On the Market

This past month in a half has been crazy.  Crazy as in getting back to the good ol' days of building the house crazy.  Once we got home from Idaho and made the decision to move as soon as possible, life jumped into full swing with finishing up everything on the house that needed to be done before we could sell it.  It's amazing what you can live with when you are living in a house, and quite frankly just don't want to take the time to do it, especially after two and a half years of work that was already done on the house.  I could care less that all my interior doors were just primed and not painted white to match the trim and the rest of the house!  But to sell, it had to be done.  Along with hooking up our in floor heating, and putting metal siding all along the outside bottom of our house to cover the last of the showing house wrap, and caulking ALL the trim! Ugh, talk about not a very fun job!.  We put the trim on our kitchen cabinets and painted the backsplash.  Our original plan was to tile the backsplash in the kitchen but that was nixed once we decided to sell.  Also, our garage doors that looked like they were on and worked from the outside, were actually just nailed up from the inside.  So those had to get installed correctly, and can I just say that it is one of the most awesome things to have a working garage!!  Oh man!  That was a little treat.  After 6 and a half years of living in freezing cold and muddy Minot, ND with 4 little kids we now have a garage to park in and we're moving!  I may or may not have considered not moving for a split second.  :)  And many, many other big and little projects were completed as Nate worked tirelessly finishing up the house to get it ready to sell.  And I just have to mention that one of those jobs that needed to be done was mowing down our 7 foot weeded lawn.  Yep, that's right folks, you read that correctly, our whole front yard was consumed with 7 ft. weeds.  Thanks to Dwight and Nate, I'm sure our neighbors are SO happy we finally did something to our yard.  And while I know no one will be buying our home for its amazing looking yard, it looks a hundred times better than it did!  The Lord thankfully sustained us as we worked on the house non stop and dealt with a terrible "week long" flu bug that plagued our family soon after returning home from our trip to Idaho and Canada.  Like I said, it was crazy and rough, but we've made it!  We are on the other side.  

Our house is FINISHED!!! 

It's quite an amazing feeling.  To not have to worry about it any more.  Well, okay, any homeowner knows that statement isn't exactly true but we are glad that it's ready to be put on the market.

Which is exactly what happened at the beginning of this week.

Our house is officially on the market!

And our hope and desire is that the Lord would chose to sell it quickly, but we are also putting our trust in Him that His timing is perfect and whatever He sees fit for the selling of this house we are okay with.

Please join us in prayer that the Lord would allow our house to sell quickly.  His timing is perfect and that we would trust Him in this process and have the peace and joy of the Lord amidst it all.

Also, if you know anyone looking for a home to buy in Minot, ND, pass along our listing to them because we have a house for sale with a pretty incredible view and we would love someone or some family to enjoy it as much as we have!!

Here is the link to our listing: http://www.minothomes.com/cgi-bin/property.pl?action=details&property_id=14175

Here are some random photos of some of the projects that have been worked on and completed this past month.

Thunderstorm Destruction

Spring has finally sprung around here, finally, and it came in with a bang.  Or at least temperatures that made it feel more like Summer instead of Spring.  There are no more freezing temperatures or blizzards and 5 ft snow banks to shovel out of but now there are thunderstorms.  And being on our hill makes those thunderstorms pretty exciting!

The other night I woke to the sound of a storm raging outside.  I quickly turned to Nate and woke him up, he can sleep through anything, and told him to get up and bring out patio furniture inside because there was a storm and I didn't want the furniture to blow off our hill and down into our neighbors house below us.  But by the time he was up and dressed it was too late to head outside.  The storm was raging and it was completely unsafe to go outside, let alone be near any of our large windows.  We went around and closed all our curtains in case any of the windows broke and waited for the storm to pass.

As soon as the thunderstorm passed it was completely calm with clear skys and we decided to head outside in the dark to see what the damage was.  We were shocked.  Our garage door had buckled over and our house was completely covered in mud on the front.  I thought window cleaning would be on my spring cleaning list but I didn't expect exterior house cleaning would be on it as well. 

The following day brought the strongest winds we've experienced yet on our hill and Nate had to come home early from work to save our roof as we had shingles flying off left and right. 

The whole ordeal was a little wild and we're thankful all the 'damage' was repairable and nothing severe. 

But it did make us wonder what we were thinking when we decided to build a house on a hill in North Dakota!

 

Decorating Touches

I've added a couple decorations to the main living area since the last time I showed you our Living Room, Dining Room and Sun Room. 

Here are some simple added touches to these rooms:

Living room side table.

The pictures on the wall I had from our old house, they worked perfectly with the new colors in this house.

The Sun Room.

A few added touches on top of the piano.

Thank you Hobby Lobby for some awesome signs!

I'm trying to keep it alive but I don't think I'm doing too well...

Dining Room hutch which now holds all our school items.

Love these Southern Living bowls, got them for a couple dollars at the flee market!

Prayer Sticks, we each get one when we sit down to dinner and we pray for whomever is written on the stick.

Our Siding is FINISHED!!!

Wow!  What a huge relief and blessing it is to have our siding finished!  It was our last really big job that needed to be finished on our house.  And from the outside our house looks finished... even though we still have a little ways to go.

But that is okay!  Because our siding is finally done!

We actually started putting up siding in September of 2011 which you can read about here, it's been almost 1 year.  Crazy.  And granted a lot of that time we didn't work on siding at all due to the cold cold weather of our winters here, but no matter how long it took we are grateful to be done.

We had so much help from friends and we could not have done it without their generous help and blessing.  The siding we used definitely is a two person job to put up for the most part.  Even Zeke was out there with his Dad holding up the other side whole it was nailed into place. 

We just need to go around and touch up the paint where we caulked all the seams and then paint the front door but overall it looks amazing.

We're so happy with how it's all coming together and now that such a big project has been completed we have a little extra motivation to finished up the inside and get this place finished!  The end is drawing closer and we're all excited about that!

Check out our fully sided house!

One happy guy and glad to be putting the last piece of siding on!

Putting the last piece up,

And nailing it on!



A late but good night, wrapping up!

Looking good!

More like.. Looks amazing!!

Even got a few lights up!

Thank you Lord for helping us persevere! 

Color Me Pretty

Color! 
          Beautiful.
                    Bright.
                              Yellow.
                                        Color!

That's right, a year and a half after we began this journey of building our home we finally have yellow siding on the front of our house!!  And it looks amazing!!

We all spent a beautiful evening outside while Nate and Billy began putting our yellow siding on the front of our house.  I am telling you, it feels like there is really a light at the end of the tunnel now! 

Zeke and Kenzie love being outside with Daddy in the evenings while he's working on the house.  They love playing in the dirt and being creative in finding fun things to do.  And every once in a while they even get in on the action of building!

And the other night Janessa got to come out and play in the dirt.  She had a fabulous time and eventually got pushed in the wagon for over half an hour by her brother and sister.  She looked like a little princess lounged in her carriage while she was carted all over our yard.

We all had fun and enjoyed watching color go up on the front of our house!  You'll also notice some more work has been done to the front porch and the brick mold siding has been put up around our front door which looks amazing as well. 

Soon I'll have to get to work and paint that door black!

It's all coming together now.

And the yellow siding begins on the front of our house!

Got some of the white siding up on our front porch dormer.

More brick mold siding going up along the bottom of the house.

Working hard!  Love this man!

Looking good!

My sweet girl loved playing in the dirt and eating it too!