Keeping up with the K-Bashes

House Updates

The last 2 months have been filled with contractors coming and going to and from our house, and us rearranging furniture and also redoing some furniture. Now that we've been here for a few months, we've kind of seen what we want where, how we want things, etc. It took living here for a bit to figure things out!

We've done some little things around the house... I moved all my craft stuff to the basement (from the office) so the office is soooo much less crowded/cluttered now. I'm able to hang crafty things on the wood in the basement where it doesn't matter where the nail holes go. Stephen even got a piece of drywall to protect my craft area from the kids kicking balls when they play down there. Whoop!

I painted our kitchen island chairs... we got them knowing they were "antique white" but they were really like a light tan. It just didn't go with our kitchen. I decided to paint them with white chalk paint. Here's the comparison:

The final product in our kitchen!

As you've probably seen, we redid the coffee table. I also finally reupholstered our kitchen chair cushions. O...M...G... I don't know why I hadn't done this sooner. I'm almost embarrassed to post the before and after pictures. Between 3 kids, lots of food/drinks and markers, these chairs have been through the ringer!

Left chair- yay! Right chair- bleh!

The final product.

We had our deck enlarged 10 feet and had stairs added! They also moved the basement window and it went from being a single window to a double window. This involved moving some of the siding and repainting where needed.

The original deck, minus the railing.

The addition

Building the stairs. Here you can see the windows. It used to be a single window that was more to the left.

The finished stairs!

We will have to stain the deck, but it has to sit for a few months before that can happen.

We had a second hot water heater installed (hello 4 showers and 5 people!). We had our sprinkler system installed (which is normally a week-long job, but turned into 6 weeks with all the rainy days we had. Plus, we added on some landscaping projects while he was here!)

We had pine straw put all around the house.

You can see the lines where they trenched to install the system. The grass is supposed to grow back... fingers crossed!

We had two trees installed along the road to continue the tree-lined street. Of course, ours are something like 12-15 feet tall while the others are 30+. ;P

I feel like all we've been doing is forking out money here and there... we counted on this, but man! It all hit at once (and around Christmas time, too!). But it's so nice to have these things done.

Next up, we're going to be staining the deck and front porch (probably in February); I want to re-do our fireplace; get a rug and pillows for the living room; paint the dining room chairs (they're the same "antique white"... I'm just not sure what color I want to paint them yet); add concrete under the deck addition and stairs, and do some little homey touches around the house. I think most of the big purchases are out of the way (knock on wood)... for now, at least!

The Evolution of our Coffee Table

You know how I like to show the progression of things, right? Well, Stephen and I recently tried to find our inner Chip and Joanna and decided to redo our coffee table. We've had this coffee table from before we got married, 14+ years now. It was a really dark, mahogany color, which was pretty "in" back then. Now, our house is very light and bright (light grays and white) so the table just didn't fit.

Excuse the mess... but this will give you an idea.

I painted the bottom portion with white chalk paint. It took 3 coats for the white to cover the dark wood. I then distressed the edges.

Stephen and I went to Lowe's and got a few 1x4s. He cut them so that they covered the top, hanging over the end by a couple of inches. Then, he screwed them in. He did a lot of sanding to make sure it was all smooth, especially the edges.

See the screw holes under the bars? The wooden piece covering had came off at some point.

I then started staining the wood. We opted for a gray-ish stain color. Stephen also cut out a piece of wood that covered the above screw holes, and I painted that white. (You can tell the difference in the below pic)

The staining process took a long time... it took 4 coats of stain, and each time the stain had to dry for several hours. We had it in the garage and it rained most of this week, so the stain had a hard time drying very well with all the moisture. Finally, it was time to put polyurethane on it. That took 2 coats, and had to sit again for a couple more days.

Here's the final product! I love it! Now, to find a rug...

Christmas Evening

We headed to my sister's house after lunch on Christmas Day. My parents followed soon after, and my brother and his family got in from Nashville around 5:30.

We hung out all day, catching up, playing some games, the kids jumped on the trampoline, etc.

Once everyone was there, we decided to knock out the tree before dinner.

Madeline was sooo excited about this book.

These guys can't take a serious pic if their lives depended on it. ;P

The grandkids!

It was a fun night. We all stayed up way too late, the girls got makeovers, we watched an old home movie, and then we all crashed. The next morning, we had brunch and then headed back to our house!

It was a wonderful Christmas!!!

Christmas Morning!

The kiddos got up before 6:45 Christmas morning. I was somehow able to delay them until 7:00 AM so I could squeeze out a fewwwww more minutes of sleep. ;)

We headed downstairs to see if Santa had, in fact, come. He did!

Farewell notes from the elves

Parker's loot

Sydney's

Taylor's

The kids came down the stairs and were stoked:

After checking out all that Santa brought us, we ate breakfast and then hit up the tree! These are some of my favorite shots...

Double fireplaces going to set the mood. ;)

Taylor was SO excited about this. It's one of her favorite You Tube stars' shirts.

Old school Nintendo! Best gift eva, if I do say so myself. ;)

They each got an Echo Dot!

I got this cute snowman from Parker.

These next pics make me laugh. We got S & T laptops since they do so much of their school work online. Sydney was the quicker unwrapper, so we told her not to say anything until Taylor opened hers. Here's Sydney figuring out what it is...