Doin' some work around the house

Since we found out about our new highly anticipated blessing, we've been making some plans to change around the layout of our home to make room for the baby. At first it was hardly imaginable how we were going to fit everything into our house, and still have a place for our guests to sleep, as we don't like to send anyone to a hotel when they come to be with us.

My mom came down from Iowa to see us in June and helped us brainstorm a way to make it all work. She's an absolute GENIUS. :) And we figured we needed to move fast.....I'm due in November, and that's literally right around the corner if you think about it. And Joe is going to be on the road A LOT working this new song with Steve, PLUS the new album in September...there is just simply no time between now and the time the baby is born to make these changes, unless we do it NOW. So "now" is the plan.

While mom was still here, we cleaned out the entire garage (a project that has been ongoing since before we got married, but constantly interrupted by life, as we all understand!). Mom helped us put the project into full motion. Once we cleaned it out, the next weekend, Joe moved about 1/2 of his weight room equipment into the garage for a mini-gym feel. It looks great. A little cramped, but hey, it will work, most definitely.

After that, the following weekend, we had the carpet throughout our whole house steam cleaned. Then Joe and I decided on a whim that if we are goign to move the office down to the first level from the second (of 3 levels), we just had to "do it" or forget about it. So that same weekend, we threw everything in a pile, and started taking apart the office furniture. The only way to get all the furniture downstairs was to disassemble, unfortunately. Wow...what a project. We disassembled fine, but the time that Joe almost lost his life during this whole process was moving our gigantic sized black industrial filing cabinet down the stairs. Ummm...i'm pregnant so I couldn't do anything except navigate. And Joe had too much pride to call Slava, our very eager-to-help and wonderful next door neighbor. Trust me, when the filing cabinet started sliding out of control on the wet stairs, aiming for the aluminum door with glass windows, surrounded by a brick entry way, all I could do was let out a blood curdling scream. I thought for sure we were going to have to stay in a hotel that night, for the lack of a front door...or camp out on the front lawn with a gun to ward off any intruders. But Joe did finally get ahold of the cabinet just in time, and was able to stop it from detroying the front of our home. After my scream, I yelled viciously at him for not calling Slava. Men and their pride....hmph! :)

Sooo..we moved all the "big" stuff down stairs, wired all the phones (which was so much fun...i've never done that before, and NOW I know how...kind of....) and moved all the electronics down. We werent' able to be a functional office by Monday, but we did most of our "work" by phone, as our computers weren't up and running yet. But by Tuesday we could at least check email. And since we missed Monday, we spent the resto f the week playing catch up,....which meant the "pile" of little office things were there all week, with Joe leaving town for 10 days (of which he returns from this trip in about 2 hours from now....) and ME to pull everything together.

With that said, I've been doing some work around the house since Joe's been out! I finished moving all the little things to the office, and organized/filed everything. Our office bathroom was compariable to your roadside Amaco station's bathroom....so I cleaned that baby up, and painted it...gave it a "girly" touch (what can i say?? ). Since I had completely cleared out the "old" office upstairs, I went out and got the paint to touch up the room, and spent an evening doing that. (Looks good too.....all that's left in that room is to clean the carpet where the furniture was).

Check out the pictures of the work....I really should have taken some "before" pictures so I could show the difference but I'm a moron and didn't do it.

We moved our doggy kennels down stairs with the office so that our boys could have a place to snuggle while they hang with us during the day. They didn't like this move at first...in fact Rudy was so upset, he got sick....but now they are LOVING all the room they have to play!

So what are we goig to put in our dining room, you might ask? Well....if we used it for an actual "dining" room, it just would be a waste of space, since we would never use it. The upstairs guest room is going to be the "baby" room, so we are going to get a "hide a way" couch and put it in the dining room to make it a "sitting room/guest bedroom." All our housing problems are solved!!! :)

Check out the pics......Joe's going to be a shocked man when he gets home! He knows I've done all this, but has no idea what to expect. :) I hope he likes it!