Memorial Day Makeover

Todd's mom and Don came down over Memorial Day weekend so of course we put them to work immediately.  We tackled the guest bathroom while they were here, but we are still putting the finishing touches on that so I'll show it to you later.  The other main project we worked on was retiling the fireplace. Todd and I finally got around to grouting it yesterday so it's actually finished!
As a refresher, here's what the fireplace looked like when we moved in...

gorgeous right?

Then as a temporary fix, we went ahead and painted it...

So it looked like this.  As you can see, we still had the problem of what to do with the hearth area...when we were installing the floors we knew we were going to retile eventually, so we decided to leave the old tile there (instead of ripping it out and risking damaging the mantle and insert).  So the plan was to just tile right overtop and build a sort of box thing around the bottom to cover everything up. So...after many hours of planning and configuring (from Don) here's what we have now...

Here's a better before/after look

It feels so nice to have it finished finally.  I wish had some fun pictures to post from their visit but we made them work so hard while they were here there really weren't alot of photo ops :(  We had fun though!  

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SI Sunset

Joe and Beth are in town and we went to Folly Beach yesterday for the Sea and Sand Festival.  Afterwards, we all went out to Sullivan's Island last night to take in the sunset and play some bocce.  We got some great pictures while we were there and of course us girls even turned it into a little bit of a photo shoot ;)  Here are are some of the good ones!

Andria, me, Beth

I'm not sure what Todd is looking at...

Will and Andria...I'm so proud of myself for taking this picture! 

Andria, Will, and Todd

Todd and I taking in the sunset

We all walked out on these rocks...I'm sure you can guess who was the only person to fall down!

Beautiful view of Charleston!  

What a fun day :)

Curb Appeal

We had a great Easter weekend!  Todd's dad flew in to visit and we of course put him to work while he was here.  We finally started working on the landscaping issues in the front yard.  Mainly clearing out the jungle of weeds!  Todd's dad went to work on our flower bed by the front door.  He also cleared out our side yard and got us some really pretty hanging plants.

Here is a before shot of the front door...notice the flower bed by the garage door.

And here is what it looks like now...

We are eventually going to add the cedar borders around the rest of the flower beds in the front yard but Mr. Potter got a really good start!

He also cleared out all of the junk from along our fence and put up these pretty planters.

We decided to continue the work this weekend and attack this jungle that was in the front yard.

We had more houseguests this weekend...Joe and Beth came to visit from NC so of course we put them to work.  No visitors to this house escape without getting their hands dirty!  They helped us clear out some of the weeds and then Todd and Joe cut down the tree in the front and removed it.

As we were clearing out all of the weeds and leaves, we found a SNAKE!!!  Todd picked it up and moved it across the street but it was extremely disgusting.  It is going to be very hard to get me anywhere near the mess in the backyard after seeing that.  So, here is the view now from the street.  It is really nice because now our house actually looks like it has a front door!

Before:

After:

We plan to put down some grass seed, do some mulch and another border around the tree area, but it is already looking so much better.  Yard of the month here we come :)  Thanks to Mr. Potter for all of his help!

Kitchen Reveal!

It is about time to start having some actual afters to show you guys seeing as how we moved in two months ago...in case you have forgotten, this is what we started with.

After painting the kitchen cabinets, we moved on to flooring and adding baseboards.  During that whole process, we added some beadboard to the flat sides of the cabinets.

After that, Paige came over one night and helped us eradicate the yellow in the kitchen...

We wanted to paint everything before the appliances got delivered.  Once they came, we had to install the overtherange microwave which ended up being a crazy process that involved alot of tools

and Todd installing an electrical outlet over the stove.

After all of that, we had something resembling a kitchen.  However, there was still nowhere for the food to go.  Thankfully, Todd's dad and Julie were able to ship us some things we needed from Woodbridge including this pantry from IKEA.  It was a pain to put together

but well worth it in the end because I finally had a place to put all of this stuff!

Also, somewhere along this process, Todd removed the awful fluorescent light from over the stove and installed some really beautiful recessed lighting.  In the end, after weeks and weeks of work, we went from this

to this

We are still not completely finished (of course).  I have to change out the shade over the window and add some accessories including hardware for the cabinets.  Also we need to finish the trim on the bottom of the pantry.  And of course we are eventually going to get rid of those beautiful yellow countertops.  But WHOA what a dramatic difference.  We absolutely love it and are really happy with how it turned out!  Here are a few more pics for your viewing pleasure..

We're getting there!

Shame On Me!

I have been a terrible blogger lately.  We have just been SO busy trying to get this place in order that I really haven't had time to sit down at the computer.  The amount of posts I need to do are piling up though, so I am just going to dive in.  Let's start with Todd's birthday!  Todd turned the big 2-8 on the 11th, and that Sunday night we went out with a group of friends to celebrate.

There were about 20 of us and we all went to Yamato which is a really good hibachi place over here in Mt. P.  After dinner Todd had to do the obligatory banging of the gong to the happy birthday song...

He also chose to add in some dance moves...it was pretty entertaining!  On Saturday, we had gone shopping at the outlets to get him some new clothes and shoes for work but I still wanted to do something else for his bday so on Sunday night I told him that I needed to borrow the Jeep Mon so I could go pick up a rug for the living room.  Instead, I went to Wal-Mart where we had seen this bike that he really liked.  The guy who put the bikes together at Wal-Mart was really nice, but their customer service overall was not so great.  I wish you could have seen me loading this thing into the back of the Jeep in my work clothes in 90 degree heat. When I got home I wheeled it into the backyard to set up the surprise.

Then I went into the house and let Charley out finally and this is what happened...

As you can see, I'm not sure if it was the bike or the balloons but he was not having it in his backyard!

When Todd got home he was really surprised and we rode our bikes to dinner at a pizza place down the street.  It was a fun bday!

Moving Day!

So, when we embarked on this little adventure, the original plan was to have an entire month to move in slowly which sounded great.  Unfortunately, with all the construction that was going on that wasn’t really an option so we had to revert to plan B, which was basically let’s wait and move at the absolute last possible second.  Moving day finally arrived last Saturday and it was a beautiful sunny day.  Todd and Matt loaded up the trailer for round 1 (planning on there being a round 2 at some point) while Don worked on baseboards and my mom and I painted the master bedroom.

They unloaded all of our furniture and stashed it in the back bedroom (which is the only room that had clean floors at this point) except for the table and chairs which we put in the living room so that we would finally have something to sit on.  It also gave us another flat surface to clutter up with construction stuff. 

Meanwhile, my mom and I painted the master bedroom.

Before

So after all this hard work, we took a lunch break.  Shortly thereafter it started raining and didn’t stop for 4 days.  That kind of put a damper on our second run with the trailer plan.  Which led to plan B—Todd and I cramming everything in our cars and making 3 trips back and forth on our last night at the old place.  Joey and Chanel were nice enough to come over with their truck and help us move the big things we still had left (in the rain) and eventually we got it all out.  

I took this pic because it really was raining but you can't really tell.  

Our place now looks like this…but we are working on the unpacking!