Basement Bathroom Project

 As I mentioned back in April, we have been doing a basement bathroom remodel. This project has been long but now that we are done, I'm grateful we did it!

Frame up and shower in

Todd putting the flooring down

 The boys enjoyed playing with all the boxes:)

    Painting...finally I can help!

 Almost there...

 ...done!

Basement Bathroom Project

One of our Cru staff members, Todd Singer, is a very handy man! He was commenting one day on our tiny basement bathroom and how poorly it was set up. He volunteered to help us redo it and we said YES!

 Demolition! The boys thought this was pretty cool. Smashing down walls and taking out the sink and toilet. But what they really liked was... 

...the jackhammer!! What noise! What a mess! This project has meant a lot of Saturdays of hard work for Tim. I know it will be so worth it when we are done. 

 Laying new pipes. Todd's brother is a plumber and drove up from Bismarck one day to help.  

 Framing going up. Tim's dad came up for a couple days to help as well!

 More demolition. We weren't planning on busting down the basement wall, but partway through we realized we needed a bigger entryway into the laundry room. One Saturday night, Kamaya (Todd's wife) and I were out a Menards buying a door while Todd and Tim busted down the wall. Teamwork!

Although it's been A TON of work, these two seem to have fun. Here they are in matching shoes and cowboy hats putting in the door!

...to be continued!

The Fence Project

Our fence was starting to fall apart with boards warping and falling off. We knew we needed to replace it and finally found a weekend do work on it. Thankfully Gramps just built a fence at their house this summer so he was able to come up and help us out. And Mimi helped a ton with the kiddos:)

The week before, Tim and the boys took off all the boards from the old fence. We were surprised by how much they wanted to help and how long they helped. What could have been an hour or two project took ALL DAY but it was fun to have the boys so involved.

Construction! The boys also wanted to help with this but we had to distract them so the men could work efficiently:)

Coming along...

...almost done...

Voila! Thank you so much Steve and Bev for coming to Grand Forks and helping us!!

Superhero Room

Some dear friends gave us a hand-me-down bunk bed a while ago and we finally got it set up. This led to switching the boys room around because the bunk wouldn't fit in their old room. We painted the room and decided to go with a Superhero theme. Here are some pics...

My friend Britta gave us the idea for the navy stripes and orange sheets. I love how it turned out with the paint and green curtains. The boys could care less about that but are really enjoying the wall art:) 

 It's a little tight in their room with two dressers but the room doesn't have a closet so we had to make due.

 Papa gave Carter some Superhero hooks for his birthday and they are perfect for hanging up their costumes.

 We might eventually take out the old chair and put in some bean bags for a reading corner but for now, this works. And a Pinterest inspired idea-painted frames for their artwork. Voila! 

Update on the Rooms

We made a couple of changes over the weekend:

New curtains in the boys room...

And we hung a couple of things on the walls in the baby room...

Carter helped make some signs for the baby. He is getting pretty excited!

Soooooo, we have the room set up, welcome signs, a "home from the hospital" outfit for the little guy. We still need to finalize his name and we are good to go!

The Baby Room...in progress

I was in the Cities for a weekend with my college girls a couple of weeks ago and they helped me pick out a wardrobe from Ikea. Here it is all assembled (thanks mom for the manual labor)! This baby room is jam-packed being that we have a guest bed in there for now. I'm sure he won't mind! Now...we just need to name the little guy:)

The Boy's Room...in progress

This post is mainly for the grandmas that wanted to see our progress on the boy's rooms! Tim had the idea of putting up a Carter and Cooper jerseys above the boy's beds (Carter and Cooper share a room). Then we found my old Sioux jersey and added a Hawkeye jersey. Tim tries to convince people that it was his from college as well:)