Tuesday, June 26, 2012

before and after, one more time

~Before~

I wanted to show the dramatic
difference in side by side pic's.
(or in this case top to bottom).

pretty big difference, huh?

~After~

You may also note on the roof
of the original picture you can 
see the chairs the boys use  
 from time to time.

And if you look even closer you
will also see a box of Shasta's
resting right next to the chimney.

Empty, of course.

You may ALSO note that after
weeks of no rain and scorching
temperatures, our lawn is slowly
dying.  There is no hope this
summer unless we see some rain.

Soon.

If you give a mouse a cookie....

Or if you give Kyle a project...


So the porch was done and 
his palms were itching...


The paint samples were 
on the house.

Light?
or dark?

If you lived in the 'hood
and walked by, you got a vote.
(Not that it ultimately mattered)
But still, we wanted you to
feel like you were a part
of the process in some small way.


First step?

Fill in the "gable" on the front.
This part of the project was free
thanks to the Mark Nielson
"leftover" store.  Kyle's dad
used shingles on his house last
year (the year before?) and
had a whole pile of leftovers
that Kyle was able to use for 
our project!  Thanks Mark Depot! 


Progress on the gable


Looming question?
Dark or light paint?



Weather proofing the front


Vent for the attic


Filling in shingles
above and 

below



Shingles in and primed.

Paint started.

Dark won...





As it looks today.

The front is finished to the
garage.  It has been 100 degrees
here for over a week.

Kyle is waiting until it dips
below 95 to resume painting
(with a roller in case you're
wondering...tedious and tiring)

What do we think?

Glad you asked!

We LOVE IT!!

It totally updates our home
from 1950 (when it was built)
to 2012.  It looks sleek,
cooler, more modern and clean.

We seriously LOVE IT!

(did i mention that)

For any purists who are against
painting brick--well you can keep
yours how you want it, right?

Until the end...that's my update.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

dumpster diving

Once a year in our neighborhood
the city brings in dumpsters so
that residents can dispose of
garbage.  One day while Kyle
was getting rid of OUR garbage
he found THIS metal chair in 
the dumpster...and well, he
"dove" in and retrieved it.

What can we say?

It was awfully retro and cute
and seemed like an easy thing
to fix to fit into our kitchen.


My mother in law (had she seen
this in its original RED color)
would've probably wrestled me
and Kyle to the ground for it--
she's a BIT of a "red fanatic".
(Understatement of the year.)


So we found a cool (ugly) green to
match the kitchen and sanded and painted....


And painted and painted (and swore
a little under our breaths at all
the painting....)


Here we have the finished product.

This is a pretty bad picture
(I blame the photographer...)
but it turned out pretty cute and
it matches all the blues and
greens in my kitchen (which of
course is recycled itself so 
this matches perfectly!)

It sits in a nice spot under
the window and is a fun accent.



Thursday, June 14, 2012

crumbling, eroding, falling to pieces, falling apart

My man, he likes a project.  Call him crazy, call him handy, or just
call him my man.  Some men like to bike and run--Kyle he likes
to build and fix.  So when the last piece of railing fell of the
porch of our 61 year old house this spring and the steps
continued eroding into little pieces of garden pebbles, we 
looked into pouring new cement.  Prices we heard were high,
anywhere from $1500 to $2000.  

Sigh, 
we didn't have that to spend on steps, so being
the handy man that he is Kyle looked into tiling over
the bad cement for a 10 year fix.  He had seen it done
and thought it might work.  We made our way to 
our favorite tile store (Tile For Less) where they
now know us on a first name basis and even 
feel comfortable enough with us to let a swear
word out (or two.)  We found some rough surfaced
tile that even looked like cement and the price tag
on THIS was closer to $150. 

Labor: Free

We saved ourselves a cool $1200 (or so) dollars.

I forgot how BAD!!!! these steps looked until
today when I pulled up these pictures!

Crumbling, Eroding, Falling to pieces...
(and you thought this post was going 
to be about ME right? ha ha)


Here is our porch remodel.
SERIOUSLY?? Yikes!!!

Quite literally...falling to pieces

bad, bad and just plain bad!

Temporary wood holding up porch roof, important details!

Hard at work


Rain

OR shine!


Making progress


New tile is kind of like "if you give a mouse a cookie...."
(the book) it leads to other things, right?  The old
metal 1950's post that was holding UP the roof over
the porch ALSO fell off (can't wait to see what
else falls off this old house--it AMAZES me sometimes
to think what we paid for a completely broken
down old house to live a good location ("location,
location, location!") in Salt Lake City.

I digress though....where was I?

Things falling apart, ah yes, the post...it fell off too.
Kinda gotta have a post to hold up the roof so Mr. Handy
thought he would build a lovely new one out of wood.

As follows:

New Post

Leveling and making thing straight


Adding some "bulk", some "beef", some "texture"


Caulking and wood fill

OHHHH pretty!


Time for primer and paint

And there it is!!

New steps!

New post!

Sing Hallelujah! 

Can you see how this is leading to painting the
old trim white that is now old and tan and peeling?

And can you see the samples of gray
paint on the house?

UH-HUH!

If you give a mouse a cookie...
or in my case if you give my man some tile...

Thank goodness he's CHEAP!




Next on the agenda, scraping and painting the all old trim a 
new shiny white.  Kyle plans on hand painting the brick to 
bring orange 1950's brick up to the 2012's.  

No offense to any who love old orange brick--our house
is just ready for a change.  We think we've settled on a 
color, and it will probably take all summer to finish this--but we
have NOTHING but time on our hands~

Friday, June 1, 2012

graduation

He did it!
(Not that it was ever a question)

I thought I would be more sad...but
I think I cried all my "sad tears/it's the last
thing he's doing tears" all year long.

My mom asked how I felt
and I said said, "strangely HAPPY!"

For him.
His future.
His accomplishment.
The hope, the promise
of what can come.

It was a nice night...we
didn't see enough of him--his
friends got all his time.

But, I guess, that's how it should be.

Olympus High Senior Graduation, 2012.
They will be the last graduating
class from the old Olympus building.

Pretty cool.

Ceremonies held at U of U.
May 31, 2012.




My "sons"  Tanner, Josh, Coleman (Jackson) & Brev (Nate)

Grandma Ladanye and Grandparents "Regular"

Gathering the (fake) diploma 

Cole, Mitchell, Tanner, Brady, Coleman & Josh

Proud sister and her brother.

Grandma and Josh

Yup, they (think) are pretty cool.

All gathered together....

Silver caps, girls.

Green caps, boys.

More shots of the homies

Grace with her extra brothers.



SOOOOOO typical, Josh and Gray


Josh and the girls

Just Josh

Josh Tanner Brev

Tanner, Josh, Coleman and Brev

Josh and Chris

Josh and Connor

Congrats Josh we are so proud of you!!
We love you very much!!

Now he's off to Newport Beach, CA
for a week with 30 boys.

And 30 more girls just down the road.

All from Olympus.

Senior Trips.

Heaven help Newport Beach.

I'm off to take a Xanax.