Are We Having Fun Yet?

To say that December was a blur, would be an understatement!  Pete was on vacation from his "Paying Job" and worked his buns off on our house.  I have know idea how many hours he worked, but a 12 hour day was a light day for him.  

Here goes one of my longest posts yet!  Hope you don't get bored!

Love the floor!  

This is the girls bathroom.  Pete was working on the pocket door!

We did have a visit from more Harbor Spring's cousins.  I look forward to hosting them in our new house soon.  

My sister Sherry and her boyfriend Peter came to help.  The boys are bringing cabinets into the house.  

Screened in porch minus the screen.

Devisser Landscaping helped us with our retaining walls.  These guys were amazing to watch carefully place the stones.  This was a job Pete and I thought we would initially do ourselves.  Glad we didn't!

We ended up with on large stone that was flat and they weren't able to use it in our retaining wall.  I asked if they would place it in our landscaping.  I thought they would lay it flat.  Nope, they dug a trench and sat it upright.  That never occurred to me, I'll have something carved on it in the spring.  

While Pete was busy trimming windows, Max and I painted a bookshelf for his bedroom.

I purchased this unfinished sink base for our main floor bathroom.  I'll have more pictures of this to follow.

In anticipation of an indoor toilet I took TP over to the house.

The hero of the day was Mike Deleeuw our plumber with the indoor toilet!  

Lee from Nieboer

The first week Pete was working at the house he was having a little too much fun.  I finally had to separate these two.

In between all his shenanigans, he was able to finish the ceiling in the back porch.

 Apparently, our Christmas decorations ended up in the very back of the storage unit.  Another Y chromosome moment!  

Tori and I picked up these potted trees and added a little bling.  In the spring we'll plant them on our land.  The kids loved having a tree they could call their own, I think we started a new tradition.  

On Christmas Day we hung out at our new house.  Pete cooked a ham on his grill and we brought everything else over in crockpots.  

 Margaret gave me wine called "Santa Rita".  How fitting, my mom's name was Rita and she LOVED Christmas!

 My crazy sister!

 More craziness

 Family photo

 The dinner table.  I'm telling ya that white table has gotten a lot of use this past year.

 The girls and Grandpa in order of height!

 Santa brought us a telescope.  The sky is huge on our 9 acres, we look forward to some stargazing. 

I distressed the unfinished sink base and Jeff from River Bend Countertops installed the counter.  

Pete and Jeff after he installed 3 tops for us.  Another really nice guy we've been fortunate to work with.

 We started working on the mud room and my desk area.  Here we are with me doing ALL the work again!

 The unfinished cabinets came with instructions that I wanted to read to Pete.  He assured me he had it handled.  

 He forgot how to use his router, so I had to show him.

Max is trying out the seat for the future cubbies.  

 Most people partied it up on New Years Eve, but we worked on this area.  The cubbies are finished!

Here is my backpack management station.  Watch-out Mattawan teachers, I'm going to be so organized!

He even added board & batten for me with a built-in chalk board.  Once it's painted this room will be awesome!

I did fail to mention Pete finished trimming all the baseboard, windows, doors and stairs.  He has a few things to finish up this weekend.  The painters showed up yesterday to start the prep for painting the house.  We are both very relived we aren't painting.  

It's been a busy month.

Champagne Taste Beer Budget

Okay, I'll be the first to admit I'm VERY thrifty and yes, I have champagne taste on a beer budget, but who doesn't like to bargain shop.  First lets start with bar stools...

I found this stool in the Restoration Hardware catalog and I thought they would be perfect in the Fired-Up Farm House.  One small problem they were $295 and I wanted 5 of them for our island in the kitchen, out of my budget.  Then I saw this...

I order them from Overstock, free shipping and they were $119.99.  That's much better on the pocket book.

Then I fell in love with this light fixture, just not the price.

$299 in the Pottery Barn catalog.  

Or $149.99 Overstock, and yes, you will see it hanging in our house.

I shared in an earlier blog post the laminate floor we purchased from Sam's Club for the upstairs bedrooms.
Pete started installing it this afternoon with Izzy's assistance.

This is really nice flooring for the price.

I have been searching for the perfect fixture for our front porch.  It needs to be BIG, a 12" pendant would look silly, but everything I liked that was the right size was $500+ and out of my price range.

Then I walked into Lowe's Monday morning to buy some wood and took a stroll down the lighting aisle and there is was...

(Imagine picture rotated or just turn your head because every time I load the picture into blogger is turns sideways.)

 this 27" beautiful lantern, calling my name.  It was so big I needed help getting it off the shelf.  The nice man David in the lighting department said this pendant has been way up on the top shelf and he had just brought it down and placed it on clearance for $99.  I couldn't get it into my cart fast enough.  They also had matching fixtures for the garage doors just placed on clearance too.

Here's the garage light without having to turn your head.

On a not so thrifty note, the Acacia wood is being installed and it's gorgeous.

Here are the first few boards that were installed on Monday.  We had a small bump in the road yesterday, but Craig Wenke came out and met with Pete and the installers and they are back on track.

I wanted the wood floor to run on a 45 degree angle, when they cut around a floor vent it threw the angle off and they were getting gaps between boards.  Craig was able to spot the problem right away, it's unfortunate that they had to take out 1/3 of the floor that was installed.

This picture turned out dark, but you can see the angle of the floor.

I love the variation in color.

This afternoon we had a trifecta of flooring installation.

Pete was installing the laminate in the bedrooms, Wenke was installing the wood floor on the main level and Tim Moran and his crew was installing tile in the bathrooms.

 Dennis is installing tile above the girls shower.

Ray is fixing a floor tile.  Apparently, it shifted and wasn't straight.  I hope it's not because someone (kids) walked on it too soon.

Pete finished up the back porch, this is the ceiling.

Tomorrow I will get a better picture, these don't do it justice.