Hey all! I haven't updated in awhile because we have been busy packing and moving in to our new home - finally!!!!! I have had a lot of people ask for pictures and updates so now that we are finally in, I can take some time to do this. Obviously a lot has happened over the past couple of months. We moved in July 16th. The house is NOT completely finished but it's certainly finished enough to move in. The only things left to do are custom things - closets, sliding barn doors, bookcases, etc. I am totally okay living without those things as long as I get to be here. :) So without further ado, here are some highlights from our past couple of months!
As most of you know by now, we have a moose. Yes, that is right. A moose. Head. A moose head. Tommy has always wanted to have a moose head in the house and he finally got one. His name is Mavis. HAHA He was in Canada and it took him awhile to get shipped to us because of customs. No I am not kidding. We went to pick him up and he was in a giant box and Tommy was like a little kid on Christmas peeking in at him. I was unable to lift anything during this time because of my heart stuff going on so thankfully my "personal assistant" Sarah came over to help with the pickup and placement of Mavis!
Here he is being carried upstairs to his forever home!
Here he is finally out of his box and put together! In case you are wondering, he isn't as heavy as he looks and his antlers come on and off. They are the heavy part honestly. One little happy family here. HAHA
The day that Mavis was hung was a very monumental day in the Forker household. Father and son bonding occurred. Will was just excited to be allowed up on the scaffolding I believe. ;)
Tommy was very proud to finally have Mavis hanging in the house. You can also see here the accent wall that we put in our living room. This is western red cedar siding. Tommy cut it to size and we polyurethaned it. It looks awesome on that wall!
This isn't a great picture of the trim around the windows but all of the trim in the house around windows and doors is also cedar. It is all natural western red cedar with polyurethane on it (2-3 coats). I then sand each piece with 220 grit sandpaper and wax it for it's final sealant.
When you walk inside from the garage we have a half bath. I have posted pictures before of the sink top that we built. Here is a picture of it now with the copper sink basin and the hardware on it. Tommy is still in the process of finishing the cabinet for it. I love the copper and I love the unique faucet that we bought!
I was VERY happy the day that my appliances were delivered! We ordered Whirlpool appliances this time. I had all Kitchenaid in the last house and we had nothing but problems with every single appliance so we went with something different this time. So far so good! I wanted a double over but didn't want to waste the cabinet space in this house so I compromised with this stove/oven combo.
After having a pretty darn small refrigerator at the apartment this refrigerator seems HUGE! I love it! That middle drawer is a crisper drawer - I get a lot of questions about that.
One of my favorite parts of the house is the screened in back porch. Sarah and I worked for hours on end staining all of the woodwork back here. The ceiling was especially time consuming but it looks so beautiful now that it is mostly finished.
The stair treads for our staircase have been a labor of love without a doubt. I posted pictures previously of the big chunks of cedar and how I distressed them and how Tommy hand hewn the fronts of them. The next parts of the process were all me and I actually really enjoyed doing it. We setup a place in our master bedroom where I had room to work on this efficiently. First I did a coat of shellac on each stair tread. Once that dried, I then did 3 coats of floor polyurethane. It's so amazing how the color changes after the shellac and poly. They looked so beautiful!
Remember that rusted tin that we got from my great aunt and uncle's barn? Now you get to see what we did with it! We wanted to use it for a couple of accents walls, one of which was on the side of our staircase. The other as a chair rail in our half bath. Tommy got to work measuring and cutting first.
Once the pieces were measured and cut we had to clean them. We started by scraping off some of the bigger tar chunks We left some for character. We then scrubbed each piece down with a stiff brush and lacquer thinner. Once that dried we then sprayed each piece with a clear lacquer. I think it looks pretty awesome and it's a very personal thing to me. Love it! (Oh yeah, see that big bright white outlet cover? Yeah we had that changed to dark brown ;)
Once the stair treads all dried, it was time to install them! As you can see my very manly strong husband was ready to tackle this project! The pictures below of the stair treads on the staircase were taken before the risers were put in so the space between treads is now also covered. :)
Having our new TV's delivered was a pretty exciting event! Tommy ordered a 75 inch TV for the living room which sounded entirely too big to me but once it was up on the wall, it actually didn't look too big. The size was proportional to the fireplace and the mantle so it all worked out.
Then there was the mailbox post. This thing is massive. I couldn't understand just how massive until I saw it finished. Tommy made this out of solid cedar posts. He built it using mortise and tenon joints with wood pegs. He is very into timber framing so this was a fun yet labor intensive project for him. :)
Here he is with his masterpiece! This was before the post was stained but you get the idea. :) He ordered nice big copper mailbox to go with it.
As I mentioned, we moved in about a week ago so a lot of things are still in the process of being finished. I will continue to update this blog as projects are completed. I also have some furniture being delivered and a lot of decorating to do that I will also post about. We are taking our time on this house to make sure everything is exactly how we want it since we hope this is finally our "forever" home. Stay tuned to more from the Forker's!
