Hard Work

We've been working hard on our house. Here are some pictures of the work we've done in the basement. We've had to scrape out the loose mortar between bricks then fill the bigger holes with "great stuff" gap filler. And finally we will cover that with mortar mix. We are actually almost done with the mortar mix part.
After that we'll scrape the extra mortar off the walls, clean up the basement, and eventually we'll paint all the walls and possibly the floor a white-ish color so that when we get heavy rains again we will be able to tell where there are other leaks. Hopefully there won't be any! :0)

Saturday our friend Michael came over to help us with the basement, we were able to finish all we could do pretty quickly. So instead of resting we pulled the carpet out of the dining room and cleaned the floor. As you can see we've got nice oak floors. I was a little hesitant of doing it now, but Morgan did a wonderful job. And as usual, he was right that it is much better than the carpet. I've got a smart husband!

Mice

We love our new home, we got lots of left-overs with it. One thing that was left over that we didn't like too much...MICE.

We discovered mice after they ate through 30 pounds of flour and several bags of beans. Not a happy day when I had to make bread and was all out upstairs. Now I know, don't leave any bagged food downstairs.

Anyway, Morgan put out the mousetraps and the first morning we caught a big mouse. Morgan thought it was the biggest he had ever seen. Two days later we catch the mate. The following day Morgan finds a little baby on the floor. Another two days, and two more babies make it out of where ever their nest was and are found on the floor.

I was more than happy to have the big mice dead and out of here, but I did feel bad for the poor little babies. It's not their fault that their parents did not stay outside like they're supposed too. Shannon reminded me that mice are dirty and disgusting, and she's right. I just feel bad for the babies.

But on the bright side, I think we've caught all the mice!

Before and After

When we were first looking for houses we would drive by this one and say, "oh, how ugly, I don't even want to look at it." Then of course, we looked at it and loved it. But one of the reasons we didn't like it was was the overgrown 1/2 dead bushes in the front. So we got rid of them.
The flowery ones really were beautiful, but I was just worried that if we trimmed them to where we needed them they would just die. So we got rid of it all at once. I'm not sure if we will plant flowers or strawberry's in the front, but something will be going there.

Greenhaven: Main Floor

Well, I've finally done it. I had been waiting to take pictures of Greenhaven to show family until we had it all in order. I realized that may not happen. So last night the main level was mostly clean so I decided to do this level first and show you the rest later.

So here is a little tour of my home.

First, if you walk in from the backdoor - our main door - you will come into the kitchen with a view like this.


Leaving our kitchen, you would see this.

Sorry this is sideways...I tried to change it. This is a little nook just outside the kitchen. Opposite the jackets is a door going downstairs. There is also a door that goes straight through to the living room. We don't use it much because it blocks the stairs when it is open.

A sideways view of the dining room from the kitchen. You've got to love those nice windows!

Here is a view of the dining room looking into the living room. But, we're not headed there next. If you turned around from this spot you'd be in the...

Office. Just a small room, but nice. It also has two famed closets in it.

#1. The WC. The water closet. Toilet, no sink, just hand sanitizer. But it sure is handy.

This big closet was the famed Sardines locked in a closet, closet. I'm glad we got out.

Okay, back to the living room. Notice our beautiful windows again! Also this pink floral couch was left here.

View from the corner of the living into Piano Bay.

View from the stairs to get a better picture of our entire living room.

Piano Bay, front door, and bench.

The bench opens up for storage, so we put all of our games there.

I wasn't going to take this picture, because it is a mess, but here is our front porch. We need to take all of the boxes to a recycling center.

So that is the first level of Greenhaven. Check back later for other levels!

Moving

While we were moving Josh loved playing outside with toys.

Eli was so tired that he fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep for a good while.

Boxes in the office.

The dining room

Kitchen

Piano bay

The family left these old Fisher Price toys for us that kept the boys busy while we unload.

Enjoying their new toys.

This is a picture of the bottom of the basement shower. The water was just draining out into the basement, going where ever it pleased. Morgan's brothers rigged up this drain with one of the drain spouts I had replaced outside. Now the water goes straight from the shower to the floor drain! Horrah, I get to take a shower now!

We had a lot of good help loading up our moving truck Friday night. It went so quickly that Morgan decided we should just unload it and move in that night. I was not prepared for that at all. We had to wake Josh up when we were ready to leave and move all of our bedding. It was a bit hectic for me but it all worked out. We did feed all of our helpers doughnuts and milk (because we thought we were doing it Saturday morning), but it worked out.

And Saturday morning when we were supposed to start moving it was raining pretty hard, so I'm glad we did it Friday. Plus then we had Saturday to get a little more organized.