I swear I am still around

Besides work, all I have been doing is working...on my house. Some of you may know we purchased our 1st home in October. The thing needed to be completely gutted & rebuilt from the frame out. We have been doing it all ourselves which has been saving us a lot of money but also taking more time. Slowly but surely we have been getting there. I haven't been able to do much until recently. I am the last person you want doing sheetrock & rewiring the entire house! I can however paint, clean, plant & help do any yard work. Now that the house is finally at that stage where that stuff can be done, I have been none stop working at the house. My poor kids haven't really seen much of either of their parents in weeks. My Mother in Law is off for the summer so she has been great taking the kids during the day & my mom has been taking them during the weekends. It has come a long way though since we bought it. I plan to post some photos here of it before & after once it is all completed. But, here are some crappy iPhone photos of the before & almost after on the outside.

As you can see a lot has changed. We painted the crappy old siding, & put up new tirm. We are going to be putting up new shutters but that hasn't happened yet. We got a new front door & the screen door that is on there is from the side door since we got a new one of those. We also tore out all the crap in front of the house. We laid down plastic & covered it all around the house. The houses in our neighborhood have been known to leak with heavy rain & we knew this would help. Thankfully we haven't had any leaking so far even with the crazy storms we have had!

Don't mind the ladder there. I swear it hasn't been laying there for the past 9 months. It was there in the 1st picture because we repainted...but not the green you see. It had to be painted because FHA wouldn't approve our loan. The previous homeowner bought the paint. It was ugly & we hated it pretty much right away but we lived with it until we painted it the color it is now. We really love the green & it hids all the imperfections. Someday we want to reside it but with everything that needed to be done residing just isn't in the budget right now.

So that is what I have been doing. I swear after this weekend I will have several previews up & what out for a late summer mini sessions!!!