Work on the house- bathrooms

The bathrooms were most of the work.  Dad did most of it.  Even at 60 years old I still wish I could keep up with him.

When I look at these before photos now I am reminded how gross the house was when we got it.  I am so glad almost nothing in these photos is still in the house.

This is the upstairs we left the tub and shower surround.  Everything else went- floor, toilet, vanity, mirror and light were all replaced.

 This is the downstairs.  It was in worse shape than the upstairs.  The top half of the tile surround was salvageable- I just scrubbed it re-grouted it.

 Very gross!  Dad got all this out without me having to touch any of it.  He had to replace a big piece of the wall here and in the shower.

 Just about ready to start putting it back together

 This is the almost finished upstairs (just needs trim in this photo- Dad came to visit for Christmas and put the trim up:) ).

 It is hard to get a good photo of a small bathroom, but I hope this shows it is clean and looks nice (and shows off my tile job)  Compare to the first photo from this post.

Work on the new house- upstairs bedrooms

These were the first rooms we worked on as they needed the least work. 

These photos are from the inspection- the rooms each had some furniture to be removed, hideous paint, writing on the walls, garbage.... 

 This room is such dark grey it is almost black

Painting in progress.  I decided to paint all these rooms the same color- it is a nice calm blue/green color.  We also painted the closets and ceilings.

 You can see here how much the celings needed new coat of paint.   This is about where I was rolling the paint on (three rooms, the hall and the start of the living room) when my neighbor stopped by and said "stop, I will come over with my paint sprayer and do the rest of this".   1. my neighbor Randy is awesome 2. rolling paint on ceilings is really hard

Mark was a big help!  Mostly he played outside- but he did come in and do some painting.

Here is the first room done (we still haven't gotten the doors painted).  I didn't get photos of the other rooms getting done.  We got so busy and then we moved in... anyway finished room photos to come.

Merry Christmas

We took the kids to get photos with Santa.... this is how close Lilly was willing to get to him.  Luckily she was willing to take a photo in their other room and we got these cute ones with them all dressed up.

Snow

So we got about a foot of snow last night... these pictures are not from this snow.  This is much earlier this fall but I thought they would be a good start to returning to my blog.

 We are pretty happy to be able to sled in our back yard.

Sophia's Birthday

We took a break from the bathroom tiling to go to Sophia's birthday.  We had a wonderful time.

 Lilly enjoyed taking a turn at the pinata.

 We hadn't seen Fiona in a long time, it was great  to see her there.

 Beautiful birthday girl

 Mark spent much of the party in this hammock.. I guess we should get one of those for the new house also.

more from my gym

Here are a few more from the gym.  

Mark loves this large ball with a tube in it.  He like when he lays in it and I roll him around in it.  And he likes when I take a big ball and bump him on the head and he falls down.

 They like bouncing each other around on the trampoline.  Our new house has a large trampoline we have been thinking about weather or not to get rid of it for safety reasons.  But the kids oh so love this one.  I guess we may try it out.

My Gym

There is a kids place called My Gym that I have enrolled they kids in a class.  I had tired a few classes with Mark two years ago through our rec district and, while we had fun, I didn't find them great.  I was expecting this to be the same quality.  But I was wrong..  the class is great!  There are two teachers and they are both amazing with the children.  I got a half price deal making it reasonable, I was going to quit when that was ove... I am on the fence now about continuing.  It is expensive but it is really amazing.

 That is my child sitting in circle time participating in the activity!