstairs! Good kitty.

Promising House Hunting

We went house hunting today, and looked at three houses. We were supposed to look at 3 more, but one was pending sale, one was tenant occupied and our realtor's contact never confirmed our appointment, and the third didn't have the lock box that holds the key to get in. Oh, and it was missing the door knob.

The first house we went to absolutely reeked of cigarettes and wasn't nice, plus it had railroad tracks in the backyard and was next door to a mostly abandoned strip mall. No.

The next house (1005 Jackson St, Middletown) was actually really nice. It's super cute from the outside (below) and seems to be in really good repair. New roof.
Kitchen: Pretty nice, utilities (older) included, looks like the fridge leaked all over the carpet.
Pantry door on the left, 3 steps down to front door on the right.
Two bedrooms, both look like this. We think we could easily add a third (and maybe fourth) bedroom in the basement if we wanted to.
Living room: More green carpet, pretty fireplace.
Bathroom: They obviously liked green. There is another full bath in the basement that looks new
Back yard and garage. Not a very big yard but not terrible.
Pros:
-Great shape for the price
-Room to add bedrooms
-Two bathrooms
-Central air
-New roof
-Nice exterior aesthetics
-Pretty nice neighborhood

Cons:
-In Middletown
-Neighbors neighbors everywhere
-Confusing/new location
-Only two existing bedrooms
-Very little land

______________________________________

The last house (6806 Dixie Hwy, Franklin) we saw we went to just for fun, expecting it to be a dump. Well, it's certainly not the prettiest place in the world, but it's really everything we're looking for, and although it definitely needs work it's much much better than we expected.

This is the picture from the website. I didn't think to take a full exterior picture. There's a magnolia tree on the left side of the house :)

Main house exterior. Looks like they replaced one row of windows with a yucky air conditioning unit. Roof looks good.
Living room. Hardwood floors in most of the house. Built in shelves, ceiling fan. Huge windows.
Kitchen: Looks updated. Pretty small. Eat-in. Utility room off kitchen with washer/dryer hookups, utility sink, furnace, and water heater.
Three bedrooms, all with wood floors.
Pink bathroom! Tub needs replaced.
Beauuuutiful back yard. House is on almost half an acre and backs up to woods (yard is a hill and slopes up to the woods). Plenty of room for a garden, etc.
Pros:
-Yard
-Location (rural feel, close to Franklin/Carlisle, nice neighboring houses)
-Three bedrooms
-Wood floors
-Two car garage that we could actually fit our cars in, plus additional parking along driveway
-Far off the road
-We could see ourselves living there for a long time, not just a couple years (that's big)

Cons:
-Needs all new windows
-Needs new bath tub
-Smell... cigarettes and ...mint??
-No basement
-Unattractive exterior

-(taxes unknown. realtor is checking)

Despite all its obvious "cons," we're both really drawn to this one. Our realtor is contacting our loan guy about a 203K loan to help finance repairs... if we can get that we'll have some serious thinking to do.