Can You Feel It?

Awwwwwww......

Progress!

Before and After pictures are so much fun to look at, don't you think?

Thought I'd share some "In Progress" pictures with you. The kitchen of our current investment property is quite different that other kitchens we've encountered. This one is located in the middle of the house with no exterior walls and thus no windows to the outside. It made this kitchen DARK- very dark and very gloomy!

This is the day we purchased the property... before trash removal and renovations began. You are looking into the door of the kitchen from a room off the back.

Dark, eh?

Here's a view from inside the kitchen looking back to where the previous picture was taken from:

The rest of this house is light and bright... lots of nice windows and natural light. This kitchen was just ODD.

On the other side of this kitchen (front side of the house) is a dining room. We needed to lighten up.... brighten up this room. The room needed to become a functioning part of this home instead of a cave inside a house.

Here's our progress from last week:

We opened up the wall and this half-wall will be a breakfast bar when we're finished. We added can lighting above this area too and we opened up a window pass-thru to the family room off the right of the picture above.
Much better, don't you think!

I LOVE progress!

I am a Misfit!

I'm pretty sure of it! And since posting that on my facebook account, several people have asked, "Why are you a misfit?".

Well.... I'm just not normal. My good-man-charlie-brown... my always-by-my-side... often reminds me that I'm just not like everyone else. More and more, I find myself in the minority of life... whether it be my thinking, my convictions, my likes & dislikes... I'm just not normal. And yet... I am still LOVED! ::insert huge grin::

So- we're working on our current real estate investment. When our team purchased this house, it had been disassembled... and disassembled in a fashion resembling that of She-with-once-skinned-knees' attempts to remove her training wheels by herself at two years old. Catch my drift?

The process of bringing this house back has been an involved process. And the time finally came when we were ready to run the plumbing (yes! The copper had all been removed underneath... I wasn't kidding! DISASSEMBLED!). A conversation, months ago, with a friend in a similar business, turned us on to a product- not really new- called PEX. The Lord had a hand in that conversation because just a few weeks later we acquired this house. PEX research was at the top of the list.

In true misfit fashion, I was completely intrigued with the idea of putting the plumbing back together and learning all there was to learn about running PEX. Years ago I was hooked on a puzzle game called "Pipe Dream". Maybe that's where this excitement over assembling PEX circuits for an entire house came from. I don't know. But I LOVED it! I think it was even FUN!


And it's not just the flexibility of the product but the COLOR CODING too! Blue lines for cold water.... Red lines for hot water... White lines for main lines. And OHHHHH... then there's the manifold where it all comes together! It's just the COOLEST!

See! Not normal!

I'm a misfit!

There's an island out there for people like me!

And SANTA comes ESPECIALLY for us! ROFL!!!!!! ;D

Yikes!

I haven't blogged since the 3rd!!! How in the world did that happen?

Ok... I'm just a tad swamped right now. We're schooling again and teaching 2nd, 4th & 7th grade is taking a little more brain power than teaching all elementary grades. We've added some additional classes thru our local support group that keep us running more than I prefer. And we are all adjusting to the "back-to-school" schedule. ::sigh:: Summer was just TOO SHORT this year!!

And in our spare time, we've been working hard on our real estate investment. Last week we ran PEX ... a wonderful alternative to copper plumbing... for the entire house. I swear, I had sooo much fun learning and running circuits. And the satisfaction of turning the water on and having it all work- no leaks!- what a blast! It's a beautiful thing... I have pictures to prove it! ;)

But alas... it's too late tonight for me to even consider preparing pic files to post here... so that must wait. I promise that I will try to share them soon. You must see what we're doing to the kitchen in this place!!! I know everyone enjoys before & after pics! I'll share some of those too!

And then there's horses, dogs, cats with kittens... rain... the grass is growing again (oh no! When will I mow?)... painting our classroom... laundry (goodness! That never goes away!)... Fall is on our doorstep (I want summer back!)...facebook (will I EVER figure that out?)... and...




PS - I discovered another family member has taken the plunge into blogging. Check her out! Isn't It Amazing?

Look who's grown!

Remember this tiny gal?

Here she is the end of May.

And then the end of June!

And now look at her!
She's a Puppy Pre-school grad now!

And she's even earned her Camping Badge!