Rob's Graduation

We visited Rob in Lawton, OK over the Dec. 4 weekend. He was having his Army Basic training graduation. I've created a website for you to visit to see pictures and read about it. Take a look.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~keneaton/graduation/

Fire!! On the wall!

Well if you hadn't already guessed it, Cass and I were busy installing a fireplace in the family room this past weekend. We had her Dad come out and spend the night at our place on Friday night so we could get started on it first thing Saturday morning. I woke up at 6:30am, he and I had a quick breakfast, and we dove right into the project around 7:30ish! We didn't start making noise with the power tools until 8am, though.

Dad B. started prepping to cut the hole in the side of the house so he could then start framing for the fireplace. Before we could really get started on anything, he needed me to go to the hardware store to get some nails, screws, etc. A list of like 3 things. So I go down to the local Ace Hardware in Ypsilanti. Dad B. calls me while I'm at the hardware store with a list of lumber that I needed to get since I hadn't bought quite enough before the weekend. So that added another 5 or 6 things to the list for which I needed to go to Lowes to get. So I went there, got the stuff, and loaded up the truck only to find that I left my phone in the truck while I was in there. Cass and Dad B. had been trying to call me because there were more things I needed to grab. D'OH! (Cass took several pictures of her Dad on the phone talkin' with me since that seemed to be the trend that morning.)

So I go back into Lowes, buy THAT stuff, load up the truck AGAIN, and guess what....NOPE! Lol. Dad B. didn't call again, I forgot to grab the little red tags you tack to the back of lumber when you have it loaded in the truck. So I had to go back into Lowes. Oy vey!

By the time I finally left Lowes, it was about 10am. Dad B. had the hole in the wall knocked out by 9:45, so unfortunately I missed that exciting part, but when I got back there was a 4 by 5 foot hole in my house! That was pretty wild! I think it would have been fun to be on the outside of the house watching as Dad kicked the wall out after cutting it out, but I was too busy running in and out of Lowes! Lol. Oh well.

So the rest of the day basically consisted of Dad B. doing the installation with me helping from time to time if he needed an extra hand. The rest of Cass's family came over around lunchtime and Chad and I hung drywall. Here's a few more pictures of the process...









Dad B. got the chase for the fireplace finished and the gas line installed just before sundown! Good timing, eh? After actually positioning the fireplace, hooking up the power, switches, and gas line we gave it a whirl and WHAMMO, we had fire! Pretty groovy! I think it looks really nice too!

I spent the next day painting the exterior of the chase so that I'd actually have daylight to do it in as opposed to trying to paint it after work with the sun already down. I also installed some of the cement board for the tile that we're going to surround the fireplace with until my utility knife broke! Oh well, I only have a 6.5" by 3' piece of cement board left to install so as soon as I can get a new knife I'll be golden. Next weekend, my Dad and I are going to put up the tile and hopefully we'll have most of the room done by Thanksgiving. We'll see!

Renovation of the Family Room...

Well, we finally started our first major renovation. When we first moved into the house the closest thing to "demo" that we did involved removing the baseboards so we didn't paint over them and remove wallpaper. This time we're actually taking down some wood paneling and completely replacing the drywall on the largest wall in the family room.

We're not big fans of wood paneling. Especially paneling that's been painted over! To us, that's just a lame way of covering up the fact that you don't like your house's 70's decor. Heh heh! Cass and I actually started tearing down the wood paneling week before last just to see what it looked like behind the wood paneling. Thankfully, we didn't open a can of worms that we couldn't handle in doing so.

This past Friday we were able to get the rest of the wood paneling down and on Saturday we got the drywall on the big wall down.




After we got the paneling and the drywall down, we noticed that the home builders had framed out an area for a fireplace! (Hmmm...wonder if that might come in handy someday.)

The last thing we did was put in a new leg to the family room's power circuit for some new overhead lighting WITH a dimmer switch and something else...you'll find out what it is soon enough.

The wiring went well. I took a stab at putting it in on Saturday, but for some reason at the end of the day I was only getting voltage to the power for the "something else" not the overhead lighting. On Sunday I bought a new junction box and redid the wiring and this time it worked. Got power successfully to both legs. I know it worked because I have a volt meter and I tested it lol! I was so proud of myself. This was a first for me, and I actually did it!

More to come soon. Stay Tuned!

Not Much Going On...

Hey everyone. I think it's plain to see that there hasn't been much news to report in a while. Cass and I are doing well. We've been busy having fun taking pictures with our new camera and just enjoying what days of nice weather we could take advantage of. If you've missed seeing the pictures at all, you can see what we've been up to. Just click on "Our Perspective" towards the top of the page.

We do have one remodeling project coming up very soon. We're going to be refacing the walls in our family room in the weeks to come so be looking out for some new posts in the near future.

New Photo Blog

Hello readers, (all 3 of you *^_^* just kidding)

I have started a new blog for the simple purpose of posting pictures for everyone to see since Cass and I will hopefully start taking even more pictures in the near future.

The Eaton Gazette blog is mainly intended for major events in our lives (even though we post some goofy stuff on here, too) so I'm making the other blog for any random photos I decide to share on my flickr account.

Here's the link to the new blog if you're interested:
http://eatonperspective.blogspot.com

My Flickr account is here.

It's Been Awhile...

Well...I realize I haven't updated the blog in quite some time so I figured I'd tackle that. Expect this to be somewhat long... :-D.

When we left the action, Cass and I had just bought new furniture. Nothing new has happened inside the house, but we've made a few improvements outside. First thing we did was replace the roof on the shed. My brother, Rob, came over and basically replaced the roof while I helped a little. I would've done more, but truthfully, he didn't need much help. Roofing is his job and it was only a 200 sq. ft. roof to boot. As you can see, the shingles were in pretty bad shape before we tackled this project. There was also a little bit of water damage on the plywood beneath some of the shingles so we had to replace some plywood too.

The finished product looks great. Hats off to Rob for a job well done! I love having a shed, so we're going to make sure we take good care of it.

The next thing we did really isn't all that exciting...we killed some grass. There was a reason for this savagery on our ground cover, though. Cass and I decided to put in a small bed for planting some raspberry bushes. In the process of doing this, we found out that our hibiscus tree is really blooming well, so that was cool. Pretty soon, Cass will be getting some raspberry plants from her parents' house that we'll be transplanting to the new bed. Hopefully it'll work. We'll see. Cass and I both like raspberries, so it will be cool to have them if we can successfully grow them. That's a big "IF" though.

Finally, Cass and I decided we were sick and tired of that goofy looking goose with the broken neck at our front door that said "Welcome Friends". We were at Joann's looking for something completely different than a new sign for our front door when we thought we ought to have a look for something since we did in fact want to lose the goose. We were walking toward the back corner of the store where they have unfinished wood products and I saw a great big "E" that was probably 2 feet tall and said, "We could just put a gigantic 'E' on our front door." That "E" was made of cardboard though and we decided against that, however Cass did like the idea of the monogram. So, we ended up finding a little bit smaller monogram and found a "Welcome" wood cutout the we were going to apply to it. Cass already had some great paint colors to use and we picked the maroon color which is pretty much the exact shade as our front door for the "E" and the "Welcome" part is white. We put it all together and are quite happy with the results. We weren't going to advertise it and see how many people notice it, but then I realized how few people have ever even seen the goose, so there went that idea...lol.

New Furniture!!!

Hey y'all, I know it's been a while since I posted anything about the house, but that's because Cass and I sort of taken a break from working on the house to have a little fun.

We're still settling in, finding a thing for every place and a place for everything, but it's coming along nicely. We went furniture shopping on Tuesday because we we totally tired of the little $20 TV stand we bought years back and we were still using the coffee table from Cass's first apartment. We've kinda moved away from the all black furniture thing, so they really didn't fit with the rest of our stuff.

Cass and I had gone to Ikea, Target, Value City, and like 5 other furniture stores in Ohio and were unsuccessful finding a TV stand that we liked. We were getting a little discouraged, but we finally went to Art Van and it was like...Dude! There you go!

We actually hadn't found a TV stand yet, but while we were in the clearance center, we found this awesome little coffee table that was marked down to like 1/4 of it's usual selling price. It's even one of those coffee tables where the top can fold up toward you. The picture will make more sense than me trying to describe it.

Then we went into the actual showroom to see what they had for TV stands and we found one that looked really nice, the color matched the coffee table almost perfectly, and the color and design of it was quite similar to the bookcase I built last year. So that turned out to be a great buy as well.

All in all, we're very happy with what we got. We think it's brought the living room up from about a 18 year old's living room to a mid-twenties person's living room.

Saturday...In the Park...I Think It Was the 4th of July.

Camping's the greatest! Cass and I came up to Caseville, MI to join her parents and many of their friends from church for the 4th of July weekend. Speaking of which, Happy 4th everyone.

This group comes up to the same campground every year for a nice, long weekend. The Caseville fireworks were pretty good last night. We were beginning to think they were never going to start though. Plus, we were freezing in the 50 some-odd degree weather complimented by the brisk lakeshore breeze.

Hope everyone's having a great weekend! Enjoy it!

Vacation...Boy Did We Need It!

Well, Cass & I decided that we'd take a short vacation down in Ohio this weekend. We've been running around doin' this n' that lately since getting the house so we needed a break and came down to visit her grandparents.

It's been a great time except for the 2 monsoons we had to drive through to get here on Thursday. We've had sunny days and fair skies. Perfect weather for making use of Memaw & Papaw's pool. :-)

As you can see, I did a little birdwatching, too. They get quite a few gold finches on their feeders.

Hope everyone's having a great weekend!

Putting stuff up!

Well, now that Cass and I are officially moved in, there hasn't been a whole lot of things to do that are interesting. We've mainly just been unpacking and finding places for everything. Cass did a great job of unpacking a lot of stuff on Saturday while I was fixing a few things on the truck getting it ready for our back to back weekend trips coming up.

Sunday however, we did a few things to the house. We bought some canvases and fabric to wrap the canvases in to create some "artwork" for the living room. We had one wall that was completely blank, so we needed to do something with it and Cass had the genius idea to do what we did. I think it turned out pretty darn good!

We also put up our wedding pictures in the "foyer" hallway. I guess you could call it the foyer anyway. It's the hallway in front of the front door.

The other thing that we did which was really special was we took a painting that Cass's great grandmother (we call her "Momoo") painted back in 1970 and had it reframed. It had a frame around it before, but it was kinda falling out of the frame and the frame was really old. So we went down to Michaels and got a new frame for it which really breathed some new life into the painting. It looks fantastic in our dining room and it's really special too because Momoo's Buffet, painting, and (coming soon) her dining table will be in the dining room.

So that's what's been up around our place lately. For Father's Day, my Mom and Dad joined us for a bike ride out at Willow Metropark and a BBQ afterwards at our house. It was great fun. I hope everyone had a great Father's day, too.

After the move...

Well, the move was a success. We rented a Uhaul truck for the move on Saturday which turned out to be one of the easiest moves many of the people who helped expressed that they've ever been involved with. We started packing up that beauty of a V10 truck with a 14 foot lunchbox on it's back around 2:20pm, which took us approximately 30 minutes and had it unpacked around 20 minutes after arriving at the house, 3:40ish. That was awesome! We were so geeked about how easily it went.

Cass and I had moved most of the essentials from the apartment over, so the bulk of what we were moving was just the furniture. Here's a couple of really terrible pictures that totally don't do justice to how the place looks now, but you get the idea.

We are FINALLY home. Everything's here. It feels so good.

More Curtains!

Cass and I decided that this past weekend was going to be a mild weekend in terms of work. We needed a good break.

The only thing we really did was buy and hang curtains for the bedroom and pack and move some more small stuff from the apartment over. We bought the curtains on Saturday and got a pretty sweet deal from JCPenney on the panels and we used our 20% off coupons at Bed, Bath, & Beyond for the scarves. When we got back, I got right to hanging the curtains. They turned out pretty good. We both like them a lot. They're kind of sheer, but the window shades behind them really block the light well so that's nice.

Except for the TV, the bedroom is pretty much finished. The TV will be going downstairs in the living room once we get the living room furniture in.


Here's what each window looks like.


And I love how the bedroom looks now!