No Pics Today Folks

Just thought I would start this post by letting everyone know that there are no pictures. Those who care about the ins and outs of what we're doing to build can read on...those who just want to see pictures have avoided wasting time by looking at the post any further.

We're getting into a stretch of DIY in this house building thing. We will be staining and sealing the concrete floors in the basement, laying tile, laying hardwood floors, staining and sealing hardwood floors, painting the inside and outside of the house, and making our own concrete countertops, all of which I am really excited about. Doing it all in the next month and a half...not so much. Might be stretched to 2 months, but still. That's a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it.

We've been spending a lot of time reading and watching and studying up on how to make our own concrete countertops. Casey is watching the instructional DVD we bought for the third time after reading the book. He's pumped about it. Why concrete? Well, budget crunches kinda got to us, but honestly I wanted concrete to begin with. If you've never seen any concrete countertops, check out the link on the right or just Google "concrete countertop images". There are some really neat things out there. Ours are going to be on the simple side, which is what I want so it works out well for a beginners project. The outcome will probably be less than perfect, but it will be unique and cheap enough that we can afford to do it again in a couple of years if we don't love it. We'll start with some small, sample stuff so we can get the feel for it. Probably will make a table or something for the patio and maybe some tops for the cabinets we're putting in next to our fireplace upstairs. or maybe the piece in front of the fireplace. Maybe all of it...all we need is to find some big football type guys to help us lift and set the huge island piece...any volunteers? We're estimating it to be about 800lbs! Yikes.

I love that we are going to have our own handy work in the final product. Especially, in the stuff we can see everyday. It will remind us of all the hard work we did to live in this house. It's not because we're cheap (which we are, or I am at least) it's a pride factor. Plus I like being creative. As uncreative as a bank auditor can be, I like to throw a little artsiness (probably not a word, I know) into my life.

I will be posting MANY pictures of the stuff we do by ourselves, the whole process; and I'll be detailed about the steps we take to do it all. I'm getting itchy, I hate having to wait to get started. I'd be there doing something NOW if the sheet rock were done! Next week maybe? Keep checking back to see how close we are to massive amounts of ibuprofen consumption :)