here is stitch keeping me company. i dont think he likes the heat too much.

well this picture shows our retaining wall project about two weeks in. unfortunately before shots of the yard are all lost somewhere in the digital world. anyways this is another project that we saved a ton of money on. all the dirt was dug and moved by hand since we were not able to bring any kind of heavy equipment to the back yard.
the yard slopes up away from the patio. by leveling out the area directly in front of the patio we were able to add a lot more space for chairs and tables for those big family get-togethers. all the old sod sat on the patio for a few weeks while the dirt was used to backfill behind the retaining wall. to this date we are still throwing away sod in our yard waste bin a little at a time.
tadda! well here is the finished product with the new sod and a new set of solar lights. it took at whole month of moving digging, moving dirt, and setting up the wall blocks but in the end all that hard work was worth it. we now have the extra space we wanted and something nice to look at out our kitchen window. the curved steps were a last minute idea but i think the outcome is beautiful and definitely adds character

this is our master bedroom. the original paint was a faux finish. jessica and i thought it looked more like dirt and dust on the walls. you can also see the hideous chandelier in the top left hand corner.

here is the new paint color as well as the cheap Home Depot light we installed. we definitely like the brighter color much better. this is still with the old carpet and no moldings.

here is the start of the brand new bamboo floors. these are solid vertical grain bamboo floors from bamboo hardwoods. we bought them through costco home which was actually cheaper then buying directly from bamboo hardwoods.
we started the floors pretty early the next morning after a long day of demo. we rented a flooring stapler from home depot which was one of the best decisions ever. we used a small pancake compressor which was plenty for the stapler.

here's kevoon hard at work. he needed a couple of practice swings before he got a hold of it. after that he was hard at work. i did all the cutting while brian laid them out and marked them for length. what you dont see is that jess was also taking turns stapling away. oh by the way thanks for the marks on the walls guys..................from the stapler. ha ha. last pieces to go in. they required hand nailing though since the tool would not fit.
and the finished product! no more dirty smelly carpet and cheap linoleum. we were glad to see the berber carpet go.

January 01, 2008well here it is folks, day two in our new house. this was the old carpet in the living room and hallway and lenolium floors in the kitchen and dining room. hidious, yes we all know. the wall color throughout the house was a nice celery/khaki color but too bad they were old and dirty.

this is the family hard at work all pitching in to help us demo. jess and i were pretty happy since we only had a weeks worth of vacation to work on the house so it was nice to have the family help. yes the guy in the grey sweatshirt does have a head. i believe his name is brain.

there's the old lady scraping away at the remaining bits of lenolium. special thanks to the best brother in law for helping us throw away all that trash.

one last look. say goodbye!