Decorating the nooks

So, here are the stairs finally decorated a little... the contemporary style of this house is hard for me because I'm more used to east coast styles. These two nooks are at the top of the stairs and needed at least something in them. What do you think?

Ta da..... !!!!!!!!!

Just so you can get the full effect....

Before and After photos of our stairs....

Still need to decorate a little and finish up a little painting/staining/clear-coating but we are absolutely delighted with the changes!

Handsome Robertsons and our tree

Henry invited Lance and I to his "Winterfest" which is a holiday tradition for the SES 4th grade. We were asked to dress up in our fancy clothes and we enjoyed a delicious lunch in his classroom. It was lovely afternoon!

I'm sure I'll post more but here is a good picture of our tree!

Christmas 2009

Here are some good Christmas photos.

The first two were taken at our neighbor's holiday open house.

And this one was taken at our realtor's office Christmas party. Sadie loved being invited to the party and celebrating Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. Claus. You can see she was channeling "Max" from the Grinch with her adorable antlers. She wore them around the party some too!

oh yeah.... that's what I'm talking about!!

We are getting closer...

So, the workers are done and gone. My job now is to get it all cleaned up and then get to the finish work. I have to paint the wall where the drywall was disrupted (the white you see on the wall is the primer coat so I'm already started with that one part of the job), I have to stain and varnish the end caps and railing, I have to paint the trim white and then put a second coat of white on the balusters. Then the carpet will be reinstalled on Friday.

We are happy with how it looks -- I think it's a million times better than before and once everything in done, I think it's going to look really sharp!

Tuesday's progress

The end caps are mostly built. Top of the stairs post is in... They are here again and working hard to finish today! Then tomorrow I get to get to work and start the cleaning, painting and lacquering.... So today I'm going to get out and do a little shopping since tomorrow and Friday are "work" days for me.

Finished for today....

So, did you ever want to know how they make a railing for a curved stair? Here's how... The pieces are thin and they glue them together (they call it bending the rail). Here you see 30 vices for the right side and about 12 for the left side. They bolt pieces right angle pieces of metal to the stairs and then bend the rail to match the curve.

Today, they put in all the support pieces and cleaned up the drywall that had to get cut down. They also installed the trim on the outside edge of the stairs

So tonight, we have no railing... yikes! The kids and Sadie are not going up there without an adult. We should get the railing up tomorrow and the balusters by Wednesday. I'm ever hopeful.

Here we go.... YEAH!!

The guys got here at 8am... the stairs are taking shape but now they are dangerous!! No railing -- I hope no one falls. It's going to take two days to get the railing in place.

2 1/2 hours later...

Well, the demo is more done... not all the way done yet as we want to try to keep the kids and dog (and us) as safe as we can for as long as we can. It would be a long fall if someone lost their balance at the top of the stairs. We already like the new look better and the posts you see are just the 2x4s that were in the wall. Wait until the white balusters are up!

In this photo, it is not snowing in the house. The white stuff you see is drywall dust lit by the camera's flash...



Ok, done for the night. We've left the posts up and tomorrow, we'll have to cut them off.

2:15pm -- Time to pick up the kids...

Looking good and making some serious progress... :)

Stairs Demolition!!!!

So, when we bought this house, my main complaint was the stairs. They are not my style at all. I like the more classic look with a railing and balusters. So, despite the fact that we won't get any of this back if we ever sell the house, we decided that it was not fun to live with one big glaring thing that bothers us.
So, the workers are coming on Monday to start the construction. To save money, we agreed to do the demolition and will paint the finished product.
I wanted to document the change since I really think it's going to be a big one so here we go....

This is the stairs from the front door. As Lance said, they kinda look like a water slide.


This is the view from the top of the stairs to the living room and front foyer.

This is the view from the living room.

So I'm working today on the demo...

Here's how far I've gotten so far..
Step #1: Pull up the carpet.

Step #2: Start smashing out the drywall!!

Thanksgiving and a trip to Estes Park

Thanksgiving preparations....
Lance and Emily are working hard to get the meal ready
for turkey-day.


We had a fancy dinner in our dining room --the kids were
ready to eat! We had the traditional favorites plus a few
family favorites too.


Friday, we took a family trip to Estes Park which is about 45 minutes north and west of Boulder. The trip was flat for a while, then you head west and UP! The road makes me nervous but luckily Lance was up for the twisting, turning road upward!

We went to Rocky Mountain National Park and took a short hike around this amazing part of the park. The vistas are unbelievable.




One of the "scenic overlooks" was the perfect place to take a great family photo.


The kids loved being up on the rocks, climbing all over the place... making me nervous!


We went to Estes Park because Henry went there for a field trip on his 2nd week of school and he told us all about the wild elk that roam the town. We hoped to see some of them and were not disappointed. Funny enough, we did not see the elk in the park. We saw them in the town -- they were just grazing right along the side of the road.


It happened to be the town's annual Christmas parade so we decided to stay and enjoy the lights. As you can see, we hunkered down on the curb to watch. Sadie even tucked under the blankets with us. It was a really fun night... the parade is delightful. The funniest part was when Sadie sprung up to bark at the passing Clydesdales pulling a wagon... she did not like the elk either :)


Well, that's it. Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and are getting all ready for the holidays.

Almost finished...

The guys are gone and the granite looks great -- now the hard work starts... Cleaning up after it all and getting everything back into the right spot. The gas guy is here now... connecting the gas cooktop and our old gas grill. This kitchen is coming along really well... I'm excited for finally having something close to being done!!

I love me some Uba Tuba!!

New Counters...

The kitchen transformation begins...
See what can be accomplished in 12 hours... The new granite counters come on Tuesday!


This photo was taken just before 11am this morning...


These photos were taken just after 11pm this evening...

Finally...some furniture (and some more snow)

Well, I would guess we have about 6 inches of snow on the ground this morning but that's not what I'm blogging about. :)

We went on a MARATHON furniture buying trip yesterday -- from noon until six. I did all the research first over these past few weeks... checking out the store, our options, etc. And finally we have purchased almost everything. We still need to find a bed. Our credit card is sore today but we knew it was coming and are prepared!! All furniture will be here this coming week except the family room couches which will be here December 1st. Now I get to decorate with rugs and pictures, etc. I'm very excited!


This is our living room sofas... Yes, they are yellow and they are a really pretty color. I wanted some color in the room because the walls are khaki. The dining room is really deep burgundy so the yellow will look great with it nearby.



This is our new kitchen table. It's a square counter height table. Our kitchen table from VA is rectangular and just does not fit in the space so we plan to move it downstairs as a card table for the rec room/man cave.


We bought the sofa and the loveseat in this taupe color for our family room. The walls are light cream and we have some accent pillows to tie in the green from the kitchen. This is the set that is not coming until the 1st of December.


This is our new dining room set. We wanted something really rustic -- not formal but large enough to see everyone who comes to visit us!!

Henry's Explorer Project...

So, Henry's in 4th grade and his recent project for school was to write a letter to the Queen (his teacher) about why she should choose him to be an explorer for her and to find new lands. We soaked the paper in tea and burned the edges. He worked really hard on this and thought the final product was pretty terrific... as we do, obviously!

(FYI - as with all the photos on this page, if you click on it, you should see a larger image. These are scans because I wanted to get the image complete with the burned edges, etc... hopefully you get the idea!)

Halloween

Halloween in Superior was a blast. Our neighborhood is so full of kids that we purchased and gave away 6 bags of candy... crazy fun!! The kids and Lance went out first together, then they came home and I went out with them while Lance stayed home to dole out the goodies. Sadie enjoyed all the door-bell-ringing but she stayed home.... In our old neighborhood, we could leave the candy bowl out front and all five of us would go together. We often went to other neighborhoods or the local trunk-or-treat. It was really fun to be in our neighborhood, running into kids we knew and seeing neighbors! It was a really lovely evening too -- the weather was downright balmy and all the snow was already melted... Crazy Colorado weather!!

By the way, Henry is a Roman Gladiator and Emily is a Candy Corn Witch

A big winter storm... 22 inches total!

Well, it's finally time to blog about the snow. Yep, we got 22inches over between 5pm on Tuesday through 8pm Thursday. It was crazy and super fun. The schools were closed Wednesday and Thursday. Lance's office was closed Wednesday. It was a fun week.


Henry in the adirondack chair out back.

I guess we're not grilling any steaks tonight.

Poor Sadie... she was up to her chin in snow!

It's Saturday now and the snow stopped falling only about 48 hours ago but our front yard is clear. I guess being a mile closer to the sun and having a south facing driveway helps!