(Guest post from Greg)

THE END IS NEAR!

We have completed a number of huge milestones in the basement! Carpet has happened. Tile in the bathroom is nearly done. The toilet and vanity are installed!

Apparently even the plumbing is working. That's a plus.

We purchased the drop ceiling and the baseboard trim as well. Allan and I will be installing that this week. It will be such a major improvement in the soundproofing of the basement as well. Right now, when Nym starts to scratch (her leg hits the floor every time), it sounds like someone is pounding on the door to get it. Funny, but not ideal for napping/movie time/video games (the major things that will happen in that space. 

Andrea has seriously done a remarkable job on the tile in the bathroom. I think she may have realized that it is more work than she initially thought, but it's pretty rewarding for her to see what she has accomplished. It's been fun to watch the transformation.  :-)

The stairs to the basement. We got nice padding under the carpet, so it's really soft and 

springy. We are extremely happy with the end result!

Living room with LoveSac and drop ceiling supplies.

Living room with a shot of what trim will look like.

Living room from another angle. We painted all of our ducting white. It looks WAY better.

The vanity! We love it. It will look even better with the mirror up!

Andrea's incredible tile work. 

Installed and functional toilet. Love it. Notice Andrea's tile work in the background and 

the vinyl floor tiles. Both look good due solely to her diligence and care. I'm pretty freaking grateful.

We also hosted my fraternity brothers from undergrad this weekend. We had a blast and really enjoyed having that space in the basement for one of the families that showed up. It gave them a lot of privacy and allowed them to just sleep and join us when they were ready. As a group, I am really grateful to have them in my life. They helped with some of the installs, cleaned up after themselves, and provided food for the whole weekend. Basically they acted like grateful, mature adults. Wonderful.  :-)

More to come soon! We're looking forward to the final inspections that should be happening on Friday!

Taking shape

The past week the basement has really started to take shape. We (actually Allan and Greg, I clean up after them) are finishing rooms and making tons of progress. We've had LATE nights and I am exhausted as I'm sure the boys are, but we're hosting a bunch of Greg's frat brothers next weekend and I would LOVE to have this space completed. So, we're pushing hard to hopefully meet this goal in 10 days!

That yellow thing in the first picture is a drywall ceiling lift. Little did I know, you find these things at rental stores. I showed up at Home Depot one night this week about 30 minutes before they closed thinking/asking to rent one. The man at the counter looked at me confused and I'm sure I returned the look because obviously, you go to Home Depot for EVERYTHING. Why would I need to go to a rental store??  Well, lucky me, there was a contractor at the counter who had one in his truck! (I think he felt sorry for me, but hey, I'll take it!)  He offered to rent me his for 1/2 the price of a normal rental and off I went. Score!!! This little contraption saved us (Al and Greg cause lets be honest, I didn't do the drywall) so much time.

This is the wall between the two rooms as the walls are going up

Check out our shower! This thing is HUGE!!! It's 4'x5' and it is going to awesome.

The boys putting up the ceiling in the bathroom. 

One bedroom complete!

Living room progress

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Check out our rain showerhead. I cannot wait to have this thing done!

I'm baaaaack!

My apologies for the silence! I wasn't posting for a couple of reasons. First, and most importantly, my little niece was born this week! I knew she was on her way and didn't want to spill the beans before Sean and Amber were able to share her arrival.  She's adorable and from what my mom says, an excellent baby so far, doin' what babies do and doing it well. I love her. I thought when Sean and Amber told us they were pregnant this summer it would take FOREVER for her birth day to arrive, but it really flew! (I don't know that the new parents can say the same) But gosh, I'm so excited to be an auntie to this little one. :)

Second, I was super busy with school and snow. Prior to owning a home, we never had to clear our own sidewalks or driveway and boy does that take a lot of time! Next year we will be getting a snowblower. No more wasting HOURS moving the stuff. Our friends who live down the block let us borrow theirs during a storm and we were SOLD.

Alright, I'm done with all the excuses. Time to update you on the house! When we bought the house the basement was listed as "finished" space. We assumed finished meant... well... Finished. Permitted. Little did we know, that's not the case. Our "finished" basement was never permitted, so learn from us! Always call the building safety people to confirm your "finished" basement meets all the specs the city requires. If not, then you have some leverage in the buying process :)

We're getting the proper permits and it has been a process! A painful process. It has slowed down our progress, caused more frustrating moments (we actually haven't fought through the remodel yet, but both of us have been annoyed and angry with this city), required Greg to take time off of work for inspections, but we're almost done! We have one more inspection this week, then hopefully we're home free and can continue moving forward... quickly.

Since I last updated we've added a new cool air return in the second bedroom downstairs (I didn't know this, but apparently you have to have cool air return in every room). We also (well not me) have been working on the plumbing. Our friend Joe came over and helped reroute all our shower piping and taught Greg how to use pex. Pex is sweet stuff. We're putting it in everywhere we can, anywhere there are new pipes. It eliminates the need for copper pipes and it's SUPER easy to put together. Thanks Joe so much for your help!! It looks so good and we couldn't have done it without his help!

This is the new piping in the shower. See those white pipes? That's Pex. Our pipes used to run across the ceiling to the opposite wall. This seems waaaay nicer and much more efficient than the previous system.

More Pex, more piping, that will go to our new vanity/sink.

This has been my job. Insulation. You know, making the basement as energy efficient as possible. Even though this is tedious work, the building inspector gave us props for using this insulation and doing it the way we are. He said we're doing it well and we're doing it right, so that's encouarging!

That's all I have for now. This weekend I'll be researching/youtubing how to tile the shower :) That's next on MY list (I'll actually be doing that job) and hopefully I'll show you the finished product soon!

What a difference a week makes!

This is the post you all have been waiting for. UPDATE! Well, let me tell, this has been a BUSY week here at Elton Hills. We demolished the bathroom, framed almost everything and are looking forward to our sheetrock being delivered next weekend.

 Here's a picture of the bathroom old. I should have taken a better before photo but forgot. It had a cast iron sink and homemade cabinet. Initially we weren't going to demolish the bath, but we are SO glad we did! 

Do you see that venting in the picture on the right?? See the HUGE gap?? Yep, he was venting moisture into the ceiling. I think he was hoping the air would jump the gap and be vented out, because you know that piece costs an addition $5 and really is unnecessary. Thankfully, we didn't find mold from this (Phew!)

 This is what the bathroom looks like now. Open, bigger, and almost framed all out. It's going to be lovely when we're done. Did I mention what a wonderful job Greg and Allan are doing? They are doing this project well. No cutting corners and I love it!

These are bedrooms #1 & #2. Remember that party room with the bar? This is what it looks like now, framed out for two rooms. Don't worry, we'll make them "real rooms" with real egress windows when it's not -20 degrees. 

 
This is the door to the smaller of the two bedrooms or my future office!

It's coming along :) More updates once the rock is up! Hopefully next weekend.

DECLINED.

On Friday, I had a long morning break, so I headed to the cafeteria for some breakfast. I normally don't have time for this, but eggs and bacon sounded delicious and why not, I had time to relax and enjoy my breakfast. I got a coffee as well and  I was off to sit down, look at some pinterest and enjoy this break! I went through the checkout line and was DECLINED.

*I'm thinking to myself* What? You (the cashier) obviously must have slid my card wrong, it's obviously the cashier's fault, this NEVER has happened to me. 

So, she tries it again. DECLINED AGAIN! Oh my gosh. I could feel the red rushing to my face as the cashier sheepishly hands my card back to me and says, "Your card was declinced. Sorry." I was SO embarrassed. I put my breakfast at the side of the cashier, and told her "I'll figure something out." This all while I'm looking around to see if I know anyone. Thankfully, there were only two ladies behind me I didn't know which brought me some relief. 

Just as I'm about to leave, the lady behinds me says, "put her tab on mine." I look at her and ask if she's sure about this. Her response, "oh yes, I've got it." I thank her again and as I'm leaving the line she very loudly states, "No, NO, THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME BE A BLESSING TO SOMEONE ELSE."  What? Who does this? A simple "you're welcome" would have been sufficient. I went from ridiculously grateful/still embarrassed to a puzzled face and utter confusion as to why you would draw attention to yourself like this. What makes someone NEED to this? I'm not sure.

Anyway, what I took away from this situation is that I NEVER want to be that woman. Simple and mind you QUIET acts of kindness are the best. No need to draw attention to yourself. Let your blessing to someone be a blessing and move on. 

***side note: Our account is just fine. With all the remodel I lost track of one BIG bill and hadn't transferred $$ to cover it. Don't worry mom and dad, all is well here :)

The Trilogy is complete!

I know you've all been wondering about the final book in the trilogy so drum roll please...

Here it is folks!

 The Art of Love :)  

We found this last weekend during more demo. The series is complete now. One of our buddies who helped with the demo is reading the trilogy and will give me full book reviews when he's done (that was our deal).

 We also found a HUGE bag, maybe 300 or so of these beer tabs! Sweet find for my sister-in-law to make creative things out of them!

Our neighbor was good friends with the man that used to live here. He's a sweet old man, 80, widowed, just lost his cat. The first day I met him, he had me over and gave me a bunch of keys to our house! (dad was right when he said the first thing we needed to do was change the locks!!) Anyway... I told him we had found some treasures in the basement. His first guess was beer bottles. NOPE! But, we sure have his beer tabs! 

Sad to say, I think our treasure finding days are over.

Nym is One!

I meant to post this ON her birthday but the whole house thing got in the way. Oh well, she is a puppy, but a puppy we absolutely love.

She was such a cutie and oh so tiny!!

Our puppy turned 1 February 2nd. We think. We adopted her around April 16th and she was 10 weeks old, so we made her birthday up :) She was born in a saw mill in Louisiana with 10 other puppies. Her mom and siblings were taken to "kill" shelter in Louisiana and then sent to Minnesota to a "no-kill" shelter. We went to an adoption event and found her! We actually went for a different puppy we found online (the story of my life... I seem to get/find all the wonderful things in my life online), but when we watched the puppies interact, Nym was chill in the corner while the others tackled each other. I'm pretty sure she was just tuckered out from a full day of people and puppies playing with her, but that was the reason we picked her. And, we are so glad we did. She is such a wonderful puppy and has brought so much joy, frustration, love, you name it, to our lives.  The first night we had her, my hubby slept with his fingers in her kennel because she was wimpering. It was so sweet. He was also determined that she would be HIS dog. And... she is HIS dog. If I can't get her to come in, I yell for him and immediately she responds to him. She'll walk off leash at his side. With mom... it's a different story. It's a work in progress for us :)

We *think* she's a german shorthair pointer mixed with doberman pinscher. She definitely has the personality of a german shorthair pointer, but the coloring of a pinscher. But really, who knows. She was born in a saw mill and I refuse to spend $100 on a "DNA" test. I highly doubt the accuracy of those tests.

Over the past year we've spent A LOT of time training her. A LOT. She's with us constantly, outside, inside, everywhere. She knows all the "normal" commands: sit, stay, come. Our favorite commands are unusual: back-up, place, nose (she hits her nose against our nose) and "do your business." Do your business = pee/poop on command, I grew up with this command for our dogs and it's SO helpful.

This is her "place" command. When we want her to lay on her mat (ie when we eat or she needs to calm down) we tell her to place and this is what she does. She also will give you a high-five, play dead, heel, and peek through your legs. 

Here's a video of us at the park yesterday. It was adorable, she bounced to get her frisbee because the snow was so deep. She loves this game!

Happy birthday puppy!