La Casa De La Beaven

Welcome to the new place in NC!

We arrived in New Bern on a Saturday evening.  Jeremy got here a few days before us and completely unloaded all of our belongings and stocked the pantry full of junk food, much to my children's delight.  I have since heard repeated requests for Daddy to take over the grocery shopping, a task, that he thankfully does not want.  :)  We celebrated our reunion with a dinner at Thai Thai.  It was so yummy!

The first weeks here were full of work.  We may have gotten a decent deal on the house because it was a foreclosure, but we made up for it many times over in sweat equity.  ;)  I didn't take a "before" picture of the yard, but it and the flower beds were a totally overgrown mess and I loathed the bushes that were already here.  I need color and flowers!  The driveway is made of concrete and lots of pretty little plants were growing between the "sidewalk cracks".  (Anyone know the professional term for those?)  The house was repainted before we moved in, but they used that awful builders grade flat paint.  For those of you fortunate enough to not know of which I speak, it is the equivalent of covering the walls with a fine smattering of chalk dust and expecting it to stick.  Jeremy has found himself quite busy with repainting as much as he can do before he deploys.

I removed all of the existing bushes, with the exception of these two tall ones and put in some pretty, easy to care for roses.  I also had to weed, mulch and install the edging.  We still need to do some work in the backyard and the shutters and front door will eventually be painted black.  While I like the color blue, I don't really like it to be the focal point of my house.  It actually makes the gray siding look blue as well.

On top of the work that we did, we bought the house with the intention of changing quite a few things that we needed to pay someone to do. The first thing that HAD to go was the laminate in the laundry room, kitchen and all the bathrooms.  We brought tile for the downstairs from Yuma.  Crazy, aren't we?  ;)  Ok.  It was me.  I can't pin it on Jeremy.  What I really would have wanted would have been a dark hardwood in all of those areas, but that's not the most practical for an area where lots of water is in use.  While we lived for weeks on end with a torn up kitchen and laundry room, I had to become creative with our meal prep and find new ways to use my crockpot.  I purchased an electric skillet so that we could vary our diet just a bit.  I also became quite familiar with the laundry mat.  While it's so nice to get all your laundry over and done with in one day, I am not a fan of spending my days in a place where snack foods hang out behind bars and employees get foot and leg massages by trannies.  But... maybe that's just me.

Crock Pot Banana Bread.
It was good and sure hit the spot when we had it, but now that the oven is back in place, we've gone back to making it the old fashioned way.

The Before of the Eat in Kitchen area

 The Before of the actual kitchen from the viewpoint of the stairway that leads into the kitchen

And the Before of the kitchen from the eat in area, showing the large wasted space that I found a perfect way to fill!  ;)

 Underneath that thick, heavy vinyl was the slab!  It took the man redoing the floor a LONG time to get up all of the adhesive and vinyl.

 All concrete slab!

Just seeing progress was so much fun!

AND there it is!  Three LONG weeks later, My beautiful chocolate brown floor with black grout!  While I started out really wanting hardwood, I am pretty happy with the end result!

 Next stop... Those sparkly blue countertops have got to go!
After looking at all kinds of granite pictures, I decided I liked this one the best.  It is from Brazil and is called Chocolate Fiorito.  I know they weren't fibbing because our friends who are living in Brazil for the semester have this same granite at their place.  ;)

 The After!
Creampuff had to get herself in that picture!

See what I did with that empty space?
We put in a nice big island that has all kinds of specialized cabinets that make me :D.
The bookshelf you see there holds the kids schoolbooks.  One shelf per kid.
There is also a cabinet for trash and recycling, a big pot and pan pull out, spice rack drawers and utensil drawers.

 I also pulled off all of the gold knobs and replaced them with something darker to match the kitchen.

This is the exact moment Jeremy realized that size really does matter!

(And that an empty laundry room can look really big right up until you have to call upon your tetris skills to get the washer and dryer to fit!)

The Before of the 1/2 bath downstairs.

We kept with the large chocolate brown tiles for the downstairs bath.

The pinwheel in the plant is Amelia's contribution to decorating.

 The Before of the kids bathroom

The After.

I changed the knobs in here as well.

 The After of our bathroom.
I didn't take a before, but the vinyl was the same as the other bathrooms.

The kids call this room the "library".

I am SUPER happy with the old lady library sofa that I found on our Craigslist site.

It was actually at an antiques shop and is in like new condition and very well made.  It suits this room perfectly!  It took me a while to find what I wanted for the room and I am glad I waited.

From this view you can see the beautiful picture given to us by our church family in Yuma.

We miss you guys and think of you whenever we look at it.

And last but not least, just a picture of the guest room.  All stays here are free and include meals and entertainment.  All you have to do is get yourself here!
In AZ, we would have said Mi Casa es su Casa, but I suppose we are in NC now, so we should say a nice hearty "Ya'll come back now, ya hear?"
(Don't worry... much like my Spanish, that's about all I know, so if when you do come visit, I'll just talk all normal...You know, Yankee.  ;)