Cutting the Grass

One of the things I was concerned about with moving was needing to cut the grass.  I shouldn't have been.  About two weeks after I got the house Austin cut the grass for me and then the drought got worse and it didn't rain, and didn't rain, and didn't rain and the grass died.

Finally, I bought a hose and sprinkler.

That same afternoon, the sky got dark and it started to rain!

Minutes later, it looked like this again.  

I'm back to using my sprinkler.

Transformation

I have done a crazy amount of painting in this house.  I started with closets - every single closet was painted top to bottom.  Then I painted my bedroom and bathroom.  The kids each painted their own rooms with some help on the trim and doorways.  Next was the dining room and living room.  Both were huge projects with some lovely brown walls to cover up along with some badly yellowed white walls.

The hallway was also that lovely shade of chocolate brown that made it look like a cave.  I replaced the light fixture with one replaced in a bedroom with a ceiling fan, and got it painted white.

The side of the living room going to the master bedroom.

What I really couldn't wait to do was the kitchen.  With it's red and green walls and wall paper board, it was hideous at best, even with good bones.  It's a huge kitchen with stainless steel appliances, nice range hood, built in microwave and oven, even enough room for my office and/or an eat in kitchen area.  But the read and green...

 Austin and my mom worked heard to get the boarder off.  It was glued on there but good!

The green on some walls was a particularly awful shade of green.  And with the red on the other walls and the bluish-gray tile....ugh!

 The transformation was slow but oh how good it made me feel to see it coming together!

Pulling out the fridge meant a quick cleaning job first but then some fresh white paint was waiting!

Little by little I climbed on ladders and counter tops covering up all those colors with WHITE!

Everything ended up in the middle of the kitchen for a couple of days but it was so worth it!

Since I was also painting all the fake wood trim around the doors and window, it was a tedious job.  All of that required 2-3 coats.  The red and green walls took two coats of the guaranteed one coat Behr paint (Hello Behr???).

But as I rounded that last corner....AH!!!!!!  How can white paint make anyone so freaking happy as it does me?

In the mean time, Dad decided he couldn't stand the front door another minute being all smoker's yellowed against my fresh white paint.  We pulled off this door stopper thing and  you could see what color that door USED to be originally.  Wow!

And my fantastic pops went to work (adding to his list of 500 other things he had already done!).

Mom was also hard at work scraping out the old caulk around the sinks in both bathrooms and the kitchen.

After cutting in the door..

And finally down to the last little bit!!  Oh my gosh it looks sooooooooo much better!!

Amazing Nature

This summer will go down in history as having the most storms that passed right by us and never dropped a drip of rain.  But the weird weather has created some amazing sunsets...

And sunrises.

Chancellor is back!

After nearly a month off to recover from his mishap of cutting open his stomach, Chancellor is back to work.  I dug out this bonnet from a box that had been in my office and while brown doesn't work well on a black horse (Mata Hari), it does look good on a palomino!

Two and a Half Weeks of Construction Zone Living

When you move into a house that needs a total cosmetic do-over inside, you have to be pretty strategic.  While living in the house for 2.5 weeks with the flooring already torn out and painting started, I had to carefully plan how to set up housekeeping since it will all need to juggle soon when they spend three days putting in all new laminate flooring throughout the house.

I needed my office set up (this nook in the kitchen makes for a great spot for it) though the file cabinets are still empty with the contents in boxes in a closet.

This patio furniture is lightweight and can be moved easily from room to room or outside when the floor is being done but gives me somewhere to sit and relax between work.

A folding table pitch hits as a dining table - it can be put away in a jiffy.

Austin's futon came with me from my little bedroom at the old house.  While not the most comfortable place to sleep, it's semi- portable and easy enough to move to Austin's room in my new house after they get the floor done in his room.  The lovely sleeping bag has been my "comforter" for 6 months now.

 I had wanted to wait to put my new bedding on when I set up my old 4 poster bed but I couldn't do it.  I love, love, love having an all white bed in my all white house!

These cube cabinets will also go to Austin's room with the bed.  The curio cabinet is one I painted and will eventually hold my grandma and mom's old tea cups.  The chair is one I refinished and reupholstered.

And that's all I have for now.  Lots of decorating to get done after the floors go in!

Accomplishment

I've always gotten a strong sense of accomplishment from being able to do things that I wasn't so sure I could do and this was one of them.

When I moved the clothes dryer from the old house to the new house, I had no idea that a different type of electrical cord would be involved, but when I went to plug it in, I quickly realized that the plug with the three wires that connected to the three "things" on the dryer also meant that the plug only had three prongs.  My outlet required 4.

This is what I needed.  The problem was - how do you know which wire goes where when there are only three places to hook them up?

 I called Mitch's Dad for some help.  He came over and showed me which wire went where but...the cord I bought was a 50 amp and I only needed a 30 amp.  Back to the store.  And nobody would be there to help me with the right cord.  But..but...I did it!!  Following a photo Brian left me, I hooked up all those wires!

Part 2 was less mentally difficult but it still required some work.  I had to wriggle in behind the dryer with it as close the wall as possible, hook up the vet to the dryer and the wall, then wiggle back out so I could push the dryer back.

End result?  It worked!!!

Thank goodness it did because my kitchen was not making a very good "drying room"!

The New View

At my Whitmore Lake house, as much as I loved having access to the lake and being able to glimpse a small view of it, we were on fairly flat ground surrounded by huge, mature trees.  I loved those trees and the shade they provided but it meant that I really couldn't see much of the sunrise or sunset.  Most days, I'm out of the house and on the way to work before the sun rises so that doesn't matter so much I guess.

My new house faces north but the two bedrooms are on the west end of the house with this beautiful view of the sunset.

I still don't have much of an eastern view.  This is from my front porch.  I'm just slightly downhill from the high point of the neighborhood and the hill drops down behind my house to the south and also to the west.  To the south, way in the distance, I can see the GM Proving Grounds.  Milford has some really nice rolling hills!