Dinner on a Deck ....

At some point in time.

So the deck building started on MLK Jr bday (Jan 18th) and is still in progress. Thanks to my father-in-law Benny Enzor and his wonderful carpentry skills and helping John with the design and building.

Here is what the back of our house looked like before


You can see how far the deck comes out from the house here and see the existing concrete stoop they had before underneath.

Obviously, it's a massive improvement! Massive in the sense of this-deck-is-big! I'm imagining all the parties and get-togethers we will have, the music in the background and the chatter of happy people filling our home.


I can envision many an afternoon eating outside here and seeing this sunset over Raleigh. Peaceful little creek running behind the house, a little city garden blooming with fresh veggies, my little house, and a little bit of time with my hubby.


I'm loving my "little"s.

Running Water

Do you see what I see? This is what a new main sewage line looks like:

As unattractive as plumbing sounds, this white piping is absolutely gorgeous to me. Seriously I have never been so excited about plumbing and sewage before. Yeah, you're probably laughing at me right now...but that's okay...I'm fine with that.



Here's the little I knew about plumbing before this house: sewage stinks, crap* flows downhill, and ... what was that third thing?....oh yeah, grab your husband if you drop your phone in the toilet.


I'm learning a lot.



You may have noticed in a few of our previous photos that there are plumbing pipes in the walls. That's because some of the main lines we can use. Fortunately, we don't have to replace every single piece of plumbing. Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot to replace, just not every piece.

But soon we will have plumbing throughout our house. And that day will be another gorgeous, beautiful, yet smelly day!

Subfloor Anyone?

Here is a great view of our basement...


...through the kitchen floor.

That is what happens when your water heater leaks and you don't take the proper precautions for repairing it.


Eventually a dining room table will be over that floor. With hardwoods that will match those you see on the left in the photo.

There's something about ripping it all up, putting it back down right, and having nice pretty new floors that really excites me.

Scraping and Scraping and Scraping

Paint, that is.

We have scraped a massive amount of paint. And there's still more.


Here's John starting on the ceiling





And making a little progress:





I will update with more pictures soon of all the demo work we've been doing. I can't tell you how many people have been following this blog for all our updates! That's exciting news to me!

And if you want to see some pictures in the meantime, go over to my flickr site.

Thanks guys!!