September 2020

We made it through the month of September! It was a crazy one!!! I look back now and wonder how we survived but we did and I'm just grateful that month is over!! Between homeschooling, selling a house, remolding, moving, a pandemic and just living I really don't know how we did it. My mom sure got lots of calls with me crying and pulling my hair out. We basically went MIA and I had to turn my phone off so I was not bothered with anything. Even though it was a struggle we made it through and I'm so grateful to have understanding kids that just went with the flow.  Timing could not have been better for us.  The day we closed on our new house was the day we accepted an offer on our Theresa house Aug. 26th.  It was perfect we got our keys and then had 30 days to be out of Theresa and into Hummingbird. That gave us 30 days to get all the big projects done. We also had a month of basically living at 2 houses which was interesting and tiring but like I said we survived and now looking back I only remember the happy stuff. 

Aubrey's PE teacher is great this year. You would think PE would go on the back burner for virtual school but her teacher has figured out a lot of fun ways to keep the kids active. One challenge was to go on a mile run so you know I was down with doing that with Aubrey. We started September off right with a mile run on 9/1. Aubrey did wonderful and this made me excited to have a future running partner.

Our new pool looks amazing. We have got to enjoy it pretty much everyday which has been awesome!

        We decided that a big transformation we wanted to do was to get new floors through out our new house. This was a huge expense but we learned from our last house that we loved it so much more once we did the floors we loved. We also learned that putting in wood floors while living in a house is very difficult so if we wanted new floors put in this house we should do it before we officially moved in.  We selected beautiful wood floors that were similar to the ones we had on Theresa.  The original plan was for Spencer to put in the floors.  Once we started demo and realized that 3,600 square feet of flooring is a lot more than 1,000 square feet we decided we needed some help. We were able to find Jose.  He didn't speak any English but lucky for us spencer speaks Spanish so they were able to communicate and we were able to hire him for all floor demoing, laying the floors and the baseboards. Spencer's job is amazing because he was able to take lots of time off or work while he was working on the house. He was able to work with Jose so we could get the end product that we wanted. Having Jose allowed for Spencer to be able to take on more projects, which believe me was a lot!!!

        Spencer has great ideas but one of his best ideas was to convert the super long living room into two different spaces. When we came and saw the house the original owners had like 3 couches in the Livingroom and it was really wasted space. Spencer said "Why don't I build a wall in the middle with French doors and on one side we could have an office and the other side be our living room/music space." It was genus!!! He wanted to get the framing up before we did the floors in there so he went straight to work. With the experience of putting up a wall at our other house Spencer had lots of confidence that he could do this wall pretty fast. He is amazing!!!! 

            Something we didn't notice until we got the keys was that every door, trim, crown molding and baseboards were cream!!!! This was not going to work since we wanted white.  After doing more research we found out that not only were all the doors and trim (40+) cream they used an oil based paint which if you paint over with regular paint it will just peel off, this was a huge issue. In order for the paint to not peel we had to prime each door, trim around the door/windows and crown molding then paint it. It was such a daunting job.  We had a few paint people come and give us estimates.  We even had two different painters take a door to their shops to do a sample and when they brought them back both peeled so we didn't feel comfortable that they would do what we asked, primer, and then paint.  After all that we decided if we wanted them done how we wanted then we had to just do it ourselves. We went and bought a paint gun and went to work. It was really hard work. I praise once again my amazing husband for having the patients and determination to get all those doors painted. My job was to prime and paint all the trim around all the doors and windows. I also did all the crown molding.  It was pretty scary over the vaulted entry way.  The nice thing was that since we were redoing the floors we didn't have to be super careful.  The kids helped taking all the doors off and numbering them all. 

While Spencer sprayed all of them in our master bedroom.  

Spraying made it go on more even and gave the doors a much more professional look but when he was spraying it got every where!

               One of the weeks Titi came out to help with some projects and to see our progress.  She also helped staying at the old house with the kids while they did their school work.  Juggling life at this time was super hard so it was a blessing to have her here for a couple days.  It was also such a blessing to have the two homes at this time. Since our new house was a huge construction zone it was great to be able to come home to Theresa and still have a normal house to live in.

I found that when the kids had a friend at the new house I could get a lot more done.  We would let them invite a friend over and they would play in the pool and the new movie room while we painted, and painted and painted some more.

        One of the days Spencer had to be at his office and I needed to be at the house while Jose worked so I spent the entire time in the movie room painting it gray. It came out so nice and we loved the color.

    I did it just in time because later that night we had the new carpet installed.  This is our only room with carpet.  It is so soft and we love it! 

                So proud of our kids and their determination to keep working on school virtually. 

Since Aubrey had a 4.0 for the entire year of 6th grade we wanted to do something very special for her so we bought her a new TV for her new room. She and dad got to go shopping and pick it out she was very excited! 

  Picking paint colors is always hard.  We went with this blue color for the laundry room and we are very happy with it. 

                                                                    Playdate with Wesley.

  Since we have such a big movie room now we decided to sell our other movie chairs and get this beautiful large sectional for the space. It looks great and it felt so nice to actually have a place to sit at our new house!! 

                                Afternoon swims were a must after all the hard work every day.

 Once all the demo on the floors was done it felt amazing! Seeing the new floors start to be laid was even more amazing!!!! We LOVE them so much. 

                    We are very excited to have 3rd car garage that we are turning into our home gym.

                One of our first big transformations was our front door. I was very excited to get rid of the old fashion gold door that everyone in the neighborhood has and change it to a more farmhouse door. We still need to finish the stucco around the door but it's such a big difference. The neighbors all love it and us too.  It really gives the front of the house a huge upgrade. 

                                                                            Before

    After

Another painting project of mine was I painted the cream mantel and the gold on the fireplace. I got a before picture but not an after once I painted the gold to black.

This is the before with cream...

This is the after with the white mantel but still the gold...

In the next few after's you can see the gold has been painted.

This was the before entry way when we got the keys.... 

And here is the after....

 One of these days we will update our bathrooms but for now the new flooring really makes them look more modern.

                                                                             Before.....

After.....

Aubrey is one stylish girl.  We gave each of the kids a budget for their rooms and they have had a great time picking stuff out.  Aubrey's theme is black and white.  She picked out this super cool bed on amazon and we had fun working together to build it.

Not only was the flooring and the door painting a must the kitchen need a facelift bad!!! We really hated the cream/yellow cabinets and all the white appliances.  We went to a cabinet place and getting all new cabinets was very expensive and kind of not needed since the cabinets them selves were in good condition.  We decided that we really just needed to change the fronts.  We had a lady from Home Depot come out and give us an estimate for just fronts and she wanted $24k!! I knew we could do it cheaper.  My dad gave us the idea to contact my uncle in Sacramento that is a contractor and specializes in cabinets. So we called him up and with his contracting license was able to get us a great deal on cabinet and drawer fronts.  They came as a wood color so we had to prime and paint them all ourselves we also had to put the hinges and hang them but it was a HUGE savings and made the project affordable. We were so excited to take down those old cabinet doors.  I had the idea to replace the small cabinet doors at the top and put one long cabinet door it came out amazing as you will see in the next couple posts.  Spencer sprayed all the backs of the cabinets.  It felt so good to cover up all the cream and start to see our airy white kitchen starting to come out.

Saturday September 19th was our official move in day! We rented a Uhaul and called on some friends to come and help us move.

It was so nice we had like 10 guys here helping us move. One guy brought his little ones and they helped too. It was a big job getting all our big furniture here but they did it and it was really making our new house feel more like home.

Aubrey was so ready to be done with her pink room and ready for her teenage room.

I loved seeing our stuff make it's way over...

Our first night was so fun.  We all just crashed since it was such a busy day.

The location of our new house is the best! We take so many walks over to Starbucks for a treat!

Our gym is amazing!!! We had all this stuff at the other house it was just berried under so much we couldn't use it all. 

Enjoying our spa tub...

Another one of our fabulous ideas was to get rid of the cabinets in the laundry room and make a mud room off of the garage.  I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the before! Fail!! We made the arear that had cabinets a family command center which came out super cool.... 

and then on the other side we took the closet doors off and made a bench area to put on shoes and hang backpacks.

The kids were so excited to have their first slumber party at our new house Friday September 25th.

Titi was actually out that same night and for the weekend.  It was crazy that we had us 4 with our 2 dogs, Titi, Lucy, Presley, Mia and Wesley and our house didn't feel full at all.  We are so happy to have so much more space now.

I was very grateful that Titi came out.  It was so fun to finally be in our new house but we still had so much work at the Theresa house.  I can't even remember how many trips we did back and forth moving small stuff. Living in a house for 14 years you accumulate so much stuff!! All our closets and hidden places were so stuffed it took so long to get it all over here.  Titi helped kick my butt into gear and we tackled all the cabinets and closets.  We also did lots of cleaning. 

Saturday night Titi watched the kids and Spencer and I got to go on a date to Thai we even got to walk there. 

Sunday morning we walked to Starbucks for breakfast.

Sunday afternoon we had our first family party! Nana, Papa, Gaga and Murphy came down to celebrate all their birthdays and to see all the progress on the new house.  It was a lot of fun hosting a party here.

We loved having everyone here.  It was so fun celebrating and enjoying some much needed family time.

We had to turn over the keys of the Theresa house in on Tuesday September 29th so Monday night we went and did a family farewell to the house we loved for so many years, it was bitter sweet.  We were so excited for our new house but emotional saying good bye to our old house.  I was having a hard time saying good bye.  It was hard realizing this wasn't our home anymore and remembering all our huge milestones we had there like bringing the babies home from the hospital and all the holidays we had there.  I was also very emotional thinking about Deuce in that house.  I worried about his spirit and hoping it would follow us to our new house.  4220 Theresa Lane will always hold a special place in my heart and we will never forget all that was there. 

Tuesday September 29th Carter was getting his new appliance in his mouth so we did a before picture.

He gets to experience a head gear now...

He did really great so I took him for a treat after...

On Wednesday September 30th I took Carter downtown to rent his new instrument for band.  Carter has decided to do percussion.  We rented his bells from the music store downtown. He is excited for band.  

Now that all our stuff is at our new house I can start decorating! Yay!!!

This is the dinning room before..

and after...

September was a blur! So crazy but so rewarding! We can't wait to do more projects and see more transformations. We also can't wait to make so many new fun family memories in our new home on Hummingbird Ct.