Finally Back!

Wow, it has been a long time since I've posted on this blog.  Well It's been a long time since I've done anything online.  The reason; my old computer died on me before I was ready.  I thought just maybe I could get a couple more months out of it.  But alas, I could not.  So today my new shiny computer showed up at my door.  It's exciting.  And I can't wait to update everyone one some of our progress.

So lets just jump right on in.  I'll start with our tiled entry way that we tackled during our "vacation".  

So as some of you might remember (or not) this half wall that existed when we bought the house.  We took this wall down almost immediately to help open up the living area and make it easier to move some of furniture into the house.

When we took it down we had this; a hole in the floor.

Okay, so it's a little hard to see in this picture, but we had a wall sized hole in our beautiful hard wood floors.  It made us a little sad, but we expected it to be there.  And we have been planning to put a tile entry way in for quite some time.  And check out that nice butt, I've learned I always seem to snap pictures while he's turned or bent over, hehehehe.   

After a trip to the Habitat ReStore, we had some new tile.  All for under $20, awesome. Okay, so this took a lot of trips the the ReStore to find the perfect tile.  We had even started to give up on picking some up there.  But during one of our last trips there, they had so many good deals, and the perfect tile was one of them.

 
And after a little help from the in-laws; that's J's dad one the floor helping pull up flooring.  We carefully pulled up the hardwood floor and saved all the good pieces for patch work we have to do in the future (hint=kitchen redo).

And look at that collection of tabasco bottles.  We love our hot sauce and for some reason J has decided to keep all of the old ones.  I guess he plans on making oil lamps or something out of them in the future.  Someday :-)

Here is the trusty tile saw that J's dad bought the day before.  His parents just had their offer on a new house accepted, so they plan on using this baby a lot.  And we also plan on using this baby for plenty of projects, even if we'll have to fight it away from them :-)  And we can always borrow my mom's, she is also redoing a house she just bought.  I wonder where our love of this came from????

   
And here is our tiled entry way.  Lovely isn't it?  We went with a nice warm brown grout color and picked up some trim that matches the floor beautifully.  And lets all give it up to J, this was his first ever tile job.  Looks pretty damn good.

Now all we have to do is seal the border tile, put in the trim and this project can be crossed off the list, YAY!  It looks so nice and cost us less then $100 to do.  Fantastic.

Now on to all the other projects.  I'll update you on our current kitchen project right now.  We decided the kitchen remodel was more important then the bathroom remodel since the house is open concept and the kitchen is one of the first things you see when you walk in.  It's a mess right now, but will look so unbelievable when done.

Also while I was away from this blog, J got his acceptance letter for grad school.  I'm so proud of him, come this fall (next month), he'll be the newest UW Madison engineering grad student.  Way to go boy.  Love you!