Been a While

Thought a post was well overdue. We have started working on the house again just after Christmas was over and will get into what we are doing in later posts. This post is dedicated to the newest member of our Family:

Barkley
The pictures below where taken when Barkley was 16 weeks. We had just had him home. Barkley is a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. Some of you may be surprised that we got a dog due to my allergies, well, he is hypo-allergenic. Kind of like Poodles, which is another dog that I can be around. Barkley does not shed.

From Barkley Dawson

From Barkley Dawson

From Barkley Dawson

This is a picture of the first bath that we gave him

From Barkley Dawson

Because he likes to end up with this:

From Barkley Dawson

So we ended up building (and yes, we did this ourselves) a Vinyl fence that looks like this for a dog run so he did not get as dirty unsupervised:

From Barkley Dawson

4th Of July

During this holiday, out block decorates and has a block party on July 4th. I thought pictures of tree lined street with the bows was really cool looking.

Bouncin'

This is a couple of photos of the bouncer that we own with a couple of other Good Family Friends. This is the first time that we had this up at the new house.

This is what it is all about

So we where out in our yard today and the kids played out front on their bicycle and tricycle. The pictures really say it all ... to me .... this is what our new house is all about. Big yard for the kids to play in. It was such a nice evening to be outside.

Now Logan likes to push with this feet instead of Pedal the Tricycle. Turns out that his feet where going so fast that they blurred in the picture a little....LOL.

Here is what I do

A lot of you have asked me what I do. Sometimes hard to explain. I thought since I am at our Home Office in Chicago learning how to work on this new printing device, it would be a good time to take some pictures to show you.

These two Racks of computers are some of the computers that control the digital printing press. This is the front view first. Each Rack holds 9 computers - 18 computers in two Racks total.


This view is of the back side of the two computer Racks. Notice the detail on the cabling.


Here are a couple of views of the Printing Press itself.

Living Room Redone

As promised, I thought I would post some before and after pictures of the main living room.

Before


During



After
I will try to get a better picture than this. But gives you a look.

Ohh my gosh

We are soo blessed with the friends that we have. Our house is closet space challenged. It seems to be that way in the older houses. People did not have as much clothes in 1954 as we do today apparently.

Anyways, we where really blessed that some of our friends, Todd and Y, had a (spare?) Armoire sitting in storage that they wanted to get rid of. They asked if we could use it, we said yes, and they gave it to us! On top of that, I was gone on a Staff Retreat for Jr. High and could not help move this beast into our room. No, problem, Todd and some help moved this thing in on their own.

So I get home from this trip and see this thing in our room, it is awesome! It adds the missing closet space that we where missing. We are very happy with this new furniture and matches our bedroom set pretty well.

Rosa and I would like to send a BIG THANKS to Todd and Y for donating to Dana Place.

Thanks again guys.

See a picture of the piece below.

The Wall is Dry

Thought I would post a picture of the wall with Dry Wall now.

It's been a while

I know, I know. It has been a while since I posted to the good old blog-a-ma-thing. This has mainly been do to the move from the old house to the new one. We moved just about 4 weeks ago. It has been crazy since then.

With that, before we moved in, a friend came over and helped me run wires through our attic for our Bose Speakers. Thanks Matthew!!

Also, something I noticed after posting this and seeing the photo again, notice the nails above Matthew's head. This is from the new roof, kind of creeps me out with all those nails sticking out.

Movin' On Up

Finally! We have moved in to Dana Place. Last Saturday was the big day.

I want to thank Shane, Todd and Jeff for all their help. We moved from about 8am until 11pm. I was so exhausted by the time that Jeff called me to help out that I did not want to do anymore. Jeff motivated me to keep going and we got most of the garage moved. Thanks for the motivation bro.

So we have little tid bits to move at the old house now. We need to get that stuff out and clean it so it is ready to rent out.

I do not have any pictures on the new house at all since we have been soo busy un-packing. I will post some when my main computer gets back up in the office. Drywall is up in the Living Room now. I cannot wait to mount the new 52" LCD above the fireplace.

We are now in the process of moving all of our stuff into place. So please forgive us for not being around. We miss all of our friends and cannot wait to have everyone over!

Sean

First Look at the finished Kitchen

Here is a first look at the finished Kitchen. It is still a mess but wanted to give you a peek.

It looks worse than it is

Well, we are tearing out the paneling in the Main Front Room Wall. We had not planned on doing that until we figured that we had to run power to the TV going over the fireplace.

So here is a view of that. I should have more updated pictures in a couple of days with the TV mounted and the Drywall finished.

Progress is being made!!

We are starting to feel like we are making progress (finally). The Kitchen is painted as well as the Doors and Drawers. I have all the newly purchased Hardware for the doors going on last night and tonight.

My Sister Elizabeth has been soo awesome with all the help she has provided to us. She has been at our new house almost as much as we have. And we all know, Painting is not the most fun job in the world.

The Kids room is fully complete. Well, all except the closet. That may have to be done after the big move.

The Blinds are on a majority of the windows and doors now with exception to one that is too long and 2 that Home Depot did not have in stock.

Rosa, my wife, has also been a champ. While I am working all day and in some cases traveling for business 10+ days over the last few weeks, she has been taking care of the kids and organizing vendors, changing address, working on stuff on the house. Sweetie, I love you and you rock!

So even though I am just simply wiped out, I am feeling really good about where we are at. Looks like we will be moving next weekend (hopefully). With that I thought I would give you at least one picture on this post of me with my turn on the Chain Saw from the day that we took the tree in the front yard down.

Clear!!

So a friend of ours came over to help us with the changes we are making to the house before we move in. Matthew was awesome, he helped tear out all of the built-in cabinets in our bedroom as well as the paneling on the lower walls.

I could not decide if we should take out the crappy closet that was built in the room. Matthew kind of took the attitude of, "When in doubt, tear it out". Needless to say, no more closet either now.

Another change that I will show when I take pictures of the Kitchen, is that Matthew and I removed the old 50's Ventahood and is now sitting on Craig's List.

The room has wallpaper that was not removed at some point in the past which was noted in the last post that I made.

A big thanks goes out to Matthew for helping on this project. As some of you that are close to us know that I have been getting a bit overwhelmed with all the projects that I have going on. It is a true blessing to have the friends that we do.

Below are the before and after photos.

Before


After

The things you find...

It is always exciting pulling areas of an older house apart. You never know what you might get. So here is another gem that a friend and I ran into tearing out the Built In desk and closet in the Master Bedroom.

So below what you will find is a nice piece of memorabilia from the 60's? Maybe 50's? I cannot tell for sure what era this piece of wall paper came out of but I would like to think the 50's if I had a choice.

Timber Part 2

Im sorry that I have not posted in a while, we have been busy on the house as you would expect. Here are the before and after photos that I promised after taking down the tree.

Before

After

TIMBER!!!

So this past Saturday, we took down the two trees that blocked the view of the house. We have been dying to have these two trees taken out. A friend of ours, Jeff, was dying to take this thing out .... especially when he found that this "project" was going to require a chain saw. 

Jeff is a great friend and worked so hard at getting these trees down. I could not have asked for a better helper on this. He was soo excited to see the results.

So now, with Jeff's help, the house looks very different. You can actually see it!! The neighbors that stopped by while we where in the middle of tear out literally said, "WOW!". 

Unfortunately it got too dark to take the final picture. Instead I am going  to post my favorite picture of the day.

Boys Room Is Finished

We continue to work on painting projects in our house. One of the harder rooms to paint has been our kids' room. Not because of the walls, it has been the Pine wood on the walls and the built in dresser. Anyways, below are the before and after pictures.

Before

After

The Office

So when we looked at this house originally, there was this office built in the garage. Talk about going back to the 50's or 60's. It was pretty nostalgic as well as a little creepy. I have posted some pictures below of before and after the tear down. We did decide to leave the cabinets that are against the outside just for storage for the time being.

Here it is Before:

Here is the inside view:

All Gone!!

That's Soo Tacky!!

While cleaning out the kitchen cabinets we found a bunch of wonderful different Tac Papers from the 60's and 70's that where promptly removed. I actually think some of the retro patterns are kind of cool. Kind of like I enjoy retro 50's publications.

If you are curios what those may look like, take a hop over to Ward Kimball's Blog called the Ward-O-Matic.

In the mean time, here are the snapshots of some swell Tac Papers. Enjoy!

Painting

Last Saturday we started Painting the house. We decided to use Behr Paint since it was rated one of the best by Consumer Reports. It's not like we researched this, I bought the Consumer Reports at an Airport on the way home from a Trip. I bought it because they rated Flatscreen TV's in this issue.

Painting is completed in the Hall and the Main Living Room. Painting is still going on in the kids room. All the wood is taking me the longest. I have finished the primer coat. I am now going through all the wood with Semi-Gloss Enamel. Here is a picture of the room before I started the wood.

Here is another photo of the main room

Thats all for tonight.

We have a ROOF over our heads

Today is the day that the roof is completed.

Tear down of Shake Shingle, re-ply the roof and lay new composite shingles.

First Look

Thought we would post some pictures of the new house in the state it is in for now. There is not a whole lot to do on this house, it was kept in really good condition, it is just old.

Below are the pictures. This is a slide show, you can roll over the picture to pause or move backwards or even forwards.

Sean and Rosa

Git R Done

Finally!!

We are all complete, Sale of the house to us is recorded and we can take the keys to our new home!

Sean

It's like Christmas Eve!!

The night before we get the key to Dana Place. We are both so excited. 

We cannot wait to get the keys so that we can start the transformation of our new home. 

This home is in a dream area of ours. I remember driving down these streets with my mother when I was little and always wished we could live here.

It seems like the closing process has taken soo long however, it has been a rather short time of 30 days. We have been blessed to have the ability to rent our current house and purchase this new property.

This blog has one main purpose, to share with friends and family,  pictures and stories as we go through the various improvements on this house.

So in the next post, I will post pictures that I recently took on one of our final walk through visits.

In the meantime, here is the first picture from outside.

Sean