Home Improvement

We built our house 25 years ago, so I decided it was time for an update.  I have all these ideas swimming around in my head. I am not so handy with a saw, but my husband is. Sooo our little update has turned into a little bit more. Today I have workmen here putting in hardwood floors in the kitchen, bath and laundary room. We are putting in real hardwood not prefab, which means a lot more work. They expect to be here all week. I finally got the painter to come today also. He's here to paint all the trim and doors. This is a very tedious job that my husband didn't want to do. He has been very busy building a fireplace mantle, putting up crown moldings and wainscoating. demolishing the downstairs bath, replacing all interior doors and installing new kitchen sink, faucet and garbage disposal. We both have been painting walls until we hate to see the site of a paint brush. New grainte counter tops were put in about 3 weeks ago, but my new kitchen sink had not come in until this past week, so it was a challenge not to have a sink and running water in the kitchen for that long. Of course, now we have no kitchen at all because of the new floors going in. Everything has been moved out of the kitchen and laundary room and the bath has been gutted. The fridge has been moved into the greatroom . It's kind of convenient, but doesn't go with the other decor in that room. I made a little mini kitchen in the greatroom for cereal and sandwich makings. I guess we'll be eating out alot this week. This mini renovation has been going on since January. We are doing most of the work ourselves ( at least my fabulous husband is--I do what I can) We both work and of course we have other responsibilities, so we said we would take our time. I think we both are about ready to see the end of this project, but after the workmen leave we still have to finish the kitchen and bath.

Since it doesn't look like I'll be able to scrapbook any time soon, I thought I would post a few pics of the awesome fireplace mantle my hubby made. We looked around for a fireplace mantle and even went so far as to get an estimate on one, but in the end it came  down to money. It was going to cost about $800 to $1000 to buy a mantle. My husband built the mantle for $200. It means so much to me that he built it. I designed it and he made my dream come true.

My husband told me he was going to cancel HGTV!!!!