June 22, 2015

A Big Creek Summer With Home Improvements

Martie Big Creek Farmhouse Remodel Big Creek, gardening, handmade countertop, home improvements, summer 2 Comments

Summer is in full swing here at Big Creek!  I’ve gotten through my biggest wedding of the season, and I have one more week to work before my vacation starts.  Do you know what that’s got me thinking of?  My awesome Brother Bear and his family are coming to visit again this year for the week of the 4th of July!  And, I’m also thinking about how different everything will look to them.  They haven’t been here in a year, and we’ve done a lot of improvements since then.  Here goes another recap of Big Creek happenings, because you know I love showing off our home improvements.

Indoor Home Improvements

Inside, other than cleaning up and putting down some strategically-placed floor coverings, we’ve pretty much just left it alone.  You may remember this,

which is our hallway back when we were first prepping the house for our arrival.  Here’s how it looks now.

We’re covering a long strip of plywood with this rug,

and that plywood strip is covering a hole that we created,

just to find out what was going on underneath.

Do you remember this?

 

Here it is now.  

See what I mean?  It’s not much different, just clean and covered.

Coach and Cousin Janet installed our gorgeous tile backsplash, and Coach finished our new cabinet soon after moving in.  

What you haven’t seen was the handmade countertop Coach made for me.

We just cut and nailed down planks of 1″x4″ lumber.  It stayed like that for a while, and I hated it, because it just didn’t feel sanitary.  I used a cutting mat for everything, and wiped the countertop down constantly, but that raw wood just wasn’t cutting it.  Coach finally found a break in time to do this project, and I could’t love it more.  He used this product, which is a self-leveling, pourable polyurethane, and the finished result is like doing 60 coats of the stuff.  It’s awesome! We had to fill in the cracks with wood-filler before using this.  I can clean and sanitize my handmade countertop now, and it looks so rustic…perfect in this old train-car kitchen.

Outdoor Home Improvements

Coach has also, as you know, painted all the shop buildings and added trim.  Since that looked so great, we also did some pretty gardening.  Just this week, Coach mulched everything, and Madre filled in some of these beautiful rock flower beds with some new plants.

I can’t stop looking at any of this…it just gives me such a happy feeling.

 

Here’s a neat ‘before-and-after tree removal’ shot of the house from the same angle.

 

It looks so different with the trees missing! Here’s the back yard, soaking in the sunlight for the first time in years.

This has already been a wonderful summer, and we have so many more memories to make around here.  The week of July 4th is always an exciting week, when Brother Bear and his brood descend upon Big Creek, and we all just turn into creek rats for seven days or so.  It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year!  This year may be a little hectic, because hopefully more renovations will be starting very soon, but it will still be a summer to remember.

Come on, VACATION!!

X,O,X,O,    Martie