Moving right along

The porch on the house was weird so to maximize space we pushed the front porch out to make it even with the front of the house. It added about 12 feet to the inside of the house. We needed this extra footage for a foyer. Before you walked straight into the steps that go upstairs. This spring we are going to add a real front porch and paint the outside.

The inside after the porch was moved out.

We also busted out the wall that went into one of the bedroom downstairs. We are going to put french doors in and use it as a office. The old entrance to the bedroom was off the kitchen.

ceilings

Here is a picture of the cofferd ceilings Josh has built in the kitchen. I will get an updated one of them finished.

As you can see we have been living in a mess! Here we had to remove the sliding glass doors (which we were planning on doing any way just not when we did) we found out that the header across the back side of the house was completely rottening through. So Josh removed it and replaced it. We also removed the fireplace because it was no longer in the center of the room after we moved the living room wall.
We replaced the sliding glass doors with french doors.

Here is the kitchen and dining room.

Kitchen

We have been busy trying to get the house finished. We are almost there. All the hard work is being finished this week. We hope to have paint on the walls and floors down by the end of the month. I love the kitchen! We have to tile the backsplash but other than that the kitchen is almost finished. Not having a kitchen for almost 2 months was pretty hard. Glad those days are behind us!

The old kitchen was awful!


What have we gotten ourselves into?

We moved the old kitchen cabinets into the garage.

Remodel update

Josh put in new windows.

Opening up the staircase

Herb helped us move the wall in the dining room to make a bigger living room. See that big pile of trash behind him? We did all this the week we got 22 inches of rain and Waste Industries couldn't deliver our dumpster. We didn't let that keep us from working! I will post more pictures because we have done a lot more to the house.

Family Effort

Macy and Ollie..enough said

Kristi and I taking the carpet off the staircase

Jared has been very helpful and encouraging through out this entire process.

Now the fun begins

We are doing some remodeling to our new house. We started with our bedroom. I just realized I don't have any pictures of it. I will post those later. The more settled we are getting the more I am realizing how big this house is. I find myself starting some thing in one room, walking to another room to get some thing, starting some thing in that room, and never returning to what I started in the first place. I love it! Here are a few pictures of what we started this week.

Josh and Jared taking out the ceiling. You will see why we did this later.

Chaia and I knocking out the wall between the living room and the dining room. We are getting rid of the dining room to make a bigger kitchen and living room. The wall is gone. The closet to the left has been removed too. The Kitchen was really small for a house this size and the living room was oddly shaped. Getting rid of that wall is going to make the space more usable.

Moving

We were supposed to close almost two weeks prior to when we closed. Our plans were to use those two weeks to do some remodeling to the house before we moved our stuff in. Things didn't go according to plan. We ended up closing at 4pm on the day we had to be out of our apartment. Thank God for great friends. When we got back from signing our wonderful friends had moved every thing out of our top floor apartment. Josh and I were both shocked and grateful! All we had to do was clean and move stuff into our house.

Tommy supervising

Chaia made sure every thing was going smoothly while we were gone. She is a God send!

We can't even begin to express our gratitude to every one who helped move. We know it was no fun, hot, and tiring.

Taking a break and enjoying some Buffalo Wild Wings.

FINALLY

We finally signed on the house last Thursday. We could write a book about our loan process. It was crazy. Things are definitely different than they were four and a half years ago when we bought our house in Wilson. It will be a very long time if then before we buy another house. Thank you God it is over with!

Our new house

Our new house! We came across this foreclosure just in time. It has been bank owned since January. We put in our offer Wednesday afternoon and had to participate in an online auction that evening. We won the highest bid! The bank approved our offer on Thursday and we are closing in less than three weeks! The MLS listing has been removed and the signs in the front yard (thanks to Josh). We are still taking it all in. Sorry, couldn't get all the house in the picture. To the right is a two car attached garage.

The house is in a great neighborhood! It has 6 bedrooms, 3 and half baths. HUGE!! It is almost 4,000 square feet. The MLS listing says 3,000 but apparently they finished in a few extra rooms with out a builiding permit. It needs a little tlc but nothing major. Just paint and carpet. The best part is we got this house for the price of a condo in Wilmington. It is 2 and a half times bigger than our house in Wilson and we are paying almost the say amount a month for this house. That's how we know it was completely God! Josh and I were shocked when they took our offer because it was so low for the size and location of the house. That's how God works!

We took pictures while we were having a builder give us price quotes on a few minor things that need to be fixed. This is the master bedroom. It has its own private sitting area down the stairs.

Sitting area in the master bedroom

The dining room

The living room

We are so excited! We have been praying and fasting for a while about buying a home in Wilmington. When God opened the door, He opened it wide! We have a few hurdles to jump in the next three weeks but we know God is more than able to handle them!

LIfe at the Beach

Kristi's Graduation

Kristi is the new addition to our family. She worked hard this last semester of school and graduated on June 12th. We are so proud of her and we know she has a huge future a head of her!

Mrs. Anne and Kristi

Kristi, Mrs. Anne, and Pastor Daniel

Kristi and Me

US

Saturday Sanctuary Kids had its annual Talent Show. We were raising money for new puppets. I was thrilled with the amount of support we had! We are going to be able to buy more puppets than I initially thought!

WOW..

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted! Here is a quick update.....on our life!

We started clearing land last week. So exciting!

Spring is finally here! The weather has been beautiful. We have been able to go to the beach several times. Traffic has increased and Walmart is to be avoided due to all the tourists.....which is the down side to living so close to the beach. I can live with that a few months out of the year!

In March my aunt Leta passed away. We traveled to High Point to attend the funeral. She was a mighty woman of God and will be greatly missed by all who knew her. Danny, Samuel, and Matthew are in our prayers daily!!

In February our church purchased 10 acres of land less than a mile from our current location. We are very excited about our new building. We are really growing in our current location and desperately need to move to a bigger facility. This phase will be a temporary sanctuary but the permanent children's facility. I am really excited about being a part of the design of the children's department.

We also got 4-5 inches of snow! It was beautiful coming down but it didn't stay around long. Life went on as usual!

Preview of the Christmas Production Josh and I wrote. It was a huge success! We had so much fun writing it, building the set, getting the dances together, etc..

Christmas Production

Josh and I wrote our Christmas Production this year. He rewrote all the songs and we did the script together. Its for the entire family. So if you are in the area you should check it out!!!

Our Thanksgiving was pretty quiet this year. We went to Dunn for a few hours on Thursday. It was great to see Josh's side of the family. We didn't make it to Rocky Mount this year. Every one was eating at the same time so we decided to go back to Wilmington. We had our first Thanksgiving meal with just us!! I fixed all the traditional food. We stayed in and watched movies and finished decorating the Christmas tree.

Happy Halloween

Last night we had our first annual Fall Festival. I had a great team of people that helped me put it together. We had a ton of games, candy, pony ride, inflatables. It was so much fun! We had a great turn out.

I was a tooth fairy and Piper was Minnie Mouse....Josh was.......

A tooth
Pony Ride

Hot Dog eating contest....Pastor Daniel was the winner. He ate 6 hot dogs in 1 minute.