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 :) 

Follow Up

Tailgating for FL. Game

Barn Dance

Barn Dance Dinner

Hay Ride at the farm

Friends in Raleigh 

Raleigh wedding couple Moose and Katie

FAVORITE part of the wedding was the Duke a cappella group (I'm a HUGE Sing Off Fan)

At the Raleigh Wedding sporting my long hair one last time!

Dan taking charge of tailgate set up for the FL game!

My new Ballard Backroom purchase (for the SAV. home)

Ballard=Trouble! I had to get these great bar stools for the new place too! 

Square dancing at the farm

Ok...so I do realize that you probably wanted house pics more than anything, and I have some...but Luke and I are heading down on the 5th of November, and I plan to get pics of every room and do before then after shots as we go about fixing things up and making it our real home away from our rental home. So just hold on for now and I'll post some after that weekend. Here is a sneak peak at one of our amazing views.