And yet more construction photos

Ali and Ben, at midnight, exhausted and sitting on plastic.

Sara, cleaning up the lovely bricks. Who wrote # 78 on that brick?

Dad, Lee, Sara and the kitchen can lights.

What I didn't get a picture of was my great smaller helpers bringing can after can to put in our new pantry cabinet. They were great! Now, today, the rest of the great room lights.

Kitchen cabinets in!

Here are the cabinets! The crown molding was added this morning and they are done. We need to make a change to two cabinet doors, but other than that----finished!


This is the pantry cabinet, with sliding trays on some of the shelves.

Our craigs list double ovens go in the space on the left---old microwave area

Now for the ceiling lights, the countertops and the floor refinishing. And Kev is here in three weeks?

More pics of Caleb

Here are a few pictures Gma took of CRW

Caleb's first walk----all bundled up in Susie's DIY sling---on the beach

Little Prince Caleb's devoted slaves



All cleaned up, full tummy----life is good


Our escorted exit out the back door


Daddy and son


Beautiful Boy



(posted by mom)

Does this look crooked?

Does this look like it might be leaning to the left? We weren't sure...

The story is that Dad and Carl ain't so good at that there math and the whole if you build an 7 ft 8 inch cabinet, How in the darn tootin' is you gonna get it into position with an 8 ft ceilin'?

Long story short: Use the Sawzall of Justice and cut some off the back. No one is going to see it anyway. And the reason it is leaning - had to take one leg off to get it into position. They put it back on later. Hey look - there is the future home of the fridge!
And that is where the sink will go!

Dad double checking the measurements...

The pantry cabinet - soon to be filled with lots of snacks for grandkids.

A view of the unfinished island from the new great room.

Yeah, I think she's leaning a little...

Didn't the drywall dudes do a good job? There's the new great room!

More Construction Photos

The floor patch job and new broom closet. Brett and Mom tag teamed the front entry tile and it looks awesome!
The infamous beam.

Another view of the beam and Jeremiah fixing a wire that was cut.

The new "great room"!

A few more pictures

Brett laying tile. Is it the same color as our old carpet??????

Remember when we removed the top cabinet?

Doesn't that look like fun? Ali got it done in a flash!

What would we do without Jeremiah? Here he is removing the water heater from the front closet

Here is our wood guy, Guy, getting the floor ready to weave in wood and make it look like the original floor ( where we removed the old closet.) You can see the new little broom closet which will open into the kitchen.

More construction photos

This was today. Four men struggling ( except for Jeremiah's brother, Mike) to bring up an incredibly heavy micro-lam beam---21 feet long. This will support the roof and allow us to remove the 2X4's in the center of our new great room
Thank you, Mike, for telling us about this way of fixing our dilemma!
All these pictures are in reverse order because I don't know how to do this. So, on Saturday:

dad consoling Kirk after his THREE HOURS in the attic crawling around with the spiders and dust into 24 inch openings, attaching wires and moving insulation

Carrie returning after yet another load of trash to the trash trailer

Brett and Kirk preparing to saw down a wall in a modern, tidy manner

Mom's cavewoman, very messy way of taking down a half-wall on Friday.

Day at the Beach, or Why We've Made it 10 Years in the Southland

Our summer-like weather continued yesterday as we headed to the beach to take advantage of it. The day started off slightly cloudy at Will Rogers State Beach in Santa Monica, where we let Derek take his bike all by himself on the beach path for the first time. He did great! He almost made it to the Santa Monica Pier. No crashes and no whining! Good Job Doo-doo's!Carissa (aka- Oblivious to the World on a bike) definitely takes on a "beach cruiser" attitude. She likes meander around the bike path, look around, speed up, slow down- whatever. After several close calls between her bike and my roller blades, I took the front and she kept up.

By the end of the bike ride the sun was out and it was almost HOT!

It was pretty much gorgeous.

THe kids were stoked.

Grayson spent most of his time piling sand on himself in the big hole that Lee dug. He was content!

No post would be complete without a pose by Derek. I think it might be time to send those board shorts to Grayson.

Then the jumping began.





Show off.

"Carissa- stand up and see if I can jump over you. Hey Sara- got the camera ready?"

So long, Sucker

The wall dividing the living room and family room is down. Turns out it is a semi-bearing wall. See those 2x4's in the middle? Yeah - they're holding up a beam which is, in turn, holding up the roof.
Crap. I guess the whole "knocking down the wall" isn't going to be so easy after all...

(But it still looks really good!! Maybe Mom and Dad will post some more pictures?)

Kitchen Update

We lucked out on Saturday and had some beautiful weather - warm almost - which made for a good day to take out the front windows!

First, Ben and Paige really wanted to help Gramma do the dishes. Taking the old stuff off.
Surveying the water lines, electrical and sewer lines inside and figuring out where to re-route stuff.

The wall is down!

All buttoned up with the new window!

Finishing up on the inside with a little help from the kidlets.

In other news, I think Mom and Dad have come to a decision on their countertops. It is all going to look so good!