Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve Everyone! 

Luke and I are doing well as we enter the final two weeks of life as we know it (just kidding), but seriously our last two weeks with just the two of us. So crazy to think how time has flown by. We are so blessed and look forward to meeting little miss Lane.

I know some of you (Lowrey) have been nervous about Lane's nursery since our whole house was/is in the process of getting a face lift, but I am happy to report we are 98% finished with her room. I have to paint a mirror above the dresser and we'll be calling it quits in that room.

We have made other major progress with the rest of the house as well. So today I'll finally show some pictures, but NO JUDGING because we still have work to do as you'll notice (we have no vent covers, etc).
We wish you and your family the best Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

Remember this front room? 

Who could forget this lovely 1983 kitchen?

I hope you forget the 1983 beauty when you see our NEW KITCHEN! I am so happy with the way it turned out. I hope you LOVE it too!

WooHoo! We removed the wall dividing the two rooms shown above and raised the ceiling up (from a drop ceiling) to normal height by adding a soffit (a place for the duct work ladies).
We added an induction cooktop to the island with a vent hood over that. The countertop is quartz and we used simple white subway tile for the backsplash. The faucet is probably one of my favorite things to use, and I'm not sure I could go back to the faucets of old. I think the only survivor of the old kitchen is the dishwasher that you can't see because of the computer in this picture. The computer won't be staying, but is currently living on my island for the time being.

We had a little window looking out into the living room before the reno, and here you can see we opened that space up for easy walking access between rooms. We also installed a microwave/oven wall unit from Jenn Air that I must admit is smarter than I am. 

My pantry is the cabinet units shown on the left of the fridge. 

The island was a dream come true! We have deep drawers for storage on the cooktop side and upper cabinets on the barstool side to store things not used often. In this view you can see we created two 5 foot openings to allow the space to feel open and easy flowing. I love all of the natural light coming in from the windows that were blocked off originally in that sad front room. 

One last look! Most people that have seen the before and after in person can't even believe this is the same space. It still amazes me how much room was really available. I LOVE COOKING in this Kitchen!

Now onto the living room! 

Our Christmas Tree!

A view looking back toward the kitchen! You may notice the blue seen in earlier blogs is no more. I decided a less intense color would be better now that we live here full time. We still have vent covers and art to hang, but we're almost there! In this room we de-popcorning the ceilings, adding crown molding (Luke put up crown throughout the entire house), added bead board, and had to paint every piece of trim and door to white from the yellowish color they were originally.

We gutted the wet bar due to mold and matched the kitchen finishes. We recess mounted the TV above the fire place, but have the option to pull out and swivel for viewing on the back deck. Please also note that Lane already has a Christmas stocking thanks to Luke's Grandmother! It was such a sweet surprise to get in the mail!

 

View from the hallway into the living room. Luke installed track lighting and can lights 

 Nursery Time!!

 I think Little Miss Lane Olivia will like this!

View looking into her room from the hallway! I decided on a blue and pink nursery theme! The fabric is blue seersucker(which you can't make out well in these pictures). In making this nursery happen I must give thanks where thanks is due. First off Amanda Dorman (my mother in law) made the bed skirt and is working to make these super cute flowers that we'll sew onto the breathable bumper. Amanda also made the beautiful pink pillows in the background. I think I'll add another post of all of the little details that are hard to see well in these photos. The fabric she used to make the pillows is the same fabric she is making the cute flowers from. You can't make out they even have cute patterns from this photo though. The cute monogrammed pillow is from a friend Lisa G. The window cushion was a big challenge that my sister Katie and I tackled making over Thanksgiving weekend. Ben Dorman spray painted my old dresser, sister Katie and sis in Law Stacie helped wrap yarn around the wooden letters that now hang on the old window. So...as you can see this nursery was a family affair and I am beyond thankful for all of the help. I must give thanks to Luke too for helping put everything together.

The last item left is painting this mirror white to match the dresser!

Mrs. Sock-ta-pus

The wreath Lisa G. made for one of my baby showers now hangs on her door.

Well that was a super HUGE post, but I had to make up for my time away. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

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)