Our Concrete Home

I'm still here, still plugging along on our concrete house.  It's been a while but there is a little progress to report. Cole used a good word yesterday when describing his Eagle Scout paper work: tedious.  That's how I feel about the trim right now....tedious.  BUT WOW!  Just look at the difference: BEFORE AFTER I am so pleased with the results--it looks better than I imagined!  I took the picture this morning and it was overcast so I don't think that the colors shine as brilliantly as I see them.  But I love how it has turned out. Boy, oh boy is it ever a lot of hand work with the white... Today I started working on the windows on the north side of the house.  I will take an after picture because those windows are going to "POP" on the green.  Can't wait!  Saturday we came close to finishing the south facing wall:  I have lots of weird places left....like next to rock....  Up a corner and under th...

Our Haiki Fan arrived!  Brent and Cole immediately went to task to install it!  We LOVE it!  http://www.haikufan.com/ I was really hoping for the cocoa and black, but they were out.  We went with white and I think I like it better.  It blends into the ceiling, it's sleek, stylish and it pumps out the air! On a side note...think I've mentioned it before...someday I will have grown-up furniture in the living room.  We would love to have nice craftsman style furniture but YIKES!  Have you seen the prices on that pretty furniture?  We will have to save for a bit.  Cole posted on facebook "A house isn't a home until you have a zipline in the backyard".  I looked in the back and saw the results of Brent and Cole's hard work installing a zipline: The word is out and kids appear when they see us outside.  The rules are: 8 years old and a parent release.  It's a pretty decent zipline for a backyard.  It goes...

We celebrated and played today!  It was GREAT!  My folks have an awesome, big backyard.  Our tradition has always been to fill the yard with blowup water toys and then BBQ.  Thank you to both sides of the family who hosted us and made it a magical day! After a big BBQ we headed up to Aunt Amy and Uncle Carl's house for more swimming and hamburgers.  The kids kept saying "Take my picture doing this"...  The pictures in the neon green tubes were my favorite:  And then there is always this favorite game: Our fourth was sandwiched between a massive 4 day swim meet.  The kids did well--success!

We spent nine hours today, in the heat (almost 100), caulking the west and north walls of our house.  It's almost ready for paint!  These are the last two big sides left for paint.  My fingers were raw from smoothing out the caulking.  But we're getting there!  I can't wait to see the front of the house in the pretty green and yellow! 

I'm back from my blog break!  We moved in mid-February and it feels GREAT! We are still have many projects to complete and I will continue to document our progress. 15 years ago Brent and I purchased a lift chair from Sundance.  They changed out all of their chairs and Brent was certain that someday it would make a fun and unique porch swing.  The chair has been resurrected and it looks fantastic! First Cole and Maya spent a spell of time grinding off all the old green paint (can not find that picture...).  Brent and Cole painted the lift black (can't find that picture either...).  Brent cut, sanded, and stained new walnut slats and then he assembled the chair. Yesterday Brent rented a back hoe.  He excavated behind the first retaining wall for another retaining wall.  On the left is the northeast corner of our house.  In the bottom corner of the photo you see the first retaining wall we placed.  In the upper right of t...