Making the Office into a Lodge

Randall and Elder McKinnon started work on the Office/Lodge this week. It's kinda crowded so I have just been taking it easy. Reminds me of home. We are supposed to install another bathroom (the existing one is a ½ bath). We also need to figure out how to put in a range. It was built for an office building not a lodge. So a ½ bath, sink, fridge, and microwave were all it needed. Since they want it to be a lodge it will need a range and full bath.  We are trying to decide how it should be remolded. Randall and Elder McKinnon want to make a peninsula for the new range and existing fridge cutting the area in half. Sister McKinnon and I want them to put the new range in an island straight across from the sink keeping the area open. Hummm.

View of  Lodge Kitchen, just getting started. Sister McKinnon's
back and Randall playing with electricity. If you look carefully
you can see Elder McKinnons head down by the ladder.

Kitchen from the other end, where the fridge is, is where the guys want to
put a peninsula which would hold the fridge and range.

Now there are two doors! Randall installing fan/light for the new bathroom.

One door for the utility room and one for the bathroom.

We had Seth Anderson over for dinner the other night (his family was out of town for Spring break). Our table is pretty small for two people, it's pretty crowded once you get everything on it. Randall and I always sit on opposite sides of the table. When we went to sit down I made Seth and Randall site on the same side. Seth looked at me strange and I said “well you can't sit next to me”, he said,” I thought you might want to sit next to your husband s'all. But I can sit next to him, I don't mind”. Then it hit me, I'm such a dork! We always sit across from each other I never thought Randall and I could actually sit by each other. I switched places with Seth and we had a nice dinner.

At the end of the week we drove Seth to the Denver airport so he could fly to Florida and spend the end of spring break with his family. They had driven down there at the beginning of the week. Well, Desiree and Allison had given us a weekend getaway for our Christmas present. We used it to stay a few days in Denver. We were able to go to the Denver Temple. We bought Randall a new suit for his birthday (the one he has is getting dingle balls, gross!). We visited the Denver Botanical Gardens. It was fun and relaxing. Thanks, Allison and Desiree!

Love Ya-all! (Can ya hear my Kansas drawl)?

Good Day!

Randall's Tidbits

It’s been awhile since I have written something and Ann has been on my case to write something. We have been working hard on getting the first house finished. There have been many chances excel, that is to do things two and three time to get them right. Since it has been a long time since I have done this kind of work I have not always been able to remember or think of all that needs to be done in time to incorporate them in( like not putting a soap dish in the tile for the master bath shower).

We pressure checked the plumbing before Elder Shaw left but when we turned the water on, there were two leaks above the water heater in the copper tubing. I ended up having to cut one of them clear out to fix it. This was a real challenge since they were up in the over head against a heating ducting. Two days and a trip to town for supplies latter they were fixed. I guess I should be happy that they were at least exposed. The upstairs tub drain also leaked so I had to cut a hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling to fix it.

We are fixing a crack in the ceiling that occurred in the ceiling between the living room and the kitchen where the old center bearing wall was. Ann has been working her butt off fixing the paint job as best as it can be. She has been doing a real good job, especially with what she has to work on.

The weather has been up and down. We had a few nights where it was -17. Yesterday the high was 30 and today it is supposed to get on the mid 60s. All in all it is warmer here than in Mackay and if the wind didn’t blow all the time it would be a very pleasant winter.

Till next time Ann gets after me.  

House#1 is DONE!

Yippy, Yahoo! We are done with house #1. Finally!Here are the pictures I promised. They would look more impressive if they were bigger but oh well.

First is the living room, we removed the wall between the living room, dinning room and kitchen making a great room.

Old Living Room 

New Living Room (excuse the carpet runner, Tiffany wants to keep the carpet clean, can't blame her).

The old dinning room and kitchen. 

Old Dinning Room.

Old Kitchen.

New Dinning Room and Kitchen.

New Kitchen (oven isn't installed yet, not our job).

Next I will show you the bathrooms for the whole house. The Master Bathroom and linen closet in the hall didn't exist before. We had to take closet space and a few feet of living room to make the room for them. Well worth it I think.

Old upstairs Bathroom (the only upstairs bathroom)

New upstairs Bathroom (we call it Lilly's bathroom). Randal did the floor tile on
this one.

New Master Bathroom (mirrors on the medicine cabinet
 need to be installed, they sent the wrong ones)

New Master Bathroom, Randall did the shower tile, Elder McKinnon
did the floor.

Old basement bathroom. So gross. Mold behind all the walls. The shower sink and
toilet were really old and disgusting.

New basement Bathroom, clean and shinny.

 Let's look at the upstairs bedrooms.

Old master bedroom.

New Master Bedroom (imagine without the floor coverings)

Second bedroom.

Second Bedroom, Lilly's Room. Yes it's pink! Her signature color.

Here is the pantry.

Old washer and dryer room.

Made into the new pantry

Now let's go down stairs. You've already seen the bathroom. The basement has 3 bedrooms, family room, and bathroom. It has some of the most amazing transformations. Goodbye paneling and ceiling tile!

Old Stairwell, Creepy! The doorway you see
is no longer there. It was the entrance to the
boys room. The doorway was moved to the hallway
were the bathroom and Maleha's room entrances are.

New Stairwell courtesy Elder McKinnon. You can see the
pantry from here.

Old family room. Are you dig'n the paneling? How 'bout the carpet. I really
got tired of this carpet, I was very happy when it was finally torn out.

New Family Room!

Tana's old room dark and nasty.

Tana's new Room the window makes all the difference!

Maleha's old room, you can hardly see in it with just the window lighting.

Maleha's New Room! Look how bright it is now, and it's not
just because it's bright green. I love this room.

The Boys room, it was just an unfinished space
in the basement.

New Boys room. The closet is under the stairs so it goes way
back, great storage.

All of the closets have built-ins like this. Nice!

Tiffany wanted a mud room and more storage. We took the end of the garage and built in a mud room for the washer and dryer and a storage room.

End of garage.

New mud room minus washer and dyer for the moment. Randall
did the floor tile and I helped.

Storage room.

Last but not least the outside of the house. New windows, siding, garage doors, and decking. We did it! It's finally done! From August, 2016 till March, 2017. Yahoooooo!

I'll try to send anther front and back picture when everything is cleaned up.  Now we go on to our next project. The Office/New lodge.

Take care, love you!

Good day!