 |
Our family, Mt. Washington, NH July 31, 2010 |
Hello there! Thanks for stopping by! I want to take a couple of minutes and introduce myself and give a little background to this blog. I'm Krista, and Hubs and I have a daughter, Lil C, who turns 4 this summer.
Hubs is in the Navy, and although his boat is in the shipyard right now, he still manages to be gone from home 60-80 hours a week. Other than tearing apart our house and making it beautiful (...I hope....someday...), his hobbies include repairing cars, tinkering on our cars (I define "tinkering" as: a man's desire to mess with that which is NOT broken, and claim to be making it better, so his wife allows him to spend the time and money he needs in order to validate his desire to get dirty and oily and play with all his toys tools), chopping his motorcycle, driving all our vehicles (we have 4 that run and 2 that don't - for now), and reading tech manuals for some light reading - really, I think he just likes the pretty pictures.
I am a stay-at-home mom, with previous working backgrounds in such prestigious areas as nursing assistant and Wal-Mart cashier. I enjoy cooking and baking, although I'm not so big on the EATING part. I'm good at making a whole pan of brownies, eating half of one brownie, and then offering the other 90% of the pan to Hubs. I enjoy reading sci-fi, although I couldn't name the last book I read, due to my Facebook addiction. I am considering starting a garden this year, but, well... check out my next few posts and I bet you'll forget all about building a garden, too! My guilty-pleasures hobby is driving the cars that Hubs buys and tinkers with. We belong to a couple car clubs, and our family has been known on more than one occasion to show up with two vehicles to car shows and get-togethers. I even took a ten-thousand mile trip during the fall of 2009 while Hubs was deployed. I took then-2-year-old Lil C and packed her up and off we went for seven weeks to see every relative we could possibly draw into the family tree, as well as friends I haven't seen since college. And I loved every minute of it - from the flat cornfields of the midwest to the Rockies to the 110-degree Southwest and the humid "Third Coast".
And now, back to the blog! We bought this house in April of 2010, just over one year ago. It had been vacant for nearly two years, and neglected for many years before that, we suspect. Over the next 2-3 years, we expect to tackle:
- gutting the basement to concrete and studs (and leaving it that way!), transforming it from a shoddily-finished basement apartment to a utility area;
- filling in the in-ground swimming pool;
- adding geothermal, solar, propane, and forced hot air systems into the house;
- adding a half-bathroom on the main floor (there is only 1 bathroom, and it's upstairs);
- gutting the main floor to studs (in order to re-insulate), then making it all pretty and finished as in our joint mind, complete with built-ins, efficient heating, pretty paint, upgraded appliances, finishing touches, and Hubs-custom-designed hardwood floors;
- gutting the bathroom upstairs, redrawing its lines, stealing from the master bedroom, and creating TWO bathrooms, back to back, one for guests/kids, and a separate master suite.
Oh, and of course, all the little stuff that EVERY homeowner has to do once in a while - roofing, siding, new windows, resurfacing the driveway, maintaining (or is it retaming?) the mature landscaping, and reminding pests of ALL sizes that the shed does indeed belong to humans....
Lastly, I'll throw out there to anyone out there nearly having a heart attack on my behalf - we've done this before. And let me be the first to assure you - it was HELL. But it was chock full of life and marriage lessons, as well as Lessons in Construction for Krista. I was CLUELESS about what's behind those plain white walls. Now I know. Now I know what the next step is - at every step of the way. So, we're beginning again, taking our lessons with us, and trying again! Wish us luck!
So, that's our happy little family! Thanks for looking in on us, hope you find our lives interesting and amusing, and comments make me feel loved!
