Welp, here's our final product. We've had our share of
bumps along the road of
remodeling/residing, repainting and etc., but it's done now. The portapotty is gone, the dumpster is gone and all the ladders and etc.. In the last year and a half we've had a new roof put on,
remodeled 3 bathrooms, and resided and repainted our house, along with new garage doors and rain gutters. We were told that the siding would only take @ week and a half and it ended up taking an entire month - maybe longer. Then the painting was supposed to take another week and a half and it ended up taking 3 weeks. Patience has NEVER been my strong suit, so this has certainly been a challenge - BUT it's over now.
YA-
HOO!!!
I love my new garage lights that Jen helped me with :). Too bad one of them arrived with a broken piece of glass (magnify this picture and look on the back side to see if you can tell I taped it back together on the under side), so Jen called (because she was able to use her "professional discount" for me) to see if we could get another piece of glass to replace it with. The company said they'd send one out. The piece never came - so she called
again. Now they tell her that since they were discontinued (they were on clearance) they can't get just the glass, but that they will send another whole fixture, and that we didn't need to send the broken one back - so
NOW a big frustration had turned into - a nice fixture on my back deck ")
From the front view you can't tell it was taped together, so it's all good.
We had our new rain gutters put on Saturday - which was a good thing. With the gully washer rain that we have been having off and on, with
out rain gutters, our fresh black organic mulch had been splashed up all over our trim paint - to where they had to repaint it because it wouldn't wash off. You can't really tell here, but the gutters match our cream fleece trim color perfectly! Other than the gutter guys using bad/crude language, we thought they did a pretty good job. . . . until we saw. . .
this little number on the front of our house by the living room window -
WHOOPS A DAISY!!
I was trying to show our red front door a little better here.
Now my
fuchsia colored geraniums clash with my door - how embarrassing!! I guess I'll need to plant a different color next year. Notice the contrasting paint on the base and accent.
We had new garage doors put on too, which we love - it's so nice to have natural light in our garage now, and the new garage door opener on the large door is so much quieter. Our bump in the road with those, was that we had ordered the doors with grids to match our house windows, and a keypad, and they came
withOUT grids and NO keypad. It was all resolved, but just another frustration.
Then there was the door knob/handle; Lee had had a difficult time a while back putting on the new one for some reason, but had gotten it on none the less. When Darrell took it off he said it looked as if whoever had put it on had had a hard time, but that he would do his best to get it back on right. Well, he tried and he tried and he tried until his nerves were shot. He decided to just go and
BUY a new one (as close to the old one as possible) so he could finally be done with our house. Lee and I left for Nellie's soccer game on So.
Whidbey to come home to the blue painters tape still over the hole where the door knob was supposed to go.
Hmmm. Come to find out, it was just off a little and would have shown 1/2" of the hole, and he would have had to drill a new hole in the door too, so he looked and looked to find ANOTHER one - but to no avail. He ended up going to a locksmith and having it "adjusted" so it WOULD fit. WHEW! And all of that just for the doorknob.
Lee had tried to put one of these "peepholes" in a while back when he was putting the door knocker and etc. on and I told him we didn't need another hole in the door and it was fine without it -
but, since he's Lee
Soptich, he just did it anyway after our door was painted. He SAID he wanted Nellie to be safe when she's home by herself :)
Darrell had left the "frame" looking part of the garage windows, around the grids, white and I didn't care for that look - it was too much white with the cream trim, so I painted the "frame" parts of the windows Friday and Saturday, (all 12 of them) and I like them a lot better.
THEN my defiant husband moved our fence!!! We had had to take it down for the residing/repainting jobs to be done. Lee had suggested moving the fence when it came time to put it back up, but I thought it would be best to just leave it where it had always been . . . like I said . . . he's LEE
SOPTICH and he does
whatEVER he wants :).
Hopefully he'll be able to get this fixed with proper
fence posts and etc. this next Saturday. For now, it's sort of put together with chewing gum and bailing wire :).
The cedar under the covered porch is new too. We still need to put some finish on it, but I love the way it turned out.
Even though Lee
is a naughty/defiant husband, he built this plantar box for me last Easter when I was feeling a bit Debbie Downer-
ish and filled it with flowers, which I thought was very nice. It's nice to finally be able to return it to it's place of honor now that this whole house mess is done.
The End
The other day I went to empty my kitchen garbage can and found a few tiny shredded wrappers on the floor behind the can - which made me a little suspicious that we may have a little MOUSE running around (we don't have cats anymore you know), so Lee set a trap and 
I don't know why but this scene just melted my little heart the other night when we had Emilee's girls. Maybe it's all the fond memories I have of my girls playing with "babies" when they were little. Addison came walking out of the playroom with this baby and carried her all over the place. Here she's having a good look at her (in the playroom) :)
Then she moved on to my kitchen cabinets - look what she found? Goofy Girl!
Scott and I were at Lowe's a while back looking for a new barbecue, and he laid eyes on this puppy and HAD to have it. He and Sarah worked an extra barbecue event at the golf course in Snoqualmie where Sarah worked part time over the Summer, and went back and made the big purchase of this electric fireplace that actually throws out quite a bit of heat. I saw them at Costco today for $40.00 cheaper than he got his for, but - who knew? Anyway, he loves it - just call him Grandpa Barrett :)
I really couldn't believe I was doing this but the belt broke on our rider mower while Scott was using it, so while I was up there today he had me hop on so I could steer the mower, and he pulled it up to the garage with his truck. I must confess I felt a little white trashish, but whatever works right? :)
Welp, here's our final product. We've had our share of bumps along the road of remodeling/residing, repainting and etc., but it's done now. The portapotty is gone, the dumpster is gone and all the ladders and etc.. In the last year and a half we've had a new roof put on, remodeled 3 bathrooms, and resided and repainted our house, along with new garage doors and rain gutters. We were told that the siding would only take @ week and a half and it ended up taking an entire month - maybe longer. Then the painting was supposed to take another week and a half and it ended up taking 3 weeks. Patience has NEVER been my strong suit, so this has certainly been a challenge - BUT it's over now.
I love my new garage lights that Jen helped me with :). Too bad one of them arrived with a broken piece of glass (magnify this picture and look on the back side to see if you can tell I taped it back together on the under side), so Jen called (because she was able to use her "professional discount" for me) to see if we could get another piece of glass to replace it with. The company said they'd send one out. The piece never came - so she called again. Now they tell her that since they were discontinued (they were on clearance) they can't get just the glass, but that they will send another whole fixture, and that we didn't need to send the broken one back - so NOW a big frustration had turned into - a nice fixture on my back deck ")
From the front view you can't tell it was taped together, so it's all good.
We had our new rain gutters put on Saturday - which was a good thing. With the gully washer rain that we have been having off and on, without rain gutters, our fresh black organic mulch had been splashed up all over our trim paint - to where they had to repaint it because it wouldn't wash off. You can't really tell here, but the gutters match our cream fleece trim color perfectly! Other than the gutter guys using bad/crude language, we thought they did a pretty good job. . . . until we saw. . .
this little number on the front of our house by the living room window - WHOOPS A DAISY!!
I was trying to show our red front door a little better here.
Now my fuchsia colored geraniums clash with my door - how embarrassing!! I guess I'll need to plant a different color next year. Notice the contrasting paint on the base and accent.
We had new garage doors put on too, which we love - it's so nice to have natural light in our garage now, and the new garage door opener on the large door is so much quieter. Our bump in the road with those, was that we had ordered the doors with grids to match our house windows, and a keypad, and they came withOUT grids and NO keypad. It was all resolved, but just another frustration.
Then there was the door knob/handle; Lee had had a difficult time a while back putting on the new one for some reason, but had gotten it on none the less. When Darrell took it off he said it looked as if whoever had put it on had had a hard time, but that he would do his best to get it back on right. Well, he tried and he tried and he tried until his nerves were shot. He decided to just go and BUY a new one (as close to the old one as possible) so he could finally be done with our house. Lee and I left for Nellie's soccer game on So. Whidbey to come home to the blue painters tape still over the hole where the door knob was supposed to go. Hmmm. Come to find out, it was just off a little and would have shown 1/2" of the hole, and he would have had to drill a new hole in the door too, so he looked and looked to find ANOTHER one - but to no avail. He ended up going to a locksmith and having it "adjusted" so it WOULD fit. WHEW! And all of that just for the doorknob.
Lee had tried to put one of these "peepholes" in a while back when he was putting the door knocker and etc. on and I told him we didn't need another hole in the door and it was fine without it - but, since he's Lee Soptich, he just did it anyway after our door was painted. He SAID he wanted Nellie to be safe when she's home by herself :)
Darrell had left the "frame" looking part of the garage windows, around the grids, white and I didn't care for that look - it was too much white with the cream trim, so I painted the "frame" parts of the windows Friday and Saturday, (all 12 of them) and I like them a lot better.
THEN my defiant husband moved our fence!!! We had had to take it down for the residing/repainting jobs to be done. Lee had suggested moving the fence when it came time to put it back up, but I thought it would be best to just leave it where it had always been . . . like I said . . . he's LEE SOPTICH and he does whatEVER he wants :).
Hopefully he'll be able to get this fixed with proper fence posts and etc. this next Saturday. For now, it's sort of put together with chewing gum and bailing wire :).
The cedar under the covered porch is new too. We still need to put some finish on it, but I love the way it turned out.
Even though Lee is a naughty/defiant husband, he built this plantar box for me last Easter when I was feeling a bit Debbie Downer-ish and filled it with flowers, which I thought was very nice. It's nice to finally be able to return it to it's place of honor now that this whole house mess is done.
Our little Emily Druschba is leaving for College at "O-dark-hundred" tomorrow morning, so we FINALLY had her family over for dinner tonight. Jessica, Cindy, John, Emily and Gunner. Even though Emily's birthday was the end of June, we (I) decided to use this night to celebrate that special occasion "Soptich style", if you will :). So I asked her for some of her favorite dinner ideas . . . . . I'm in a panic - I just realized I forgot to have Emily use the "You Are Special Plate" - UGH! I'm a failure for sure! You HAVE to have the special plate when celebrating ANY special occasion - Oh well, too late now - maybe next time I'll remember.
Anyway, we had her "hunt" for her gifts (she was a good sport)
Emily already has a pink Snuggie, but a while ago she had mentioned wanting a second one so she could "double up". She said she wanted a zebra one and I was lucky enough to find one at Fred Meyer.
Then on to the pumpkin and apple pie with homemade ice cream AND her favorite type of QFC "shaved" chocolate and mint ice cream. We sang . . .
. . . she made a wish and blew out the candles. Happy Belated Birthday Emily - may all your wishes come true, and may you have the time of your life at College.
We got a little bit behind in our birthday celebrations so Sunday we had a party for all of the 10 birthdays, from June through September - SHEESH!! The weather was beautiful and we had a lot of fun. We had dinner and then went on the GOOD stuff :). Chad was my photographer while I was TRYING to keep the candles lit so the ceremonial birthday song could be sung. We celebrated for Calley, Emily Druschba (June birthdays), Gracie (July), Paul, Bailee, Jen (August), Braden, Abby, Addison and Paige (September).
Abby REALLY enjoyed her first birthday cake
There are always requests for "tractor rides". Here's Chad performing his duty as the cool Uncle.
2 Birthday Babies - born just 10 days apart
Tyson was not to be shown up by Chad so he took a turn . . .
so Chad offered up the wheelbarrow and Nellie took him up on it
Rodeo style
Tanner LOVES his soccer uniform and wears it as often as he can. Kaisa got a very cute shot of him pulling up his shorts (without him being aware of it) similar to this, but by the time I got my camera, he had quit and didn't really want to do it again for me - however, with a little coaxing from Emilee, he decided he would IF. . .
he got to take one of me doing the same thing - so this is a sample of Tanner's photography skills. Charming isn't it?
Calley with her first official candy poster made by Jen. Tyson later took a little nibble off of her snickers bar - he's so naughty!!
No worries - Abby is just having a little (plastic) celery snack
2 Goober-snoots
Jen found a piece of packing from one of the gifts that represented a bra of sorts and stuck it in Tanner's shirt. At first he thought it was funny but then he got embarrassed and wanted it out.
I asked Braden to smile for this picture and instead of "cheese" he belted out "DISNEYLAND"
Yes indeed - we had a splendid girls day out on Saturday; we went to lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which is where this first picture was taken, and then on to the Paramount Theater to see Wicked. We had a great time - great food, great company, and the play was wonderful as well :). Thanks to Calley for suggesting it.
I don't remember if I've been to the Paramount before or not (it's heck to get old), but it is beautiful inside. 
This was taken after the play was over. We need to make sure we do more things like this :)
