Tile

So by now you all know we love tile and remodeling. So, in January we decided to do another big project. We had our tile expert come up from Utah to help us tile our entry way, part of our living room, eating area, kitchen, and laundry room (around 500 sq ft)! Below are our before, during, and after pictures.
This was the main reason why we did this. We really wanted to connect our entry way and our kitchen and get rid of the carpet in between. Extending the hardwood would have been very difficult so we decided to just tile it all.

We had hardwood before. It actually looks really nice from the pictures but in real life it was badly scratched up and damaged from previous owners with the wood seperating, water damage, and some burn marks. We could refinish it all but it actually would have cost about the same amount to tile it all as it would to refinish it.

This partof the hardwood was the one that was not as damaged. It was hard to pull this part up because it did look reasonably nice.

Okay, now the during pictures. WHAT A MESS THIS WAS!!! Pulling up the hardwood was hard with lots of staples to be removed and it formed a cloud of dust that covered everything in our house. It took me (Sharese) a month of wiping every inch of our home to get rid of this (early Spring cleaning). It felt like we lived in a home that was just constructed. It was an interesting experience. This kids and I basically lived upstairs away from it all because I had a hard time with it all. This is a picture of our laundry room which at the time had lanolium.

The hallway from our laundry room to the kitchen, had hardwood.

Our kitchen. Kory took out the island. That was fun.

Our living room became our storage area for everything. We managed to eat still the majority of our meals in our living room with only the fridge and microwave and BBQ.

These pictures are much better. Our new tile!!! In the end it was all worth it. It was hard, but worth it. We love the look of our tile. It is nice to see not so much wood anymore and this stuff is sturdy and will withstand our kids. We still have a lot of work to do with the baseboards and sealing the tile and painting all the boo-boos that happened along the way. We are waiting for Mom and Dad to come help with the finishing work.

We have sucessfully connected the entry way to the kitchen and we really like it. It saves our carpet.

The Kids

Kason (like Erica) is a climber. It makes him happy. He is always wanting to climb up our stairs. We usually have the gate up because he cannot come down the stairs yet but when the gate is gone, he is right there climbing up, and he is fast too. He now pulls himself upon furniture and finally figured out how to crawl on his hands and knees. He is very cute and fun and very messy. He loves to pull toys out and get them all over.

Erica likes to play with Kason while McKay is at school. He is her new buddy.

McKay finally lost his first tooth last month. Since then he also lost his second one a few days ago. It is fun to see him grow up.

Healthy, I think not

We went to the eye doctor for Kason and after examining him, she thought his good eye was stronger than the bad eye and he was using it more. This is not good. She wanted us to patch his good eye up 15 minutes a day so hopefully this will strengthen the bad eye because he will be forced to use it. If this does not work and his bad eye continues to weaken, surgery is the next option. We were hoping to wait until he started school for this, but it may be sooner now. He does not like the bandaid we put over his eye. We usually have to hold him down and keep him preoccupied or he grabs it and rips it off. They also hurt his sensitive skin when we take them off. It is not fun. We are deciding whether or not we should get just get a removable one that we can use all the time (like a pirate patch at Halloween) but then we would really have to hold down his arms because that would come right off. Maybe Mom can sew us one to try out. Hmmmm....

Poor Erica has been sick with a yucky flu. She has had fevers, a cough, and a runny nose and is spreading it to us all. She is feeling better today at least, so hopefully it will go away.