Living in a construction zone...

In the past week I have quickly learned the joys of remodeling. We decided to update our kitchen and make it more functional for us. But because this house it so old we seem to keep running into one problem after another. Such as molding drywall to rotten floors, which is something every home owner loves to hear. Right now the kitchen, dinning room, and family room are completely torn apart. We decided to replace the floor in the family room too since we were doing the kitchen and dinning room and they all kinda run together. Since we were doing the carpet we decided to take down all the horrible wood paneling (which I have hated since day one in this house) and put up drywall. So right now it is looking like a pretty big project. But I know it will be worth it when it's done. The hardest part is really just keeping the kids happy and out of the way. They can't go into the kitchen or family room now because there are nails and stuff everywhere, and they can't hang out in the living room because it is full of all the boxes with our new cabinets and a lot of the stuff we had to move out of the family room. So that pretty much leaves us to hang out in our bedroom all day (those of you with kids can imagine how much fun this has been for me). So I have just been trying to get them out of the house as much as possible so they can enjoy a little bit more room for awhile before we have to go back to the room. Our goal is to have this all done by Christmas though so that shouldn't be too bad. Here are a few pictures so you can see the progress.

We started demolition on Monday for our family home evening activity. The kids thought it was awesome. Nick bought them there own tool belts, hard hats, gloves and the whole nine yards. They looked pretty cool. So here they are on Monday starting to take down the cabinets.

I know they were trying to be tough little workers, but to me they were just so stinkin cute.

This is Nick's favorite part. He loves breaking things and taking them apart.

This was a view from standing in the kitchen door way looking out into the kitchen and Family room. This was taken on Thursday (yes it was Thanksgiving, but the work didn't stop in our house)

Here is Nick taking down the wood paneling in the dinning room.

The rest of these pictures were taken this morning so you can see what our house looks like right now. This first one was taken from inside the kitchen looking into the dinning room and part of the family room.

The other two are a view from standing in the family room looking into the kitchen and dinning room.

If you notice in this one you can see right into the garage, which has made it quite convenient not having to open any doors when my hands are full of laundry. So see there are benefits to all this craziness.

We have been really lucky and grateful though that some of our friends and family members have been able to come over and help Nick whenever they have a little bit of spare time. He wouldn't be able to do this all on his own (and we all know how handy I am when it comes to things like this) So I just want to let everyone know how thankful we are for all you do and have done for us.

I will keep you posted on the progress.