my favorite day

This blog isn't only about our home renovation, it's about our life. One of my favorite things in the world are Sundays with my little family. It is the one day that is truly relaxing. We make it as much as we can about family time. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we try our hardest to keep the Sabbath day holy. This means no shopping, no running errand, no working on the new house. I love this because we have no distractions.

Here is how a typical Sunday goes here in the Lunsford household. Today we woke up lazily, ate waffles and blueberries, then played around the house. Monkey has a new favorite thing to do during play time. She will put on one of my hats and walk around telling us over and over that she isn't Monkey she is Mommy. She won't respond to anything but Mommy. She "cooks" us food, brings us babies to rock and feed, and will push her shopping cart around "shopping" throughout the house. I'ts pretty adorable. We have afternoon church that starts at 1pm so after a quick pb&j sandwich we head off to church. Monkey loves church.

She loves her Sunday school class and all her little friends. She loves singing and learning about Jesus, or as she says it her friend Jesus, and who doesn't like coloring, playdough and stickers? Monkey loves church and her friends there so much this is typically the face I get when I tell her it's time to go home. She would honestly love to stay there all day and never come home! I'm glad that she loves it, I hope that as the years go by she will continue to love going to church and learning about Jesus. I look forward to the day she makes the choice to be baptized and grows into a strong, spiritual young woman.

By the time we get out of church we have dinner. Today we went to my sister in laws house and had dinner with them. Spaghetti was on the menu so this meant naked dinner was happening. The Monkey loves food and one of her favorite meals is spaghetti. As an Italian, I'm proud that she has inherited my love for pasta.

Today was a pretty perfect Sunday. Great family morning time, an amazing church service that was all about how prayer can strengthen our lives and our families, and a delicious dinner with part of our extended family. Brandon and I are about to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and a movie, I can't imagine any other way to end our weekend.

it's who you know sometimes...

My cousin Josh is an architect, yes this is awesome, especially when you are building a house. Josh was awesome and offered to draw up some quick plans for us with both the existing house and the addition. What made it really awesome is that he did it for free, sometimes it really is who you know. 

Yes, I used the word awesome a lot in this post, I realize this and I'm ok with it. 

hanging windows, instead of hanging by the pool

Before we bought the house the 4th of July meant sleeping in, relaxing at the pool or on the lake, lots of family lazy time, a BBQ and fireworks. This year, with the purchase of the house, it turned out a little different. Brandon was up with the sun and heading to the house to work. Monkey and I were up and out of the house by 8 for the church pancake breakfast and then it was off to the house to help work. Thankfully Mae'mae offered to watch Monkey so she would be out of our way. My Dad came over to help Brandon at the house and they had already mowed the lawn, torn out most of the ugly laminate and were moving appliances by the time I arrived. Dad checked on some termite damage that we uncovered (thankfully he is a pest and termite guy) and we made a list of things to pick up at Home Depot.

After the trip to our second home Home Depot Brandon, Dad and David (Brandon's dad) started installing the new windows in the house. Y'all I'm so excited about the windows. Not only are they pretty and energy efficient, but I found an amazing deal on them! I had terrible insomnia when I was pregnant with Monkey and this pregnancy has proven to be no different. So on one of my sleepless nights I decided to check Craigslist for windows. Why I even thought of it I have no clue. I've never done anything on there. I have always thought Craigslist was only filled with serial killers and scam artists, BUT I actually found something that looked promising. Someone had special ordered windows but when they got them realized they weren't what they needed so they were selling them for an amazing $75 a piece. These windows retail for around $210 each! The windows just happened to be exactly what we needed for both the existing house and the new addition. We met the guy last week and he turned out to be neither a serial killer or a scam artist so we bought windows from him. We calculated that with all the windows we bought we saved around $1700! I for once am thankful for my baby insomnia. Anyways... instead of getting all the windows installed today like we hoped we only got one installed, but now the guys know what they are doing and the rest of the windows should go in pretty easily.I am so thankful for a husband, dad and father-in-law that are all handy and can do so much of the work themselves to save us money. 

We ended the day with a delicious BBQ at my in-laws complete with BBQ chicken, hot dogs, grilled corn on cob, my homemade potato salad and the traditional American flag jello cake. Sadly we didn't have any fireworks because of the extreme drought we are in and the burn ban that has been issued, but we did have the sprinklers on for the girls to run through. All in all it was a wonderful day. I hope all of y'all had a fabulous Independence Day filled with fun, family, friends and food. 

home tour

So I love my little house, yes it's little and yes it's a mess but I love it and I can see so much potential in it. Every time I walk through the front door I feel like I'm home.. Each and every room needs work, but dude it's going to be awesome afterwards. Some of y'all aren't able to be here in person to see it so I thought I'd do a photo home tour to show y'all, and also for me to remember how ugly it is where this project started.

Here is our living room, it's the first room you walk into through the front door. It's a great size and won't need very much work at all to make it perfect. When Monkey first walked into the house she ran circles around the room giggling. I'm so happy that this room will be filled with laughter for years and years to come. The room is is getting a new non popcorn texture ceiling, new laminate flooring (more on that later), paint and crown molding. We will also be painting the font door and replacing the windows throughout the entire house. I'm excited and can already envision Razorback football parties, family movie watching and good ol' family time taking place in here.

The dining room will soon just be a "hallway/walk through" into the new addition to the house. Where the window is will be a doorway into the new master suite *hallelujah*  and the backdoor will be a 6 foot wide opening into my dream kitchen and dining room. this area will get matching laminate connecting to the living room, new lighting and fresh coat of paint.

 Here is the current kitchen. it's an 8'x8' room. Yes you read that right. It's actually smaller than the kitchen in my college apartment. The cabinets are tiny, there is no room for a dishwasher and the fridge doesn't even fit in the room, it's actually part of the tiny dining room. Needless to say, It will not be our kitchen for long. Instead it will be a huge walk in pantry/ food storage room. It will hold a deep freeze *yay*, our normal pantry food and all our food storage. As a member of the Mormon church we have been advised to have food storage and water for emergencies. This room will hold that food/water so it doesn't have to be stored in closet corners and under beds any more. This is a dream and I'm excited to have it!

 Here is our only bathroom in the house, for the time being. It is old and ugly and comes complete with awesome light swags. We will be tearing out the cabinets above the sink (well they are already falling down, we will just finish the job), painting the existing vanity, replacing the toilet and refinishing the bathtub. I ordered a Rust-Olium tub refinishing kit online and hoping i don't screw it up excited to see the finished product. We will also be tearing out the ugly linoleum and laying a pretty tile floor. New paint, light fixtures and faucet will pull the whole project together and make a great guest/girls bathroom. 

Here is the laundry room. Y'all did you read that... We will have an actual laundry room! Not a closet that holds the washer and dryer, but an actual room with shelves and room for laundry baskets and such. We will be removing the ugly gross hideous linoleum and putting down a tile floor, adding functioning shelving and paint. We will also get to use our amazing washer and dryer that has been in storage for a year since our apartment won't let us use them here. 

This is the original master bedroom, but since we are adding a master suite to the other side of the house it will soon be Monkey's new room. We will be tearing out the awesome carpet that is original to the house being built in 1985 and replacing it with matching wood laminate flooring. We are also putting in central heat and air so will be getting rid of the ugly and not energy efficient window units throughout the house.  I'm excited about making it into a dream little room for Monks. I'm positive she will love it!

The other room in the house will be the new nursery for baby girl. I can't believe I'll be planning a nursery in this house. I have zero ideas for color scheme or theme for the room but am excited I get to start on a blank slate. The only thing I know for sure is we will have wood laminate flooring in this room too. I guess I need to start stalking Pinterest for nursery ideas.... 




So there y'all have it, a not so quick tour of our little house. Hope y'all enjoyed.

let the adventure begin

We bought a house. A house that will soon become our home.

See this adorable house.

This 1800 sq foot brick house located in a classic Conway neighborhood. A three bedroom, two bath house with a large living room, dining room, finished kitchen and cute little backyard was ALMOST ours.

We put an offer in that was accepted and then had an inspection done. It needed a few things fixed on it but nothing we couldn't have handled, but it just didn't feel right so we backed out of the offer. Now I know why I had such uneasy feeling, It wasn't our home. 

We looked at hundreds of houses on line, looked at dozens of houses in person and each one we found something wrong. Too small, too high a list price, bad neighborhood, too far of a drive, bad floor plan, etc. There wasn't a single house that felt right to me, a single one that I walked into and said "this could be our home" until we found THIS house.

The house that we will be making into our dream home. I knew this was the house that would be our home because it's the only one that I could picture a nursery in. This house will be the home that Brandon and I bring our little girl home from the hospital to. I felt at total peace when I walked into this house, I knew within seconds that this house was the one, the one that would be our home.

The crazy thing is this house is half the size of all the others we looked at coming in at 960sq feet. It's a total fixer upper with original carpet from 1985 when the house was built and a kitchen so small that I, at 5 feet tall, feel cramped in it. However, It's got great bones, comes with an acre of land in the country and will be fairly simple to add onto to fit our needs.  I'm so excited to start this adventure with Brandon. I'm not naive enough to think it's going to be all fun and games. I know it will be filled with stress, headaches, sweat, lots of learning and probably some blood and tears. But when it is finished it will be 100% ours.  Our design, our remodel and our own acre of land.

Let the adventure begin!