Home Study - Complete!

So, we have shared with some, but not everyone that we are in the process of getting Foster/Adopt licensed.  It's been a long process, lots of training and paperwork.  The final item we had was our home study.  This is where the licensor for our county comes out and checks our home to make sure it meets safety requirements and then spends a few hours talking about how we were raised, how our marriage is and how we want to raise children.

We had this home study done yesterday.  It was pretty interesting, although I am not so sure I liked how she connected my mother's keen ability to leave To Do lists on Steno pads everyday after school with our chores to my list making so Mike and I can get things done around the house (read:  lists for Mike).  Bah!

Anyways, we took some pictures of the rooms and the doors and everything kind of pulled together to share, mainly with my List Loving Mother (hi mom).  So here you go (Click and open a new window if you want my comments on each):



Now we wait.  She needs about 3 weeks to complete her reports (backlogged) and we should be listed as licensed with two beds for kids age 6months to 7 years old by mid December.  Then we wait for a call and placements.

Stay tuned!

More house stuff

(FYI I post this stuff mostly for my mom who hounds me regularly about whether we finished our projects...)

So - Here is the new hole we put in the kitchen nook, not big enough to be a nook area

And it's predecessor, the door in the dining room, which made the dining room this weird little crevice that you couldn't really use:

So, no more dining room hole... this will be a cool dining room soon.  You know, when we finish painting and then I will need new furniture in there... ahhhhhhhh

And, Viola!  We have a closing door into the office from the kitchen.  This means we close off the clutter room and the noisy Macaw when we have company.  Hurray! 

Well, at least in theory. Most people that come over are nerds computer savvy and want to hang out with 7 or so computers in one room... sigh.

Here's what it looks like when the lights off.  The room glows.  Mike calls it the gamer cave, glowing green...

Here's why it glows green.  This is our fresh, new Grasshopper green wall.  This room has light issues, it always seems so dark and dreary, so it needed a bright color on the wall.  I still need to paint the door (ugh) and we need to put little recessed door pulls in both sides.  We went with the "barn door" mechanism - much easier to install than a pocket door.  Especially when this is technically an outside door into the old converted garage... too many studs (huhhuhuhuh) to move.

And last, here is the stripe that I am doing.  We definitely had no intention of going FULL GRASSHOPPER GREEN in the entire room.  But the stripe seemed cool (it follows the door to the circuit box thingy). 

I love the new layout of the room, it actually makes me want to use the room again.  Less clutter (what? you say... well, clutter free office with a computer builderdude, this is about as good as it gets).  I did the one stripe and am planning to continue it on, hence the blue tape.  Alison made me post these pictures before it was done... she's mean.   Oh and the carpet needs cleaning.  Sigh.

Still lots of painting to do.  Seriously, painting doors and trim sucks.  I don't mind walls and stripes in walls, but trim and the glossy paint that has to be perfect... ugh.  Next up, the dining room and finishing out the doors and baseboards.  Then we should be done for a while... I hope... 

Now you see why we stopped working on the house when we realized we needed new doors?  We knew it would trigger all the rest of the projects.  Good times!

Sammy is serious about his toys

Doors (not the Jim Morriso.n kind)

So the doors came in. First, let me give a shout out to Franks Lumber - The Door Store. Great experience! Get this, you take your doors in, the old doors. Leave them for a few hours and come back. They matched up all your doors to your new doors. You take them home, pop the pins back in and you are done. New doors. Crazy easy. (I did opt to change the hinges to satin nickle, so Mike had one more step, but still crazy easy)

We did have one door that wasn't shutting all the way, so we took it back, they shaved a bit more off right then and there and it went up. Had we known about this place and how easy they made it for us, we probably wouldn't have put off this task for the last few years. If you are in the Seattle area and need doors, seriously go there first. I can't say enough good things about them.

Well maybe I can - we are also creating a new doorway, so the door slab we bought didn't fit it right. Easy return, then the guy sat there with us for a good 20 minutes, on a Saturday no less, working out what would fit best in that opening. He is calling Mike back today after he confirms the specs with the manufacturer and we should have the new door for that this next weekend.

Anyways, without further ado....

Here is a before example



Here is the during, I call it during because it's just primed. We need to paint the door and trim (will be white) and the hall (sand). But we love them! So quiet with the solid core:



And finally, a picture through the living room arch, to show the reason we went with the two panel "Roman" arch:


Next up is finishing the new doorway and closing off the old one. Mike and Joe worked on that this weekend. The smart thing would have been to work on it *before* we cleaned the whole house... ha! Dry wall dust rocks every inch of the freshly dusted surfaces...

Renovation of sorts

I'm a slacker in updating here. I blame Faceb.ook. And that my FTP publisher has been incredibly slow lately...

This weekend we did a little more renovation to our home. We ordered new interior doors and will have pictures of those soon enough (2 weeks).

I painted our fireplace inserts. Here is a before:





Here is one side after:



More pix soon of the new doorway we created and the all new doors throughout the interior. Good stuffs!

Puppy sitting

And we're back

What happens when your host company goes out of business?
Your site goes with it.

Hurray!

But, luckily I use blogger and had purchased the domain through another provider. After much effort, we are back on a new host and even added some privacy settings. So hurrah. Unfortunately, we lost most of the uploaded pictures, but oh well.

As an added bonus for your patience, here is the album from the cabin upgrade:

Cabin Remodel 09