Jim and I became homeowners on my twenty-fifth birthday, June 22 of 2007. We were in Las Vegas for our bachelor/bachelorette celebration weekend as well as the marital union of my father-in-law, Sven with his blushing bride, Toni. It was an exciting weekend for everyone, especially for Jim and I because we were only days away from tying the knot and with the help of his Aunt Kathy and Uncle Al we became homeowners in Poway. The first time we visited the house I was in complete shock, the house was abandoned and simply trashed by the previous owners who could not make ends meet. I couldn’t even imagine what we could do with this house, and where the money was going to come from to make the livable upgrades that were much needed. After we returned from our Jamaican honeymoon we moved back into the Schack’s house for a little over a month and began our five month journey of making our first house our dream home. With the assistance of my Father and a little reserved wedding money we were able to completely gut our rotting kitchen and make it the most amazing kitchen within our reach. From the remodeling of the kitchen we moved onto the demolition of the much hated pink glazed Spanish tile. Can you imagine in your worst nightmare an entire house covered in pink tile? Well, that’s we had, and can I tell you I had nightmares about this house, would the pink ever leave my sight? It all happened when Jim was attempting to “clean” the kitchen flooring and realized that the stain would never leave us unless we smashed the hell out of it. In which we did, and I had no problem taking a hammer to the tile. On Labor day weekend of ’07 Jim and I finished our kitchen flooring, what an amazing weekend! Another unsightly eye sore of our living room was the glass block window above our fireplace, which I might add was still covered in the pink tile (it was still haunting me!). Jim and my Dad popped out the glass blocks and covered the now hole with dry wall and our signature sage paint, and it made a space for our flat screen television which is the focal point of the room. On October 17th, my Parents thirty-seventh wedding anniversary my Dad and I moved around all the rocks that made our front lawn and lined our “island” and bought several plants to add foliage to our “rock garden”. The day that all the fires started in Poway, my Dad and Jim planted our lawn, as the smoke stacked and before we were awoken the next morning to evacuate. October was a surreal month for everyone in Southern California, but also for our friends and my bosses, The Waldon’s who had lost their house to the wildfires. As many moved on and attempted to rebuild we had set a date for December to have our housewarming party, which only meant that we had a deadline to finish all the smaller details around the house. We were left with the: texturing of the kitchen walls and ceiling, painting the kitchen walls, ceiling, guest bedroom (which thanks to my friend Cassie it was the best night of painting while Jim was in the Bahamas), our hallway and the removal of the last forty pink tile left on the fireplace. It all seemed so simple, right? Well, Jim was gone on a work trip which left me to paint the remaining rooms and decorate the house. Jim and my Dad managed to finish the fireplace and my Mom and I decorated for Christmas. By the time the holidays rolled around we were able to throw our first party, in the rain with a house packed with our amazing family and friends and great food. When 2008 rolled in we said that we were not going to make any more renovations for a while, and actually took the time to spend time with one another, since our first seven months as newlyweds were hardly spent as newlyweds. The only minor details that we had made in the first half of ’08 was planting our backyard grass, planted many plants, decorated some more, received patio furniture from Aunt Kathy and Uncle Al for our birthdays and somehow came up with the idea of re-painting our house. This was the one thing I was adamant about since the beginning, but knew that the kitchen was needed way before we said goodbye to our brick red trim, mismatched white stucco, and our 60’s flared door. My Dad had his two-week vacation planned for last two weeks of August and within that time frame they would come down and we could finally say goodbye to the 60’s and say hello to a brighter appearance of our 1959 house in the Poway suburbs. We still have many projects left before we can even consider selling our first house, but I just wanted to write a little bit about our journey as homeowners and give a piece of advice for anyone who purchases a “fixer-upper”, you can make it work, it may take a lot of tears, sweat, vulgarity and time, but in the end that pebble of a house will turn to a gem. Below are some pictures of “before” and “after” projects, and trust me there are many more to come.

Sink Wall, Sink and cabinets removed. “Before”

Stove/Oven Side, Flooring replaced. We kept this side of the cabinets unlike the other side and my Dad re-finished the existing white washed cabinets with our dark stain.
Sink Side “After”

Stove/Oven Side “After”, this is an older picture from last fall, not current to what it looks like now (Blinds, curtains, appliances, etc.) But, you get the idea.

Right after we closed escrow, the view from the living room into the kitchen. “Before”

View into kitchen, this was taken again before we added blinds, curtains, and other nic–naks. “After”

Flooring going away! You can see it inside the closet…pink go away!

Living Room “Before” Pink tile and glass blocks. This was August of ’07 Right after we got our furniture.

Living Room “After”. Still no picture with curtains, picture and sconces lowered.

This was our master bedroom “before”. This is pretty funny to me.

Our bedroom “After”

Dining Room “Before” as it housed our new cabinets.

Dining Room “After”, I love our chandelier!

More to come. . .

Today I spent the day with my three-year-old neice, Makayla. Jim and I had picked her up last night in Murrieta and brought her back to our house to spend the night at Auntie and Uncle Jimmy’s house. She didn’t know what we were going to do but we started the day off with breakfast and cartoons and then headed out to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. This was both of our first times visiting the aquarium. When you drive down from Torey Pines Road you have an amazing view of the La Jolla bluffs and the Pacific Ocean. Upon entering the aquarium there are two extremely life-like Grey whales towering over you as you purchase tickets. When we entered we started to enter into the Hall of Fishes and Makayla really did not want anything to do with it. I think she really got overwhelmed with all the kids from the day camps and with the darkness. So, we headed outside and experienced the tide pools and all they had to offer. It was really neat because you can touch anything that lives within the tide pools. Today we saw an amazingly beautiful black octopus, hermit crabs, bright colored star fish (which one worker took out and placed into a bucket for Makayla to touch, it brought me back to the first time I touched a star fish…awww) many different types of fish, lobsters, crabs, prickly and sticky purple sea urchins, coral and tons of kelp. We soon left the picturesque cliffs and drove a little further down and decided to climb down the La Jolla Coves to the beach. Once down there Makayla played in the sand and got so excited that the water “kept washing her footprints away”. We played down there for a while and then headed to my work where she ate for the third time and somehow managed to eat 3/4 of a personal pizza, I guess this little one has her momma’s appetite! We left there and about five minutes after non-stop talking she was finally asleep. Overall, today was awesome! I truly miss seeing Makayla everyday, she definitely is one of a kind with her unconditional love and caring and not to mention her views from her three-year-old mind. What a great day!

So cute! He went straight to the front row for story time.