Changes

So I have a LOT of change to talk about! First off the house is really moving now and I'll post a sneak peak of the kitchen. We have cabinets in and counter tops won't be too far behind I hope. Luke has finished the crown molding for the entire house, so we are excited about that, but we still need to throw a painting party.

In sad news Luke lost his Grandmother Mimi this past Sunday. We were given a little heads up on her condition, so it wasn't a complete surprise, but she was such a wonderful person that we got to see rather often, so we will be missing her. Please pray for Luke's mother and family!

Mimi

In other news of change I am finally allowed to say that Luke has taken a new job in Savannah, Georgia. He will be doing the same thing he does now, but we won't be traveling the country anymore. We are excited to finally live in our house, and take a break from the road warrior lifestyle (even though I will say we had a blast moving around). Luke is actually moving at the end of this month while I plan to move in with my sister and her husband for two months to finish up some work for Lockheed.
In terms of my career future: I can't do my current position from home in Savannah, but they are working to find me a position where I can work from home remotely. I don't know anything for sure yet, but I'm hoping they can pull this off. I would LOVE to keep my JOB if possible!

Another BIG announcement is my first cousin is going to marry one of my best friends!! My cousin Tyler proposed to my friend Lisa yesterday. I am VERY excited since I purposely sat the two next to each other at my rehearsal dinner 3 years ago. Way back 3 years ago Tyler was living in Oklahoma (his home state) and Lisa (my college friend who I met at Auburn) was living in North Carolina (her home state)....so I wasn't really expecting results. However, when my cousin Tyler took a coaching position with Clemson in South Carolina, he called up Lisa for a date. I guess you could say the rest is history now. It's pretty great to know that one of my best friends will now be the mom to my kids second cousins.

Lisa and Tyler

I guess the last MAJOR announcement is that Luke and I are expecting our first Child on January 7, 2013! Tomorrow I have my 14 week check up and 4 weeks from tomorrow we get to find out the sex of baby D. We are very excited, thankful, nervous, joyful, etc.....
We have known about a lot of this news for a while, but couldn't officially say anything yet, so it sure does feel great to finally share this information with the world.


Lastly, I plan to pick up my blogging again very shortly because my two hour daily commute is leaving in two short weeks!! My sister lives about 10 min. from my work, so I am REALLY looking forward to having my life back outside of work and driving.

Update

 The past couple of weeks we've been full steam ahead with finally starting the kitchen reno. This week the electrician is coming, the duct work will be complete, and the cabinet's measured out by
the cabinet company. My dream is to see some drywall going up this weekend, but....I don't see us getting that far realistically.
Here are some before pics in case you forgot our 1980s beauty:

I think my favorite part is how they left the sink off centered from the window :) 

The front room that we would never use is joining the kitchen!!

DEMO TIME!

The wall between the two rooms shown above is about to come down!

Not great quality, but this is looking back towards the living room where the old kitchen was 

Just another demo shot, so you can appreciate the next photos

Here is the state we are at today! Framing complete and ready to move forward with electrical.

View from entry hall, we opened up the wall by making two five foot openings

Because this wall is load bearing we had to be very careful to make sure the support was still there

Another view

A view looking back toward the front door, and the two rooms joined as one!
Part of my future island is drawn on the floor

The new extra large doorway to access the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs

Fun with Auburn Friends

Luke and I headed west last Wednesday to Park City, Utah. You already know the ladies I take the beach trip with from http://dormandays.blogspot.com/2011/07/girls.html, so this trip we swapped babies for husbands (babies might have been better though! J/K).
In our group we had 9 skiers, two lonely snowboarders (tear for Luke and I), and one pregnant Caroline. Experienced folk we had 4 including Luke and I, so...as you can guess we had a good time laughing. Everyone really did a wonderful job and improved over the week! We ended up with only one person being carried off the mountain (Thankfully nothing serious--David) which is a good stat with that many new skiers. I wish the snow had been a bit better, but the trip was SO MUCH FUN and I'm already ready to do it again.

The Whole Group

All the Ladies

All the Men

Luke is GOOD!

Our Normal Ski Trip Pic

I HATE you can't see this better. Darn phone pic! Nothing like a bunch of men in a hot tub!

Working Weekends

So I'm hesitant to show updates because everything is not how I want it yet, but I just can't resist putting up some pictures of the house along the way. Eventually I'm going to make a Shutterfly book of the whole house project and everything along the way.
This weekend I flew without Luke to the SAV. house for some work. Luke is on the final push at the job and just couldn't afford to take off since we are leaving for Park City tomorrow through the weekend. Luckily...I have the best family ever... and my parents along with my first cousin Tyler were in tow to help out.
We did get a lot accomplished, but have many a miles to go. I'll post the pics and walk you through the progress made and some items left.

All of the trim in the entire house and all doors were off white. Here you can see the newly painted white doors and trim. We finished all of the downstairs trim (Thank you Tyler).

We have the drapes hung (lower than I would like, but that's a whole long story I won't make you all suffer through). I agree with my mom in that I need at least one more on each side so they don't look so scrawny.
I still have to paint the coffee table, and I've decided the fan blades will get a slight brush of white to lighten them up a bit. The poor barstools are still waiting for an updated kitchen before they can find a home.

So this will probably scare some of you! The ceiling is complete in bedroom number one. We only got one coat of white on the walls in here before we had to leave. The vision for this room is white bed (which is taking forever to get here), white walls, white basically everything except the ceiling, comforter, and drapes. Eventually the bench will be white and I'm going to try my hand at making cute custom bench cushion, etc...
Before furnishings we still have to finish painting walls, putting up the crown, and paint all trim, etc...

This next bedroom is not an Auburn room actually. I fell in love with this color pumpkin spice in a magazine. We finished up the ceiling sanding and painting this weekend along with all paint on the walls.
The vision for this room is orange walls, rope or natural headboard (DIY Project Potential), you can see the horizontal striped comforter. We still have to hang the fan (it's navy and white), put up crown, make the headboard, paint trim, move bed into it's proper spot, etc

We didn't get to the master except that we finished the ceiling sanding, painting and hung the ceiling fan. I think one more long weekend and we should be in pretty good shape. The BIG to do projects left that we are working on behind the scenes are Kitchen (numero uno), and flooring change for the master bedroom and upstairs hallway to match the rest of the house.
Hopefully March will be a month full of work and progress. Thank you again to all who have been helping us. Luke and I appreciate it more than you know.

Catch Up

I do know that I am officially the worst blogger ever right now, but that is what happens when you spend all of your extra time working on fixing up a house in another town. I did happen to snap a lot of phone pics of what you are all really interested in seeing anyway. We still have A TON OF WORK TO DO, but we are making progress.
First things first....THE VIEW! I didn't photoshop this photo or anything! My favorite part of the house HANDS DOWN...even after we have things just how I want them, I'm pretty sure this will always win.

Ceiling De-Popcorned, Can Lights Put In, Ceiling Primed, Ceiling Mudded, Bead Board Up

View down the hall

Looking back towards the kitchen...Yes we still have the fridge in the living room

Fireplace View

Painted Celing (I still wish you could tell it's a faint blue rather than white), Bead board Topper On, Walls Painted

Crown Going Up...boys will want me to mention this is not the finished look of the crown!

Boys Working Hard 

Furniture going in...Fan looks a little dark to me at this point. What do you think? I think I'll hold of on any decisions until I get the Navy Drapes Up. I'm going to put together my own red curtain rods too. Excited about getting rid of the awful blinds!

The TV is Pushed Back into the Wall so you can't see the sides and will have crown around to look like a picture, but we can pull it out and swivel to the deck if needed. The bar facelift is coming later!

I'm all about FREE STUFF and Ben got this barely used love seat for free, along with Luke's old college coffee table (I think a facelift for that will be coming later also)
Next Steps: Get up Drapes, Chair Delivering, Purchase Side Tables, Accessories, and  Start Kitchen Demo and Remodel (YIKES)

The House (downstairs only)

So...I took a ton of photos of the house in Savannah. So many in fact that I'm going to end up just showing a floor at a time. We plan on remodeling a floor at a time, so that works anyway. Luckily, the only floor that we really have to remodel is the bottom floor, but we have beds to buy, etc...for the other floors.
I don't feel like breaking down the whole plan, but I'll just try and explain that we are blowing out walls and making one huge kitchen and one big great room downstairs. I forgot to get any pics of the half bath, but it's been recently updated, so I'll just take some when we go down next time. The pictures are in no order. Sorry!

Back of the place (please excuse our fridge box)

The View!! (aka: the reason we bought this place)

One view from inside! (we need to fix the screen door)

Our new fridge BIG BERTHA! We had to take of the handles to fit her in the house. 

De-Popcorning the ceiling! (my parents were a HUGE HELP) 

The fireplace and wet bar!

The front room that will eventually be part of my dream kitchen :) 

The front room windows that I plan on leaving! (funny thing is the current blinds are DVF, but I plan on changing them out and who knew she was in the blind business)

1980s Kitchen (CHECK)...this is where we plan on spending our time and energy! I mean why would you not center the sink on the window?? This will look 100% different... eventually.

The Hallway that holds two storage closets and the half bath.

The front view! 

Already completed one project. Bought a new fan for the living room, but it was a little heavy chrome...so I painted it NAVY instead. The blades are wood and I can't wait to put it all together, but we have to put in some can lts. etc...1st. 

Here is a pic of our dock. Apparently the neighbors don't crowd it up with boats, so we should always find a parking spot. We love the dock because it has a shower, sink, nice table, and chairs for all to enjoy.

I look forward to sharing our house remodel and decorating via this blog. I don't think this is something we are going to be able to tackle right away (we are taking donations), so please be patience. Here is to hoping I have many transformations for you to see shortly :)