by Rachel on February 7, 2011
You can’t tell from this angle, but Sadie was enjoying the view of our backyard from atop a 4-foot snow drift on our back deck. Springfield (along with a big chunk of the country) was attacked by a major blizzard last week, so we enjoyed a day and a half of being completely snowed in. Sadie enjoyed it the most; she LOVES frolicking in the snow and bringing in huge chunks of ice to gnaw on. She has her daddy to thank for that habit.
The temperatures have been FREEZING ever since the big snow, so unfortunately we haven’t seen much melting action yet. Ugh, what a mess. I just keep looking out the window and trying to picture what it will look like out there in June. I’m counting down the days until I can take Sadie for a walk without fear of taking a spill. Spring, come soon!
by Rachel on February 6, 2011
I wish we were still there. It doesn’t get much better than sunny, 80-degree days in the middle of winter, and we took full advantage of our time away from cold, snowy Illinois. We stayed on South Beach at the Hotel Victor, and spent our time in Miami exploring the beach, eating at yummy spots, and hanging out with my friend Michelle and her husband Ed, who live in Florida.
We also had a chance to road trip to Naples, where we visited with my grandma. It was the first time Zach had been to Naples, so it was fun to show him around the city where I spent so much time growing up.
There were collective groans when our plane touched down in Springfield, especially when the pilot announced that the temperature was 35 degrees with ice and snow on the ground. Well, at least we have the memories of our fun trip (and the rest of the pictures). Hopefully that’s enough to get me through the rest of this terrible winter…only four more months until summer!
by Rachel on January 23, 2011
Well it only took three months, but we finally have “after” pictures of the Great Flood of 2010 as promised. This year has been super busy, so we haven’t had much time to reorganize and clean up the newly renovated basement…until now. In the picture above, you can see the new tile that we picked out to replace our ruined carpet.
Here’s the entrance to Zach’s office. I really like the look of his dark desk furniture against the gray tile. Too bad this room doesn’t get much use!
After spending almost two full days working down here, it was nice to sit down on the big red coach and relax. I’m actually sitting right here, typing this blog post :)
Our closet room has new carpet and plenty of empty space, after I went through and finally got rid of tons of junk we’d put here over the last (almost) two years.
We had the bedroom repainted from the original khaki green to a nice yellow. We also put in new carpet. This room still needs some work, but at least it’s functional now.
The bathroom has new tile both on the floor and halfway up the walls. I’m kind of in love with the paint color Zach chose, and the shower curtain we picked out.
This room (which looked like this when we moved in, by the way) was the dumping ground for furniture and everything else while the renovation was happening. Although it still needs to be dusted, it’s looking much better.
The full album of “after” pics is posted on Facebook. Our next basement project is purging and organizing the storage area, which I purposefully did not picture here. Trust me, it’s not pretty! Luckily, we like a good home improvement challenge every once in a while.
by Rachel on October 2, 2010
This is what our finished basement looked like a couple of months ago, following what we refer to as the Mill Creek Flood of 2010. One Tuesday in June, Zach was at work and I was waiting on my first piano student when it started raining. And raining. And raining some more. Zach called and asked me to check the basement, the chronic worrier that he is, and I begrudgingly obliged. I walked downstairs, through the carpeted living room, and opened the door to the workout room, which is when I saw the water streaming towards me. I screamed, and Zach told me he was on his way before hanging up the phone.
An hour later, we were up to our ankles in water, wet-vaccing (I’m not sure of the spelling, or if that is even a word) and draining the storage area and workout room in our basement. The carpet in the bedroom, Zach’s office, and hallway was completely ruined, and the perimeter of every other carpeted room was soaked through. Needless to say, Serve-Pro was over at our house bright and early the next day ripping out square foot after square foot of sopping wet carpet. They spent an entire week drying out our basement, and although the Serve-Pro crew and I had become close personal friends by the end of the ordeal, I wasn’t too sad to see them go.
Then came the real fun: deciding what to do with the basement now that we were left with a cold, bare concrete floor. It took about a month of back-and forth before we decided…well, you’ll just have to stay tuned for the next post to find out!
