Small Changes and New Ideas

 Happy Thursday Friends! 

 

In honor of our wonderful country and the 4th of July holiday, Lance added a new addition to our front yard last week.
 

 

Our gorgeous new American Flag flying in our front yard brings a huge smile to my face everytime I drive down the street!  Crazy enough, when Lance began looking for a flagpole and flag to purchase, he kept finding that the flags (yes the American Flags) were all made in CHINA (or some other place that is not America).  Who would buy an American Flag from another country??  It just didn't make sense to us.  The Buckleys wanted an American Flag from America and thankfully my tactically savy husband new right where to look.

 

 

LaRue Tactical is a Texas based company that sells American made American Flags.  Anyone who enjoys military related items, guns, or tactical equipment will love this website!

 

A few other small victories of the past few weeks include:

 

We found some dining room table chairs that we love!!  We are saving up a bit before we purchase them, but I am thrilled we have a good idea of what we want that will add some great color to the beautiful grey walls in the dining room.

 

 

And remember that old white door???

 

 

Well we are starting the process of turning it into our new dining room table!  It may be hard to see our vision now, but we will slowly continue to share pictures until we have the finished product.  Below is an example of the first steps - removing the layers, and layers, and layers of old paint that are on the door.  At any hardward store you can easily find a good paint stripper.  At the Lowe's around the corner from our house we got a container of Jasco Paint and Epoxy Remover, brushed it onto the door, and started scrapping off the layers of paint.  It's a long and tedious process so it will probably take me another week to get it finished!

 

Once I have all of the paint off, and can see the beautiful oak wood that the door is made of, we will move onto step two - staining or painting the door a great color that will match the (eventual) dark wood floors we are planning to put in down the road.

 

We are considering either a dark mahogany stain or a dark navy blue paint color - which do you think we should go with??

 

As the projects continue to move along, we are realizing more and more how thankful we are for this house!  While homeownership has already had its bad/hard days, as with most situations in life, the good days are greatly outweighing the bad!  One of my particularly favorite things about our new house is the wildlife around it!  For example:

 

- We have mallards that fly down our street on a regular basis and just chill in our neighbors yards

- we have blue herons that frequently fly throughout our neighborhood and live in the creeks that run through the parks

- we have rabbits EVERYWHERE - we were outside walking the dogs for about 20 minutes around the neighborhood two nights ago and I counted 18 rabbits!

- We also have a birds nest right outside our dining room window: 

 

 

At first I thought this was just an old nest, because I didn't see any activity around it for a few days.  Boy was I excited when I saw the mom and dad birds sleeping there a few nights ago though!  And then I actually saw the babies!!  If you look closely, you'll see that there is a tiny beak sticking out of the nest that I have circled in orange!  A few days later I was watching the nest again and was thrilled when the beautiful dad (who is a red bird!) flew in with a HUGE green worm (or maybe catepillar?  All I know is that it was very large) and started feeding the baby birds.  It was the coolest thing I have ever witnessed from a foot away!  After living in the city, getting to see the beauties in nature around our house on a daily basis is truly a blessing.

 

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful, safe, and patriot 4th of July holiday!!



All for the dogs...

I'm back!  Sorry for my absence these past few weeks - this moving thing is hard work and incredibly time consuming!  Lance and I have been busy trying to unpack, get settled, and of cource, dive into all of our projects.

 

We also got a heaping dose of "Home-Owners Reality Shock" during our first full week owning the house when the air conditioner, garage door, and pool pump all decided to break!  Joy!  But we handled it well, bought some fans, and had a good excuse to not complain about how hot it was outside :)!

 

Those of you who know us well already know that Kimber and Delta are the center of our lives.  So it shouldn't come as a surprise that everything we have been working on since we moved in has been to accommodate our puppies.

 

The biggest project we have been trying to complete is installing a new back door, installing a doggy door into this new back door, building a fence for the dogs to have a "dog park" that keeps them out of the pool, and removing all bushes and shrubs and laying new sod for the dog park area.  The reason why this project is #1 on the list is so that the dogs will be able to go in and out of the house while we are at work and not have to stay in their kennel all day.

 

Since I had already agreed to paint the whole house, this project was added onto Lance's Honey-Do List (oh boy!).  He started by removing all of the ugly shrubs that are ALL OVER the back yard. 

 

Here are some of the before pictures of the Dog Park area of the backyard:

 

 

Lance started by removing all of the shrubs and ivy that were underneath the bay windows and installing the beams that would support the fence.  It took a couple of days to remove everything and dig the holes, especially with all of the pool and sprinkler pipes that ran underneath the ground in this area!  Thankfully, he was diligent and did not bust a single pipe!

 

We then turned our attention to the back door. We used to have an all window back door which wouldn't work for our dog door to be installed into.  So we made a trip to Lowe's and purchased your average, boring, white back door.  I cannot wait to get some paint up on it - but that will have to wait for now.

 

 

While Lance is fully capable of learning and completing the task of putting in a door, we were under a bit of a time crunch and didn't need a hole in our house for an extended period of time.  So we decided to enlist the help of an extremely handy friend,

Maricio.  He and his guys spent about 2.5 hours at our house on a Friday evening and "TaDa!" our new door was in!

 

 

 

With the new door in, we could get started installing the doggy door! 

 

Now I have to stop and take a minute to describe this doggy door.  Most people think of a simple square cut-out with a flap - right?  Well, not in the Buckley house.  Due to the large size of our pups, we needed a doggy door large enough that a human could easily crawl through it.  Seeing as how Lance is all about safety and home defense, it came as no surprise to me when he excitedly told me about a bullet proof, electronic doggy door he found online.  High Tech Pet offers multiple different doggy door options for those customers who have home defense and safety in mind.  At first I was skeptical about how it would work and if it was really needed.  Now that it is installed I couldn't be happier!  I sleep easier at night knowing that only the dogs (who have sensors installed on their collars now) can get in and out through the door while all raccoons, squirrels, humans, etc. are stuck on the outside.

 

 

 

Kimber took to the door a bit faster than Delta, but now they both know what to do and they love it! I tried to get a picture of Kimber using it, but it is a little blurry because she is a hard one to get to hold still.

 

The next step was to remove all of the front shrubery and begin putting in the top and bottom horizontal planks and then the vertical pickets.  With the help of a good friend, Travis, Lance was able to knock out all of that in just one afternoon.

 

Doesn't it look great??  The last piece of this project was to have the sod laid down and that was completed today!  So now we have a fully functioning dog park!!

 

 

 

The last two gates are going on it tonight and the dogs will get their first day out of the kennel tomorrow while we are at work!

 

This project took us a total of 2 weeks to complete, but let's be honest, who wouldn't want to give these cuties are wonderful dog park of their own??

 

 

Until next time, any guesses at what we will be turning this $20 oak door into that we found on Craigslist???

 

 

Saturday and Sunday's advertures

I don't think I've seen my husband as excited as he was on Saturday in a long, long time!  He was like a kid on Christmas morning knowing that his trophy of an elk was arriving today!

His parents were so sweet to come all the way up from Waco just to bring us a few (some more important than others) items and help us unload our storage unit in Dallas to our new house.

When they arrived, we had to first unload the elk from the back of their truck, and we were all a bit nervous that he would not fit through the front door!

But....

HE FIT!!!!!

 

                                  

Thankfully, all went well and the elk made it through the door frame just fine!  Then came the trouble of deciding which wall to put him on (remember we had just stayed up the night before until 1:30 am painting the wall we thought he'd go on).  After some investigation, we realized the painted wall would not work due to what was on the other side of  the wall.  So we had to decide on a new game plan.  The elk will now go on the wall directly to the left and we will just have to remove/replace the light fixture so it does not hang down even with the elk's face.

 

 

 

 

 

We decided not to hang him on Saturday, to give me time to paint the new wall, and so we could focus on unloading the storage unit.  So until the next time his parents can come up and visit, we will have a large elk sitting in our living room!  Once we have him up on the wall, new pictures will be posted.

After getting to spend some wonderful quality time with his parents, we saw them off and then got right back to work.  We had a few hours to spare before a graduation party on Saturday evening, so Lance got started removing the old dishwasher that was in the kitchen so we could install our new one! 

 

Having never done this before, he sure looked like he knew what he was doing!  It didn't take Lance long at all to disconnect and remove the old dishwasher.  This was our stopping point on Saturday night.

 

Sunday morning we were both already feeling pretty tired.  After a Starbucks and Lowe's run, we were ready to get back to work!  Lance start in on installing our new dishwasher while I went back to painting.  I was able to completely finish painting the stairwell and the hallway leading to the master bedroom.

 

 

As mentioned before, Sears Outlet is the place to go for new appliances!  Not only did we get a great deal on our fridge, but we got 50% off our dishwasher!  We got a Kenmore Elite 24 inch built in dishwasher that has so many extra jets it can clean anything you put in there!

 

 

After lost of hard work, reading through the (not so great or detailed) instructions, and four trips to Lowe's for pieces, Lance installed our gorgoues new dishwasher!

 

It's times like this that I am so thankful to be married to a man that can figure anything out!!!

 

I will be using it for the first time today and I cannot wait!!

 

 

 

 

 

 Come back soon to see the house completely painted, and the dog park project getting started!

Moving!

The events at the house started early on Friday with the delivery of our new refridgerator! If you ever need new appliances, I highly encourage you to look into Sears Outlet.   While some of the inventory is used, refurbished, or damaged, a great deal of it is brand new!    

 

  



We were able to get this brand new, out of the box Maytag 4-door 25 cu. ft. fridge, normally priced at $2,599.00, for only $1,472.95. We also paid a little bit extra to have it delivered and the men that brought it were so nice! They set everything up, including taking off all of the inside stickers and tape.

We were so thankful for all of our friends that helped us move tons of boxes on Friday night after work.  It only took us one trip, and within an hour we had moved everything but the furniture from our apartment to the new house!

With all of the heavy lifting out of the way, Lance and I knew we had to get started painting - actually it was just one wall in particular that we needed to paint.  Lance has a beautiful, massive Elk that he shot many years back.  His parents have been so kind to keep it until he had a place big enough for it to hang on the wall (by massive, I mean that it is 6 ft. tall, 5 ft. wide, and 4 ft. in depth and it's only a shoulder mount!).  Thankfully, we found a home with tall enough ceilings that the elk could fit and we knew exactly what wall it would go on (-->).

My in-laws were coming on Saturday to bring us the elk and help us unload our storage unit into our house.  It wasn't until about 10:30pm on Friday night that we realized we needed to have the wall painted and ready so that Lance and his dad could hang the elk on Saturday.

 

 

And so the fun began.....

 

Now I am not one who is easily scared by heights, in fact I usually always love heights!  But once we got the ladder set up to reach the top of the wall, I started getting nervous.  By the time I was at the top of the ladder and starting to paint, I was honestly terrified. 

Thankfully, with lots of help from Lance, I got over the scared feeling and got the wall painted!  This is also the first time Lance and I got to see the color that we are painting the entire inside of the house on a wall and not on a swatch from the paint store. 

 



The paint color is "Summit Gray" by Sherwin Williams and it is the perfect gray for all of the living spaces of a home.  We can't wait to see what it looks like once we get it up on all of the walls throughout the house!

We finally called it a night around 1:30am and decided that, despite our excitement for having a house, we couldn't handle another night sleeping on an air mattress.  So we loaded up the dogs and drove back to our dallas apartment and spent our last night ever in the apartment that we first called home.