Now that the Christmas season is finished the men in this house were eager to get back at the home renovations. Last year my sister and her husband bought their Greg's dream home - an older house on 2 acres in the country. It needed a lot of work (think dark red and emerald shag carpets, animal stains, uncleaned for years kind of work) but they were eager to get started. It was also a very large home - during the initial walk through we just kept finding more rooms and hallways...the house seemed to go on forever! Mark and I were trying to wrap our heads around the miracle of becoming parents and providing for a little person and therefore we were rethinking our living arrangements. We had come to the conclusion that we needed to rent a cheaper place in order to accommodate the loss of my income and our goal of one day owning our own house. Danielle and Greg approached us wondering if we would be interested in renting out a basement apartment from them in their new house. Its amazing how God works isn't it? We quickly agreed and the plans were set in motion! We gave our 60 days notice to our landlords and started the looooong process of packing up yet another house. Since the house needed quite a few renovations and an apartment needed to be built in the basement we decided to live with Mark's parents for the month of July with a goal of moving into the apartment sometime in August (just enough time to get ready for PJ's arrival!). July arrived and Mark spent most all of his waking time either at work or helping Greg renovate the house. They first made the upstairs livable as Danielle and Greg (and kids) needed a place to live. Once that was done they started on the basement. I must admit there were times that I wasn't sure if would have a place to put my newborn baby once she arrived. They worked long and hard and built us a WONDERFUL place to call home. Seriously, the transformation is unbelievable from my first view of the apartment to what we are living in right now. This is by far my favorite place that I have called home since being married. And that's saying something because it is our third place in two years! Anyways, they made the basement livable for us so that Danielle and I could have our newborns in comfortable living spaces. Thanks guys!
Now that the babies are no longer newborns (what?! time flies by!) Mark and Greg have decided to start the next stage of renovations. This includes building a wall to separate the basement into two living spaces (currently we have the entire basement (which is huge) and Danielle and Greg and kids are living upstairs in only two bedrooms!), opening a door into our storage room so that we have access from our apartment, and building a bathroom on our half of the basement (a necessity!).
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| The 'before' picture - our dark back hall and the old sauna! |
They decided that Saturday would be a good day to start and were ready bright and early. I had never been around them while they did the work previously as I was pretty much a pregnant blimp sitting on my in-law's couch watching the Olympics the whole time. They seem to have more fun then one would expect to have from home renovations. Like I said, bright and early they were down here with sledgehammers and pry bars tearing down walls, laughing and making witty (wise crack) comments. It was actually quite enjoyable to watch. Since the action was downstairs I also had some very cute and fun visitors - my sister's two oldest kids. All in all, a very fun Saturday! Our apartment already looks different as they have opened it quite a bit. I actually am really loving this as I get to try to start planning how we are going to use our new space and how I am going to make it homey. Mark promises me that we won't be moving in 2013 so I have sometime to make this place really feel like home!
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| The DEMO Dudes! |
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| He's so handsome :)! |
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| What it looks like now - don't mind the "mess" that's our storage area :). |
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