Before and (Mostly) After Pics

We're mostly done remodeling the house, we just have a few odds and ends left like oddly shaped ceiling registers, light switches, and a small area of moulding. We also need to finish getting some furniture and decorations, but we've made a ton of progress in 3 months...

Living room before. Living room after.


Kitchen before.

Kitchen during. We had to paint everything in the house including all cabinet doors in the kitchen and bathrooms, all of the interior doors, all of the trim, all of the ceilings, and all of the walls because of the smoke smell. The previous owner had smoked inside for the past 7 years and everything was yellow tinted. So not only did we have to paint everything we had to Killz a lot of it first. The house needed updating anyway, but I don't think we would have done as much as we did as fast as we did if it weren't for the smoke smell. Which is completely gone now, there's nothing original left!

Kitchen after. We did everything on the house ourselves, which was a lot for two people, except for the kitchen countertops and backsplash.

The two by four isn't holding up the bar, it's helping to brace it in case someone leans on it before we have a chance to put up some moulding underneath it.

Half bath before.

Half bath after.

Master bath during.

Master bath after.

Foyer before.

Foyer after.

Dining room before.

Dining room after (although we haven't had a chance to clean it out yet, it was the base of operations for all of the projects. It's emptied out a lot, you'll have to trust us.)

Painting the interior doors. Notice how yellow they are, which is how yellow everything was. We painted them white.

Front/Porch.   Front yard, a deer moving in to see what the cat food situation is.

We have to physically stand over Scooter while he eats so the deer don't kick him out and take his food. And even then they get about 10 feet away and just stand there waiting for you to go in. We got him some tuna yesterday, which he seemed to like very much.

No, it's not a dead raccoon. Just Scooter napping in the front yard on his back with his foot up in the air.

I've never seen a cat that loves to sleep on his back so much.

Allie the dog. Not our dog, we're dog-sitting this weekend. The best part about Allie is she doesn't like Scott. She growls and barks at him and hides from him. Won't have anything to do with him. Well Scott invested some time last night and they became friends and he was wrestling with her and playing fetch and she'd curl up next to him on the couch while he read. Well this morning, he had to start all over because she didn't remember him. So he spent some time coaxing her out from under the couch, we went for a walk, and they became friends again, everything was cool. Well then he took a shower and in the meantime she forgot him again and freaked out when he came back in the room, she was growling and barking and went and hid again. Now they're fine again tonight but tomorrow's a new day!

It really is a small world...

Scott has spent so much time this summer flight instructing, between that and the house we really haven't had time to do anything. Renee went out to Boerne while Scott had a lesson to watch and try and get in his world a little bit. The student that night, Hyun Ju Shin, asked if she wanted to come along while he practiced landings. It's a small world because as it turns out, he's from South Korea and works for the South Korean company in Louisiana that bought Taylor Energy. So he now works in the exact same downtown office in New Orleans where the Taylor corporate department was located. Anyway, he's an attorney in South Korea and his company is sending him to school at UTSA to learn US law. He said it's like a vacation for him and he wants to learn to fly in his free time because he can't in South Korea. He's only here temporarily on a work visa so he said he's really enjoying everything and soaking it up because he'll eventually have to go back. His wife and baby were able to come with him too. Pretty cool.

Coming in to land.

In the pattern at Boerne. Banking after taking off again after a touch and go.

More Animals...

Maybe if the cat wasn't so worthless we wouldn't have such small animal problem... We can't decide if all of this activity surrounding the cat food is cool or alarming. The possum was at least a little skittish when he saw us but the raccoon didn't really care. Scott was changing the locks on the garage door and the raccoon walked right by him within 4 feet, looked at him as if to say "what's up?" and went on his way. At least if he gets his fill of cat food he'll stay out of garbage. Assumedly.

It's all fun and games until the baby skunk gets freaked out by the raccoon and decides to spray. At some point we should probably just take up the food and water at night when Scooter's done, but for now it's cool to check up periodically and see if we have any visitors!

Busted!

Animal House

We bought a house a couple of weeks ago, and as a bonus it came with a cat! His name is Scooter, and he has been hanging around for the past several years, according to the lady who used to live next door and who had been driving all the way across town to feed him while the house sat vacant a couple months. He is very lazy and sleeps all day, lying around waiting to be fed. He doesn't hunt, if he is not fed he will probably die of starvation he is that lazy. The one day we didn't feed him because we didn't go by the house, we pulled in the driveway the next day and instead of sleeping on the porch he was gnawing on a patch of grass by his food bowl all crazy eyed, so we have made a point of feeding him daily since. The problem with the cat food bowl, though, is it attracts many different animals, all of which seem very familiar with the location of the bowl and dinner time. The deer especially love cat food, but we have also seen a baby skunk, a raccoon, and doves helping themselves. There's also a tan cat that sometimes comes around that the lady said used to be really fat and who she called "Big Fat Orange Cat" but is now really skinny and looks like he might have some kind of mangey disease. He will sit back and wait for Scooter to be done eating before he eats, so it must be Scooter's territory. We feed him off to the side though, and they hang out on the porch together all day.

Here Scott's feeding the deer down the driveway so Scooter can eat, they used to just take the food over from him but now they're kind of scared of us because we shoo them away while he eats. We're going to get a bucket for the front yard and fill it with deer corn like a lot of the neighbors. Good thing we like animals! I can't move the pictures for some reason, so here is a picture of a lizard we found today in the living room. They're all over outside but this one must have snuck in. Scooter's typical day...
He sleeps on his back on the porch. Worthless. We also weren't sure if Scooter and the deer got along or not, turns out not. One began following him shortly after this picture was taken and when he realized it, he turned around and hunched and hissed at it. The deer just stared and didn't move, but he did quit following him. Scooter's very lucky there's no beagle to chase him because she HATED cats and that was one of her favorite things to do!

Bridget aka "The Beagle"

11/8/2004-2/26/2011

Last Saturday, we had Bridget put down. It was an extremely hard decision but she had been very sick off and on for the past couple of years or so, and sick constantly for the past month. About a month ago, after another trip to the emergency vet where she was hospitalized, we went ahead and had a bunch of different tests done to see exactly what her illness was as the special diet and medication we had her on were no longer working. She had an ultrasound, colonoscopy, endoscopy, and various biopsies of her gastrointestinal system. The findings were that she had inflammatory bowel syndrome, which we had suspected but didn't know for sure until the tests. There was no cure, all we could do was continue to try to manage her condition with a special diet and additional medication to try and keep it from progressing. At the end of last week, she had degenerated to the point where we had run out of food brands she could tolerate, and she wasn't even able to stomach boiled chicken and rice. She was constantly sick, and the side effects from the already large amount of medication she was on were making her even more uncomfortable. Last Saturday morning, she had another episode which would have required hospitalization to stabilize her. Since we were unable to effectively manage her condition anymore and it seemed like we were just prolonging her suffering, we decided the best decision was to put her down. She was hurting so much and so uncomfortable in her last minutes of life, it is a relief to know she is finally at peace. We're glad she doesn't have to suffer anymore, but we loved her very much and miss her greatly. She was a very good little beagle.