March 2013 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

A 1/2 weekend

We went back to NY last weekend to meet our new little nephew who is adorable! He is also the quietest little newborn ever, didn’t make a peep the whole visit, just loves to snuggle!

We drove back home on Saturday night so we had all day Sunday to do regular weekend things. We hit up our regular breakfast place where Alex is always admired and she loves to see the new decorations each time we go. Then we did some home depot shopping (got our tile for the kitchen!) and a little work on the house. Ryan got the kitchen window trim all made up and installed.

The apron underneath will go on after tile. Then he got the plinth blocks and the start of the trim around the archway done. The rosettes still need to be stripped so we’re just waiting on me to have time to do that so we can move forward with the trim there.

I started the process of cleaning up the tool area, it’s been a lot harder to organize tools without my back hallway and bookcase to store most of them. So i’ve had to get creative and still keep track of where everything is. For now our hutch is taking on a major roll in tool storage (actually both hutches, the built in one and the standalone). With family coming up this weekend (and my almost 2 year old nephew), I’d like the diningroom to be usable for breakfast at least and safe for a toddler.

Wood

Just a little vent… so a couple of weeks ago Ryan went over to Home Depot to get some more 5/4 select pine wood, we use it for our plinth blocks as well as for window sills on the inside. He was actually buying it for a new door frame (which we’ve used it for before as well). Turns out they stopped carrying it! We called around and all of the home depots (we have 3) and lowes (we have 2) stopped carrying select grade, they only had knotty pine. This does not work for us!

So in the mean time we decided to just buy a new door for the basement instead of making a frame and using an existing door – mostly because it would be easy and it’s next to a new door off the back anyway so it didn’t bother us. We really like the new door we picked and if we weren’t refinishing our original doors we would probably go with this door throughout the house.

This brings us to last weekend when we needed 5/4 for plinth blocks, no getting around it. Luckily we had one small piece left that got us a few blocks (5). We couldn’t make the kitchen window sill however which was another thing we hoped to do.

So I’ve called around and found one place that carries select 5/4 still – down in MA. So hopefully i can ‘swing by’ on my way to work one day this week – it’s not open very long hours unfortunately but we’ll make do. We’re stocking up that’s for sure!

Oh and that 500 board feet of poplar we bought way back when – running out already! We use it for everything (our baseboards, our built-ins, our crown molding (base piece), our trim upstairs). Considering we have the whole upstairs and the livingroom/diningroom still to do, i think we may need another batch! I never thought i’d see the day!

A very productive weekend

It’s been a while since we had one of those but we found ourselves home unexpectedly this weekend because Alex got sick again! This is actually a secondary illness (ear infections) so she was feeling fine mostly, just couldn’t sleep at night but with antibiotics she is doing much better.

In the meantime, rather than spread our germs to our new nephew, we stayed home and worked on the house. First Ryan finished the mixer lift (adding the shelf and adjusting the tension).

Next up he got the beam in between the kitchen and diningroom so that we can do crown in the kitchen when we have time and 2 people.

And then it was on to the back door and then trim. He got the new back door installed, the last 2 pieces of cement board in and then trimmed out both new doors and started on baseboards. The last baseboard piece in the back hallway needs to be scribed so we quit there.

It is amazing how much warmer it is in the kitchen with these doors in! And safer for Alex of course. The next big project will be tiling the kitchen floor, probably the first weekend in April. I can’t wait – soon Alex can safely crawl around the kitchen and she will be very happy to not be cooped up in the livingroom. She’s definitely learned that she can crawl out of the livingroom so we have to keep the doors shut or gate off a section of the kitchen she can play in…

She escaped the livingroom but alas the kitchen was walled off 🙂

And Sunday we went to our regular breakfast place and then the grocery store. Of course the time change through us off (we had no idea it was coming) so we just pretended there was no time change for the day! We ended the day with a nice walk – it was a big chilly but Alex loved it, it’s been too long since we got outside!

Ryan’s mini vacation and Alex is crawling

So Alex started crawling over the last couple of weeks. On Friday she did the official hand/knees crawl but she still prefers the army crawl she’s been doing for a while. Of course I can’t upload a video bigger than 1MB so I have nothing to share on that but some cute pics of Alex standing up.

caught ya! Sneaking into mommy’s work bag 🙂

She had a great weekend back in NY with her cousins. She played with little Jason and he found it very strange to have another baby sharing his toys at grandma’s house. He is obsessed with ‘Aahee’ as he says though, always asking where she is and pointing her out in pictures (or pointing to her high chair since they ate next to each other a lot). It was adorable!

Bouncing on the bouncy bike – she loved this thing and now bounces on her dragon at home 🙂

Over at Grandma and Papa Williams’ house she played with both of her cousins who just dote on her and give her tons of attention!. She also bounced on her cousin who was still in the womb (hmmmm… maybe that’s why he came the next day!).

And Ryan took last weekend as a long weekend, taking Friday to Tuesday off. He got some projects around the house done and took a much needed break (of course we also traveled to NY and it was nice to be able to leave friday easily because he was already home!).

New basement door installed (especially important now that alex is moving around so much)

Blocking in the ceiling of the diningroom, firms it up a little bit more. Next up is the fake beams.

KitchenAid mixer lift – it just needs the shelf to be attached. It would be good if that was after I got the outlet installed as this gives me more room to maneuver.

Ryan also made a much needed trip to the dump so the side porch is cleaned off now. We have many more dump trips needed now that the snow is melting and piles are exposed 🙂 Getting there slowly!