this old house: master bath edition

i know, you're probably sick and tired of hearing about the red brick house; i know i am. but in the spirit of being thorough and to honor travis, his brothers, and his dad for all their hard work, i have to share one last remodel before and after.


BEFORE:

my mom, taking a turn scrubbing shower grime. we scrubbed for SIX HOURS.

AFTER:

travis built these cabinets. seriously, that is sexy.

• new tile floor
• new cabinet, granite counter, faucet 
• light fixture
• new tile shower and hardware
• base molding

thank you to anyone who helped in the construction!!!

yo, here's what's up. (ee cummings style, making the title the first line of the poem. wut, wut!)

yo, here's what's up.

(a) we no longer own a house in murray. (!)
(b) we own a home in daybreak. (!!)
(c) all our stuff is packed away in a trailer, a garage, and numerous bedrooms in our parents' homes.
(d) i am going to graduate from college in five weeks.
(e) if you're into the hunger games, you might find this read interesting and awful. {here} (thanks erika)
(d) my friend chelsea and her coach are putting on a free self defense seminar in april that you should check out. go {here} for info on how to sign up and i'll be seeing you there!

phew, that's a lot a links.

so yesterday we emptied the house in murray. so amazing to see it actually happen. thank you so much to any family/friends who came and helped us. travis headed out of town today to work and so i am currently staying at my very gracious and sweet in-laws until he gets back and we can move in. initially, i thought, duh, we can move in without travis. i'm a big girl who can handle things. then i remembered the couches, dressers, and piano and decided that waiting until this weekend would be just fine. especially since i have a massive test thursday that is currently taking up most of my free time. but i will have a key and i'm gonna start moving the small things tomorrow.

driving home from school tonight on autopilot, i almost drove to the house and then remembered, i never have to sleep there again! i never have to wake up there again! i never have to deal with the flush on the toilet that has to be held down to work properly. (middle class white people problems, amirite?) i never have to go in that dark, spider infested basement to do laundry EVER AGAIN. travis and i walked through it together one last time and reminisced about the good and the bad. we went from room to room together and said goodbye. we both knew exactly how the other felt. it was as if we were putting those times to rest, and looking forward to a new adventure.

my mom dug up the giant rhubarb plant in the backyard just hours before the new owners got their key, which i feel should be a scene from a movie, only in the movie version, she would scale a fence and do a sort of barrel roll to sneak away as the owners pulled into the driveway. for those of you who know my mom, you know that isn't too far fetched.

even though my life is a mess, scattered between trailers, garages, and bedrooms, and i have a huge test in two days, and travis is gone, and i have a pimple on my forehead, and i'm about to start my period, i can't remember the last time i felt this happy. and excited. and hopeful. not much better than new starts, yeah?

if you care to see how i plan to decorate the new house, feel free to stalk my pinterest.
yes, i have a board dedicated to babies.
taking baby steps, guys. oh she made a pun!
i'm beginning to wax sentimental and goofy. time to unplug and call it a night.
love -c

searching for home: part 1

our house. is a mess.

and we haven't even packed our bedrooms yet.
it is AWESOME!

this is what it sounds like when we pack:
travis, taking down the kitchen table, says, "wow, i remember putting this table up with nate and us eating eating our first meal in this house." pause. "and you were so mad at me."
i laugh, "yeah i was! and you were so scared of me!"

travis and nate, eating the first meal in our house

we laugh now, but when we were first married, it was a pretty tough adjustment. sex was painful and scary, which made travis feel guilty and withdraw, making me wonder why travis was acting so different, leading to me getting really defensive and angry, leading travis to think i regretted marrying him.... etc.

then there was the house. it's a long story, but the reasons we bought this house weren't really great reasons. we were trying to find something in a certain amount of time so we could get that $8,000 tax credit. (that we didn't end up getting, but ended up being a huge blessing because if we had gotten it, we would have had to pay it back before selling our house.)  we didn't really know anything about buying a house. i'll just leave it at that. but the house was a disaster. filthy, crawling with spiders, covered in construction mess. etc.

then came the adjustment of living alone 2-3 days a week while travis went to work. i really resented his job for a while- and i know, i should have been thankful he had such a great job, but i wasn't.

then there was the fact that we were living in the neighborhood he grew up in. a great neighborhood, but i just never felt like it was mine. it was like i was visiting his, you know?

sorry, this is becoming a list of negative things. but to understand why i'm so thankful we are moving, you have to know the reasons it was really hard living in this house. every room in our house is full of memories of sadness. the other day my mom was over, helping me when i hurt my back. she was sitting in our t.v. room, saying how nice it looked. i told her what i though about every time i see that room, our first night spent in the house.

 our first night back from our honeymoon. we had barely spoken to each other on the plane ride home. my parents picked us up from the airport with a cute sign, "welcome home bodtchers!" i saw the name "bodtcher" and panicked, because i didn't understand how travis and i had had such a good thing before getting married and now all the sudden we weren't speaking. and now i was supposed to just be a bodtcher? when my parents asked us how our trip was, both of us were probably thinking the same thing: i feel like a failure because sex is impossible, and i think my spouse hates my guts. and i can't believe i have a spouse. when we walked into our house, it was a mess, the floor covered in brown paper to protect it from all the sanding and mudding we would have to do. florescent lights cast shadows on the dingy walls. my dad looked at us, perhaps reading the panic in our eyes, and said, "this place is going to be great, you know. once you get it all painted and decorated and remodeled." i wasn't sure i believed him.

then my parents left us alone. our first night in our house. a bed was set up in the only room that didn't have paper covering the floor. it wasn't our bedspread, just someone's extra we were borrowing. there was an ikea catalog someone had left us. i got into bed and started leafing through it, trying to start conversation with travis about decorating our house. he disagreed with every suggestion i made, probably feeling stressed out about money just looking at how expensive everything was. we had a fight, then turned to face opposite walls, and i fell asleep with tears on my cheeks, wondering what had happened to us.

that is what i think of every time i see that t.v. room.

there are so many other memories similar to that one. our first year of marriage was hard. between all the normal newly married adjusting, remodeling our house, travis's job, paying for my schooling, travis's mentor committing suicide, my PTSD and sex being so scary, fighting about our families- "make your family stop telling me to have a baby"- travis's damn dog roxy and her nine puppies, travis having to live paycheck to paycheck for the first time in his life...  we both agree that it's a miracle we came out of that and stayed married. but we did. we stuck it out, started figuring it out,  and we are so happy now.

travis started talking to me about wanting to move last january. neither of us have ever felt at home in our house. i have always had a weird way of thinking about inanimate objects as alive, (like when i used to put band-aids on the kitchen table because it had an owie...) and i have just always felt that our house didn't really want us there. maybe it was sick of all the disagreements and anger. i know, it sounds crazy. but it was never home.

so when we say we are excited to move, it's more than just being excited for a new house with a dishwasher and more space. although those things will be a huge upgrade from what we have now, we are so excited for a fresh start in a place that feels like home. and i'll always be thankful for the lessons we learned in our red brick house, as painful as they were. because through all of the fights and doubt, i always knew travis was the one. that even though we were making each other miserable, we could be great together. we could be happy. i thought i knew that when we were dating and happy. but if you're completely miserable with a person, and still want to be with that person, that is when you really know.

i'm so thankful for travis and for that first awful year of marriage we struggled through.
probably more thankful it's over and things are good now.

guys, it's really happening! we are moving!

and if you need to talk about how hard marriage can be, feel free to email me. i won't judge you. :)

happy weekend! -xo
 

winter = pwnd. well, not really.

it's trying so hard to be spring around here.

come on little garden! you can do it!
my little flower beds are one of the only things about this place i'm going to miss. hope the next owners water and weed my little flower-children.

happy first day of spring!

what a difference a year makes

remember last year? when our flowerbeds looked like this?
those horrible bushes? and crazy weeds? overgrown everything?

seriously, why were those weeds growing in the lawn?

things look a bit better this year. a fellow fireman hooked us
up with some sod for the random missing lawn parts.

my mom helped me plant starts and bulbs last fall and
i spent hours of my summer mornings weeding and pruning.
also, murray city gives away free mulch every friday afternoon,
which helps the beds look finished and keeps the weeds down.

these flower beds still have a long way to go, (hopefully someone else
will be taking care of them) but they were a great learning experience
and i'm pretty darn proud of myself.

this old house (kitchen edition)

welcome to our home!
(new back door and molding)

amazing ksl classified finds

above is the afore mentioned fine china
and thanks to the many people
who give us their old things
like this beautiful hutch

BEFORE

i know you can't tell from the picture
but this kitchen was FILTHY!
we scraped the grease from the cabinets
and had to use oven cleaner to clean the walls.
pretty sad that the boydells, the previous owners
lived in this mess.

AFTER

we lucked out with the laminate floors in here
and the big windows. like the red chairs?
took forEVER! and travis's garage has
red paint all over. oops.
the curtains are vintage from my
grandmother's basement. :) my mom sewed the black part.

new countertop, sink, stove top, and backsplash.
my handihusband intalled everything!
with the help of his family of course.
but i was very proud that he figured out
the sink and countertop without much help at all.

BEFORE

AFTER

can't wait for the new windows :)

this old house

BEFORE

whenever anyone asks me what has been
going on lately? i tell them this:

lucky for us, underneath the green shag carpet
was a beautiful surprise: hardwood floors
that had never seen the light of day.
so travis and our brother-in-law josh
and of course randy, the best father-in-law ever
refinished them :)

i try to keep up with all the construction helping, but
let's face it, the guys don't let me do much.
so i did most of the cleaning, painting, and decorating!
this lovely find came straight from D.I. for $20

that map above my beautiful baldwin hamilton
was originally wrapping paper from a wedding gift.
the loveseat and coffee table came from an estate sale.
(along with a butt ton of free fine china from japan!)
i am planning to get a rug, maybe something that
looks like a persian rug? red perhaps?
and the paint color appears blue in these
pictures, but is really more of a green.

mostly old clutter i have had, plus that crown from ross.
it always confuses men who come over
(ha not that i have "men" over! that didn't sound right.
men = family, friends, home teachers, etc.)
but when women see it, they're like oh i love that.
kind of like how most guys who are over are like,
"that couch looks pretty old." but the gals love it.

can you believe people lived with this carpet? ^

i much prefer this. :)

this room's improvements were:

6 can lights
refinished floors
patching the many holes in the wall
new primer
fresh new paint
new (ish) furniture and such
new baseboards and crown molding
and soon a new front door!

buying a fixer upper has been soooooooooooo much work
but it is starting to pay off.