New kitchen ceiling

When Dan and I bought our house, The kitchen ceiling was in the worst shape. The floor was covered with chipped paint and lath and plaster from the ceilings and walls. It was quite a task to undertake redoing all of the walls and the ceiling, but we got it done in one day surprisingly! Dan is really great at that!

 I helped a little bit with the drywall mud. I never knew that drywall could be so heavy! I helped Dan put it up and he put it in place. It was pretty heavy. I have just a few blurry pictures to show, but it was a relieving day when we were able to finish it all. Short post, but there are more exciting things to talk about in the coming posts!

Remodeling the Bathroom

Well, it seems so hard to believe, but it is nearly April!  In just thirty days, I will be married! 

 

Since time seems to be flying now, Dan and I have been working very hard on the house.  When we originally filled the radiators with water, we found that the bathroom radiator pipes were completely busted.  So when Dan's father came up to visit a month or so ago, the two of them fixed those pipes.  They re-piped the entire bathroom and remodeled it. 

 

When we first bought the place, the bathroom was set up very strangely.  It was almost awkward to walk into.  But since Dan and his father re-did all of the pipes, it is so nice now! 

 

Here are a few pictures. 

We painted the walls a cheery, china blue color.  I really like it. 

We also rearranged the tub.  Now it is straight ahead when you walk in, instead of to the right.  

 

Dan worked very hard to re-pipe the bathtub.  We had to buy a plumbing system for clawfoot tubs.  He was working on putting that on in this picture.  

 

When Dan's dad was here, he built this vanity for us.  I love it.  The white brightens up the bathroom.  

Together, they made a large shelf we can put towels on.  Part of it will eventually have doors, but those haven't been finished yet. 

 



 

 

 

Dan was working on the shower curtain holder.  It was kind of hard to put up.  I helped a little bit.

 



 

Except for small detail work, like cabinet doors and drawers, the bathroom is finished! 

 

The kitchen ceiling and walls will be my next post, since we are nearly finished with those.  :)

Until next time!

Renovations

Good morning!  We have been keeping very busy with trying to fix up our house!  We started by buying blinds for all of the windows...

Since I have never lived in the city before, it was strange for me to see people constantly walking by JUST outside my front door and window. 

 

I am so thankful to have such a hard-working and skilled fiancé.  It seems like he is able to fix everything! I scraped the chipping paint in the living room, dining room and staircase.  The kitchen was more than just chipping paint, the entire wall was coming down as I was scraping it.  When I finished that, Dan went through and put drywall mud in all of the holes.  I took quite a few pictures during the process.  :-) 

 

 

 

 

OH! And we also are blessed to not have to buy a stove, refrigerator, washing machine or dryer!  They all were in the house when we bought it, and after a lot of scrubbing and cleaning, they all work!

 

The refrigerator was the hardest to clean up.  But this is the stove. 

 

 

 

Dan also worked very hard on the radiators in the house.  We had to go get some "new" used ones and Dan fixed them all up and installed them.  

 

 

 

 

Another little thing I get to brag on Dan about...

He repiped the whole house and got the shower in the basement working.  I can't wait to post new pictures of the upstairs bathroom before and after!  But I will save that for ANOTHER post!

 

 

As a sidenote:  There are only 54 more days until I get married!

Big News!!!!

I have BIG news!  It's late, but I'm posting it anyway.  On the last day in December, Dan and I closed on a house!  We'd been looking at this house for more than a month.  We loved it, and the price was good.  There were a few complications with the many different people involved in the sale of it however.  This house has some history too...

But everything finally worked out and we were able to get it for a little cheaper after finding out that there were quite a few problems with it. 

 

 

 

Both the front door and the back door had been kicked in multiple times, so the very first thing we did was go to Home Depot and get a security door and a set of locks.  

Here are a few pictures (blurry because they are taken with my phone) of the bathroom, hallway and some radiators. 

 

We love this old clawfoot tub, and Dan is in the process of remodeling the entire bathroom right now.  But we have decided to keep the tub because it is so vintage!

 

We had to replace five of the nine radiators in the house.  We finally got them working, the house is warm and there aren't any MAJOR leaks.  We found the major ones the hard way, by trial and error.  We filled the system with water and thennnnn found a HUGE leak in the upstairs bathroom.  The kitchen ceiling was raining!  We (and when I say we, I mean Dan ) fixed that though.   

 

There was a refrigerator left in the kitchen when we bought the house and I told the realtor that I was going to clean it out and see if it worked.  She thought that was disgusting and could hardly believe that I was going to do it.  I spent a whole day cleaning it out (there was old food left in there from the previous year, so you can imagine how gross it was).  When I finished cleaning it, we turned it on, and now we have a refrigerator that was free.  I'm sure eventually we might get a new one, but we can save that money now and use it on fixing the house. 

 

 

We also have a washing machine and a dryer downstairs in the basement that work!  We accidently spilled water pipe glue on the washing machine, so now it is a lovely permanent purple color...

 

This was a picture I took of me "helping" Dan to fix the water pipes in the basement.  All of the copper pipes had been stolen from the house, so he replaced all of them himself.  I'm so proud of my sweet, hardworking fiancé. 

 

Here is another picture of Dan, working on the radiators.

 

So that is my news about the house!  :)

 

Other news is that it snowed a few weeks ago.  I was not really expecting it, so it came as a nice surprise. 

 

It began on Friday at about 3pm and by that evening at 7, I was snowed in.  I made my favorite meal to eat while I was snowed in.  Mashed potatoes, gravy and ground beef....mmmmmm

 

This was on Saturday morning when I woke up.  We had a bit of a break since there was no church on Sunday and no school Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday!  It was like an unexpected spring break. 

 

 

 

SO that is my new news!  :)  There are only 65 days left until my wedding day!

Catching up

It's so exciting to be engaged!  Sometimes, it seems like a dream.  I remember when I was quite young, having the dream that someday I would get married.  When I was young, all I ever wanted was to get married.  When I got older, I began pursuing different dreams as my dream of getting married seemed so far away. 
Now, reality has hit me and both of my dreams are being fulfilled.  I am a piano teacher and have been for five years now.  That was my career dream.  I am a Christian school teacher, and have been teaching now for six months, and that was a goal of mine.  Another one of my dreams was to get married and I will be doing that in just 79 days! 
Dan and I had our engagement pictures taken in November.  Here are just a few of my favorites! 

 

79 days until I say "I do!"

The best day of my life...thus far

I know, I haven't posted on my blog in forever.  I say that every time I re-visit my blog after a long absence.  However, this time, I feel like my long absence is warranted.  My life has been too exciting to even think of sitting down at a computer to chronicle my life experiences. 

 

It is time to chronicle now though.  On October 30th 2015, the school where I work celebrated a special day.  We had a grandparents day celebration with a program and carnival booths and everything.  I spent my morning playing the piano for the program and then tying those long, skinny balloons so that my boyfriend and a school student could form them into shapes for the children.  After two hours of tying off balloons, school was dismissed early at 12:30pm.  With raw fingers, me and my boyfriend Dan joyfully drove off to Cunningham Falls State Park in Emmitsburg MD.  We had been planning to go and see the remaining leaves while they were on the trees still. 

 

When we arrived at the park, I insisted on hiking to see an abandoned whiskey still back in the woods.  It was a nice little hike. Since we wanted to see the falls, I was expecting that next we would hike to a spot by the waterfalls, but Dan didn't express any particular interest in the falls.  He wanted to go on this certain hike called the Vista Point.  I wanted to argue and tell him that the falls were what we came to see, but I decided to go along with what he wanted, since he had done what I wanted when we went to see the historic still. 

 

We hiked up a hill, and I took this picture of the beautiful leaves. 

 

 

 

We kept finding beautiful leaves, and would take pictures of them.  We even kept five or six of them.

 

We hiked up a sort of mountain and came upon this vista point with a beautiful view of the valley.  Dan wanted to go out to the edge to take a picture, but there was another couple sitting on a rock, eating a snack. 

 

Normally, I am the one who never wants to take pictures when other people are around. 

But today I said,

 "Who cares?  They won't mind if we take a few pictures.  They might even take a picture of us!"

Dan reluctantly followed and took a few pictures.

 

We sat on this wooden bench and looked over the valley.  The other couple sat close by as well, still eating.  After a few minutes, they got up and left. 

 

Dan suggested that he take a picture of me with the background.  I posed for his picture.  Then after this picture was taken, I turned around and looked at the valley, trying to see if I could find route 15.  I was thinking about the times I would drive to markets on route 15 when all of a sudden, Dan came up behind me.  I turned and smiled just as he got down on one knee. 

 

 

Of course, the rest is history.  Dan asked me to marry him, and I said yes after being so excited I could hardly talk.  Here I am with the gorgeous little box he put the ring in. 

 

We posed for a few after-pictures with his self-timer camera. 

So now you know about the best day of my life!

 

The love of my life asked me to marry him and I happily said yes. 

 

Prepare yourselves for coming posts about wedding plans and lots of pictures of me and Dan. 

I'm going to be a Mrs!!!!!!!!