jacob jay: ten months

jacob turned ten months old yesterday. ryan told him he was 5/6 of a year old and that in one more sixth, he would be a year old. CRAZY. and this past month has been crazy for the little man. we moved out of our apartment and into my parents house temporarily. it's a full house - my dad and step mom, my step brother and his wife, and the three of us. oh and my brother came home for the summer a week ago - FULL HOUSE. lots of loving on j has happened, so that is nice, but we are VERY excited to be in our own space and being settled for our little man. 

some things over the past month:

+stranger anxiety. this is really kicking in. he has a hard time going to people he doesn't know and if he loses sight of me or ry he starts crying. oh man, he's cute when he cries (okay, fine, i think everything he does is cute). the little lower lip starts trembling and then he goes off - poor bugger. 

+visits from the vt grandparents and the md grandparents. he was spoiled with love both times.

+BOOKS!!!!!!!! this is my favorite thing this past month by far. j has finally started showing an interest in his books. he's been choosing to kneel and look at his books and turn the pages instead of playing with toys a lot of the time.

+it's warm! we let him play in the grass and he LOVES it!

+they look like they're friends here, but really beans is often scurrying away from j. every morning j chases beans around in circles. it's very funny.

+WE HAVE DADDY BACK!!!!!!!!!!! TAX SEASON IS OVER!!!!!!! they love each other. makes my heart happy.

we just love this kiddo. to pieces. he's just such a happy kiddo loving life. what a blessing he is.

a quick weekend update.

tax season is over, which means we get ry back on saturdays! yay! we had a slow saturday morning and then ry headed to the house. he was able to get a jump on painting...which is what we did all weekend. we got two coats on the master, the second on the spare, worked to finish up priming trim work in the kitchen, and started painting the kitchen. here's some pictures of what we've done since we last updated:

we didn't exactly do this. i was painting the stairs at the house and it was extremely windy. the windows are pretty old - probably original to the house. i was just wondering if the windows could ever blow out and break in the strong wind...and then i got my answer. shucks. good thing we just had the windows measured to be replaced. hopefully we'll get the windows this week so ry can get those in. we are replacing all the windows.

here's our bedroom. it looks very dark in the picture, but it's not so dark in real life. this was a bold pick for us - riskier than we're used to - but we love it. i am a little obsessed with it. i can't wait to get it all set up with our wonderful comforter - just need to find some coordinating fabric for curtains. 

we are replacing all the vent covers in the house because they were disgusting when we pulled them off - full of dirt, dust, nicotine and grossness. lowes and home depot had cheap plastic ones, so ry had us stop at the beyond hardware in our town - perfect. they had metal ones that we liked much better. you can also see the color of the spare room in this picture. this was our "safest" color. nothing too special, but we like it.

oh yes, ryan hung our new outside light. we found it at lowes. we feel like it brings us back to our new england/north shore roots. love love love. please disregard the disgusting discolored siding where ry took off the shutters that were next the door (we hated looking at them...can't wait to paint the house next summer!)

time to paint the kitchen!

here's what the yellow looks like on the walls. can't wait to have new floor and get those cabinets painted white. we are debating on when to do the floor - perhaps next weekend...but we just want to get moved in! and as for the cabinets being patined - again, we just want to move in!

oh and one more picture. i was upstairs painting trim in the hallway and i looked down to see this furry creature walking in our hallway. it gave me quite a startle, until i realized it was the neighbors cat! we call all cats "meow", and "meow" was very friendly.

a house update.

i can't write this post without first saying that our hearts are heavy. the north shore of boston was our first home as the dumi. we love it there, but more than that, we love the people that are still so much a part of our lives that are there...and that is why our hearts hurt. they hurt with some very dear friends that were way too close to everything that happened (praise the Lord everyone we knew who was there was physically unharmed). i can't even begin to imagine...so we spend our time praying while we work on the house. praying for our friends. praying for those who were hurt. praying for boston. 

but this i call to mind, and therefore i have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. - lamentations 3:22-23

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i normally wouldn't post a house update after something like this because it seems so insignificant, but i'm quickly losing track of all that is being done, and my in-laws are in town, graciously giving up their vacation time to work on the house with us, so i'd like to get some pictures up for family back in VT.

in the time that they've been here, along with help from my parents, we've been able to get the whole house cleaned and primed. what a task. we are finally at a point where we can start getting some colors on the wall. progress.

here's a few pictures of what's been going on:

ry stirring a five gallon of superprimer - we decided not to BIN the upstairs because it wasn't nicotine/tar stained like the downstairs was. we used an oil based primer that covers stains and smells and still creates a barrier so that nothing leeches back through.  

to get us through our sunday morning. 

starting on the yellow guest room. 

here is my father-in-law edging for the primer.

quick decision to get the porch floor ripped up so that it could go into the dumpster.

 ry and his dad carefully packed the bagster dumpster to ensure that everything would fit - there was a lot of very ugly carpet.

picnic lunch on monday because grandparents can't come all the way from vt and not get to see their precious little grandson!

had to shop for paint colors finally. i was dreading it. thankfully martha makes beautiful colors and we made some quick decisions. YIKES! we shall see how our quick decisions turn out. (isn't he the cutest shopper at home depot? the arm on the cart makes me laugh so hard.) 

and finally it looks like some progress is being made. this is j's room. it's hard to capture the color because of the lighting, but i really like it. it's cornflower (i think??) blue. it'll go really nicely with all the wood furniture he has and the beautiful bright red name sign ry made him out of old pallets. 

day 8: paint prep and priming

quick update for tonight. ry worked from 7 am until 8 pm, so there wasn't much time to work at the house. we got there around 8:30 and did about an hour of work. we smoothed out the spackling, put painter's tape on the trim work in the dining room and living room and primed the ceiling with BIN. it makes a HUGE difference - it looks like a brand new ceiling. the pictures are hard to tell, but you can definitely tell that the ceiling looks better than the stained walls in real life.

day 6 and day 7: the ceiling and spackle

ah - finally a day off for ry! i guess we can't call it a day off since he spent the whole day working at the house. good thing working on our house is one million times better than doing taxes. poor guy is exhausted. however, with him being off, we were able to make some serious progress today. the goal was to get the whole downstairs prepped for painting and we almost accomplished that goal. all that is left is spackling the kitchen/hallway, which don't have many holes. we were able to get all the downstairs walls and ceilings cleaned with the help of my dad. ry also went through and removed all the outlet covers and heat grates (this almost made us vom---so much dirt/nasty behind those) and he was able to spackle holes in the dining room and living room.

i've started referring to him as mr. foreman. here he is spackling away:

and here's mr. foreman fixing the door knob. the front door doesn't have standard sized knobs for some reason, so we held off replacing it until today so there was daylight and so lowes was open in case we needed anything. ry had to chisel out a spot for the strike since the old door didn't have one. the door works okay, but we think we will replace it.

and here is the absolute most disgusting thing i've ever done. it's hard to see how gross this ceiling is in the picture, but that discoloration is layers of tar and nicotine. the dark speckles are drips of that. it makes me shudder to think about it, and i definitely was not excited to tackle the job. 

luckily, my stepmom had a genius idea. she has a steam mop and she suggested giving that a try to loosen up the stains. genius i tell you. my father and i worked out a system where he went through little areas with the mop and i followed with paper towels on the swiffer mopping up behind him. 

it took two hours to go through the whole room twice to get it cleaned...but it is shocking to see what it looks like now:

and finally, i left ry at the house to go back and feed jacob. right before he was finishing up to head home for dinner, he sent me this text:

 don't worry, he's still alive. no electrocutions here. phew. tomorrow we wipe down all the spackle spots and start with the BIN!! oh - another highlight today - we met the nieghbors. they are super nice and have two dogs, one of which is a goldendoodle. beans was at the house with us and spent an hour or so next door playing with tess the goldendoodle. i think he's going to like living at his new home.

days four and five: a trip to lowes and more cleaning

we took thursday night off from working on the house so that we could spend some time together as a family. tax season is already draining enough on our family, but throw in a fixer upper house with a deadline ((some of our favorite people in the entire world are coming to visit the weekend of the 20th)), and we haven't seen much of each other together. ry got home around 6:30 and scooped me and j up and off to lowes we went. we had some things to pick up: wall putty and primer. the primer we are using is the most powerful stuff on the market:

we are hoping to start priming monday night and finish that up tuesday night.

we returned to work on the house on friday night, feeling a little more rejuvenated, because who isn't rejuvenated by a friday? on tap: more cleaning and more carpet tacks. i know, you're getting bored with carpet tacks and cleaning. guess what...so are we.

check out the filth here in the living room. you can tell where we stopped cleaning. i might have almost puked multiple times:

we also removed these beautiful curtains in our bedroom:

and the last of the carpet tacks are up:

check out these floors!

tomorrow is a big day - ry has a day off! we have to drill a hole for the deadbolt on the front door, replace the mailbox, clean the foyer, wipe down/clean upstairs walls (those are not very dirty at all), and fill many holes. so much to do, so little time...but SO much fun :)

day three (wednesday): walls, curtains and more darn carpet tack.

wednesday i went over to the house during the afternoon while gramma was on j duty. the time warner people were supposed to meet me at the house...but that didn't happen - i missed them by five minutes. apparently they aren't supposed to wait, even though i asked them to call first. anyways - i stayed for two hours to start cleaning the kitchen:

see the corner in the picture - that is years of filth (dirt, nicotine, tar). DISGUSTING. here's one happens with one sweep of a cleaner:

i headed home for dinner and ry and i returned to work on more of those darn carpet tack strips: 

also - see those beautiful curtains in that picture above?? yep - gone:

and yes, the window is held up by a broken lacrosse stick. we are going to replace both of those windows and the trim.

and here's the dining room with curtains:

and without curtains:

we also started cleaning the living room walls, which are absolutely disgusting. that was the previous owners smoking room. the walls are covered in filth. we're hoping to finish cleaning at least the downstairs by saturday night so that we can start priming the walls. we'll be using a shellac based primer that is supposed to cover all of the stains/absorb all of the odors.

lots and lots of sweat equity going into this house. the goal is to get it primed/painted by april 20th. then we can move in since all the grossness will be gone. the kitchen will eventually need to be redone, along with the bathroom...but those are projects for down the road. we'll be painting the trim on the outside of the house after we move in, too. lots to do, lots to do...it's a good thing my husband likes a good project to be working on, because this is quite a project!

the house: day two - carpet tacks

thanks to our friend, sarah, requesting documentation to see the progress we're making on the house we bought (that story coming when i have time to sit down and write it - aka never...), i'll be trying to post pictures and a quick synopsis of what we've done every day. this is also for our own good to make sure that i'm documenting, otherwise i get too carried away and forget to take pictures! come along for the ride with us, won't you?

last night we ripped out all the carpet in the house. the whole house had carpet except the kitchen/foyer. i'll post pictures of that soon. tonight we had to start the painful process of removing the tack strips that held the carpet down on the stairs. it's a slow process and we got a late start tonight -- ry didn't get home until 7 (oh the joys of buying a fixer upper during tax season...). here's a few pics of what we worked on: