Mom and Dad visit for the Fourth! - 'AMERICA!

Tool Time Paul!

Curty and Deb made another drive out to Pittsburgh over the fourth of July weekend, which was during my first week in lab!  I wasn't able to get home very much during my two months of surgery service, so they came out here to help we a few more house projects while it was still warm.  Our first stop was of course Lowes were we loaded up on lumber for the week.  No house project is complete without 2x4s!

People kept offering their help... hey, those little pipes are DETERMINED!

Amazingly enough, we were able to fit close to eight 8ft 2x4s into Little Richie (my tiny two door Hyundai Accent) and get things underway.  Dad and I had to head back to Lowes to do the rest of the heavy lifting with their rental truck... which we waited about 3 hours to borrow, yeesssh!  I knew I should have bought a Diesel Truck when I turned sixteen.

Curty, the man with the plan to transform our backyard and front porch!

Dinner with Chef Alyce....

We got a good jump on the projects and I fired up the grill that we bought over the summer to make some veggies and other treats. We mainly bought our grill because of how good the neighbors smelled when they had their first BBQ.  Dad worked in the backyard to get the corner of our lot turned into a decent retaining wall instead of scrub brush, and started getting ideas about the front porch and how were were going to tackle that and get it done in a day!

Grillin' in out backyard!

Look at all the landscaping that Kathy and Jack helped us with!

Dad up on our garage, about to transform it into a relaxing front porch!

Action shot!

Our transformed first floor bathroom!  New vanity and mirror!

In the midst of all this, Paul was looking for deals on his computer (per ush) and came across an awesome deal on a white vanity that we had been eying up over the course of the summer.  It was small, but probably a perfect fit for our tiny first floor bathroom.  We had to run to another Lowe's store to get one in stock, but again, we were able to fit the vanity, a few faucets and some other building supplies into Little Richie in addition to three grown adults.... Little Richie is a hauling machine!

Dad had the vanity installed within 30 minutes I think! Crazy. It was a sweet little side project that transformed the look of our first floor bathroom.  He also installed new hardware for towels and toliet paper that dolled up the room.  I am a huge fan of Martha Stewart's line at these home improvement stores... which is where we got our hardware!  Worth the extra few dollars, because it came together beautifully!

The finished project after a days work and some creative adjustments! 

Finished front space!

Now I have to paint that terrible brown garage door...

In addition to the yard and new addition to our garage, we also did a few things that transformed the exterior of our front entry way.  We were looking all around to find new screen doors because ours are terribly old and made the front of the house look aged and nasty.  It was worn down to an old metallic silver from the 1950's.  After searching and realizing that the cheapest screen door we could find would be close to $400, because our doors are old shaped and too tall to be standard, so we would have to special order... we decided $10 of spay paint would suffice.  I think it looks AWESOME!  Really changed the look of it!
(Click here to view before photos!)

Dad spray-painted our front door!

Finally, while Dad was doing the heavy lifting, my mom was painting up a storm!  All of our inside doors were different shades of brown... and well very distracting in comparison to our white painted trim throughout the house.  So, again, we painted them!  Deb managed to put about 3 coats on every door in the house... which is actually just crazy.  We spray painted a few door knobs and others we left gold.  It looks great and was another project that really helped with the facelift!

Dad's trundle bed , so they both can sleep on a real mattress!

The final project was one that Curty was working on at home for a while and brought with him to Pittsburgh in the Prius... another hauling machine!  He hand crafted and sealed these boards together to created two beds in the space of one.  Where you see the handles, it pulls out on wheels for another twin bed for extra sleeping!  We were grateful for this design because it saves a ton of space in our modestly sized house.  My parents were pretty thankful as well, because it means they can actually sleep and not be confined to a spare air mattress or our concrete couch.

As always, it was another productive visit!

Next project.... The MAN CAVE!  
(also know as our nasty basement...)