My Little Gentleman

Okay there is a lot to catch up with on this blog. Sorry I have been negligent with it; for those of you that visit often to catch up. Well most of you probably know that Joel and I bought our first house the last Thursday in May, and since then I have been busy busy busy!! The first line of business to take care of in the house was cutting the nasty carpet in 3 foot strips and bundling them up so that the trash men would take them. I did that in 3 rooms. Next I had to remove all the tacking strip and all of the tacks throughout all the rooms in order to prep the floors for being refinished (we were lucky to find we had hardwoods existing throughout the entire house). Here is a taste of what I did.







The kitchen was the worst to prep because there was 6 layers of linoleum that needed to be ripped up. My cousin Brad and Joel got dirty with this job. Thanks Brad!

After the floors I started in on demo in the main bathroom. All the drywall needed to be torn down, the vanity junked, toilet gone, medicine cabinet gone, etc.



With a lot of help from my Dad the new sheetrock was hung. He also helped close of one wall where there was a door going into our room, and building a walk-in closet in our master bedroom!! Thanks Dad! With that project finished I hired out for someone to do the tape and mud of the sheetrock as well as add texture to the surfaces that were not done. Finally, upon completion of the tape and mud, my floor guys have been working away sanding, staining and putting the top coats on our wood floors. Somewhere in between all of that stuff I have primed the walls so that they are ready to paint. For those of you that want to see more before/during/after pictures you'll have to come to our house warming party sometime in July. After that I will try and post more for those of you that can't make it in July.

Joel's parents also put logged in some time when we first took posession. The gutters were sprouting new trees because of obviouse neglect from cleaning them from the prior owner, and the grass was getting much too long. Steve helped with the weed eating, and assistance with Joel so that the gutters could be cleaned out. Meanwhile inside Sharon asked if there was anything she could do to help (I bet now she wished she hadn't asked! :-)) She also helped pull tacks in Sam's bedroom. But now the hardest parts should be done with. Of course there are other projects to be done, but hopefully not so labor intensive as these first few. I guess we'll keep crossing our finger with that one. I also want to say thank you for those that helped watch the kids during the start up period so that we could get everything done.

During the time I could not get into the house to do anything, while the floors were being done, we had another main event to attend. Jenny (Joel's sister) got married on Saturday. Samuel was the "king of the ring" and looked mighty studly in his tux!




Cooperation for pictures was pretty much slim to none considering he was already running empty from a lack of nap that day.

Friday we enjoyed mexican food for the dinner rehearsal, and Saturday was an all day event! Sunday there was a lunch for all out of town relatives and then we celebrated Father's Day as Joel wanted it.



Now that the floors are complete I can get back into the house and finish up painting and the cleaning that is desperately needed before we move in. Our house that we are currently living in is a complete wreck with the process of packing started. I feel like I am going crazy, and it is driving me nuts being unorganized and sloppy! I can't wait to get in the new house and settled in. We will be enjoying the Farmer's Market on a weekly basis and can't wait to make that one of our summer traditions. Now that I have caught you up on what has been going on with the Kellen clan, I better start fixing lunch for my kiddo.