Busy Beavers

  Wow have we ever been busy. Between moving and watching the grandkids I am completely worn out. We started on the kitchen and dining room this last week. We brought the oak kitchen cabinets from the trailer that we had purchased a few years back. The cabinets here were nice but the kitchen just seemed closed off. With the sunroom on the back it should feel more open. They had the refrigerator right in front of the door from the dining room. That made it feel like you needed to pull your shoulders in to get into the kitchen. So far we have the sink side all installed except for the new counter tops. We will be making butcher block counters. I can not wait. The improvement so far is amazing and it will be just awesome once we get done. I picked my paint colors at Menards the other day. A sage green for the cabinets and a beige for the walls.

  We are using all of the materials we can from here. I guess you can call it a "Green" remodel. Not to mention the money it will save us. Which is a double plus. I have been reading up on making a butcher block counter from recycled wood flooring. Someone put hardwood flooring on the bottom half of the basement walls. I thought "what" when my son started taking it down. At first glance it looked like some kind of beadboard panel. Then it hit me. After looking at hardwood flooring at Menards I thought hey we have a ton of it in the basement. We will just cut off the bad parts.

  When the previous owners remodeled the kitchen they put linoleum down. Well lets just say oh my. They put a ton of glue and i mean a puddle in some spots then no glue at all in others. The bigger pieces we pulled up I am saving just in case we can use them in other places. I am thinking one place will be the bathroom in the basement.

  We pulled the carpet up in the dining room the other night. Woot Woot the hardwood floor is still there. But oh my does it need a ton of work. They started to paint it in one corner then must have changed their minds. Oh my. It was easy enough to pull the carpet up. My granddaugher Sophie helped us. She is grama's big helper. The tack strips along the edge kept "biting" us. She would say "Grama" "Grampa" you be careful don't get booboo's. It was the cutest thing. She is so observant it is amazing sometimes. She watched me take the flat head screw driver with the hammer and tap the tack strip off the floor. I layed them down to go into the other room and heard a tapping noise. When I got back into the dining room she had the screw driver with the hammer just a tapping away. Now she isn't big enough to hold the hammer up and tap the screw driver, so she improvised. She layed the hammer on the floor and using the end of the handle slid the hammer along the floor to hit the screw driver. Dave and I giggled over this one and thinking to ourselves that she wouldn't get too far that way we watched. Well to our surprise we were wrong. I should have known not to underestimate that child. She comes from a long line of strong stubborn women. She managed to get a whole wall of strip off. Woot Woot go girl. My grandson Bryson helped a little too just before taking his nap. He used the power drill to put a screw into a piece of flooring for me. Here is this little guy with a power drill almost as big as he is holding it up and drilling. I laughed and laughed. He did a really good job too. That screw was straighter than mine. LOL.

  We have had a lot of fun and laughs while doing this. And it is making me love this house even more. Knowing that as a family we are building our home and putting our own imprints on the history of this place. I can look at that wall and smile knowing that Sophie helped in that small area. And every time I walk into the kitchen I can smile as I walk over that area that Bryson held a power drill for the first time. Who knows.....maybe they will grow up to be a famous decorator or architect.