a blessed day

today truly has been a day where i feel the weight of grace. just a few moments ago i was standing in the NEW kitchen, smelling the zucchini bread in the NEW oven (nutmeg is a new favorite spice!) and watching through the gorgeously huge kitchen window as our hired helpers wrapped tyvek on our home. i was struck by the immense blessing this whole experience has been. God has made it all possible.

in the past few days, friends and family have reiterated to me how awesome it is that we are so young and able to truly customize our home like we have. and they are right - this is a blessing we don't deserve. i am thankful to God for this opportunity, and hope that i never take it for granted.

i just got off the phone with my neighbor. she is such a gem. she offered me encouragement and Scripture for a situation i was struggling in. then she called me with a situation that needs prayer. ben and i looked for houses for two years and this is where God put us..."0h, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" He is so good.

as for house work, we are in the final push! i'll post some pics soon...we took off the old siding last weekend and the contractors have continued the work...we're getting there!

house styles

today, i wanted to know exactly what makes a house a bungalow. i honestly had no idea. i've heard the term tons on hgtv and other places, but i had no clue what a bungalow's characteristics are.

so of course, google came in handy. i found this explanation - along with tons of descriptions of other types of houses! i got kind of hooked.

architecture is interesting. it is fun to look at all the different styles of homes in minneapolis: cute tudors, colonial revivals, and cotswold cottages. (i learned that from the site!) and then to drive south through richfield and see the one-and-a-half stories. bloomington is ranch land. you can really see how the house architecture changed as people moved out of the city and into the suburbs. narrow city lots meant people built up, but wider suburban lawns meant people built out.

our house is a mystery. from the front it looks like a ranch, but there's a large half story on the back of the house. hmmm. in a class of its own? we like to think so. :)

(the front, ready for a major re-do. that's one long ranch!)

(the back, before we ripped the porch off. looks almost like a two-story from here!)

anyone out there have a house with a specific style of architecture? any french eclectics or richardsonian romanesques?

six months later

we've owned this house for just over six months. honestly, that fact coupled with the truth that none of our rooms are actually finished is a bit discouraging. on friday night, we got a little down about it. we've been waiting for our framer to get started on the siding, new windows and roof - he has been busy building a haunted house at buck hill! funny.

we're ready to get moving on the finishing touches. we spent a few hours at menards picking out our base profile. i'd love to do a really wide base - something really substantial - but we don't have high ceilings. what we picked is nice, though. i didn't really like anything they had in stock for casing. thankfully, ordering from scherer bros. is an option (sometimes, menards just doesn't quite cut it), and my father-in-law had a bunch of leftover samples from his homes. yesterday, i primed and painted them to see which one we like better. i think we'll go with the one on the left. the edges are a little softer. again, i'd love to do something wide and dramatic, but we have a simple ranch home and we don't want to go overboard.


ben also framed out the new hearth so that it will meet code. we are going to install a really basic solid taupe tile surround with a white mantle. we are hiring a contractor to do a sort of smooth stucco treatment over the brick, so it will appear to be drywall. we can paint it the same color as the room.


i've been priming and painting doors in our living room "workshop."


and yesterday, i finished tearing down the wallpaper around the front door.

(before)

(after)

our new front door came in last week, and i'm excited for less of a peep show! it just has a few small panes of glass on the very top, so people won't be able to see so much into the house. i think it'll make us feel a little safer.

pressing on!

weekend update

the weekend isn't over yet, but it has been fantastically productive. ben took friday off of work to work on the house, and we accomplished quite a bit: taking down wallpaper, taking off siding, narrowing tile choices to two for the fireplace surround, picking up roof samples, and other small things. our new front door, garage door, and a window were delivered, too.

kristen graciously volunteered to spend her saturday morning helping me and ben outside. we started tearing off the masonite siding on the back of the house. man, was it hot and humid!

(kristen takes it to the house. literally.)

(and she holds the rope for my man on the roof, while i snap pictures.)

(hanson sisters unite!)

(at one point, i'm sure it was "the lovely white house on the corner.")

(ben takes a sledgehammer to the fireplace.)

(admiring his handiwork. better already.)

(today, three tiles came off the vanity. i heard a crash and this is what i found. this bathroom has to last us for a while, though...)

(decisions, decisions.)

we are going to push hard to get a lot done in the next month. we're finally getting the summer weather here in minnesota, but fall isn't too far off and we want to have the windows, siding, and roof finished soon. then we are going to take a break.

scenes from a house

i stole/tweaked that title from an ingmar bergman movie we watched in my scandinavian literature class at the u. i don't know why it came back to me. (it's really called scenes from a marriage and i'm not sure i'd recommend it.)

anyways, we are still here, still working. here are a few snapshots.




as for that list, here's where we stand:

*choose, paint, and install casing, base, and trim (half round, too)
*install trim above cabinets
*paint door to garage
*paint closet doors
*paint door to basement
*paint pocket doors
*install doorknob to garage no more hole in the door! :)
*touch up paint in kitchen
*touch up paint in mudroom
*take off siding
*order windows
*take down wallpaper

hmmm.....that list got simultaneously shorter and longer.