Before and After: G's room

before:

after:

I have lots of fun plans for G's room! So far it's pretty bland but it's gonna be super girly and sweet.

Before and After: Hall Bath

The before and afters on this room will be by angle...

Looking In:

Shower Wall:

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Vanity wall:

For goodness sakes...can you believe that?

Before and After: Boys' room

It's finally time! The next few posts are gonna be the before and after of each room. By no means are we even near being done decorating...but I want to show you how the house looks now. 1 week in and slowly starting to feel like home! Still no doorknobs (they are still on backorder!) but things are starting to be completed!

Before:

Then move in ready:

And AFTER!

The Isenbergs come to help!!!

Even though the house wasn't ready by November 9th, we didn't let that stop us from starting to move in! Katie, Ryan and Liv came down on Saturday the 10th and stayed ALL day and we got so much accomplished! The guys moved in the dining room table, set up the new bed frame in the master bedroom and completely built a bed platform for Des to match Ben's. Katie and I put shelf paper in all the cabinets and drawers, began to unpack the kitchen and painted the two bed platforms for the boys. It was super productive, plus the boys loved having Liv here to play with!

Here's Ben's bed getting painted. That's Kate and Liv in the background. Liv LOVES pop and gaga and Katie was probably having to drag her back from there. :)

The new bed frame!

And the new table!!!! Didn't Brad do amazing!?!?

A huge thanks to our friends for helping us get so much done! Katie and Liv even came back the next weekend to help even more! We are so lucky to have them as friends.

The move has begun...

The house isn't completely done...my four page hand written Punch List can attest to that, but it is close enough that we started moving stuff in on Saturday. Ryan, Katie and Liv came and helped the whole day and we got lots done. Sunday, Brad and I worked all day again and got even more stuff moved in and put away. There is still so much left to do but it feels SO good just starting the process!!!!

The guys weren't going to come today because they were working on a bank job, but after I called, I convinced them that with 4 PAGES of stuff left to do they should be at my house!

Considering we are hosting ben's fifth birthday party a week from today that's not too much to ask, right?

So, with barns and rent houses full of stuff left to move and a baby that no longer sleeps at night and a birthday party and thanksgiving to plan and a couch to buy and three babies to raise you would think I'd be freaking!?

It's all good.

The deadline is here and gone...my thoughts?

It's Friday the 9th.

In the beginning, the deadline for the house to be move-in ready was "sometime in October."

Then as the summer passed and we were up to our necks in remodel it turned into "the end of October."

Then it was "welllllllll, hopefully by the 31st of October."

Then a couple of weeks ago, I was fed up with not knowing and pinned the guys down to Friday, November 9th. We will be moving in that week-end I said. We've got people coming to visit by golly!

That date was today and the house is not done. It's close...but no cigar.

There is still a list of a few things that need to be done. They need to install the dishwasher, build the wine rack, hang the table over the washer and dryer, and caulk all the sinks. The garage door hasn't been fixed and the stonework on the back flower bed needs to be re-mortared. They will hang the TVs and fix the office doorknob that I broke. The plumber will install the rest of the faucets and hook up the icemaker. And that pesky door hardware still hasn't arrived. But because it is pretty darn close, we are gonna go ahead and start moving in this weekend. We by no means have any intention of finishing, or even sleeping there yet. But we will start.

It's been a heckuva week. I've made so many trips to various hardware stores and big box stores to pick up last minute, totally forgotten about items that I honestly can't even count. I'm still unsure why some of this responsibility lies on me, but it does. It's amazing how something as simple as running to the store for lightbulbs can be such a difficult task between feeding and napping and nursing and dressing and car-seating 3 kiddos. BUT it's worth it...we are so close!!!

People are constantly asking me if I'm excited and I have a hard time answering them. I know that I am supposed to say "YES! I can't wait! This is all so wonderful and we are finally there and yaddy yadda" because if I don't say that I sound ungrateful and negative. But I honestly don't know what I feel. I mean there are tons of negative ones on the surface. I definitely have feelings of being overwhelmed, of dreading moving, of worry that it won't look good once we get our furniture in, and those of anxiety over UNpacking. But excitement? I can't place it. I am so looking forward to seeing my babies grow up in that house. With the progress made this last week, I am almost to the point where I can even picture us there. I can't believe that I get to live in a house where I picked out nearly every single design element of. But I still don't know if I'm excited. I feel almost reverent about it. Like I need to take a deep breath and hold a moment of silence. This is the house my grandmother designed. Just like I have over the last 11 months she too poured over fabric samples and color swatches and furniture choices. She stayed up late thinking about the finish on her faucets and towel bars and which light fixture she would want over the sink. She probably spent way too much money on silk curtains and boy did she love her counter tops. She hand picked out every little design element...and then 40 years later I changed it ALL. Is it the same house? Well yes. Do I know that she is so proud of me for what we've done. Most definitely. But I feel so strangely connected to her. Not because I'm about to move into her house...but because I've poured just as much of myself into this stone and mortar structure as she did all those years ago.

So, am I excited? Not really.

I'm ready. I'm honored. I'm nervous about unloading boxes and finding the perfect place for everything and organizing ALL those cabinets and decorating my babies' rooms. But most of all I'm hopeful that through this crazy process that has consumed so much of my life I've been able to create a place where my kids and my grandkids will feel at home.

Wanna see?

Again...I'm almost a week behind in my photos. These were all taken Monday, right before I had to run to Lowe's with all three kids in tow for something necessary. The guys worked all week and it's close enough for us to start moving things in! It's amazing what those guys can do in 5 days though!

Laundry Room:

Task Area:

Office/Guest Room:

Kitchen:

Living Room:

Dining Room:

Hall Bath:

*Those sconces are upside down!

Master Bedroom:

*This picture makes me so sad. See that gorgeous 18 arm chandelier? Remember how I bought it at Habitat for Humanity for 20 bucks and it was brass and I spray-painted this gorgeous color and bought fun lightbulbs for it and then had it installed to hang over my beautiful new rod-iron bed? Well, moments after this pic was taken and I headed off on an errand (to a home improvement store of course) the darn thing started smoking. It started charring the bulbs jet black and smoking and smelling. The guys pulled it down immediately and I had to find another chandelier. So sad. All I can say is that when you are remodeling, THERE IS NEVER A DULL MOMENT.

G.'s Room:

Master Bath:

So there are the latest! I simply canNOT wait to share the final BEFORE and AFTER shots! Won't it be so much fun? I will try to get a bunch tomorrow morning before we start moving in!!!

Bathrooms...

And here's the latest on the bathrooms! {Well, as of over a week ago! So much different now!}

The glass shower door was installed!

Need to buy some hardware for those cabinets and drawers...anybody got any tips on a good place to order from? Something different and funky?

Here's another view of the shower. Those holes are where the marble will go {went in last week and it's gorgeous!}

Master bath. Not sure why the sink is moved over. But the vanity below is painted with doors back on. Ordered some super fun baskets for those open shelves. Light fixture is in now too.

Bullnose got finished on the tile. Even with the SECOND order, Brandon still didn't order enough! Robbie had to end up MAKING his own edged tile. It's in the left cubby and you can't tell at all. He was not happy about it though...it's pretty hard to do!

Close up of the painted vanity...need hardware for here too! 

Floor vents

Here's another example of something so simple that can turn into a huge life-changing decision and hours and hours on the computer.

As the floors were getting finished, it was time to replace the floor vents and Robbie put me on the mission. I first looked at the big box stores and they didn't have any oil-rubbed bronze in stock. And the ones they had online were ugly. And then I found a WHOLE bunch online at other sites and boy, were they expensive. I wanted something dark, because the floors are dark. Dark, but not brass or brown. But I also didn't want them to be very noticeable at all, so no weird designs or mega modern look. And oh yeah, I didn't type these into the contract either, so we were buying them. And oh yeah, our house is pretty big so we needed a LOT of them.

***NOTE: WHEN REMODELING YOUR HOME INCLUDE EVERYTHING IN THE CONTRACT...EVEN FLOOR VENTS...EVEN LIGHTBULBS...HECK EVEN WRITE IN WINDEX...otherwise, guess who's buying it? YOU...and you probably didn't budget for it.

So...I spent hours online trying to find some silly floor vents that were dark, and not ugly and not a million dollars a piece. It was just another thing that I never thought would be a hard decision and well, WAS!

Oh, and then when they arrived the guys thought I had ordered the wrong size because they didn't just slide in. I had a mini heart attack because that is always my reaction when something is wrong. I start pouring sweat from my armpits and my heart feels like it's gonna stop beating and then I fall to the floor in exasperation. But, thankfully, they were the right size. Our foundation had just sorta collapsed the vents when the concrete was poured so the guys have had to bang the heck out of them and kinda jackhammer the concrete just so to squeeze them in! I have no idea why the nasty old ones just slipped in and out, but these are much more snug.

Then, somehow even though Robbie and I did it together TWICE, we didn't count right and we missed two and are short 2 vents. So the two on the front of the window seat will have to be white because I can just pick those up at a big box store and be done with it and they are like 1/4 of the price and heck, maybe that's what I was thinking when I was counting and I'm not a crazy person that can't count gaping holes in the floor, but I'm gonna bet that I counted wrong because for the last 10 months I've turned crazy and do things like that all the time!

The floor is coming along...

Remember this was week before last. The guys worked hard every day to get that floor in and it came along slowly. Apparently with a sub-floor they could have had it in in 2 weeks...but with an old, very uneven concrete foundation it takes closer to 3 weeks! :)

They started in the office then moved over to the laundry room and kitchen and then continued to snake eastward to the other end of the house. Here you can see it down the hall all the way to the hall bath and then 1/2 of the master.

Week-end before last New Ryan even came in on the week-end to work on it. Then the unthinkable happened. Last Tuesday they realized they were gonna be short. No big deal, they had two guys up in the city anyway so they could just swing by and pick some up, right? Well, the Lumber Liquidators in the city was out and it was backordered for several weeks! Uh oh. Then they called Tulsa. They didn't have enough. The store spent some time tracking it down and the closest store that had any was in Sherman, Texas! The frustrating part was that they literally only had Genevieve's room left to go and even if they could get the wood that day, it still had to sit in the house for 48 hours to adjust to the temperature and humidity! Grrrrr. Just as Brandon was about to drive to Sherman, the store said they had a truck coming to OKC and they could get it to us the next day by noon. All was not lost and they finished G's room by the end of the week, but man! It's always somethin'!

The built-ins have doors!

As doors were going up in the kitchen and laundry room, the built-ins in the office also got their new doors. They look so pretty and really complete the look of the shelves. Not to mention there is so much storage! 

Cabinet Doors went up!

The rooms started to take shape once the cabinet doors were being hung. The freshly painted hinges looks great and they work! :)

Here's 1/2 of the kitchen. Those two missing were going to get glass put in them, but it turns out I forgot to type that into my 20 page contract. Oops.

Here's the task area...much more complete...

And the Laundry Room...see those nine doors missing on top? :)

Cabinet Hardware

Remember those darn hinges? Well that wasn't the end! I still had over 100 handles and probably close to 50 electrical plates to clean and paint and paint and paint and poly! It's been a long process, but I still think it is worth the savings. Plus, it's fun using something old in a new way. I think it will give the house character.

Here's the line of the some of the handles for the drawers and cabinets and a few more hinges. When Robbie was re-hanging the painted cabinet doors, he called me in a panic because there were 9 doors missing! I had a dreadful fear that they had been thrown out accidentally. I rounded up the kids and dashed over there seeing that it was 9 of the doors in the laundry room. Uncle Ronnie had taken these off long ago to store his books there and we had the doors in one of the closets. I still was worried that they somehow found their way into the dumpster but then we found them hidden away in one of the closets in the garage! Whew! This meant that Robbie and Arnaldo had to spend two more days sanding and prepping and priming and painting nine more doors...and I had 9 more hinges to paint. :)

Butcher Block

Things around here are crazy! It's Sunday night and we just spent the week-end house-sitting for my parents while they were in Vegas. They didn't really need house-sitters, but we wanted to stay there to be that much closer to the house so we could complete some of our to-do list. If the date holds, we should be able to MOVE IN this coming week-end so we had LOTS to do. Brad finished the dining room table and it is perfect and beautiful. I painted the light switch and outlet plates, put coat 5 and 6 on the silly storm door and put 4 coats of chalkboard paint on the kids' closet doors. I also touched up the pantry door and looked for some hardware online. There is still quite a bit to do but in less than a week we could be moving in! It's totally blowing my mind. 

I have a slew of photos from week before last that I want to share. Then I will get some new ones of everything the guys got accomplished last week...which was a LOT!

First of all, check out my butcher block.

I am so in love with it. Plus it is very special to me because we got it from my late Uncle Brad's wood company, Phoenix Hardwoods in Oklahoma City. When I called up and talked to Casey, I told him who I was and I've never been treated better by anyone, anywhere. This is just one of the many things that will always make me think of my crazy, beloved uncle. Some other things? 1/2 of the marble tile in the kids' shower, the HUGE plants that will go on the back porch and some very special furniture that we inherited...oh and every time Brad mows on that awesome mower! :)

I had the guys stain it with 2 coats of burnished walnut oil stain from Sherwin Williams and then top it with several coats of butcher block food safe oil. I doubt I will ever cut on it because it is just too pretty!