Our Two Year Anniversary!

Two years ago on February 1st, 2011 our tiny but sweet 1930's cottage was partially torn down so that we could build a bigger, more comfortable home for our family.  It was such a crazy and exciting time for us and the results were even better than we could have hoped for.  On January 31, 2013, the day before our 2 year anniversary, we had our final house inspection required by the city.  In the weeks leading up to it Mr. Bamboo was frantically trying to get our inspection to do list completed and worked very hard to tie up loose ends on the house.  The inspection ended up being not as big of a deal as we thought it would be and we passed it no problem.  We celebrated with tropical drinks and did the happy dance that night!  

 \We took most of the month of February off from house projects and had a mini getaway to Disneyland to celebrate my birthday and then hosted our good friends Honey and son Brixton in our guest house for a week.  We had such a great time together at Disneyland and of course we had a stop at one of our favorite tiki bars, Trader Sams!

Now we are expecting Grandpa How and Kerby to visit us next weekend and we are so excited!  In between hosting guests we are gearing up to get some of the last big projects done around here in the next few months.  These projects include power washing and sealing our driveway pavers, designing and installing an Ikea closet system in our bedroom, installing Mr. Bamboo's new office desk, and continuing to unpack and organize our final boxes in storage.  

The guest cottage, our former home during the remodel.

However, we are most excited about landscaping our front and back yards which were completely destroyed during the remodel.  Lumber and building supplies had to be stored in our front yard which killed our lawn and all our shrubs now are completely overgrown.  We can't wait to get out there and start ripping things out so we can start over with a blank slate.  But for now I will end this post with a few pics of our house exterior as seen from the front yard.  The portion of the house painted black to the left of the front door is the original part of the house that we saved and just gave a facelift (new siding, paint, insulation, corrugated metal roof, windows and skylights), the gray two story stucco side is entirely brand new.

We love our modern farmhouse beach cottage!