BBQ Birthday

Last week was a week of 'homeowner firsts' for Royden. He purchased his first barbeque and weedeater and hung his first slabs of jiprock downstairs-this morning I saw even saw him wearing a tool belt! We took some time out of the busy renovation project to celebrate the fact that we have now been blessed with having him around for 26 years. So in celebration he fired up the new grill and served up some of dad's delicious homemade burgers which I made for the first time. Mmm mmm good! A bunch of our friends came over and we had our first official party at our new house!









Fellow blogger in action...check out more pics at themillerhood.blogspot.com






Thanks to all of our friends for coming out to celebrate with us. Happy Birthday Royden!!

Instant Update

Check out that handiwork. You're in the kitchen looking into the bedroom to the right. Those are new walls and a new doorway.



Inside the bedroom-new walls, closet and ceiling. Great job guys!

Blood Sweat And.....No Tears!

So the reno work continues downstairs. I've been anxiously awaiting the installation of jiprock and I'm excited because it is occuring as I write. Things are progressing!


This is the offending piece of lumber that tried to take Royden out. He's still smiling...sort of!



Lots of things have been done downstairs and there are lots of things yet to do. One of these things was to rent a jackhammer and bang out some of the foundation. Nice work dad! I unfortunately think I may have sacrificed my lens for this shot as I think that there is now a small nick in it. D'oh!



Another done...or sort of done thing is my very own laundry room complete with laundry sink. I have always wanted a sink and now I have one! Yeah!



I think the worst part of the work so far has been attempting to remove the linolium off of the
bathroom floor. Amy valiently attempted the frustrating task before we invested in goo gone and a super sharp razor...she has more patience than I. I liken the task to trying to scrape bubble gum off the floor that's been glued there first. Awful. I wouldn't even attempt to remove the stuff until we had some new devices to aid in the removal. It's all off now...and my hands are still aching!

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Jiprock has arrived! Those strong boys are nailing it to the ceiling right now. Sounds like fun eh? Tomorrow however we will have fun and celebrate Royden's 26th birthday.

My Hot Date with a Contractor

Friday, the most anticipated day of the week is rife with possibilities. It is the end of the work week and signals the kick off for well...kicking off...or kicking it up...or just plain kicking around. We Lepp's generally just kick around Friday night and Mrs. Lepp, she often is found sound asleep by 9:30pm. If not sleeping Friday evening then the Lepps are found at the local movie theater partaking in some popcorn as Fridays often are opening night for new movies. Well this past Friday there was to be no kicking around. I had a hot date with my favorite general contractor, and yes it did involve popcorn.


Safety googles never looked so sexy. Yep, Friday night was spent spaying and scraping that darn popcorn off of our ceiling. It looks much better now...I'm just not so sure how our lungs look since some boys I know laughed off my idea to suit up and wear respirators. I guess that's what faith is for??



Saturday was spent continuing the deconstruction of the basement. After seeing the extent of our progress on Thursday Stuart arrived to lend a hand...and some muscle to our labour. He's moving in June 1st and I think he wants carpet and drywall by then:). Thanks for your help...we really appreciate it!



I really felt that no real progress was being made until we began pulling out the existing carpet. I was so delighted to find that in the old garage it pulled up almost effortlessly as it was hardly glued to the floor. In the office however was a different story. Note the above mosaic rubberbacked carpet stuck to the floor in the above photograph. What were they thinking?!



My dear old dad (I mean young...actually quite young as far as dads my generation's age go) has been working tirlessly for us. Not only is he loaning us the money for the project he is working for free. I can't begin to thank him and I don't know what I'd do without him. I'm so glad to have him here...and we're not even driving each other nuts yet! (well at least he's not driving me nuts....I might be driving him nuts........)



Look at that man work! Has anyone ever seen Eric move so fast?!

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On Thursday dad and I went to the dump to drop the first load. A city dump is an interesting experience. In fact it's not even called a dump but a 'transfer station'. There you shovel all of your junk into a semi truck container and they haul it away. You're not allowed to use your cell phone either in the area for some strange reason. I was concerned that I'd get in trouble for taking pictures and I did in fact get mildly interrogated when I began brazenly snapping photos. What a laugh. The guy unloading his garbage next to me told me that in Seattle they load garbage into freight trains and ship it to guess where? Good old Canada. Of course. Well, I felt quite saddened by this fact until I asked where in Canada they ship it to. "Saskatchwan" he answered.





So there you have it, 1800+ pounds of drywall has come out of our basement and there it is, cleanly swept waiting for framing to begin.

Breaking Things

Things break easily. Nothing lasts forever. Things break when you drop them. Things break if you don't maintain them. Things break because they where down.

Things also break when you swing hammers at them. Sometimes they break when you kick them too. Or when you pull at them with a wonder bar. Breaking things is easy.

That's what I learned this week as construction got under way in our basement. Ruth's Dad is here for an undetermined amount of time, remodeling the downstairs into a sweet little suite. I'm going to have to post some new pictures almost immediately since the work is going so fast, a lot of things have changed since these pictures were taken.




But it's a serious business; construction. You can't mess around with reciprocating saws lying around, and nails all over the floor. Safety comes first, and that means no horsing around...





My Dad and Mom also came down for the weekend with Joanne too. Unfortunately, and fortunately, construction continued downstairs while we visited upstairs, so it was a little hectic but still fun. My parents got to see the house for the first time and I think they liked it. I promise it won't be so noisy next time, Mom.

We decided to hit some of the Seattle sites that they haven't seen yet, like the Library and Columbia Tower. We took my Mom to a baseball game at Safeco but I totally forgot my camera. d'oh!






Oh ya, Mom got a new camera. It's got a nice big LCD.



Sorry it was kind of a hectic week for everyone. We still enjoyed all of your company and hard work.

Come back soon!

Spring is Sprung...

...the grass is ris. So much so that Royden got to use his new lawnmower for the first time today. Lucky him. I've been on a bit of a feminist bent since we bought this house together. I've noticed that since we have become homeowners the majority of our new mail comes addressed to Royden only, even though my name does happen to appear on the title. Things like new utility bills, coupons to the grocery store etc. This perturbs me greatly and I have complained loudly about it to him and to the various bank and utility companies I have called to get this situation rectified. I have had varying degrees of success with this endeavor, even after adopting Royden's brilliant strategy of being nice as opposed to annoyed on the phone:). So you would think that this feminist ideology of joint ownership and responsibility would continue right through the whole of our life together. You would be wrong. The lawn and mower are his. I did however provoke him to anger when offering my opinion (read insistance) about which brand of mower to get.



Royden has some new talents that I had yet to discover in the past 10+ years of knowing him. Note in the above photograph his close proximity to an open tool box. I know you too are amazed. So my lovely husband used those tools (in fact he has used various tools in the last six hours that I hardly imagined he knew existed) to install our new hose reel. I guess I'll help water the lawn.



Royden, as impressed with his handiwork as I. Dads be proud! However you will notice in this picture what is still clutched in is left hand. Nope that's not a power tool you're seeing. A true artist at work. An artist AND a handyman...now that's what I call sexy!



So I got ahold of the camera today in an attempt to live up to my better half's photograpy skills. I thought this shot was very creative...Royden thought it was funny. He did like the rest though, so here's a little sampling of what else I shot today.

This fat bee has been buzzing around this bush all week!

This is a blossom from the ugly apple tree in our front yard...I had a feeling the tortured looking thing would produce beautiful blossoms which would prevent me from chopping it down. The season here is about a month ahead of home, all these flowers were in bloom at our wedding and our anniversary is still a month away.

Happy SPRING!

That's all Volks!

Ruth's parents came to visit this weekend. They came to see our new digs in Bothell, as well as save us from the depths of dish washing despair. Having a dish washer is a social status symbol you know. I feel like I can look people in the eye again. Ruth and I suffered for an entire week, bonding with each other at the kitchen sink as we washed dishes by hand. By hand! It was horrific. Thanks Dad.
The other reason they came was of course for the Spring Volkswagen meet in Puyallup. The meet consists of two distinct attractions. The swap meet, which mostly looks like this;


But then there's the show cars. And the show cars go like this;



Definitely a lot of fun. I've been to the show enough times now that I'm starting recognize faces. For those of you who haven't heard the story, when I asked for Eric for Ruth's hand in marriage I basically asked him what he'd like me to change in my life before I proposed, since I already knew that he wanted me to marry Ruth. He thought it over for a while before he asked me to sell my BMW and buy a volkswagen. I've driven a Jetta GLI ever since.



We can't thank you guys enough for taking a trip up here to work on our house. I can wield a pencil but I sure can't maneuver that reciprocating saw like Dad can. You are a clear blessing, and we thank God for you both. Ok, next set of parents; you're up!