The last week has been a WHIRLWIND!
I will start with life updates. Work is slowing down, and by slowing down I mean shooting less... But the busyness is in the website updating, blogging, taxes, and the list of million other things you cannot get done in the heart of wedding season. I'm all caught up on editing and now its on to the not so fun stuff. But happy to have a small break from the hustle and bustle to get these things done!
We have been busy with the house... I will update you all on the kitchen below!
My nephew was born at 7:11am on Thursday January 19th. What an incredible experience. I have one sister and this is her first baby, you could say we were all EXTRA excited. She went into labor on Wednesday night as we were hanging out trying to figure out what the heck to eat for dinner. By the time the pizza arrived she was pretty sure these pains were labor and 30 minutes later her and her husband Jeremy were out the door to the hospital. And thankfully they were! Because she dilated to 9cm 30 minutes after arriving to the hospital. She got her epidural around 11pm and 9cm -- we all thought this was going down NOW. Well Baby West wanted to stay snug a little longer... She labored down about 6 more hours and started to push at 5:30am. If you have never witnessed a birth in your life, you should. Its the most amazing thing I have ever seen. My sisters birth was my third in the last year and nothing short of incredible. The strength of women is absolutely unreal. Basically, she's the bomb.com. After an hour and 45 minutes of pushing his 9.2 pounds of perfect popped out and all was right in the world. Since his arrival myself and my family have not missed a beat. West is loved by so many and we are just so excited to have him apart of the family. I learned a new and fierce love, being an Aunt. Nick and I are just so excited at the future we will have with this little guy. He is such a gift to our family. Here's a few shots from the past few days! (Some pro and some iPhone!)
Little guy made it home! Two days new right here:
Okay, onto the kitchen update! Oh my goodness ya'll. The amount of work here is unreal!
We started demo the last week in November.... Our original timeline was early November but I had to have my wisdom teeth emergency extracted and I had some complications with that which pushed us back three weeks. And we last minute decided to paint our barn because we had a great weekend of weather so that pushed the kitchen another week.
Demo itself took a month. Can we talk about getting up glued down tile floor!? OMG I am so grateful for these men that busted their butts. And the clean up on a project like that!? Lets just say there is STILL dust covering everything we own.
When we Demo-ed the closet that we're removing for better sight lines to the kitchen we uncovered that it is load bearing. We have a structural engineer coming out tomorrow to guide us in the right direction on how to install a new and proper beam that can hold the load. Unexpected detail right there!
We also uncovered the upstairs bathroom drain that needed to be relocated so we could run our cabinets to the ceiling. Another unexpected detail!
Once demo was finally done (still a little more to do!) we started hammering away at all the little things. We had to tear out the ceiling so the electrician could come in and rewire the kitchen, thats now finished! We had to install supports for the new open shelving, run water to the new pot filler, gas to the new range, support for our sliding pantry barn door, lay new subfloor... the list is long!
All of these small details have added up to a TON of time. And not much instant gratification! Dying over here. Can't we just make it pretty already!? Turns out when you completely change the layout of your kitchen and tear it down to the studs and do everything yourself with the help of your family it doesn't get done overnight. Ha! Once we get the engineer in here, we are hopeful this project will really start moving... And with things you can see! Moving plumbing pipes is hardly glamorous. I am hopeful that February is going to be a big month for us! Maybe we can start putting this old house back together!?
If you scroll up you and see the plans for the new kitchen (black and white screenshots!) One day hopefully it will look like that!? In all honesty we are projecting April-May for a finish date. There are so many finishing touches that are going to take us a ton of time. We are working on being patient, thats for sure! But its a good thing to do with our time and I know once its done we will feel so accomplished!
The images directly below the new plans are "before" shots of the kitchen before we demo-ed. Definitely going to be a HUGE change! And the last image is the kitchen we put together in the basement so we could cook and feel normal temporarily. If we hadn't done this, I would not have survived a minute. It is certainly annoying to spend my time in a dark basement cooking, and we don't have a dishwasher which I'm finding to be a huge inconvenience, but honestly... it really hasn't been that bad! A few extra trips up and down the stairs and washing dishes the old fashioned way, we will certainly survive!
And now onto everyday life! I was down for 5 weeks of the last 3 months due to some sickness and my wisdom teeth -- not fun! Made for some pretty uneventful days. But I was healthy Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years -- Grateful for that! We had wonderful holidays with family and friends. I'm missing the Christmas decorations up around the house... But looked at our Chatbooks from over the Summer and was quickly reminded how beautiful it was here and will be again in just a few short months. Consider us ready to host all of the get togethers this summer with the kitchen and so much else around here done -- we are ready for a Summer to remember!
Hoping you all are enjoying your first few weeks of the New Year! We are looking forward to the good this year will bring for us and a fresh start! And of course spending unlimited time with our new nephew! Hoping our house updates are much more thrilling in the coming months!
As always, thanks for the support!
XOX - Ashley