And The Verdict Is...

Well, after referring to the baby in my belly as a "he" for the past 20 weeks, we can finally start calling it a "SHE"!  Mark and I went to the doctor yesterday, and finally got to solve the big mystery.  We're having a girl!  From the very beginning, we thought we were having a boy.  Everyone I talked to at work, everyone at the dentist office, the Chinese Astrology website, etc., all thought we were going to have a boy.  Our friend Katherine, who works at Pregnancy and Newborn magazine gave us a free gender prediction test (normally retails for about $30.00) called Intelligender.  It was a urine test that is best taken in the morning, just like a pregnancy test.  If it turns green within 15 minutes, it's a boy, and if it turns orange it's a girl.  Ours turned green immediately, so that only fueled our fire for thinking this was going to be a boy.  I had a doctor's appointment the following week, so I tentatively told her about it to see what she thought.  I thought she was going to make me feel like an idiot for bring it up, but she didn't.  She said she'd heard of tests like that being somewhat accurate.  And, she said she was more likely to believe it because it said boy...because if it said girl, who's to know if it's not just picking up on my hormones or something.  Anyway, so we had our minds made up that this was going to be a boy.  We got to the doctor's office 15 minutes early, because we were both so excited.  They took my blood pressure right away, and the nurse asked me if we had gotten stuck in traffic, because my it was higher than normal.  I said no...that I was just extremely excited.  I had also had a few sips of coke to get a slight sugar buzz before going back there, so hopefully we would wake the baby up.  We wanted to make sure we would get her into a good position so we could see what we were going to have.  So, then we waited...and waited...and waited...an hour later, they finally called us back there.  By that time Mark and I were pretty ticked off.  Unfortunately, the excitement had turned sour.  I had my appointment with the regular OBGYN first, since the Ultrasound OBGYN was still backed up.  Then, we went back to see Dr. Moore.  Once we got the picture up on the screen, we weren't mad anymore.  It's so fascinating to actually see this thing move around inside me (which I'm still not really feeling, by the way).  He checked out the heart to make sure the chambers were separated as they should be, he measured and said that the baby was about 13 oz, and he checked the face for abnormalities (like cleft palate) and saw that everything was as it should be.  Finally, he got to the big news, and asked if we had a guess.  Of course, we said boy...and he said nope...it's a girl.  Immediately, he started shutting everything down and taking notes.  Mark said...are you sure?  The doctor said yes, and kept on packing it up.  Then, Mark said...are you sure you got a good look? (because he didn't seem to take very long to decide)  The doctor said, he hadn't been wrong in 7 years with someone at week 20...so we decided that he must know what he's talking about.  Needless to say, we're thrilled either way.  We know just how lucky we are to be blessed with this.  Now, we've got a long wait ahead until we actually get to meet her! 

p.s. recognition goes to Jean...for being one of the only people to guess that this would be a girl!   

First Contact

Well, the picture pretty much says it all....we're having a jellybean!

We had the first ultrasound at 7 1/2 weeks and could see little more than the beating heart right in the middle of the picture.  That's when we knew it was for real.......

Joanna is 18 weeks along and finally starting to show.  Her face is glowing from the increased blood flow and her body has crested atop the hormonal roller coaster (momentarily).  Things are good as we curiously anticipate whatever it is we created.  Our next appointment is in two weeks to find out the sex.  That's one thing Joanna and I never debated.  We wanted to know what we were having the day we found out.  We've each flip flopped about what we think it is............its 50/50 at this point.  The chinese astrology website says boy, intelligender says boy, but miss Jean is holding down the girl vote.

The next ultrasound was at 12 weeks and it gave us a much better look at what we were dealing with.  Two arms, two legs, ten fingers, that's something we could understand.  It was hard to believe how much had happened in the 4 1/2 weeks since the last time we peeked in.  See you in two weeks!

 

Ok, now that you've seen what's on the inside...............wanna see the sweet exterior?  Joanna really isn't showing that much, but she certainly feels bigger.  Not dramatic, just a plump "after the holidays" version of Joanna.  I can't wait to see the full bump!

Ole!

Mom, Dad, Dorothy and Ernie had a Cinco de Mayo party this past weekend.  Here's some pics!

Kitchen 101: Part 3

Once the floor was finished, we were ready for the granite.   We ordered the granite back in November, but it took FOREVER for it to get here.  It was shipped from China, had a lay-over in Houston, and sat at the Solaire job site http://orlando.yourcondoco.com/developments/details.cfm?devId=98 for a month.  Mark would get the guy on the phone, and he would say, "blah, blah, blah, it's going to be another week.  Well, the granite finally made it here.  We had their guys come out and install it, and the under mount sink.  Once that was done, Mark was able to do the plumbing for the faucet, disposer, and dishwasher.  Finally...we had more than one sink in the house again!  Next, we hooked up the rest of the power and could start using the kitchen again!

We got really excited when the granite went in.  It felt like we were getting close to the end, so we went shopping for the pendant lights to break the monotony of working in the kitchen.  It was kind of hard to find some that were simple, fairly small, and that didn't cost $200 each...but we did.  Things were starting to look much better, but we really had a lot of work left to do.

  It was time to face the drywall once and for all.......we had to finish up what Charles and Duane couldn't get done between cigarette breaks.  We started with the ceiling, ugh!  After three layers of mud and a house full of dust we got a pretty smooth ceiling.  Once that was done, we primed the walls and ceiling with Kilz.  Man that stuff is incredibly thick.  I think I broke down and cried at least 3 times while trying to get it on the ceiling.  That was a horrible job.  While I was doing that, Mark put the trim around the cabinets, put down the base boards, and the casing around the windows and pass-through.  After all of the trim was done, I started painting it all.  While I was doing that, Mark started tiling the back splash.  The back splash tiles are the same color range as the floor tiles, only smaller.

We took some time off for the work week and the next weekend Mark grouted the back splash while I painted the walls. 

  We still have to put the hardware on most of the cabinets and drawers, finish all the outlet/switch covers, and some put a few trim pieces on the cabinets and we'll be done.......with the kitchen.

To be completely done with the work on the inside of our house, we have to finish the drywall craters that Charles and Duane left us in the dining room, move an outlet that is in the middle of the wall down to the floor, put up crown molding, paint the crown molding and the base boards, and paint the ceiling and the walls................that's it you say?  Doesn't sound to bad to us especially after what we just went through in the kitchen.  We'll post some pictures of the rest of the monstrosity soon.  Hopefully, we can just show the finished product.  This remodeling stuff is really starting to get old, but we love what we've done so far.         

Kitchen 101: Part 2

To continue...the week before Christmas, the drywallers came.  The boards went up pretty fast, and the mess began.  Originally, Charles told us that the job would only take 2 days to complete...with walls that would be "as smooth as glass" and "ready to paint".  That sounded really fast to me, after seeing what it took Mark to get the wall perfect in the bedroom.  But, we believed that since they were professionals and they used "hot mud", that they must be able to work faster.  The first day I came home, the guys were still here working.  By 5:15, they were  out of here, but there was no mud on the walls, just the boards were hung.  At that point, we realized that this really was going to take several days.  In three days they were, what they called, finished.  We called them to tell them that they completely forgot to mud certain areas (the screws were still exposed), and many of the places that were "finished"  were not smooth at all.  So, Charles came back out. But, when I got home that day, I could see that the walls still were not smooth.  Mark gave him a call the next day,  and he sounded surprised that we were calling.  He seriously  thought he was done.  Mark circled all of the spots we weren't satisfied with (which was practically every place a screw went in the wall, and had him come out one more time.  It's no big surprise that even after this last time, the walls were not smooth.  They would have to be re mudded and sanded multiple times after that (by Mark).  After we got those guys out of our house, Mark and his dad started installing the new cabinets.  This was so nice, because it finally gave us a little more room to breathe in the rest of the house.  Until then, cabinets were all over the house, anywhere we could find a place for them.  Mark also started building the island.   Now, we could finally see the kitchen start to take shape!  The next major task we took on was tiling the floor.  It actually took us two weekends to complete.To start, Mark poured out this leveling mixture because the floor was sloping downward on the wall where the stove and fridge were going to go.  This stuff was so cool!  It started setting almost immediately, and with in a couple of hours, we had a perfectly level floor!  Next, we started mixing the mortar, which turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the whole job.  And, once you've got that stuff mixed, you can't quit until you're through with the bucket!  Laying the tile wasn't so bad, except that it killed Mark's knees (even with knee pads). What slowed us down the most was cutting all al the tiles that had to go around the corners  and  walls.  On the second weekend, as we were just about to be done...we realized that we were going to be 2 tiles short....ha!  We can laugh about it now, but after working for about 12 hours straight, this was just about enough to push Mark over the edge!  He ended up going up to the warehouse one day in the following week to pick up an extra box to finish the job, and to have a little extra.  Once we had it all layed down, we had to go around  the room, and scrape out the morter lines, so the grout would adhere to the tiles, and create clean, straight lines.  Once that was done, Mark was able to lay the grout pretty quickly, and then he was able to put the sealant on.  That's all for now.  We're much further along than these posts show.  We should be completely finished by this weekend, then we can post the rest of the pictures.  Hopefully, I'll get them up on the site soon.   

         

   

Kitchen 101: Part I

It's been a long time since we've posted anything, and it's because our computer crashed right before Christmas.  We were planning on getting a new one for Christmas anyway, but it was not cool to be left without one for almost a month.  We bought a new laptop last week, and all is well again!  We got a new Dell...a very cool little toy.  As a result, Mark and I have both been on it non-stop.  So, for those who haven't seen the kitchen pictures, we think it's about time to start showing you a little of the work we've been doing.  Unfortunately, we don't have many of the 'true' before pictures, because they weren't all backed up before the computer died.  To paint a picture for you, we had these 60's style knotted pine cabinets that were old and looked extremely dark and grimey.  This is kind of what they looked like, but ours were much worse.  These appliances are lightyears ahead of the ones we had, including the dishwasher that didn't exist in our kitchen. 

So, it all started the week of Thanksgiving.  Mark took a week off work, and his dad came over to help demo the kitchen (thanks Pops!!).  We rented a big dumpster that sat in the driveway for two days.  They started by tearing out all of the cabinets.  Then, they took down all the drywall.  We originally intended to keep the ceiling, because that seemed like it would be a huge pain to put up ourselves.  With one last piece of drywall left, a strong tug of the wallboard caused the ceiling board to rip.  At that point, Mark and his Dad decided to take the whole ceiling off.  Mark had to call me at work that day to warn me that everything in the kitchen had been ripped down to the studs.  He thought I might have a panic attack if he didn't.  It turned out to be a good thing in the end though, because it allowed us to install recessed lighting, which would have otherwise been very dificult.  Another task Mark decided to take on himself was all of the electrical work.  I think at first, he was just going to do some of the work, so it would cost us less.  But by the end, he had read up on it so much, and spent so much on materials, that he just decided to do it all himself.  Here's a picture of us in the crawlspace/basement hooking up the power for the lights.  Another task that was harder than it looked was tearing off this old siding from one of the walls in the kitchen.  The kitchen and the bedroom was an addition on this house.  That might explain the water damage in the wall in the bedroom.  When they added on, they just put drywall over the existing exterior siding.  Mark had to pry all of those boards off. It was especially difficult in the corner, where the boards ran past the wall and into the bedroom.  It's kind of hard to explain, but here's a picture.

Once the demo-dust was cleaned up we started on the floors.  The first thing Mark did was reinforce the floor joists from the basement.  It really made the floor more stable since we were planning on tiling.  Mark and his dad got up as much linoleum as they could, then they used twelve tubes of liquid nails and 500 screws to put plywood down.  Once the plywood was down we laid hardi backer board down on a bed of mortar with another 500 screws.  That's a lot of screws...........

So, the next brilliant idea we had was to tear down yet another wall!  It would allow us to cut an opening from the kitchen into the dining room.  That turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made.  We can't wait to see this all finished, because it's going to really open up the two rooms.  Here's a picture of Mark tearing in to that wall.  Here's me, freezing in flannel because we have to keep the doors open when all this dust is flying around.  Then, here's a picture of Mark, framing the opening.

      

         

Since the drywalling was now going to include the ceiling too, we decided to hire that out.  We knew we could do that ourselves, and we knew we could do a good job, but it takes a long time, and we just wanted a professional to come in and take care of it for us so we could move on to other things.  Before the drywallers could start, we had to get the insulation up on the outside walls and the ceiling.  Expecting the drywall guy on a Wednesday we cut it close and started on Tuesday night.  We ended up working on it until midnight for me and 2:00 am for Mark (I had to get up at 5:00 the next day).  Good thing we stayed up so late, because the drywallers didn't make it out until Friday......This was a sign of things to come with Charles and Duane.  This story is turning out a lot longer than I thought it would!  There's a lot more to show you, but we're going to have to split it up into multiple posts. End Part I                            

      

   

We don't want to scare you...

but we wanted to show you some before and after pictures of some of the "projects" we've been working on since this past April.  If you asked us to come visit or go do something fun this summer, we probably said no, and this is why.  The reason we were getting new siding and windows back on our first post was because we discovered that a wall in our bedroom had water damage.  Water got in the wall and rotted the studs. You could push on the wall, and the whole thing would move...very scary.  We decided to take the wall off, replace the studs, get new siding (which included new windows), and fix the roof so no more water would get in.  Sounds easy, right?   It wasn't...just ask Mark.  Mark's dad helped out with replacing the studs (which was a HUGE job, and we're so glad he was here that day).  Other than that, he was pretty much on his own. 

Here's what it looked like before.

And here are some once it was finished.  We're putting Kilz primer on the walls. 

In case you're wondering...drywalling is one of the worst jobs on earth.  We can't believe some people do this for a living.  If you see specs all over these pictures, it's the drywall dust that's been flying all over our house for the last many months.  Here is a picture that shows just how thrilled I am to be working on this on a Monday night.

Fixing the wall wasn't enough for us.  We decided we had to do something about the washer and dryer that was brilliantly designed to go in the kitchen.  In order to get those out (and make way for a dishwasher once we remodeled the kitchen), we had to divide the big closet we had in the master bedroom into two closets...one for our clothes, and one for a stackable washer/dryer.  Here's what the closet looked like before.  It was pretty long, and we just had one bar that ran across to hold clothes.

   

Here's the big divide of the closet into two...before drywall, and after.

Mark tiled the floor in the laundry closet, and he ran the plumbing and electrical work himself!  Also, here's a picture of the inside of the new "double-decker" clothes closet.

Finally, here are some after pictures.  We had been staying in the guest room while all of this work was going on.  Now, we're back in our bedroom, and we are so happy!  The next project we're tackling is the kitchen.  The destruction has already begun...but you'll have to wait until we have some after pictures to show you once we're done.  We wouldn't want to depress you too badly, looking at just the before pictures.