Last post before I see the Grand Canyon!! Unless I post again before Saturday...

Some of my favorite pictures of Aavo (you can see part of Squirmy the frog, his favorite, in the 3rd picture. I love Squirmy) Maili dressed as a vet for her school's Halloween parade/party. The K, 1st, and 2nd grades paraded through the school and out around the neighboring shops. Poly's (high school) drum marching band led them, they were great! Some pictures from trick-or-treating and some from Miia and Amber's Halloween party, including my 2 all time favorites. I know I'm going to get a million emails asking who's that hot guy to my right in that one picture (to MY right...the other guy is Frank) so...he's my cousin Albert, OKAY?? And there's another hot guy/mental patient (Bob) sitting at the bar. And I HAD to include a picture of that cute scary thing that kept trying to claw it's way off the couch. Poor thing.

"Before" photos...

Here are some of the before/during photos of the construction. It's giving me a headache just looking at them, but it has come a long way. Groundbreaking was August of '05, and we still don't have our final inspection!!

First 2 are the view from the family room into the kitchen. This is on the basement level of the house (same level as the original basement, although we have another basement under this level). We lived with those temporary stairs for about 9 months, no railings. Same story with the other set of stairs to the top floor. We tried not to invite a lot of foolish drunks over during this time (although we couldn't exactly turn away Kulli and Leho). Luckily no falls!

Still in the basement, this is the family room. By the way, I laid all of this flooring while we were living here. Most of these pictures were taken while we were already in the house- dirty, dusty, noisy, no running water until we had been here for 5 months (luckily our house connects on every level to my parents' house so we were able to use their bathrooms, kitchen, etc.).


Another view of the family room. We actually used this room, in this state, to watch tv. As my flooring installation moved along, I just kept shoving the couch closer and closer to the tv until we were finally sitting about a foot in front of it. At that point I had enough flooring laid to move the couch up onto the finished side. The door in the second photo leads to my parents' side of the house...the sauna! Complete with a front room for drinking, playing rummikub, cooling off, etc. My dad has a record player in there and there's a huge selection of records- old Estonian folk music, classical, Dr. Zhivago, the Monks, Aerosmith, of course Bowie, hundreds of records, hours of fun.
Below is the view through the pantry into the downstairs bathroom. We keep a bunch of building supplies that we still need, and lots we don't need, in there. Second photo is a close up of the BEAUTIFUL tile floor (which I'm not done laying yet, obviously). I love this floor, and I don't mind saying I did a pretty good job for my first time laying tile. Well, when I put it in writing, it sounds obnoxious...but whatever.

Next 2 photos below are of the "dining room" on the middle floor. It is actually part of my studio but it's disguised as a dining room, since we already had the furniture and all. The door on the left leads to my studio and the one on the right goes to our office. Second photo shows the stairs going down into the family room/kitchen and stairs going up to the bedrooms. After I laid the floors (on this level and the next level up I had help from several friends- I'd like to take this time to thank Gwyn, Paul, Garth, Leho, Danny, and Brook. And thanks, Kulli, for the idea to get Leho to come and help. Sorry, I didn't have time to prepare a more elaborate speech), Liza's husband Matt did all of the finishing. It looked gorgeous for a good 2 days until the electrician used the pushing method to move probably the heaviest piece of furniture I own. That guy was truly an idiot and I hope he's finally kicked his painkiller addiction. I feel sorry for his wife and their 6 or 7 kids. Especially because he's a jerk too. But I digress.
Next 2 photos are of my studio, looking towards the dining room. Powder room is at the back in the center. I put a linoleum tile floor in here, but not the peel and stick kind- oh no, that would be too easy. This was the trowel-on adhesive that is just like really sticky chewing gum. It's really hard to get off of your skin. This room is still a complete mess but I do work in it, and I love it. Next photo shows the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, den and laundry room. You can also see the front door for this level (another front door is downstairs). This was before we moved in.
Next photo is the master bathroom, also before moving in. I was able to borrow an industrial paint sprayer and prime the entire house including ceilings, and paint the ceilings too (2 coats) in the weeks before we had to move in. It was July, 90+ degrees outside, our air conditioning wasn't working yet and it was HOT! This was a big job, the addition is about 27oo sq ft... Thank GOD I had the sprayer! Actually, I guess I should thank Danny. Thanks Danny. Sorry I broke your sprayer.

Below is the view from the attic of the old part of the house. One guy is standing in our future bedroom, 2 more guys are standing in part of the new attic, and Construction Roger (aka hot Roger) is standing in our den/play room which is above my mom's studio. You can still see the roof that used to be over the studio.

This is what the front yard looked like for a looong time, minus the everpresent dumpster.
View from the street/alley.
Side view, much further along. See the next post down for some of the afters...

After/during

The house is far from finished. You'll see lots of unpainted walls, trim, etc., unfinished floors,tiling and backsplashes, but we are working every day on it so it'll get done sooner or later.



First group of pictures features the family room/kitchen. We hang out in here a lot and it's very comfortable. Some of you will remember the "big tv"- subject of many debates. I keep hoping it will run away from home...Bob hopes it will magically double in size overnight, and have babies too. The door closest to the kitchen leads to the screened porch.

This is that downstairs bathroom again. Still keeping tools and supplies there, shower is still not done but everything else works fine.

Still unpainted, and no finial chosen yet, but this is the newel post that I built- twice. The guy who installed the stairs told me how tall to make it. When he went to install it he realized a mistake he made in calculating the height. Oops!

This is my studio, view towards the dining room. In the foreground is my foot chopper, used for chopping moulding, not feet.

Ok, let's jump upstairs to the master bathroom. Here you'll see the unfinished shower,and more building junk. Other than that, I love this room. The toilet works really great.

View into the master bathroom.

Quick back downstairs to...the stairs...trim still not painted, but at least we have railings up!

Below are more views of my studio. The double doors lead to the deck which is over our screened porch.

Let's go back upstairs to the view from the deck (off of the family room) down into the backyard. Boy we have a lot of dirt.

The upstairs deck. How did these all get backwards? What am I doing wrong??

Upstairs, the laundry room, looks out onto the deck.

This is the bathtub room, could be my favorite room in the house. The doors are all original to the old house.

This is the old original bathroom, now the kids' bathroom. Needs some work.






Another scary room, Leho's old bedroom (where all the magic used to happen, right Leho?). This room will be the guest room/big fancy art printer room. Needs some serious work for that to happen.

Below is the stairs to the old attic, forgot to take pictures of the other set of stairs and the new attic. The 2 sides connect, so you could go up one set and come back down all the way on the other side of the house. Great for hide and seek.

Side view.

View from deck up to the street. Bob's digging trenches to bury drain tiles. Why are they called tiles? It's a plastic pipe.

Bob's trench, one down 2 to go.

This is the extent of our landscaping.

Back views. Upper deck is visible better in second photo.

Front view.

Bob in the bobcat.

Just a portion of the huge pile of rocks we've been bringing over from the jobsite where they are excavating for Leho's new restaurant. Lot of good rocks out there, and I want to build a lot of rock walls. My mom has been getting them too.

And here's my poor dad unloading them.

More "after" pictures later. All rooms not pictured aren't straightened enough to allow for that. Could be a long time...

Siiri+technology=BAD!!

Oh boy, I meant to finally sit down and add some pictures but the evening was spent on the phone with tech support for both our wireless router and internet provider. Woohoo! Then I tried uploading pictures without resizing them first and found that it takes forever so I dug around some more and FINALLY found the "resize all" button that I have been hunting for. And apparently, I haven't figured out how to load pictures in the order I want them to be in, but I had to start drinking after the second hour on the phone with Linksys so that may have something to do with it . Anyway...some pictures from Sunfest in O.C.- my mom's booth at the arts and craft festival, taking the kids on the rides (another funfilled day of "Excuse me sir, could you stop this ride please?"), the ride operator who Kulli thought was hot (??), Maili making the most pathetic scared face on the Frog Hopper, a giant inflatable ice cream stand, Kulli Raili and Maili somewhere on the ferris wheel, and -finally- something Aavo can get happy about- popcorn and ice cream. Back at home the kids make brownies and goofy poses for pictures, all haphazardly arranged here on this blog. I finally have pictures of the house too, but I'll have to do that tomorrow.