A country home

Well folks, Zac and I are moving, again.

We're movin to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches.

I hope you all now have the song stuck in your heads...

Since we've been married, that will be 4 moves. 

4 moves in 3 years....

This time with a new business and baby to fret about during the process.  

I won't complain a bit though, because I am THRILLED!

Dad bought the farm directly adjacent to the "north end" of his cattle farm.  The north end is where Annie and Maggie have both built houses, and where Zac and I want to build.  

The man that lived in the house passed away.   His last name was Kraus, this is the Kraus House.  The Krouse :)  His kids have since cleaned out the whole house and had a big ol' auction.  These are pictures before they had a chance to get into it.  

The house is adorable and has so much potential.  The yard is huge, there are a bunch of barns and outbuildings.  Plus, it has a full basement too. It is just really gonna be so fab!

This is what we are starting with..

This is the back porch, looking out to the carport.  I'm standing at the doorway into the kitchen.

If I turn to the right, there is this little room.  I'm thinking a sewing room for me :)

If I walk into the kitchen and turn around, you see the back porch from the pictures through the door on the right.  On the left is my GIANT laundry room.

Do you see that!?  That's a fantastic double sink in my laundry.  If we cloth diaper, this will be amazing.

Also, notice that deep freeze.  I can't even tell you how excited I am about it.

I forgot to mention, within my laundry room...a second bathroom. 

We are gonna rip out that bad shower and spruce it up.  

What you can't see, is that outside of the bathroom to the left is a whole wall full of closets.  Awesome.

Directly across from the laundry room door is the kitchen. Let me just say, I am so excited about all those cabinets.  I've never had cabinet space.  Now I have more closets and cabinets than I'll ever be able to fill!

This is the other side. As you can see, it's a U shaped kitchen.

We are thinking we will remove the doors and knock off the back, and have open shelves here because...

On the other side is my giant dining room.

See.

This is the whole kitchen.

We are going to take off that slightly lower wrap around counter and paint the cabinets.  

Honestly, we will paint everything.  

The floor in kitchen, laundry, and dining room is not great.  We don't want to tear it out because it may contain some asbestos...so we think tile right over it.  

To the left (behind a wall of course) is the living room.

It is also big.

Zac already has lots of plans for it.

This is the wall shared with the dining room.  You can see the front door in the corner of the picture.

North Wall

West wall

This is more the east wall, but you can see where the door to the back yard is. 

This is obviously our hallway.  Both doors on the right are to closets.  

Closets everywhere!

On the other side of the left wall is a little bedroom.

Behind the door on the left at the end of the hall is the second bedroom.

Zac and I have already ripped the carpet out of the hallway and the living room.

The bedrooms and the hall are all hardwood.  

We are gonna sand it and refinish it.  Again, pumped!

This is the bedroom on the opposite side of the hall.

I love the little built-ins.  

It will make a great playroom for Cliffy B.

This is the other side of the bedroom.

You can see Zac going into the second bedroom.

This is the second bedroom. 

And it's closet that spans the ENTIRE wall.

Then opposite side of the closet, is the closet for the 3rd bedroom.

Right outside of bedroom 3 is the bathroom on the left. 

I am so excited to have a bathroom that is separate from master bedroom.  So excited.

Also thrilled to have a tub.  I dig a good soak.  Plus, it would be difficult to bathe Little Bitty without a decent tub.  

Welcome to our little house in the country.  I will put up more pictures as we work on it .  Plus you should all see the little buildings and the yard.  The yard is so fantastic.

I can't wait until we get to really start workin on it.  Unfortunately I told Maggie that we would wait until her house is done and they are moved in before we make it the project of the month.  

Besides, Zac and I still have to dig out an area and prep to pour a concrete pad for our future shed.  We also have to run water line from the shed to the septic tank...that we still have to dig a spot for and set into place.  Like I say, projects galore. Get excited for us!

We can't wait to live in our new Krouse. 

Floored!

It would seem that the end of my pregnancy has been all about finishing up projects.  Namely the office (and in utero fattening up of Clifford.)  The last big thing on the list (aside from future x-ray unit install...sorry family) was completing the floors.  After all the drywalling and painting, they were a mess. 

I decided to do carpet tiles in my adjusting bays so my tables wouldn't slide around and so that it might be a little easier on me than concrete floors.  The rest of the office we were going to repaint with garage floor epoxy.  For both, the floors needed to be super clean.  

On Monday, I knew I had a little time to head to the office.  I knew that that prep work meant a lot of scrubbing floors on my hands and knees.  Unfortunately, as I was heading to my OB appointment that morning I wiped out off of the second step of my porch.....thought I was on the first step.  I landed on all fours and scraped up my knees like a little kid.  Seriously, who skins their knees?

The most ironic part is that I was literally on my way to see my Uncle Doug and borrow a pair of knee pads from him in preparation for the aforementioned Cinderella-style scrubbing.  

It was a bummer.  It is still a bummer.  

Anyway....Zac and I headed to Effingham Thursday to get crackin on the majority of the space.  Jade said he would help with the epoxy, since he had done it before.  That gave us about 8 hours to get all the prep work done.  There was lots...I was overwhelmed.  

First things first, Zac had to finish putting up the rubber trim in the new bays, so all of the carpet tiles would be slightly over the trim instead of some above and some below.  While he did that, I rolled around a mop bucket of hot water and used a scrub sponge to get all of the paint and drywall off of the floors.

After the paint and drywall were up, I mopped the floors.  Then mopped them again, and sometimes a 3rd time with a regular mop.  I basically haven't stopped cleaning those damn floors.  It was an exercise in futility, but ya know....I am anal retentive and couldn't deal with NOT trying...
Anyway, I mopped, then I steam cleaned them.  And then I steamed them again.  

It was the most frustrating process EVER!  

Every pass created a new slightly dusty line after it dried.  

I wanted to bawl.  

I almost did.  

After I finally got the 3 adjusting bays "clean" I marked the center of the bay for Zac and he set to work cutting and laying floor tile.  

I was worried about peel-n-stick tile.  I prayed that it wasn't as super cheap and awful as it could be.  Turns out, that adhesive is no joke.  I was super impressed.  Not bad for a little more than $1/square foot.  

Zac finished my big bay first, and then I cleaned drywall dust off of all of my equipment and slowly started the process of moving everything into the bay so we could do the main space.

(The wall color is much more accurate in this picture...I told ya the walls were not dark as night. )

Anyway, don't you love my blue chairs?  I just happened to get luck in finding them at a thrift store.  

Their arms/legs are close to my 3 waiting room chairs (which are bright green, orange and blue), plus I got them for $4 a piece, so you can't beat that.  

Next he went to work on the little bays. 

Mind you, this ENTIRE time I was still kneepadded up, scrubbing floors.  This picture was about 5 hours into our day.  The process was not fast.  

After Jade got there, he helped Zac move the tables out of the way of the main space.  If you were to come to my office, this is where you would be worked on.  Get excited!

As the boys got started on the epoxy, I had to finish the process of floor prep in the rest of the office.  

They painted, I mopped, steamed, scooted and taped trim.  

Every stinking piece of trim was taped.  

Let me tell ya, this is hard to do with a 39+week belly and a dinged up knee.  

The boys started in the back of the office, and worked their way forward.  Zac trimmed, Jade rolled, then sprinkled the floors.  The floors were looking fab!

As they worked closer to me, we all decided I should take a break and get away from the fumes.  

I ran and got the boys tea from McDonalds.  

As seems to be a running theme for me lately, I promptly let my late pregnancy clumsiness overtake me and I knocked a tea off of the ledge and onto my brand new carpet tiles.  Damn.

The boys continued working hard. 

Jade had the sprinkle technique pretty much nailed.  Sadly, almost immediately after this picture Jade broke his roller frame.  There was no way to get to the other frames.  I had to go to Menards at 8:30.  It was lame.  I waddled as fast as I could.  

The boys finished the rest of the office in all of ten minutes.

Then we closed up shop, and headed off. 

Zac and I were hungry after a forever long day.  We hit up Steak-N-Shake and I felt like there was a distinct possibility that I may fall asleep at the table.

I was exhausted.  I had mega heartburn.  I had Fred Flinstone's feet.  I still had no contractions.  

Darn this hearty body of mine.  

Have no fear ladies.  I know you all worry about me working too hard.  Friday, I took it easy.  I headed to see my chiropractor (a wise decision after the fall) and stopped by for a massage from the therapist I used to work with.  I also made a sweet dinner and watched t.v. with Zac in the evening.  

Mom and I had big plans to do some office shopping the next day.  I am so pumped to do the decorating and arranging of the office you just don't even know!

Stick around, there will be more pictures soon... of the office and this stubborn baby Clifford!

Thursday "off"

After the drywall was finished in the office, I was all over the next few steps in the process.  Like I readily admit...I am impatient and would work from dusk til dawn to get the office done.  Luckily I have people more reasonable that I that reel me in a bit.  Plus my cliffbelly slows me down and, as much as I hate to admit it, makes me occasionally stop and rest.  Unfortunately, resting makes me anxious and leaves me with plenty of time to form an agenda for the next day.  

Thursday was no exception.  

Thursday is Zac's day off.  This means, Thursday is Zac's day to work for someone other than Best Buy, namely Dad, or me.  Last Thursday, he was all mine.  Mom also made the mistake of volunteering, not realizing that she would be worked until she lost interest in helping and her back hurt.  

I can promise you work friends, I can't promise you will not regret the offer to help...

Zac and I showed up first and I was fully agend-ized.  We had a plan.  

Zac would work on putting up the base shoe under the trim while I painted the desk area, so that the wall caps would be done and I could paint them while he installed countertops for the front desk.  

After painting, was cleaning, mopping floors and hopefully steam cleaning.  

This is Zac, fulfilling the plan and base shoe-ing like a pro.  

While he did that, this nook was my domain.  I have no pictures of the process...but we all know what painting looks like.  

In keeping with the plan, Zac and I switched areas, and mom and I painted the trim like pros.

(That's professional painters mind you, not pro like prostitute...though I imagine some prostitutes are skilled painters...and it makes me curious as to how much difference their would be in the hourly rates of the two professions, as well as the difference in dress code for painting....anyway....)  

After painting Mom and I moved around the absurd amount of tools that are hanging around the office. As you can imagine, we mostly just moved them from one pile, into another, and cleaned around them.

By the time the trim had 3 coats of paint, the front desk had two, we had rearranged the tools, and mopped the entire office twice, Zac had the countertops all set.  

He had also installed the top boards that cap the front desk...and caught me trying to take sneaky pictures of him at work.

I can't help it...I think he is cute. 

With our leftover paint, which seemed to never end, we trimmed underneath the wall caps.  We figured that would help to speed up the wall painting process at least minimally.  

By the end of the day, my front desk area, was looking like a front desk.

The office was starting to take on a whole new look.

And Mom had assumed the position. 

Fortunately, when you work for me until your back hurts, I can do something about it.

After Thursday's accomplishments I was on top of the world.  Then I realized, we had a TON of painting to do.  I talked to Mom and quickly realized I needed a crew.  Maggie had offered to help on Saturday, so I knew she was in.  I put up post on Facebook and managed to guilt or bribe help out of my cousin Ellen and my Aunt Jackie as well.  When it comes to that combination of ladies, I knew work would get done...and there was a very real possibility that someone was going to pee their pants laughing.  The best part is that it was not necessarily going to be my weak bladder that gave out first.

Stay tuned for Saturday's escapades.