Crazy Life

Ok so I'm a horrid blogger. But hey, I'm raising twins. BTW their first birthday party is coming up. My life is crazy. But Our Brick Ranch continues to change and grow with us.
I'm finally starting to like the living room now that's it's not just a pile of excess furniture and junk.

That banjo belonged to my husbands great grandma I believe? We dug it out of his Grandma's shop attic. DH put some new strings on it and oiled it up. Sounds lovely :) I still haven't gotten this decorating a mantle thing down, but I'm learning. Hopefully it'll fill in and look lovely.

My parent's ranch.

After embarking on our remodeling project my parents got the bug. They bought another ranch house and decided to gut it and change almost the entire house. It's been several months, but yesterday they moved in! Now everybody knows what it looks like the day after you move in. :) So you can understand how much trouble I'm about to get into by blogging these photos before they are all unpacked! But I'm just so darn excited. So here they are!

The most amazing transformation was probably the kitchen for me. It was really dated and had an odd desk thing that protruded into the hallway.
Before


After.. Isn't it gorgeous!?!?! Ok so you can't even see the counter tops and my brother should definitely put a shirt on. But I'm impressed.


My parents also weren't a fan of the old stone fireplace and stove insert.

So they had a new gas insert built on the right and on the left had a built in media center attached. All of their electronics are built in, and they even have a sweet little ledge for their Xbox Kinect sensor to sit in under the tv! They also built up the ceiling in that area to match the other living space. It has the coolest mood lighting up there.

This is the other living area I was talking about. They kept this room the same, but they did change those double doors. Before they were huge and heavy and took up the entire entry way.

After. They decided they wanted a space for a bench so they shifted it sideways and went with a single door. They are having a local artist craft a special metal screen door. I can't wait to see it!

This is probably our favorite. Before.

After. It's only my favorite because my kids have their own dedicated room at Nana's house :)

I'm so incredibly happy for them. And of course dreading the phone call when my mom realizes I posted these pictures of her messy new house. You all understand though right?
Sorry mom!
Oh.. and on a side note. I kept those big double doors of my moms to do this.

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays
from
Our Brick Ranch

Growing up my mom had a tradition, we all picked out one special ornament each year. I've continued this now that I have my own children. This year I found these sweet snowmen for the twins. The hearts above them say Babies first Christmas. It was really hard finding ones that were both the same in different girly colors. You usually just have the choice of pink or blue. I think they are super cute!

I'm also super stoked about our stockings this year. We really needed new ones, plus the babies didn't have any of their own yet. I wanted to make some special ones that'll last for a long time. Unfortunately we are in somewhat of a financial crisis at the moment so I couldn't afford the supplies. I found these ones at the dollar tree! I'm going to make paper tags with everybody's names to identify them.

3 year old Nemi decorated almost all of the tree. She picked out which garland and lights to use and was so excited to hang the ornaments. She went to bed late the first night with the promise of more decorating the next day. When she woke up she stumbled out of her bedroom her eyes still half shut and begged me to continue the tree.

She asks me every single morning, "Is it Christmas yet?" She also told me we need to buy some more presents for under our tree.

I was ultra depressed this year because we didn't have enough money for presents or a tree. We are very blessed to have family who care so much about us. We got 3 offers to buy us one! We finally accepted one. Then last weekend Nemi went to stay the night at her Nana's house and help them pick out a tree. While they were at the lot the guys took a liking to her and let her pick out her very own tree! I couldn't believe it! Now we have two trees!

And she absolutely adores having her very own in her bedroom.
It really is starting to feel a lot like Christmas here at The Brick Ranch

Current Progress

Before

Currently

Yes I know, we're slow. But it seems that every time we have a tiny bit of time to work on the house some family obligation pops up or I have a baby or two. :) But we're getting there. The carpet people come Tuesday! I'm thinking of a dark brown low pile carpet. Now I just can't decide whether to cap the mantle off in white or black/dark brown.

Family Molding

Let's take a trip down memory lane. Hard to believe this was the family room at one point. Do you see the baseboard heaters on either side of the fireplace? And beside them you can see the blue carpet extends up the wall? That is because this room was once the original garage.

When we pulled off that old carpet this is what we found. The cement footing for the "garage". It took us a while to figure out what to do as some walls didn't have this bumped out area and we definitely didn't want carpet up the wall again. My first idea was to putty it and paint it black. But after brainstorming we decided to use two layers of plywood on the other walls to bump it out the same depth as the walls with concrete.

Then we layered a piece of 1/8" vinyl paneling on top to cover it all up and give it a prettier face.

Then because every wall was really a different depth and height we ripped primed MDF boards for the tops to finish it all off.

It's more of a Craftsman look than I originally wanted but it seemed the easiest way to cover it up. And yes we'll also be putting the white facing on the concrete areas as well. Hopefully in another week the entire room will look like this and we can order carpet!

Shed Roof

Before

After

Work Party

They came in droves. Well.. we had like 12 workers and that was awesome! People started showing up around 10am and our dumpster was well on it's way to full by noon! I couldn't believe how much yard clean up was already done. So we separated everybody into groups, some for yard debris, some for the shed roof demo and some for the bathroom/laundry room demo.
We had cleared the bathroom all out the night before so my dad could go in, disconnect the plumbing, and then get to the smashing!
A friend brought over her kids and they were super stoked to try out some demo in the bathroom. So I set Alayne in charge of demo. She did a mighty fine job too.

This is my dad. He's awesome. The laundry room is now down to the studs.


Here's the shed before, the beam ends were rotten as was all of the sheeting. And it was growing a thick moss.

This is my stepdad Lennart. Everybody got in on the action!

My best friends son Tony up on the shed roof with my hubby.

And good ol' Jeff.

There was a little of this.

And a break for some of this.

And some ice cream bars to cool off.

And tons of this.

All goofball. Pure Cheese.

And this is my current after photo. The tar paper is up but I don't have a picture of it yet. And hopefully the shingles will go up this weekend!