March: We worked on the finish trim of the house, Prestons parents were so grateful to help us! I (surprise) found the trim style I wanted on Pinterest and showed Ken, and he figured out how much we needed of all of the wood and helped us install it. It really adds SO much to the windows and the height of the ceilings.
Kate is also building a house so it's fun to see the progress on hers too. Hers will be done sooner because they didn't do any sweat equity, but it's sure going to be a beautiful house! Emmett quite liked the sink when we went over to check out the progress. Aiden loves to "help" me vacuum and plays with the toy one I got him all the time. He loves to be outside and always roams around with us while we're out there. Also - random, but Emmett LOVES pickles. He gnaws those things like crazy and freaks out when it's all gone haha.
April: Progress is going great on the house. Dad and Preston are working on the siding, we ran water and power lines out to the shop, and it's finally starting to warm up a bit. Emmett is sweet and fat, I swear he's just about outgrown his mini crib, but we've got to make it last until the house is done. We're working on the potty training again with Aiden, he's sure wild. He snuck out to play tractors and then found a can of white spray primer and decided to paint papas dump trailer. Preston and I took turns scrubbing it off with paint thinner for the rest of the evening... To top it all off Emmett discovered some german chocolate cake while I was doing dishes and quite liked it.
May:
Aiden loves to find new places to play as the construction continues, and loves to run around in his underwear/pull up all the time. Grandma Lisa took Aiden out to a little event and he got to pet lots of cool animals and ride a horse, he had such a blast and it gave me a break for a while!
We officially moved into our house on the 17th! The last month of finishing it totally dragged big time, but It was so nice to be in! I actually was surprised the night we stayed there, I wasn’t planning on moving in until after my race that weekend but when I came home from work Thursday night Preston and my mom had moved our beds and the big stuff over.
I ran my half marathon and barely survived, I definitely need to lose weight and actually train for one before I do it again, my hip ached for a good 3 weeks after I ran it, and my knee has been bothering me off and on since then. I’m pretty sure I got a stress fracture in my foot because it still to this day aches all the time and usually is worse at night, but oh well ha ha.
June: lots of time at the splash pad, refinished the dining room set, and enjoying our new house!
Back to the house… Dad and Preston put up the siding on the sides and the back because it was about 10K in labor for the siding company to do it. My dad did soooooo much work on our house (Preston did too, but he could only do it when he wasn’t at work), and I’m so grateful for him helping us. Overall we saved about 55K off the original bid to have the house built with all of the sweat equity we did, and we definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without that help. He was so thoughtful about where we should put our plugs and switches, and researched a lot of stuff to make it the beautiful home that it is. We are leaving the basement unfinished and will just work on it a little bit at a time. As I said before we’re working on the gym room now but after that we don’t really care about finishing anything else down there until probably next year except fort the shelving in the cold storage. The next thing I’d like to do would be the bathroom, then the main living space, and the extra bedroom very last. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it’s such a big space that it’s going to take a lot of wood to frame, plus sheetrock, and don’t even talk to me about what the carpet will cost to do a whole entire basement ha ha!
We needed to get the rest of the house painted and were originally going to do it ourselves to offset more labor costs, but in the end we just didn’t have the desire or time. I put out an ad on Facebook and got several messages from people who could do it, we picked a couple to get bids, and they came out last week and got it all painted. It is amazing the difference it makes, I love our house! We’ve done some smaller things throughout the house too like getting the kitchen backsplash up, building the barn door for the bathroom, and hanging stuff in the garage. I went to Home Depot to get some plants for the porch and holy crap the nice ones are expensive! So never mind on that.
Our next big thing is a temporary fence between us and the neighbors on the west side of the yard, Aiden is good about staying close but I always worry especially when that house gets started, I don’t want him to get hurt or into trouble. I really want to do trex fencing but it’s like double the price of vinyl, I just hate vinyl fencing… it’s so.. common. Plus sprinklers usually leave hard water marks all over it if they spray on it anywhere. But with cedar fence you have to re-stain it every year or two, which is also a hassle, but if I had to choose between the two it’d be cedar any day! So we’ll see how that all goes. After that’s up we’re going to start running sprinkler lines and getting the front yard ready for sod, the back yard we will probably seed but I’m not in as big of a hurry as getting that one done. I’d love to, don’t get me wrong, but putting in a yard is EXPENSIVE! I had no idea… I knew it wouldn’t be cheap but man. We are pouring the cement for a back patio area that the deck will eventually be above, we needed to get some more cement anyways for the retaining wall on the side of our yard so we can take the forms out and start grading the yard for sprinklers/grass. I’m excited to have more of a place where Aiden can safely play and I can keep an eye on him. Kate got her grass in and had some left over so we got it and took it to our house, we’re going to have to trench it like everywhere else when we do sprinklers but for now it’s so much fun having grass!
I’ve always been super OCD about cleaning and organizing and after a few weeks into being at our house I decided I needed to take a step back and tone it down a bit. I mean it’s one thing to be moving in and unpacking but it’s a big house and I didn’t want to be cleaning allllll the time. So, as hard as it is for me, I’ve made myself take time while both kiddos are awake and in the house to just play with them and be present. Not be on my phone, leave the laundry/dishes, and just be. There. Anyone who knows me knows how hard this is haha! I still think about the stuff I “need” to be doing sometimes when I’m playing with them or just relaxing but I overall just feel better when I slow down a bit. I have figured out a pretty good schedule of what to do daily or weekly to stay caught up, it is working well so far and I’m happy to have found a balance... now to just find a balance with adding in exercise…
I am so grateful for how much help my parents have done with helping us, and I can’t wait until it’s all done one day and I can swing in our hammock under the deck with the boys while Preston cooks some big ole’ juicy steaks on the grill ;)
I am so grateful for how much help my parents have done with helping us, and I can’t wait until it’s all done one day and I can swing in our hammock under the deck with the boys while Preston cooks some big ole’ juicy steaks on the grill ;)
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