The gloves are off!

I am happy to report that Steve and I had pretty successful weeks. Steve lost 4.6 lbs and I lost 3.6lbs! Which means I am at 11.6 lbs towards my 25lb goal. Steve (who started after me) is at 5.6 lbs towards his 28 lb goal.

Steve was greeted with happiness and shock when he told me his numbers. I know everyone had warned me - but all I could think of was how much harder I had to work for my lbs. Not to say that he hasn't been trying. He did burn a great deal of calories doing yard work and mowing the lawn with the push mower while I vegged out.

I assume this week will be even tougher for many reasons. I am at week 4, which I hear is when there is a drop off. We are also going on vacation to Cali, which includes attending a wine tasting, rehearsal dinner and a wedding. I am already making my list of what snacks I can take to help curb my appetite. Although, I also mentioned that a trip to In and Out burger was on the menu.
Hopefully we can get lots of walks in as well.

2 week update (a little late)

So it doesn't seem fair to give an update since Steve was on day 3 of his diet this past Monday. In any case, I will share that in week 2 I lost 3.2 lbs.....grand total of 7.6 lbs. I am supremely confident that this will slow greatly in weeks 3 and 4 - but I have my secret weapon for when that happens....actually going to the gym. You know the one I pay every month so I have the option to workout. I have been doing nightly walks of 30-45 mins, but it is getting muggier and buggier every night.

I am also happy to report that Steve on Monday was down 1 lb. He also randomly posts his actual weight on his site - so I will leave it to him to update his progress. He hasn't fully adopted the ww points plan- but does check in with me to see how many points values of different foods. For the record, they give 0 pts to most veggies and salsa is also a 0-1 pt option (depending on how much you eat). Steve has taken to sliced green pepper with salsa as a good snacking option.

Even if at this week's weigh in Steve has lost tons of weight while perhaps not following as strict of diet, I will be happy. While getting to healthier weights is one of the goals this is more about enstilling healthier eating habits that will last beyond the weight loss.

Biggest Loser(s)

Ok let's just overlook my lack of updates on the house. We have started a new project called remodeling our stomachs.

2 weeks ago I decided to step out of denial about the amount of weight I have gained in the last few months. I did the mental game of - well as long as I weigh less than X, I'm not so bad. Of course I made that number 5 lbs more than I thought I was (having not weighed myself in quite a while). When I saw that I was only .5 lbs less than my inflated estimate - reality hit.

I knew I could talk myself into exercise - it was the change in diet that seemed overwhelming. I went to weight watchers to check out their online points system. They were offering one-week free trial - so I figured why not? In the first week I lost 4.4 lbs and this week I am on track to lose another 2-3lbs. My official weigh in day is Monday.

This past Friday, Steve and I met for lunch at Chipotle -one of my favorite places (pre-dieting). I was able to put together a lower point option and had to manage the rest of my food intake that day. I also decided to challenge Steve to participate in my quest to lose weight. After fattening him up, Steve agreed to take the challenge. His goal is to lose 30 lbs and mine is to lose 25. I figured I need to give myself a stretch goal (still within my ideal weight for my height) since I am a few weeks ahead of him.

No before pics at this point. Perhaps when we get a little further I can post the house and the owner before/after shots!

The Bag Lady

My mom would drive my dad to the train station when he worked downtown. My sister and I were often fascinated by the characters at the train station. One such lady always rode her bicycle and carried a bag of bags. She was affectionately named the bad lady by us and I'm sure many others who saw her around town. I remember my sister at no more than 3 or 4 claiming that she wanted to be the bag lady when she grew up. Today, my eco-friendly little sis wouldn't step foot in her house with a bag of plastic bags. She was the first in the family to start using the cloth bags at the grocery store and routinely turns down the use of a bag when carrying the items will surely do.

Since we now have a hybrid and we recently celebrated earth day, I decided to go bagless this weekend. I haven't made the effort to purchase the grocery store bags but I was able to make grocery and household purchases at meijer, walmart, target, linens n things, and lowes without a single bag. I have purchased vinyl cube baskets for the trunk so no worries of spillage.

I know that this is not a major breakthrough for many folks - but it was suprising to me how little effort it took on my part and how much it threw off the store clerks. I know my sis and bro-in-law get similar reactions when they say "no thanks - we brought our own". JC Penney went as far as saying that the bag would ensure that Dr. T was not wrongly accused of theft. I guess the receipt wasn't quite enough evidence of a legitimate purchase.

I was planning on posting some pics of the house since things are really coming together. It will have to wait a little while longer as I don't want to spoil it for those that are coming for the big day bday/open house bash.

17

cans of PAINT! I just went around and counted all of the full and partially used cans of paint/primer in out house. Bear in mind, this 17 doesn't include the 20+ cans of paint that came with the house and currently reside in the basement.
This pretty blue is waiting for the kids bathroom. It has been all primed - but needs a coat of ceiling paint. For whatever reason in the pic below, the wall looks blue - it is actually just primed.
I think we might as well get stock in Kilz primer which we are using on the future kids bedroom.

We decided to paint the ceiling white to cover up the corrugated tile looking things. The plan is to go back and fill in the brown around each of the tiles. Needless to say, this is going to be a rather tedious process....only slightly more fun than the few hours I spent cleaning the walls in this room - 30 yrs of dirt removed!

These 8 cans are the remains of the master bedroom and bathroom painting. We also have a few cans of ceiling paint and some paint for the trim to use.

Finally, here are the supplies currently sitting in the living room. The lady who we hired to paint the living room and family room is using these.

Here is her work so far. The bay window had some water damage, so we are hoping that the Kilz will keep this looking good for a while.

A strangely familiar feeling....

I woke up this morning and had this strange ache in my back. In fact my whole body was sore. I spent a good minute or 2 wondering how this happened. Until, it hit me. We spent most of Thursday night painting the kids bathroom. Hence by deduction, the physical labor had strained muscles that clearly had not been used in a while.


Suddenly it all came back to me - this familiar feeling of doing work on the house in the evenings during the week. Since we moved upstairs at Christmas we have been slowly getting things done under the gise of being ready for my bday party. We have also had a woman painting the downstairs living room and front room. The plan was to have her finish up and then we would start our work.

Not quite sure why we couldn't be working simulataneously (she's downstairs, we're upstairs). In any case we have procrastinated away several weekends. Buying a car is way more fun than painting!

So pictures to come - as I hope we are pretty close to done on the kids bathroom!

Hey Harvey!

We are pleased to announce the latest addition to our family - Harvey the Highlander Hybrid.

This is a picture of what Harvey will look like in the rain that is due today and with his new sunroof (which is being installed at the moment).

We decided to take the plunge this weekend into full yuppiehood and get not only an suv but a hyrbid. I love it and am thoroughly annoyed at the non-hybrid loaner from the dealer which requires a REAL key and gasp - doesn't tell me my mpg! I know the horror. Let's just say in a mere 5 days I have gotten used to all of the bells and whistles of Harvey.

Not to brag - but Harvey is smart and therefore only requires a button to start. He is also wise enough to show me what is behind me so that I don't run over things (btw no beeping noise either Prius owners). It is making me a more cautious driver as I am aware of the size difference between a car and an suv. I also have a fun new game to play called - drive so that you can get your mpg as high as possible.

So why the name Harvey - well first off we are big geeks and wanted alliteration AND a certain song from hs about a hamster pops into my head when ever I hear the name Harvey. 2pts if you can name both the song and the artist!

Why Katie no longer posts....

A. If she waits long enough, Steve will post for her, the house will be done and PT will have started college.

B. She is so humiliated by the pics Steve posted (yet too lazy to take them down) and is hoping the internet will forget that she was the instigator of this blog.

C. When not working, she spends all of her time with the Gilmore Girls and her new best friend- a Cricut machine.

D. All/most of the above

On to the future Kids bathroom

I will post some 'moved into' pictures of the master bedroom but right now it has a lived in look. So moving onto the kids bathroom.

Here is the beginning of the work taken last summer with a trench in the middle of the room for our new plumbing. On the opposite wall studs and plumbing go in for our laundry. And of course we needed the "little inspector" to make sure that everything was up to standards. Up next, the vanity's and bathtub go in.

And the beat goes on

It does help that we play music while we work. We agree on most stuff but sometimes I need a little extra push from something heavy like Rammstein - especially if we have a 'heated discussion' about what should be done first or how fast something should take. (Katie is a lot better at getting 3 things done is the same amount it takes me to do one - but I get more detailed, so it all works out.) Happy wife - Happy life.

So we flash forward a bit (thanks to Katie's persistence). We move our bedroom upstairs into the kids room and finish painting the master bedroom, closet and I start working on painting the master bathroom.

Master Bedroom, Craft Room

So moving right along - some chipping and wallpaper removal with a pinch of plastering.









We try to keep track of each stage but we missed a few points. Getting the wallpaper off in the Master Bedroom was rough. There aren't a lot of shots of the process because we were just happy to get it done. The picture of the cabinet is the one that used to be in the 2nd floor kitchen (now the Kids Bathroom). It will be well used in Katie's Craft Room.

Slow Progress

We are further along than these photo's indicate but they show some progress of the Master Bathroom. All the tile is in and the shower basin is set.

Now for a few fixtures.









Along with the general mess that comes with a house renovation. And on the the stripping! Stripping of the old wall paper from our Master Bedroom. I'm not sure if I am allowed to post a picture of the Mrs. as we both tended to get a bit messy.

We are alive.

Along with painting, putting up shelves in our closet and getting ready for more contractors this weekend, we (or maybe just me) will be updating our blog.

Much love.

So far behind...

I think I must have taken a picture of every hole that was made in our house over the last few months. Then when each of those holes were patched, made into an outlet or had a new fixture installed - I took another picture. Seriously - I went over board. So here I will share a few of my favorites.


The master bath - with the right tile!

My scrapbooking cabinet in its new home.

The opening to the old kitchen all patched up.

The tub installation in progress..

Slightly Distracted

Here is just a quick tease. We have been busy but we will upload the progress.

We're still here

The House (phase 1) is almost complete - I would post photos but we have been kinda lazy and not downloaded the photos yet and my wife has the camera with her at a scrap booking weekend. The home equity loan is also almost complete, but as you will see in near future posts with pictures it is well worth it. The plumbing is almost complete, electrical has a few goofs which are going to be corrected and now its our turn. We (and by we I mean Katie) has to scrap a lot of wall paper off, fix some cracks, prime and paint. Whoa. That is a lot of work she has a head of herself. Anyway, we will keep you posted.

Labor Day

There has been tons of labor at our house as we get further into the rennovations.

Unfortunately there has also been a great deal of non-house related labor ie the kind that helps pay for the professionals. I have tons of pictures and zero time to write about them.

We did take some time this weekend to attend the Naperville Last Fling, enjoy our front porch, celebrate PorTillo's 4th birthday, see a parade and give several tours of the house in progress.

Hopefully I will be able to catch up on my blogging in the next few weeks....

New views

We haven't been impacted too much from the work being done on the house. For the most part, all of the dust and dirt has been contained upstairs.

The one exception is in the bathroom downstairs. Since the plumbing is stacked, they replaced the pipe that connects from downstairs to upstairs. It required cutting a hole in the downstairs ceiling which enabled us to take these shots...

Me in the bathroom downstairs while Steve is in the bathroom upstairs (taken from both vantage points). I know we are 2 wild and crazy kids!!!

Other than a great deal of dirt and heat getting through which forced us to move all toiletries out of the bathroom - this wasn't a big deal...until today.

Today when I went to do laundry in the basement, I noticed water on the floor. Apparently there is some kind of blockage which now prevents us from using any water upstairs. The washer drains right there in the basement. Fortunately, my mom teaches close by and was able to get us access to the school bathroom and we will be staying at their house tonight.

Never missing a moment to joke about it. Steve proclaimed that our anniversary had really gone down the crapper. My reply, "Yes, it's a real pisser."

Hallway

Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture of this hallway or the bookshelf that used to be on the other side. Steve captured it on video - but it will be a while before I figure out how to splice and post parts of that.

This is the hallway that leads into the existing kitchen (left) and living room (right). The opening that is shown below was blocked off so that you had to pass through either the kitchen or the living room to get anywhere. That makes sense for an apartment, but not really for a single family home. We had suspected that this was once a hallway because of the cased in bookshelves on the other side.


If you look at the opening on the far left in this second picture, you can see that it was framed the same as the doorway to its right, which goes into the kitchen. Since we are closing off the kitchen opening by putting in a bathroom and using the existing living room as a bedroom - it made perfect sense to get rid of the bookshelf and return it to a hallway. It was hard for me to let go of the bookshelf (so hard I didn't take a single picture of it before demo). Having the kitchen cabinet in the soon to be reading room will certainly more than make up for the lost storage space.

Kitchen Cabinet - before and in progress

In the existing kitchen, there was a built-in cabinet (pictured below). Because this was my great grandmas, I wanted to find a way to keep it . The first thought was to move it downstairs and incorporate it into a future kitchen remodel.


The very top few feet of the cabinet (shown below) would have to be removed, because the kitchen and dining room downstairs have ceilings that are a good 2 ft shorter than upstairs.

When the cabinet was removed in 2 pieces, it became apparent that the only way to get this thing downstairs would be to take it apart into more pieces or send it off the back porch (like was done with the blue bathroom furniture). Neither of these seemed like good options. So we decided to find a home for it upstairs in the reading room. Basically it will be on the same wall as it was previously just on the other side.



Right now both pieces are in the kids' bedroom and will need to be put together in the reading room.

Below is what it looked like in the kitchen after this was taken out. The first shot is the floor and the second is of the wall. As shown in the bathroom/laundry room pics - this is where a toilet, bathtub and linen closet will go.

Steve is giving me a hard time about the amount of blogging I have done today. What better way to celebrate your anniversary, right?