Before and After - Family and Dining Room

We spent our 11th wedding anniversary (Saturday) and Mother's Day (Sunday) laying laminate floor. What better way to celebrate your love for each other than to bicker about whether to put a short piece next to a long, or should we just put a medium one in there?! :) These home projects are definitely some of the more trying times in our marriage. But, we made it through and celebrated with a bottle of wine last night. Bartee claims that he's finished with big projects for a long while, and I don't blame him.





The floors look great and we're left with just a few finishing touches. Here is the final set of Before and After photos... what do you think?

BEFORE






AFTER

Before and After - The Living Room

Last weekend Bartee finished up the laminate floor in the living room and it looks incredible. He worked so hard and did a fabulous job with essentially no help from me. I thought it was probably better for me to keep the kids out of the way, so we tried to leave him alone as much as possible. It turns out that he really needed an extra set of hands, so this weekend when we tackle the Family/Dining Room I'll stick around to help out where I can. We'll try throwing the kids in the back yard with the Bocce Ball game and see how long that lasts. :)

It may appear from my earlier posts that Bartee has become quite the handy man, as I received a couple of comments indicating such. However, I should clear up that we hired a contractor for all the tile work. This is Bartee's first time attempting a flooring project, so we let the contractor work in all the areas that required LOTS of cutting and squeezing into small areas. Getting all that tiled left 2 almost rectangular rooms, ensuring a better chance for success for the amateurs. As it turns out, Bartee is way more capable that I gave him credit for and I must apologize publicly for doubting him. It did take him the full 2 days, but the results are amazing. And, I'm impressed that he's all ready to start again tomorrow morning. It's my job to do the demolition though, so I'd better wrap it up and get down there to tear out the carpet.

Here are the before and after shots of the living room... apologies for having removed the furniture before thinking of grabbing the camera for the "before" shots.

BEFORE






AFTER

Before and After - Tile

Here are some before and after pictures of the tile work...

Guest Bathroom

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Entryway

Before and After - The Deck

We've been thinking of clearing the main level of carpet for a while now. It's just not practical with 3 doors to the outside... all the dirt, pebbles and whatnot being carried inside and lodging themselves to the carpet. So, we do a lot of talking but never set aside the money for the project.

Turns out Caboose has pretty much forced us to get moving on the remodeling project. He had stomach issues as a puppy and pretty much ruined the carpet in the living room. Bartee called the carpet replacement "an emergency" and wanted to start on it right away. Within days of buying the materials (we're going with a laminate flooring) Caboose promptly threw up on the carpet and just this morning urinated on the carpet. Everything he'd been holding all night long and he's a big doggie. It was a mini swimming pool in there. Both times, I didn't bother cleaning it. Very liberating and a little stinky. :) In any case, the carpet is gone and Bartee plans to start on laying the new floor tomorrow morning. Will hopefully have some before and after photos in a few days to share.

In the meantime, it was time to sand and stain the deck again, and I do have some before and after photos of that... what do you think? The before pictures unfortunately were taken after the sanding so the old stain color is gone. The old color was similar to the house color, but not an exact match so it always looked like we tried to color match but failed horribly. So, this time we went with something totally different.

BEFORE...

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AFTER...

Bridgette

Sanjay,

Thanks for the incredible weekend at your place. I have been waiting a long time to come home with you and it was worth the wait.

Just before we walked into your house, the sound of barking put a big scare into me. I must say, that meeting your big dog face to face like that, was NOT the highlight of my weekend. Rather, the time we spent at the Indian New Year festival ranks among my special memories with you. Seeing all those lovely costumes, hearing the Tamil music and devouring the yummy spicy Indian food, it was hard for me to believe that we were still on American soil. For those hours, I felt transported to India. Thanks for sharing that with me and bringing along your sister's little stuffed furry friend.

Fortunately for me, I got a couple of extra days with you and you decided to take me to your piano class. Funny that you just learned a note called "Alligator A". Your teacher used my cousin, Alex, to demonstrate. It was good to see him again... hadn't seen him since Easter. Keep up the good work in piano!

The weekend went by so fast, and now it's time for me to visit another preschool friend. I'm looking forward to more adventures and I'll see you in the classroom soon.

Love,
Bridgette

Tamil New Year Celebration

This weekend the Tamil community gathered to enjoy a wonderful South Indian buffet dinner after a full afternoon's worth of dancing, game playing, singing and acting. It always amazes me what effort they go through to pull this off every year.

For weeks, the kids and adults have been holding dance, singing and acting practices in their homes. The menu plan was organized and families were assigned items to cook on that morning. A venue was selected and folks were trained on the audio/visual equipment available. Unlike many other Indian functions, this one is specific to a certain region of India where they speak Tamil. So, unfortunately for me, the program was mostly Tamil and Bartee had to do a LOT of translating. Disappointing to my MIL, I still have not learned Tamil. Despite the language barrier, I throughly enjoyed every minute of the program.

For a sample of what went on... check out this video:

Happy Easter

Before it's next Sunday and well-outdated, let me get this post out there.

We had a busy and fun-filled holiday weekend. The Easter bunny brought goodies for the kids, we spent the majority of the day with friends, and the weather cooperated nicely for playing outdoors. This rarely happens around these parts, so we have to be thankful for that. The kids were thrilled with everything except the mother lode of M&M's that filled their plastic eggs. It seems they were hoping for a nice variety of candy to keep their sweet tooth at bay for the next month or two. Of the 100 thousand M&M's Priya received, according to her estimates, Daddy said he'd be willing to take half of them off her hands.

The proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the video that I made of the days events...



Hope you all had a very Happy Easter!