by Becky
on February 3, 2017
The last several weeks at church, my Sunday School class has been discussing what the Bible says about contentment. It seemed to be a common theme that many of the ladies in class (self included) struggled with feeling content with their homes. So to put into practice what we’ve been discussing in class, I want to exercise my “spirit of gratitude” and make a list of the things I love about our home to focus on the positives, which there are many. Here we go…
1. One-level living. I absolutely love that everything is on one floor (especially the laundry room).
2. Cabinets and Storage. We have at least doubled our cabinet space that our house in town had.
3. DIY-ing. This house is a DIY-ers dream! I’ve painted almost every surface and get a lot of satisfaction in seeing such huge improvements.
4. Who puts carpet under a dining room table?! Although I hated it when we first moved here, I actually love it. It’s cozy to sit at the table. And you don’t see every little food crumb that gets dropped on the floor.
5. Masters. Matt and I have a true Master bedroom, which is much bigger than our old house. It has a vaulted ceiling, a walk-in closet, and our own private bathroom.
6. Room with a view. We have six large windows in our living room with a sweet view of the lake.
7. I wish I liked to cook. But even though I don’t, I love having a gas stove. And I love that the stove is in our island and faces towards the living area so I can cook and have a full view of whatever the kids are up to.
8. Is it smaller or bigger? I think the overall square footage in this house is less than our old one, but this house feels bigger. Our living area, kitchen, and dining area are probably twice what our house in town was.
9. More about carpet. I should mention that my in-laws had brand new carpet put in. And it’s a perfect, forgiving dark tan. Much better than the light beige we had before. Sure, kids. You can dump grape juice on the living room floor.
10. I’m the dishwasher. We don’t have a dishwasher. I hadn’t washed dishes by hand for years until we moved here. And I actually love it. I realize that I hate loading and unloading a dishwasher and that it’s much easier and quicker to just wash them by hand and put them away right away.
So I’ll leave it at that. Short and sweet. No need for pictures. And a great reminder to myself that our double-wide is a pretty nice set-up, and we are lucky to have it as our home.
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by Becky
on December 16, 2014
As I sit here on the couch resting a knee injury that I’m too embarrassed to go into the details about, I thought I’d might as well share the latest update we’ve made to the house. About a month ago, after finishing our master bathroom, I had enough paint (and motivation) left over to finish the kids’/spare bathroom.
Here’s the before pics:
BEFORE
And after:
So much better! And the kids love it too.
On a side note, we are enjoying winter at the lake so much! We all bought ice skates, we can sled right in our front yard, and we have plans to start ice fishing soon. Here’s Matt with his new ice fishing gear.
He’s pretty excited. And I’m excited that we’ll have lots of fun activities to do with the kids to make winter go fast.
In the meantime, coffee.
It makes the swelling go down, I hear.
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by Becky
on December 4, 2014
As I sit here on the couch resting a knee injury that I’m too embarrassed to go into the details about, I thought I’d might as well share the latest update we’ve made to the house. About a month ago, after finishing our master bathroom, I had enough paint (and motivation) left over to finish the kids’/spare bathroom.
Here’s the before pics:
And after:
So much better! And the kids love it too.
On a side note, we are enjoying winter at the lake so much! We all bought ice skates, we can sled right in our front yard, and we have plans to start ice fishing soon. Here’s Matt with his new ice fishing gear.
He’s pretty excited. And I’m excited that we’ll have lots of fun activities to do with the kids to make winter go fast.
In the meantime, coffee.
It makes the swelling go down, I hear.
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by Becky
on November 8, 2014
Good things happen when Matt is gone! While he was in Seattle for work this week, I decided to tackle repainting and decorating our master bathroom. My goal was to have it completely done by the time he got home, which only gave me four days. And the best part is he had no idea what I was up to!
Now, originally the plan was that I wanted the bathrooms to be totally gutted this winter. I wanted new shower surrounds, toilets, vanities, bead board walls, and more. But there is something in my mindset that has changed. This house is turning me into a cheapskate. The reward of not changing all these things seemed pretty great. It would save a lot of money to keep the current fixtures, and probably more importantly, save a lot of time that Matt would have to spend renovating.
So with that said, I had my challenge; four days to make it great! Here’s what I was up against:
[continue reading…]
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by Becky
on August 31, 2014
I’m going to get right to the point. In one week’s time, and about $150, we were able to transform our kitchen from this:
[continue reading…]
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by Becky
on August 6, 2014
I’ve been looking for the perfect nightstand to add to my daughter’s room, but it seems that the one’s I’ve seen in stores lack the character I was looking for or were far too expensive. Luckily, I was able to find a night stand at a thrift store (along with a few other awesome finds!) with the style, and price, that I was looking for. Let me show you how a simple paint job made this dresser shine! [continue reading…]
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by Becky
on August 1, 2014
Now, where were we? The last place we left off I was talking about how we decided not to do our garage project in order to put that money into the roof and exterior of the house instead. I was also feeling really excited about re-siding the house in blue.
Well, we’ve had a change of plans yet again. Matt said we need a new furnace before winter. The one we have is 20 years old and I guess they are known for spewing carbon monoxide when they are on their way out. So I was totally on board with the new furnace thing. And while we’re at it, we figured we should get central air at the same time. But I was shocked when quotes starting coming back between 5-7k. [continue reading…]
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by Becky
on June 28, 2014
Last week we had a guy come out and inspect the property so we could get our house insured. Unfortunately, he ended up being a bearer of some not-so-good news. The roof, which we were hoping to hold off until next summer to replace, is in such bad shape he wouldn’t even insure it. Awesome. We knew it wasn’t pretty, but “the plan” was to use the money we made from the sale of our house in town to build a much needed garage and home office area for Matt. I now put “the plan” in quotation marks, because the further we get into this new house adventure, I’m finding it’s not the original plan we had. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. [continue reading…]
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by Becky
on June 19, 2014
Welcome to our little house on the lake! Actually, it’s a mobile home. A double-wide. But it’s our home! It’s been such an adventure getting to this point in life that I have to share it with you! I’m hoping that by tracking all of our progress on our new home that someday we can look back at all the work we’ve done with a sigh of relief and say, “We did it!” In the meantime, we’ve got a lot of work to do around here.
Our little lake house in all of her double-wide glory!
But first, the story of how we ended up here, at our quaint little double-wide on the lake: [continue reading…]
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