Double Diamond Ranch Renovations

More Crib Fun

2010-08-29T17:53:00.002-05:00

Crib is starting to come together. All 4 sides have now been glued and by now should be finished drying. Next step is to fit all the sides together with hardware, cut the base part of the crib that the mattress goes on, treat with teak oil, and put on about 6-7 coats of finish. We're almost there!

Leg pieces before assembly:
One side piece after being assembled:
Mike glues one headboard/footbard (I don't know which) together:
I think this is the "headboard" - all assembled:
I believe this is the "footboard", though I may be wrong.

Microburst/tornado puts crib building on hold

2010-08-16T17:36:00.004-05:00

Didn't get as much done this weekend as we hoped since Mike spent Friday evening clearing limbs after a microburst/tornado hit Manhattan/our driveway and M/D came out Saturday morning to help with limb clearing as well. The Double Diamond Ranch is now down several very old trees, but the small baby ones growing in our driveway gravel are still there.

View of driveway from the road.

Oak tree down across driveway by the post-rock.
Same tree - looks like string cheese
Limb down nearby
Already dying apple tree dies even more
Pine tree in the orchard snapped in half - you can see where it broke around the middle of the picture
One pear tree lost his pears.
Want some?

I bet the crib plans were written by Mal Evans

2010-08-09T20:12:00.002-05:00

Pictures from this weekend's crib-build.

Dad & Mike work on rounding a dowel thing to go on the top-rounded-part of the crib headboard and footboard.

Semi-dry-assembled crib sideboard. The wood color really isn't showing up in the pictures as well as it does in person. It's a bit darker and richer in person.

Project Build-A-Crib Begins

2010-08-04T21:30:00.001-05:00

Several weekends ago we went to a nice KC Hardwood lumber store and picked out some Sapele lumber to build baby's crib. Sapele is also used in Cadillacs and apparently to make guitar bodies as well. It has a nice rich color with a subdued pretty grain. We like it a lot. It's an "exotic" wood from Africa. Neat.
The next weekend was spent mostly planning and cutting boards down to size/re-sanding them with the sander-tool-thing (maybe dad or Mike should be blogging this since they might actually know what things are called).

Weekend after that (this last weekend) they made a lot of progress with getting the spindle slat things cut down to size, all the legs cut, and the back/front piece things put together. Lots of sanding left to do not to mention all of the assembly, but things are definitely coming along nicely so far! Here are some pictures.

Spindle slat things that have been routered and cut.
Mike draws out the pattern for the legs
Then cuts said legs
And sands them
While dad works on the curved back and front piece thing that is apparently made by putting 3 spliced pieces of wood together. The pattern we're using only suggested gluing, but since dad has 33293023 tools, he also biscuit jointed it.
Curvy piece drying with lots of clamps. See the little blocks with each clamp? They measure the exact angle the curve is supposed to dry at.

And what did I do while this was taking place?

I made a monkey/peanut.

Renovating = done. Unless we do the basement.

2010-07-24T12:18:00.003-05:00

Project laundry room/bathroom is complete. Here are some "after" pictures - sorry they took so long, it has been a very busy few weeks.

View of the bathroom/basement door looking from our back door into the laundry room.

The new home of my sewing/craftish area looking in from the living room. The sewing desk is exactly where Granny had it (and the exact same desk/sewing machine, too...)
A view of the sewing/craftish area looking from the bathroom - you can also see the washer/dryer and a new cleaning cabinet along the wall.
Sorry, this bathroom is impossible to get pictures of, but here is the best I could do - you can see the shower behind the door and the new sink/vanity where the old tub used to be. The toilet is where it always was in the corner, but it is not very photogenic.
Now since most of the renovations (except landscaping) are pretty much done, I think I'll make this into a baby update and/or random Double Diamond Ranch Adventures blog.

Renovations: Phase 3 begins

2010-06-08T09:45:00.007-05:00

Phase 3 began late this winter/early this spring and is still continuing. Renovating the laundry room and small extra bathroom.

But why would anyone want to redo this gorgeous bathroom?

And no laundry room is complete without rust stains on the floor.
Mom starts to tear down wallpaper. Fun job.
Dad tears out the extremely gross sink that hasn't run well in years. Or ever?
Bathroom is re-sheetrocked with waterproof stuff and re-plumbed so the shower will go where the sink used to be and the sink will go where the weird tiny tub used to be. Toilet stays as is.
Wallpaper and floor have all been removed. Junk has not, but I'm still expected to do my laundry somehow...
Dad emerges from the even junkier basement with painting tools. Think we should renovate the basement next!??!
Dad and I prime the laundry room. Baby makes a small appearance.
Mike and Mom prime the bathroom.
Whoa. Why does this subdued dark blue we picked out look more like an eccentric little boy's room? We realized after it had all dried (hoped it would dry darker..nope) that the paint chip didn't even match the hue of the paint on the wall at all.
Got a new can of paint and made them re-mix until it matched better. Still not perfect, but definitely better than that crazy bright blue. Oops, we forgot to paint the bottom?
Wainscoting going up. It's all up now except corner pieces and the "shoe."
Bathroom is a khaki color, but I don't have a good picture of it yet. The floor tile is almost done - it's done in the laundry room. Renovation blunder #1233292.5: we bought all floor tile when we started the project several years ago so all tile would match throughout the house. Apparently we under-estimated by 2 whole boxes (40 tiles) how much we would need, so we ran out. Of course, the brand of tile we used is phasing out and no longer produces this exact tile. We now have about 25 tiles left in the bathroom that either won't match completely or...who knows.....we haven't gotten that far yet.....

Renovation blunder #1233293: Dad power nails the trim up around the "pocket door" from the living room to the laundry room. He accidentally nails the door open so it can no longer slide.....he does this twice.

And no renovation is complete without your toilet sitting on the porch for months.
Next up: finishing floor tile (hopefully with a similar tile design on the edges of the bathroom and no one will notice?), putting up trim around windows, painting all wainscoting and trim, installing all bathroom items (new shower, new sink vanity, old toilet), finding some sort of cabinet for my cleaning supplies and brooms and stuff. Almost done?

Renovations: Phase 2

2010-06-08T09:08:00.007-05:00

Phase 2 happened last fall and a little early this spring. We stained the entire outside of the house and garage. After blasting clean the real wood siding, it still had lots of extremely dark and extremely light patches from sun and weathering over the years, so we had to go with an opaque stain - it looks like we painted, but it is actually wood stain. Went with a brown (anything else just would seem weird) and a khaki-ish trim color.

Why is mom taking down the basketball goal while dad watches? Who knows. There is now a nice basketball goal-shaped patch on the house where the texture of the wood is different since it didn't weather as much as the wood around it. Lovely.

Dad starts staining the garage. It looks a lot brighter when the stain is wet - the finished product is darker and more subdued.

Mike stains trim.
Dad stains the "uppers"
Mike and Dad tear out the old doors. (You can see our new porch light in this picture, too. It matches the one on the front porch and our new post-light by the driveway)
New front door.

Next up: Phase 3 - laundry room/bathroom.

Before and Afters!

2008-11-25T11:19:00.008-06:00

Well, sorry it took so long, things still aren't COMPLETELY done (we have some touch-up paint to do), but it's close enough to take some "after" shots. See how many times you can spot Rigby in the pictures...

Living room:
BEFORE:

AFTER:

Front entry hall:
AFTER:
Dining Room:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

Kitchen
BEFORE:
AFTER:

Bathroom
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Craft/sewing/music room (previously the master bedroom):
AFTER:

Office (previously the "den")
AFTER:

Bedroom Hallway:
AFTER:
BONUS: Here are the kitties.
Skiba chasing Sadie
Skiba
Sadie
Rigby got jealous and wanted his picture taken too

FINALLY another update!

2008-09-18T19:54:00.006-05:00

Well here I am, an update is way past due! We have many more things accomplished since the last post. The floors are COMPLETELY done! (Stained, stained, varnished, varnished). We have our living room furniture/rug moved in, office furniture in (and a new computer to replace my slowly failing PowerBook mac). Right now, we're painting doors and trim. After that, we just need to continue "settling" in and getting things organized/arranged in here. We're almost done, but it's going very slowly since I'm in school, Mike works, and M/D can only come once a week to help out. Here are just a few picture updates from the past month. They're still not completely current, but I'm kind of waiting until I can get good "after" pictures to post many more pictures. We're THAT close!

Putting the old kitchen fan into our bedroom. No more head bonking. Unless you stand on the bed...
New blinds for all bedrooms. This is before the windows were painted. The wood showing is now all painted white!
One of my new "friends" at the house. A small tree frog who likes to suction himself onto our kitchen window at night when there are bugs on it. He disappeared awhile ago when Mike cleaned out his home of wood scraps on the ground. :(
Now the "fun" stuff. Here is me staining the floor to the living/dining/hall. It took about 3 hours for each coat (2 coats). I left a "walking strip" so we could still live in the bedroom. The "walking strip" took another hour or so to stain once the other side was dry. Whew. What a lot of work.

This pretty much sums up staining in general.

And here is the finished floor with 2 coats of stain---but not varnish on yet!
Now for the varnishing! D did that.

Here is M painting trim

And here is proof of Kelsey's "renovation-brain." I was putting cabinet knobs onto all the kitchen/dining room cabinets. I definitely put this one on the wrong side. If anyone gets stuck INSIDE the cabinet, at least they will have a handle to aid them in escaping.
Oh, and here is another turkey picture! They're everywhere all the time.

Getting closer...I guess...

2008-08-04T17:58:00.006-05:00

Well here I am again with another small update from the Double Diamond Ranch.

We've been "moved in" for almost 2 weeks now. The bedrooms' varnish has all cured completely, so we were able to start putting up trim and moving big furniture into those rooms.

Dad cutting trim:

We finally have our bed in the bedroom along with our closet/clothes set up and our dresser in. Here's where we were sleeping for about 3-4 nights. It was such a lovely luxury accomodation. I got to wake up to the lovely sight of a miter saw!
The bathroom has been put to good use. We still need to put the final coats of varnish onto the cabinets and paint the trim, but the bathroom is pretty much done after that.

Here are some pictures of our other lighting solutions.
Bathroom vanity light:
Dining room light (on a dimmer switch):
Hallway light (same light in front entry and bedroom hallway):

We got the kitchen painted! It just needs the trim painted and new knobs on the doors and we'll be done with the kitchen! I have most of my kitchen stuff organized now and have been cooking regularly, but I'm still missing at least 1 box of packed kitchen stuff that I can't seem to find..

Since the pictures: All the trim is now up and all the nail holes are filled. We're working on putting on primer paint on the windows so we can paint all the windows/trim/doors soon. Dad has most of the doors hung and fitted. They still need to be painted and some still need their knobs/hardware installed. Dad installed a shelf on the empty wall in the kitchen that has some lighting on it to help fill the dark void that that end of the kitchen becomes without enough light. We have satellite TV now with DVR service. The satellite looks beautiful on the very peak of the house (the only place we could get a signal).

We still need to paint the hallway, do a final sanding on the living room/dining room floors, stain and varnish those floors, paint all the trim, windows, and doors, and do little touchup work on paint in all the rooms. There's also lots of little odds and ends that need to be done, like replace all the outlets/outlet covers that haven't been replaced yet. I can't wait to get my stuff out of boxes and actually organized into a home. It's driving me crazy right now. The smell of strong oil paint in my nostrils isn't helping much either....

It's official!

2008-07-30T22:46:00.008-05:00

The Double Diamond Ranch officially has internet access for the first time ever! :)

That's right, I'm posting this from the "comfort" of my bed (currently located in the living room..we'll see where we end up sleeping tomorrow. You never know around here) at the ranch. We're all moved out of the apartment (our lease ended today), so we're living here now...even though there is still a lot of work to do before the renovations are complete. It's a huge mess trying to find things in boxes from moving and figuring out where to sleep/eat/etc. We're also Rigby-less right now (he's living with M/D) since we can't have him walking on freshly varnished floors...

Well, here's a little photo update of the happenings from the past week or 2. We have a lot done, but we still have a lot more to go!

New appliances have arrived!

First coat of floor stain goes on in the bedrooms..
And the 2nd coat... (several days later, but she's wearing the same outfit!!)

Dad tries to take a picture of the 2nd coat through the outside window..hm..
Varnishing is a serious business. All 3 bedrooms now have both coats of varnish on them - thanks to Storm Trooper mom.

Bathroom vanity and cabinets are installed

D. cuts the counter for the bathroom
Sink and counter are in!
D puts in the tub surround so we can have a fully functioning bathroom

Preparing the paneling walls to be plastered. Look how much brighter the room is with white walls!

Putting up the Venetian Plaster. It's blue. Luckily, Mike has a friend who used to do plastering stuff for a job, so she was a big help.
Everyone (but me) got to do some plastering. I was at work and missed all the fun....

As the plaster dried, it looked like clouds! It doesn't look like that anymore though :)
DONE with plaster--the pictures don't really do it justice though. The texture looks great in person!
Since the last pictures....I put the first coat of paint on in the kitchen and began spackling nail holes in the trim/baseboard so they can be painted. Dad started hanging our new doors today - those still need to be painted as well. Mike and I both just got done taking showers in the new bathroom! It worked well, but the motion sensor light didn't think I moved enough while showering, so the lights went out twice while I was in there and I had to flail my arms to get it to turn back on. I'll remember next time to turn the motion switch to "on" mode instead of "auto" mode when I enter the bathroom!

Well, until next time....and hopefully I can find the camera batteries so I can take more pictures...they got packed somewhere and are now lost in the moving/renovating fray...

Meet Skiba!

2008-07-21T15:57:00.003-05:00

Welcome to the family, Skiba.

She's one of the kitties we will have as outdoor "hunting" cats at the house. After only a few days, she made herself right at home.....

On top of the roof!

This weekend, we finished painting the 3 bedrooms (a second coat may be needed in 2 of those) and the bathroom ( a second coat is definitely needed in the bathroom). Dad worked on garbage disposal electric stuff, Mike worked on getting the side-boards put onto the vanity and bathroom cabinet things. Those are now ready to stain and put in. Cabinet doors are 1/2way stained. We're almost ready to start staining floors and that really needs to get done...SOON. We move in a week................

Here I am painting the bathroom.

Don't try this at home.

2008-07-18T13:37:00.009-05:00

Heavy duty soldering tools.

Here I am again with another update from the past week or so. Since we left off.....

We put in all the new vinyl floor tiles!

Almost done picture.Dad proved to be a man of many talents. He's an electrician...
And a plumber...
Here's the new plumbing for the bathtub/shower in the main bath.

He was also a sheetrocker. Here he's putting in waterproof/moldproof sheetrock that should have been put in years ago.

Mom turned into our sheetrock mudder person. She looks rather menacing.

The sheetrock sanding tool was fun. It had a vacuum attachment so we didn't get dust everywhere. It had so much suction that it stuck to the wall.
Mike also got to sheetrock mud the seams in the paneling.
Look how many patches were needed in the old green bedroom. That bulit-in-desk was once again glued, cemented, welded, tacked, stapled, screwed, nailed, and painted to the wall.

I got to do many jobs. I tore off all the window/door trim since we're getting new stuff. Not sure why I look so happy about it...
And help primer paint the bedrooms
Mom also helped primer the old "den" room.
See how fun it is?
I also got the den completely painted a few days ago. It is now light green. The pictures don't do it justice.

Almost done!
We also bought a new door threshold for the front door. Mike worked on getting that to fit and be the right size. I've started staining the bathroom cabinets and the old green bedroom is primed and ready to paint tomorrow. The new green bedroom (the old "den") is ready for floor stain, trim, and touch-up ceiling paint. The bathroom has been sheetrock mudded but still needs a few more coats before we can paint it. I picked out a kitchen paint color and hopefully we'll get to have that painted soon - our appliances arrive on Wednesday!

Look for another update after this weekend!

Wow, it's been awhile...

2008-07-10T23:14:00.009-05:00

So this is going to be a big update with lots and lots of pictures.

We had some setbacks with me being in classes, M/D being busy, and then of course the funeral and everything that came along with that. However, last weekend and this weekend, M/D were able to take off some days of work and come stay in Manhattan for 3-4 days at a time and get a LOT of work done. Since I last updated, we re-sanded the floors with a more powerful sander that worked MUCH better than the first one. Mom is now putting the finishing touches on sanding by going over everything with a really fine grit to get it all smooth.

See how much fun she is having with her big fun tools?

I'm not actually doing a thing in this picture. But M is sweeping the kitchen (note that the vinyl flooring is torn out and the built-in desk-thingie-weird-green-bulletin-board area is gone too!)
We even set some of Mike's brothers to work when they were here for the 4th of July.
One major project we have done --- the bathroom is all ripped out and everything new to go in is bought!

Tearing out the tub...

No more tub!

Bathroom without anything in it. It needs to be re-sheetrocked at the bottom with water/mold proof sheet rock. Actually, some of that is done as I write this!The toilet found a new home on the front porch. Lovely.

New tub!!!! Complete with whirlpool jets :)
I had to test to see if the tub "fit" me. It did!
New bathroom cabinets being loaded out of Dad's new truck into the house. At night.
New bathroom cabinet (un-stained) and countertop (un-cut)
Among other things, we also did a lot of work on the kitchen. We decided to get a new sink/faucet for the kitchen. Mike took the old sink out......and sawed out the old cabinet where the new dishwasher will go...
Today, I primed the floors in the kitchen and hallway in preparation for the vinyl tiles to be put down.
And I got to pry off all the old trim around the windows since I guess we decided to put new casings on as well as new baseboard. Hooray.
Tonight we had a lot of "decisions" to make - especially regarding the bathroom arrangements. But I think we came to a consensus. I'll let you see it when I have a decent "after" picture to show how everything is arranged. I think we decided to install a Star Trek-esque door that whooshes upwards when you step into it so we can avoid a problem with a doorknob blocking a drawer handle. Very reasonable solution, I think.

(this is D and I making decisions.)We have also....
-Purchased all new appliances that will be delivered and installed the week before we move in
-Purchased a bathroom light fixture as well as sink/faucet/bath fixtures and other things to match
-Mostly patched the walls to be painted, but they still need some drywall mud putty stuff
-Made about 2394802349082304 trips to Home Deopt
-Endlessly debated over a floor stain/cabinet stain color. Mike and I have opposing views, apparently.

ANNND:

-Found a snake staring at us as we walked in and out the back door --- he was slithered up ON TOP OF the door frame to the back door. As we walked in and out of it. And we think he was a copperhead. Mom threw things at him, I whimpered in the distance, the snake hissed and showed his fangs. He disappeared after awhile, so now he's waiting for us somewhere, ready to pounce when he so desires.

And probably more that I forgot about because my brain is fried due to too much renovating.

Floors, doors, and a light

2008-06-02T09:16:00.017-05:00

This last week, Mike and I spent every night at the house painting the ceilings so they would be done before we sanded the floors. That was....fun...?

This weekend was the big floor-sanding-extravaganza. We rented an orbital floor sander and set to work. We have to/had to get ALL the varnish off the wood floors so that we can stain them a new and darker color.

We had to replace one floor board that had termite damage, so here is a good contrasting picture of what the floor looks like w/out varnish as opposed to the varnishy gold-red tint that the floor was before sanding.
Mike sands in the living room. Ha. There's mom moving clothes out of a closet....

I had the...uh...privilege...of sweeping and vacuuming dust. At least I got to look dangerous in all of my work-gear. I think Mike and Dad may be scared here...
Mom sands for awhile in the living room. Ugh..Look at all that paneling. We're probably going to have to sand all that too in order for our plaster-faux-finish-paneling-covering-solution to work...
After day 1 of sanding, we finished the dining room, living room, hallway, and about 1/4 of one bedroom. Now on to day 2....

I thought I'd give sanding a try. Big mistake.I added this picture to show how late we worked. Day 1 we were working from about 8:30am until 8:45pm with a few breaks for food. Day 2 started around 8:30am and we didn't get done until about 11:30pm.....In this picture it's probably about 9:00pm. We're really starting to get tired. I took over sanding at one point and Mike accidentally fell asleep at the dining room table.Last room!Unfortunately, the sander, even with a coarser grit, didn't get all the varnish off the floors in some of the low places. We're going to have to go back and either hand-sand with a belt sander or small orbital sander to get those spots off. Maybe we'll try a chemical removal method. Or just burn the house down. I've had that idea several times....

MEANWHILE while others are sanding.....

Dad and I went to Home Depot and bought 6-panel doors to replace the old wood slab doors. We figured out that we'd save money by just buying new ones instead of adding a fake 6-panel look with moulding and paint.

Here's the new doors standing next to the old ones. It will definitely brighten things up and make the house look more clean and sleek.
Mike and I picked out light fixtures for all the rooms (a simple globe-light thing for all the bedrooms and living room and a chandelier light for the dining room). Here's the basic globe light we installed. It was hard to find a light that didn't have 1/2" thick glass that was tinted yellowy brown. We're trying to get RID OF all the yellowy-brown junk in the house, so we definitely didn't want that!
Next steps:
-Get rid of small patches of varnish. Clean, clean, and clean the wood floors from dust. Stain floors. Stain them again for the 2nd coat. Put polyurethane on top.
-Start tearing out vinyl floors while being extra careful not to die of possible asbestos poisoning.
-Destroy bathroom.
-PAINT rooms, do the faux-plaster-paint-thing to cover paneling.
-Put in appliances in the kitchen so I can cook meals while we're working instead of having Wendy's every day.
-and many many many more, each with its own probable road-block in the way....

Some setbacks, and other things.

2008-05-15T17:18:00.003-05:00

The auction is DONE! We're still hauling stuff that didn't sell or didn't get picked up from the yard, but it's over and done with - a huge relief. We even made more $$ than M&D "expected" apparently - that means nicer appliances! Maybe.

We started tearing out vinyl flooring in the hallway before D stopped us and said that it might have asbestos in it. Great. Now we get to send each type of vinyl in the house to get tested and hopefully we won't die in the meantime.

We found a stain that we love for the floors, it's going to look REALLY nice with light colored walls and newly painted white trim! I think we also decided just to buy new cheap 6-panel doors instead of painting the existing ones and putting on fake moulding to make them "look" like panel-doors. We really wouldn't save much money that way.

Since we're leaving for PHX this next week, we won't get much done until the end of May. We have a floor sander rented for May 31st-June 1st so we'll get all the floors sanded off by the beginning of June! The next step will be painting the ceiling and doing the walls (we're going to do a plaster-ish textured wall to cover the paneling since the paneling is proving too hard to tear off without destroying the sheet rock underneath). Mike's co-worker used to do plaster finishing for a living, so she has been kind enough to offer advice and says she'll even come help us when we get to that step. After that, we'll stain the floors! In the meantime, we'll have major demolition going on with tearing out the bathroom stuff and putting in everything-new in there.

I hope we don't have many more setbacks. We've also found old termite damage. Who knows if it was ever treated...

Mike gets to use his new drill

2008-03-22T12:53:00.004-05:00

This was last week, but I just now got pics. uploaded. While I was cleaning out the refrigerator (it was quite nasty), Mike got to use his new drill to start taking out bathroom cabinets. We're going to replace all the cabinets with some pre-assembled stain-them-yourself ones we found at Lowe's.

Taking out the shelves in the above-the-toilet cabinet. Did you know that the white paint on them was SPRAY-painted on? It's all blotchy and you can see runs.
Hey, where'd the cabinet go?Now he starts in on taking out the stuck-in-cabinet above the stuck-in-counter. This was fun. The cabinet was glued, tacked, screwed, and nailed to the wall. We have some dry wall repair to do.... Mike had to get out his angry face. He finally got the last of it off the wall yesterday.
Now he's starting in on the lower stuck-in cabinet, but that one is nailed to the real cabinet, so that will be fun.

We've also been working on cleaning out stuff in the basement and garage. We got a new garage door installed (it looks great!) and running, and Dad spent most of one day tearing a bigger hole in the side of the garage to put in a REAL side-garage door with a lock on it. It looks great too! Dad also re-wired the garage for more lighting and he re-wired the laundry room so there isn't a switchplate with 34928023 switches on it and you never know which one to flip. Things for the auction are coming along well, though it's hard to see "progress" with cleaning out all the stuff because it's cleaned out and then stuck in a pile somewhere else in the house. It will be good to get this auction over with so we can see an empty house with room to work! I'm sure M&D are anxious to get it over with as well...

We're going back out to the ranch today to work, who knows what adventures lie ahead of us...

Cleaning and an overwhelming amount of stuff

2008-03-03T02:21:00.004-06:00

Well I was supposed to go out and help do some cleaning last weekend, but I came down with the flu, so this weekend became cleaning weekend. The kitchen is all cleaned out so I got to scrub down the cabinets inside and out. I kept having this fear that a mouse would jump out at me every time I opened a cabinet door. I actually only found 2 spiders - one alive, one dead. Oh, and 2 crickets. I still have to do the oven (it's pretty disgusting), sink, counters, and fridge. Most everything in the upstairs of the house has been sorted for the auction. M&D are now working on the downstairs (Mike helped with that this weekend) and will soon move to the garage once we get a new garage door in place.

Here are some pictures!

The kitchen filled with lots of questionable cleaning items...

cleaning...ewww

Wow messy dining room and living room!

"What is this?"

EEEK! This has got to go...
And as we were leaving, we saw a bunch of big turkeys in the front yard! I had to take the pic. through the door window because after I opened the door they all ran off.

The task at hand..

2008-02-20T16:46:00.001-06:00

We have decided to live at the Double Diamond Ranch for a few years to keep the land/home in the family. In order to do this, renovations are needed. Many of them. The preliminary stages are underway...M&D have been throwing away old junk, rolling their eyes at some (like the WWJD stamp with the JD shaved off so that Gramps could have a WW stamp - his initials..), and getting everything else ready for auction.

It's quite a daunting project, but we're really quite excited to get our hands dirty and see the finished product.

So far....we've bought a rug. Step one is complete. Next step: Everything else. :)

Rug (to go in living room....picture it MUCH bigger. When we unrolled it I said "WOW Those leaves are huge!" I was used to seeing tiny leaves on my computer screen...)

We've picked out some paint chips that match the blues and red in the rug so we can use those colors as the basis for curtains and throw pillows. We thought the rug was especially nice because it blends contemporary modern style with the nature-cabinesque feel. It reminded me of something Granny may have liked when I saw it, so that was definitely a factor in our purchase!