Hanging in Brandon's new office

Brandon's getting more settled into his new office space. We spent some time out there this weekend enjoying the new swanky futon.

Bath time

I'm SEW excited!

With Brandon moved into the new garage office, I'm working on making the office inside the house a fun and creative space for myself.  Brandon got me an amazing quilters table for Christmas and we finally got it put together this week. It's awesome, thanks Brandon for getting it and putting it together! I can't wait to get the space organized to start sewing fun projects asap.

I got a six cube storage shelf to start getting things organized. I am sharing the space with Hunter too so we put up her tent and I got her some fun animal storage boxes. You can see them in the background of the first picture below. We now have space to paint too!

I have to share this space with my computer desk since it'll be my work space when I go back to work in a few weeks. That desk is a disaster area, will post more pictures of the finished room soon. I'm going to paint one wall with diamonds (argyle pattern) but still deciding on colors... thinking about green and turquoise.

Here is Hunter's first masterpiece from our creative space. It's a dragon. :)

A day in the life of Leo

eat.poop.sleep.cry.poop.eat.sleep.pee.eat.poop.cry.sleep.eat.sleep.poop.eat.poop.pee.sleep.poop.eat.sleep.eat.poop.sleep.eat.sleep.poop.eat.poop.sleep.poop.eat.sleep.eat.poop.pee.sleep.eat.sleep.smile.eat.sleep.poop.eat.sleep.eat.poop.cry.sleep.eat.sleep.cry.poop.eat.poop.sleep.poop.eat.sleep.eat.cry.poop.sleep.eat.sleep.pee.poop.eat.poop.sleep.poop.eat.sleep.eat.poop.cry.sleep.

The one smile makes the rest totally worth it.

 

 



The office

It started with a vision and it turned into a room.

That is my original drawing of taking one half of one stall in our two car garage and making a 10x10 foot room in the space. Brandon and I were sharing a small office space inside the house and with both of us working from home more, it was getting too cramped. Originally the garage office space was going to be mine, but along the way it became Brandon's. It made more sense for a few reasons, but mostly it's just that he's louder at night playing World of Warcraft talking to his friends when the kids are sleeping so we've kicked him to the garage. :)

We started prepping the garage area in March of last year but didn't end up really doing the work until about August or September. I unfortunately didn't take a before picture, but this is what it looked like after we removed the shelves along the wall and packed it up in the tahoe to take to the dump.

All along we thought, "Oh, we'll just frame a few walls, sheet rock and we'll be done!". Hahah, NOT! But isn't that how all home projects go, thinking it won't take as long as it actually does.

First up was framing the wall. Which I thought sounded fairly simple but there is a lot of math involved and I hate math. We watched a lot of videos online before we attempted putting a frame together and I put it all down on paper first. I originally wanted to also put a window in the room so framing a door and window on one wall was a fun task. I spent alot of time looking for the perfect old style window too, finally finding it a rebuilding center in McMinnville. It's a bummer we decided last minute not to put up the window, but it makes more sense to put another window in the garage on an outside wall than on the office room wall. We'll tackle that window project another day.

Here is our framed walls after the door was installed. Another fun task that took many hours with Mark, Teri and Brandon working on it.

Next up was the sanding and staining of the existing garage wall (which can be seen in the above picture). Brandon spent ALOT of time on this, alot more than I ever would have, but the wall turned out amazing and well worth the time. Many nights sanding, sanding sanding and staining staining staining. All those little things take more than one step, I think that's the part people (or it's just me) don't account for.

We still have to frame in the window on the existing garage wall, but you can see that the stain looks awesome. You can also see what the next big step was, the electrical work. Mark and Brandon spent a lot of time running electrical into the room from the garage. It looks really awesome and industrial with the metal conduit running on the wood wall.

Along with the electrical came the light fixture. Brandon spent a lot of time actually picking the light fixture that he wanted and then a lot of time wiring it with the assistance of Mark. Turns out we had exposed live wiring in our attic space above the garage, that's not good!

The light looks really slick though and it's on it's own light switch separate from the other garage lights.

Then came the fun task of drywalling. Brandon and I attempted to do this ourselves at first but I was very pregnant so holding up the giant sheets of drywall wasn't very easy. We had the help of Brandon's friend Brandon Burns to come help put it up as well as Teri. Teri also helped put the first coat of spackling on the joints and I finished it off with two coats and all the sanding. Not a fun task.

Then it was time to paint. We primed all the walls and ceilings and then painted the walls a nice dark grey color and the ceiling a lighter grey color. Brandon went with the No VOC primer and Low VOC paints which made me happy. I did alot of the painting while the kids were sleeping and Brandon was back at work. A few weeks after having a baby, I was happy to start doing something other than sitting and feeding when I got the chance. :)

Brandon painted the floor with a concrete paint and after that we painted all the trim and crown molding the same color as the ceiling. We painted it before nailing it up so here it is all layed out on the horses.

After the trim was up Brandon did some touchups and some caulking of the joints and then came the insulation.

Brandon called on his cousin Brett to help out and they got quite a bit done with Brandon finishing it up the next night.

We have yet to finish the outside but once the inside was move in ready, he got to moving! :)
 

After he got his computer moved out there he discovered the wireless internet had terrible reception. He had to get a 250 foot network cable to run from our inside office up through the attic and down into the garage office. I'm glad it was him crawling up there in the attic and not me, I've seen one too many scary attic movies.

We'll post some fully finished shots once we get the outside walls complete and I'll post some pictures of my inside office space once I get it all organized. We're both super excited to have our own spaces and when we move onto our next house in 3-5 years, we'll definitely be needing that extra space from the start. :)

Trip to the beach

I wanted (needed) to get out of the house last week so I asked Teri and Bethany if they'd like to go to Seaside to feed the seals. We left early Monday morning and got out there for a few hours. The drive there was a bit scary going over the mountains, lots of ice and snow built up on the road. I snapped this shot from the back seat, but you can see it was a winter wonderland around us.

Seaside is a cute little town and they have a small aquarium on the beach front.

They have a pool area where you can feed the seals that live there. I bought a little tray of fish heads to feed them but none of us wanted to touch them so Teri just tossed it in. I had Leo in the front carrier and  it was hard to snap pictures of the seals but I got one of an adorable seal and a cute one of the girls.

I didn't spend too much time inside the aquarium because I had to go feed Leo but I got a few shots of the awesome octopus they have. He's in such a small space though, I feel bad for him. I think I see a bit of loneliness on his face...

Sad octopus face

 We didn't spend much time on the beach because it was a bit cold out, but enough time to snap a few pictures. It was so quiet there since it's winter and was a Monday, that beach is usually packed, especially in the summer time.

Bethany and Hunter

We had a nice lunch at Mo's in Cannon Beach (15 minutes from Seaside) and the girls all got a zipper pull with our names. Well, there wasn't a name for Teri so she got the "Sweet!" one. :)
Leo modeled them for me.

I snapped this last picture from the car on our way home, the sun was coming out and turning into a gorgeous winter beach day. Too bad we couldn't have stayed longer, but still a nice quick beach trip, definitely a great way to spend a Monday!

The first month of Leo

I take alot of pictures (if that isn't already obvious), so here are a bunch of Leo in the first month.

Of course I have to have a few of big sister Hunter too.