Clean Sweep

Tonight... we cleaned.

(And no, we did not stage this. She picked up the broom on her own tonight.)

See that nasty drywall dust on the floor above? That has been coating our kitchen for the past 10 days. It is the reason we had plastic taped up over every doorway, why we couldn't cook in our kitchen, and why life has been generally miserable around these parts.

But tonight! Tonight, we (fingers crossed) finished the little bit of sanding that we had left, and afterward, we immediately got to cleaning. Vacuuming, then scrubbing every crevice of the microwave, the stove, the refrigerator, the countertops, the floor. All of it.

I already feel a million times better. Like this:

Because the chaos that consumed our lives--that weighed on me like someone was sitting on my chest--it was mostly because of the filth. I don't like the disorder of having no kitchen cabinets and letting the rest of the house go to shit, but hey--at least we were able to take down the plastic and clean up the dust.

For now, it is those little things that are making me happy. We are moving onto the next stage of this project: Paint. On the walls (if we can finally choose a color, which is proving to be tough). On the cabinets.

Yay.

Oh, and lest you think that living with a sweet, adorable little toddler is all fun and games, I feel the need to give you a small dose of reality. Nora made her way over to the stairs with the broom, dropped the broom, tried to climb the stairs, got removed from the stairs, and...

Someone doesn't like it when she doesn't get her way. A big ol' tantrum ensued.

And then this happened:

What...the...? The kid picked up my shoe and bit it before I could even react. It's not like I paused to take a picture of it while she stuck a nasty shoe in her mouth. I was already snapping away, dutifully documenting her toddler tantrum, when all of a sudden she was biting my shoe. And I got it on camera.

Is it normal for them to bite random things when they're frustrated? Because this isn't the first time, unfortunately. At this age, I feel like her tantrums are mostly caused by her inability to effectively communicate, so I wish she would just learn to talk already. But that's a whole 'nother subject.

I'm just going to go back to basking in the glory of our clean kitchen. Disassembled? Yes. But clean.

Happy Wednesday. And hey, Happy Leap Year!

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Kitchen Reno: New Walls

It has been a hell of a couple of weeks as far as our kitchen renovation goes, and I figured it is time for an update, even if it is not a very exciting one! When I last posted about it, we had ripped out all of the brick--taking a good portion of our drywall with it--and we were staring at studs. We were also waiting on an electrician to come in to run the wiring for under-cabinet lights--and fix a few other things as well--while we had the walls open.

Well, on the same day that Nora had her ear tubes surgery, the electrician did come and run all of the wiring. The next day, my brother came over again and helped us to measure, cut, and hang all of the new drywall. It took a lot longer than we anticipated, and was a pretty full day of working, so I was bad and didn't take any pics of that process. But, once we were done and we had the chance to do some mudding, things were looking like this:

After that, things got... unbelievably messy. Dear lord, I forgot how much I absolutely HATE sanding drywall mud. After one night of sanding, I declared our house uninhabitable for anything except for sleeping.

I thought living without a kitchen sink was difficult, but this was so.much.worse.

We made the decision to retreat to my mom's house after work every night, where we cooked and ate our dinners, then came home to put Nora to bed AND GET TO WORK. We worked on the kitchen every.single.night this past week, because honestly, it was hell and we just wanted to do whatever we could do to get it done as quickly as possible.

It was a crazy and exhausting week. Especially since work is ridiculously hectic right now, too. Let's just say: Stress? I have it.

We were bound and determined to get our base cabinets back into place so we could get our countertops and sink back on this weekend. Even after working every night, we were still left with a lot to do in preparation for the countertop placement, so we actually had to cancel plans with friends on Friday night in order to get the job done. :(

BUT! But, thanks to help from my mom and kicking it into high gear on Friday night, we did get it done, and my brother showed up on Saturday morning (third Saturday in a row, he's the best brother ever!) to help us get the cabinets, countertops, and plumbing back into place.

As of yesterday afternoon, the kitchen was looking like this:

That's Michael and my mom scouring the old wallpaper glue off of the walls. If you go back and look at the "before" pics, you'll see that the walls over there look white. Well, as it turns out--that was all GLUE! Scrubbing led to the discovery of nice, smooth, GREEN walls underneath. Who knew they could look that clean??

As of this moment, the kitchen looks pretty much like this except the green walls are gone, because I finished priming everything during Nora's nap this afternoon. Yippee!

Also, the boards that are leaning in around the dishwasher in the pics above have finally been attached to each other and the cabinets, building the surround around the dishwasher. That has only been six months in the making!

We still have a long road ahead, if you can't tell. Two weeks in (three weeks when you count the prep), I'll admit that I am tired of it already. I'm running out of steam, but I'm hoping to get the walls stuff officially finished within the next day or two so we can move onto something else (painting cabinets!) to get me excited about it all again.

We've had some trouble with air bubbles forming in our mud (we had the same problem in the family room), so now that the walls are primed, I actually had to go back over areas of them with spackle to fill in tiny little holes that formed from the air bubbles popping. It's a pain in the ass, and I don't know what has caused this problem for us--but it is what it is, and I expected it to happen this time since we had already been through it with the family room. I spackled the areas tonight, hope to sand them tomorrow, and then we can hopefully clean the dust off of everything once and for all so we can have a (somewhat) functional kitchen again.

We're currently trying to decide on a wall color. Sherwin Williams is having a sale later this week so we want to snatch up our paint! We are looking at shades of gray. The countertops have some gray in them that we want to pull from, and we think that it'll contrast well with the soon-to-be white cabinets, and the darker wood floors that we're hoping to get installed after this mess is over.

More to come!

P.S. In case you don't follow Heather Drive on Facebook (you totally should, click here), I wanted to share a cute video we got of Nora and Hunter dancing and singing to "The Hot Dog Song" yesterday. They love Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!

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Spitting Image

Genetics are hilarious.

The night after Nora was born, I sat in my hospital bed with my sleeping newborn passed out across the front of me. She had been born at 3:29 a.m. that morning, and after a day full of family and visitors, this was one of the first quiet moments that she and I got to spend together. I took the opportunity to study her features. Her hair, little face, and hands. She had been swaddled or otherwise wrapped up in a blanket for most of the day, but I uncovered her little legs and feet to take a formal peek at them. When I got to her toes, I started cracking up. They were MICHAEL's toes. Teeny, tiny versions of his toes.

It's not that I actually doubted Nora was Michael's kid (this isn't Jerry Springer, y'all), but that was the first moment where it was like, "Yep! He's definitely her daddy!"

In those first days and weeks, people commented a lot about how Nora looked like Michael. We broke out a couple of old baby pictures to compare, and it was easily confirmed. Just check out this blog post I did when Nora was a newborn.

As she's grown, the jury has shown more of a split when it comes to the "Who does she look like?" debate. More and more people have started saying things like, "I see a lot of Heather in her," and I occasionally get the "She looks just like you!" comments as well. And I'm sure they're not lies; after all, I did carry the kid for nine months and contributed half of her genes, surely I should get some kind of resemblance, right?

I think she's a good mix of the both of us, really. I can't clearly identify features of Nora's that are MINE versus features that are HIS, because well, let's face it--Michael and I don't exactly look like night and day. We're very similar in a lot of ways: hair color, eye color, skin tone, etc.

BUT... Last weekend, Michael visited his aunt and uncle, and she brought out some old photos. I got a text from Michael with the following photo, and I had to laugh:

I was immediately struck by the similarity. That's Michael as a baby, but I won't lie--he looks ridiculously similar to Nora. Wouldn't you say?

Check out the side-by-side comparison:

What do you think? :)

P.S. We're in kitchen renovation hell right now, so please excuse my lack of regular posting. We're in the new drywall stage--it's up as of Saturday, and now we're into the mudding and sanding part, which is pretty much the worst.thing.ever. It's bringing back horrible memories from our family room project, that's for sure. The problem this time is that the kitchen is in the center of our home, so we pretty much have to walk through it to get to any other part of the downstairs--which is impossible since all of the doorways are taped off with plastic to try to keep the flying drywall dust to a minimum in other areas of the house. Ugh. Fingers crossed that things go smoothly and we'll be able to take down the plastic and have some semblance of a kitchen again by this weekend.

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Unphased

It's really the best word to describe Nora when it comes to dealing with her ear tubes surgery.

Girlfriend was a ROCKSTAR.

Our surgery arrival time was scheduled for 7:45 a.m., so we got up early this morning in order to be ready to leave the house by 7:15. Thankfully, the timing was pretty perfect for us, as Nora usually wakes up around 7:00. Since she couldn't eat or drink anything, it was nice to be able to just grab her out of bed, change her diaper, and go. If we had to hang around the house for a while, things would've gotten ugly without her milk and waffle (or oatmeal).

But Nora rolled with the punches from the get-go, riding silently the entire way to the surgery center, despite us derailing her usual morning routine. Shortly after arrival at the center, we were called back for preparation--weighing Nora, confirming her medical history, introductions with the anesthesiologist, and a greeting from her ENT. We kept Nora occupied with a movie on the iPad, and before we knew it, it was time for them to take her to the operating room. They whisked her away, which was awful (she screamed), but it was quick.

Fifteen minutes occupying ourselves in the waiting room, and the ENT came out to tell us that it was over and that she had done really well. He said that they had suctioned a lot of fluid from her not-even-infected-at-the-moment ears, which really made me feel like we had made the right decision. A couple more minutes and a nurse was leading us back to see our little girl.

When we got to her, she was crying, and clearly still out of it, but she reached for me and calmed down once she was in my arms. Surprisingly, she was not terribly lethargic--she had no interest in continuing to sleep on me or anything. So, again, we took out the iPad to help pass the time we had to wait to be discharged.

Twenty minutes later and we were told we could take her home. All in all, we were in and out in an hour and a half. Not too shabby.

By the time we got home, Nora was back to her normal self already. I was expecting a clingy, tired, extra snuggly baby to lie around with all day (I was actually looking forward to it), but instead we found ourselves chasing after Little Miss Busy all day long (exhausting, ha). She even introduced us to some new dance moves:
It was like nothing had ever happened to her. We were so happy to see her bounce back so quickly (even if I was hoping for extra snuggles).

Nora went down at her normal nap time and slept her normal length of time. The only time I really noticed a difference was tonight, when I put her down to bed. She was so exhausted that she fell asleep on me (which is not the norm). I might've held her a lot longer than usual. You know, to get that snuggle time.

I'm just so happy to have this behind us. The lead-up to it has been long, and stressful. Earlier this week, we were in the ENT's office on both Tuesday and Wednesday--once for a hearing test (they said there was no permanent hearing loss) and then for the pre-op appointment. And obviously, before that, there were many ear infections and trips to the pediatrician.

Here's hoping that this procedure helps Nora and turns out to be a wonderful solution for her.

And maybe now I can finally stop worrying.

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Testing the Waters

There is a name for people who can't sell their property and don't want to lose money on it; they call them "reluctant landlords."

Hi, nice to meet ya.

It's hard to believe that it's already time to try our luck again in the real estate market. Our little old condo is back up for sale.

It seems like just yesterday that we were finally able to breathe a little easier when our friends became our tenants. But at the time, we agreed that it was best for all of us if we only signed an 8-month lease. Although it doesn't end until the end of April, we're trying to time it so that we maybe won't have to have a vacant property. You know, if we get lucky.

Which unfortunately hasn't been our case so far. Six+ months on the market last year, and we never got a single offer. But everyone's luck has to turn at some point, right? At least that's what we're hoping. Especially when you price the property as competitively as we have.

But the market is still slow, so we're trying to remain realistic. We are testing the waters over the next few weeks to see what happens. If nothing, we'll start to plan for an alternative. Our tenants sound like they could be willing to extend their lease by a month or two in order to give us some more time on the market. And, we always have the option of trying to find new tenants who will sign a new 1-year lease, too.

Uncertainty. I hate it.

Hopefully we will find that needle in a haystack this time. It only takes one person, after all. We've priced the property lower than we ever thought we would. We still have St. Joseph buried in the garden.

So now we wait. And hope. And pray.

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Just Precious

I love her so much, I can't even stand it.

She is SO.FUN.

She has personality for days. There is so much that she is doing that we need to capture on video somehow, because I just don't ever want to forget it.

Simply, she is the greatest thing ever.

Sometimes, I just need to say it out loud.

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Kitchen Reno: Brick Be Gone

DING DONG, THE BRICK IS GONE. Can I get a hallelujah??

After all of the demo prep work we did throughout the week, the actual demo took just a couple of hours. My brother and sister-in-law rolled up at our house shortly after 9:00 a.m. yesterday morning. Marie took Nora for a little one-on-one auntie/niece time, and Tyler stayed to help us out.

As a reminder, this is what the kitchen looked like on Friday night:

We got to work right away. Tyler helped us with disconnecting the plumbing under our sink, and getting the over-the-range microwave disconnected and uninstalled. The hardest (and scariest) part of the whole thing was removing our gigantic piece of countertop without breaking/damaging it. But, the three of us managed to support it in all of the right places and moved it into our front entryway successfully. So yep, our house pretty much looks like a war zone right now.

But DUDE. The brick is gone. So 'sall good. :)

In the lead-up to all of this, Michael and I couldn't decide which tool would be best for cutting the drywall. We didn't want to remove ALL of the drywall in the room--just the parts with the brick. We did some asking around, talked to several workers at Home Depot, etc. The problem was that we didn't want to invest in a tool that we didn't have another immediate use for. So even though things like the Dremel Saw Max and the Dremel Trio sounded like they could be our answer, we hesitated.

Then, on our last trip to Home Depot this week, one of the guys there suggested that we just "score" the drywall with a sharp utility knife, and go from there. At the last minute yesterday morning, I texted Tyler and asked him to bring his sawzall, really as a "just in case." As it turns out, this was the perfect tool for the job. Tyler was able to control the depth at which he was cutting pretty well just by feel, so being able to set a fixed depth (which is why we were looking into those other tools) was not an issue. It was certainly WAY FASTER than working with a freaking utility knife, so... yay!

Once Tyler cut our "seams" for us, things started moving very quickly. Soon, we (and by "we," I mean Michael and Tyler, haha) were tearing off gigantic pieces of brick.

We were definitely not sad to see it go.

The brick "backsplash" on this side of the room was the first to go.

Then we tackled the "big wall." For this wall, we actually did end up tearing the whole thing down to the studs, since the pattern of the brick was so erratic. If we had cut out only the brick, it would've been like putting together a puzzle with the new drywall and the old, and there would've been a lot of seams to mud/sand/finish. This way, we can use fewer, larger pieces of drywall when we go to put the new stuff up.

I never thought we'd be so happy to see studs. :)

We also found this "gift" in the wall for us, from the original contractors who built the place. An empty tube of caulk/liquid nails material. From 1973. Couldn't they have left us, oh, I don't know, some cash? That would've been a fun find.

The last piece of brick we tackled was this spot above the doorway. It was firmly attached to two studs, so it was kind of a pain in the ass. But, with a lot of muscle, Tyler got it down, once and for all. And all of the brick-covered drywall went directly into the trash.

Onward and upward.

We had an electrician come today to take a look at things. We're adding under-cabinet lights, and need to replace some of the outlets with GFCI outlets. We also want to move a few switches around, add a couple of new ones, etc. So, we're hoping the electrician will be back to do that work sometime this week, so we can begin to put the walls back up on Saturday.

After all of the demo, we cleaned everything up pretty thoroughly, and organized the kitchen back into a relatively-operative configuration. The most disruptive thing is, of course, not having a sink or a dishwasher. TORTURE. We usually throw everything we can into the dishwasher, and run it every other day, if not more often. Now, we not only have to wash dishes by hand, but we have to do it in the utility sink in the basement. First world problems, I know, but still, I whine just a little. :)

For now, we just have to keep our fingers crossed the electrician can get his part done this week so that we're not delayed from putting the walls back up on Saturday. The sooner we can get them back up, the sooner we can get our sink and countertops back. It's the little big things, right?

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Kitchen Reno: Prepping for Demo

This week, we've been working on preparing the kitchen for demo. We've tackled it in small chunks, doing an hour or two of work every night.

It started with emptying cabinets, then removing doors and hardware (in preparation for painting the cabinets, of course).

And then it escalated into removing the upper cabinets, then all of the lower cabinet doors and hardware. We also pried off the trim and window sill from around the window.

So, here's where we're at as of this very moment:

We're waiting until tomorrow morning to remove the microwave, so we have to wait to remove those last two cabinets. That one on the left side is actually totally detached from the wall. We unscrewed all of the screws and then realized that we couldn't slide it out--because it's being held in place by the damn brick!

We were pretty sure that the cabinets were not original to the house (they seem to be better quality than builder-grade), but we weren't positive. Once we took down the big cabinet that used to be to the left of the window, our suspicions were confirmed, thanks to the soffit. The original soffit is even with the rest of it, but they built out the soffit a bit to accommodate the bigger cabinet.

Don't you love the floral shelf paper lining the lazy susan? *gag*

Once the kitchen reno is over, I promise we will invest in some "grown up" dish towels. :)

So, there you have it. We are heading to bed to rest up to begin some serious demo in the morning. If all goes well (fingers crossed!), we will officially be rid of all of the brick by this time tomorrow night.

Wish us luck!

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Daddy's Birthday

Nora's daddy, that is. :)

Oooh, look at that. A store-bought half-moon cookie. As you can see, our kitchen (sneak peek of the demo prep!) is not exactly in good shape for doing any baking right now.

Happy Birthday, Michael! <3

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Kitchen Reno: The Beginning

It is here, folks: It's KITCHEN DEMO WEEK.

To see what the kitchen looked like when we moved in, see this post. And this is what it looked like earlier this week, when we started (sorta) tearing things up:

So, in other words--not that different. But like I mentioned in my original kitchen post, we did remove the wallpaper. And tore out the z-brick around the dishwasher (as you see, we haven't really gotten around to rebuilding the surround, but now that we're moving forward with everything else, that's actually a good thing). This is how we've lived with the kitchen for the past six months. Blah.

But no more. The road to removing the brick is now short. We're just days away from ridding ourselves of it, once and for all.

(Oh, we took down a fugly flourescent light fixture above the sink, too. We had big plans to replace it right away, but, um... well. You'll see.) As a reminder, we plan to rip out all of the brick, paint the cabinets white, and install a tile backsplash.

We also have plans to replace the floor. Timing on that will depend on some other things we have going on, and will be one of the last steps in the process. But it will be coming. We're also going to paint the wood trim/sliding glass door, and replace those cheap, busted-looking bifold pantry/laundry closet doors with six panel bifolds. Wheeeee!

Oh, there's something else we did. We replaced that door--it was an old, cheap, wood-colored door that was totally '70s. We did the replacement six-panel door ourselves (it still needs to be painted). And we've done 8 others in the house, too. We only have two more to do and we'll have replaced every single interior door. Woot woot!

Get ready for progress!

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