Three Projects and a Wedding

I have hit a blogging slump lately and I know that I will regret it at the end of the year when I start to put together the book for 2011.  I need to get motivated again somehow!  I’ll start with a catch up post. 

My brother-in-law, Kelly was married to Sara Turner in December.  We were able to drive to Twin Falls for a very short weekend trip to see them sealed in the Twin Falls temple.  It was a beautiful wedding ceremony and they were both so happy.  We are very happy for both of them and are really excited to have Sara join our family.  Here are some pictures of them coming out of the temple ….. Don’t they look happy?!!! 

Kelly and Sara asked us to host an open house for them here in Coeur d ‘Alene at our new home.  We were exited to have it here but we also knew that we had to get a few unfinished things completed before we had a bunch of people over.  It was good motivation for us to get some things done around the house. 

Leonard finished up some trim work that had never been finished.  There were a few pieces of trim on the island that he put up and he put up the rest of the baseboards and some of the trim around the doors in the hall, the bedroom, the pantry, and in the half-bathroom on the main floor.  I am really enjoying the old doors and trim work from the old farmhouse -- lovingly called “Grandma’s house”-- here on the farm.  The house was built in 1902 and as far as we know, the trim is original.  I was a little leery at first to use the old wood but it looks beautiful and adds so much character to our home.  It’s probably the one thing that people comment on the most – and now that it’s finished, it looks even better!

Here is the laundry door (on the left) and the half-bath door with trim complete!

Here is our bedroom door (on the left) and the pantry door – it has an elk scene etched into the glass:

We even kept the same door knobs and hardware – I think they are beautiful. 

While he was working on trim, I worked on putting slate on the backsplash of our kitchen.  We had a hard time deciding what kind of backsplash to put in the kitchen.  We didn’t like the tile that we put in the bathrooms because the countertop is a different color and it just didn’t look right.  We had pretty much decided to just leave it painted for now – in fact, we took all the tile stuff back to my parents when we were there for the wedding.  While we were there, Len went to visit a few friends from his old work and one of them showed him some pictures of their new kitchen which had slate as a backsplash and he thought it looked great.  So….we loaded up the tile saw that we had just returned and headed back to Coeur d’Alene.  I cut and set all the slate and Len grouted it one morning – I hate grouting!  We love the new look!  It really makes the kitchen look awesome!

The pictures don’t do it justice, but you get the idea:

Before:After:

The third “getting ready” project happened because Michelle came to stay with me to help me clean and get ready for the open house.  I was so grateful to have her there.  She was really hard worker and my house was spotless for the open house because of her.  While she was here, she helped me recover my dining room chairs!  They had this beige fabric (that I never really liked) on them with so much dirt and grime that it made you not want to sit on them!  I found some fabric that I love and we recovered them on Friday night – the night before the open house.

They look SO much better and the best part is, I got to keep them even after the open house was over!  Thanks again Michelle!

I think that’s all for now – it tells what we were doing the first couple weeks of January.  The open house was a success and we were happy to do it for them.  Congratulations again Kelly and Sara!