So very blessed!

The house has been going tremendously well.  I just had to blog today because I'm very excited about what happened last night.  It's not that huge, but then again, for us, it pretty much is.  We went to Lowes last night to return a few items and pick a few up.  We were going to leave the store, but Justin decided that he wanted to look at some bathroom fans at the back of the store.  On our way back there, we saw a beautiful bathroom vanity that had some damage to the back of it and was marked down from over $500 to just $150!!  We looked at it and I fell in love (of course), and Justin said that he could fix it with about $10 worth of supplies and a little bit of time.  One of the sales ladies walked over and told us just how good of a deal it was, but the problem was, we had only brought our car and damaged items like this aren't supposed to be saved...you have to take them when you buy them.  Thankfully, the lady knew Justin because of all the times he has shopped at Lowes and said that since it was him, she would mark it as sold and put it behind her desk while we ran back to Morton to get Dad's truck!!!  What a God-send!  If it wasn't for her, that would have been gone by the time we got back.  It was pretty great because all of the staff at the store knew about it and kept telling us what a good find it was.  I would have to agree!  Little things like this mean a lot, and it is these things that let us know that God has a hand on this project!

I didn't think that we would be able to afford anything even close to this!  I absolutely love it!  

This is what the back looks like.  Justin bought some boards and is going to fix it right up.  You won't ever know that this was damaged!  

On another note, we put the "For Sale" sign out last night.  It is bitter sweet, and a little bit scary!  I have loved this house and we have had a ton of good memories here, but I am so excited that we will soon be moving into our very own house!  That's also the scary part...we will be moving into the new house all too soon.  Yikes!  Thankfully, we have running water now, and it won't be long before we have our bathroom installed, but still, it's frightening.  I can't let my mind go too far because I start to think about school starting, moving during school, living in a halfway finished house, and all the things that won't get done for a while because I'll be way too busy.  I'm envisioning painting over Christmas break.  Oh well.  As long as I have a place to study, I'll be fine.  I think I'm going to start making a bunch of things to put in the freezer because I have a feeling that our kitchen won't get hooked up for a while and I'm going to need some easy things to pop in the oven!  Anyhow, here are a few pictures of what has been going on lately.  Once again, thanks to Klint and my dad for helping us on your free time.  It means a ton to have friends and family who are willing to donate their time to our efforts!

This picture actually predates the last video that I put up, but I thought I would put it in  anyway.  Justin had to tear out the old floor in the "bathroom" section, re-level it, and redirect the beams so they weren't going long ways.  The floor originally slanted so that the back part was several inches lower that the front.  It was very noticeable.  That's what you get with such an old house!  Justin has now installed all of the plumbing under here.  he had to belly/back crawl under this area for several days in order to put it in.  You can probably about imagine what the shower looked like after he did that all day!  Yuck!

As I mentioned in the last video, I tried to plant some annuals, but alas, I am not a green thumb.  However, I have four little snap dragon plants that have gone crazy lately and I am loving the color they add to the landscaping.  If only everything else would have survived!

This is the beginning of my closet.  Justin is finally done with the plumbing under there (since that used to  be the bathroom) and put the new sub-floor on it and started to frame it in.  The framing has been my favorite part so far because I can actually visualize what things are going to look like!

This actually works!  We have running water!!!!

This is the basement, folks.  Lovely, I know.  Justin installed a new water heater and a dehumidifier...two much needed improvements!

This is another look at what a beautiful basement we have.  (Actually, I am very thankful for it.  I hate tornados and in our current house, we do not have a basement.  This will be used as a tornado shelter and storage area. :) Justin put in a water filter and there is now a spigot that I can use to fill up buckets to water my poor, poor plants!  If you can see up in the left hand corner of the photo, that is the "entrance" to the crawl space under the bathrooms, which is Justin's access to the plumbing.  Thank goodness he isn't claustrophobic!   

This room used to hold all of the tools and will eventually be the laundry room.  Klint's job last Saturday was to pull off all of the dry wall, which turned out not to be too bad of a job, considering some of the dry wall screws weren't screwed into anything at all.  Ummm...good thing we're redoing it!

Just another view of the laundry room.

Ta-Da!  More running water!  Justin hooked up a utility sink and installed the hookups for the washer.  Very exciting stuff!