My Three Amigos and Buttercup: house

As I sit inside my house looking out into my big back yard I do not think about all the fun things my children could be doing, like playing on the swing set, or in the sandbox, or with all their trucks. Instead, every time I look out the back door I think of the fact that I will have to open and close the door for my children each time they want in or out because our door catches on the carpet (either the door or the carpet or both have some issues), we also do not have grass so the boys track the dirt in to the house and on to the carpet, and I have to open a window so I can hear the fighting and screaming. It is just kind of a big ordeal that I don't enjoy.... until now...

My dad came to visit from Utah this week to help us decide if we should buy a new car or fix our old one (not "the hoopty", this involves our newer car, our hoopty has actually needed less work than our newer van). It turned out that we could not get nearly enough money trading it in so we have decided to shell out $2500 sometime in the near future to get it fixed. We came to that conclusion fairly quickly so here we were with nothing to do with my dad for 2 days. So, what do you do when you have your multi-talented, expertly-skilled dad around? Put him to work!

First we had him fix our valve cover plate in our bathroom, our pilot light in our fireplace (that I worked on trying to light for hours that he had lit in about 3 minutes) and last but certainly not least--he laid laminate flooring in our dining room and put a new screen door on the back door!

The laminate flooring and screen door is how my attitude towards my back yard has been changed forever. Now my door opens easily so the boys can do that themselves. They can leave the door open and the screen door will keep all the bugs out. Lucky can even open that himself (hopefully his fascination with that will end by the time all the bugs are out this year), and if they track in the mud I can just clean it off the floor instead of dragging out the carpet steam cleaner.

Now when I look in my back yard I am excited for summer to come. I can't wait for the boys to spend hours out playing in the dirt (although it does make me want one of these in the back yard considering it is already in the 70's today and will get so much hotter this summer). Because of something changing inside my house, I look at the outside much differently!

So, Dad, thanks for making the inside of my house so beautiful so I can now appreciate the beauty of the outside! I really appreciate your hard work. I hope your knees recover. :)

Here are some pictures of the process.

I could only find this picture for a "before" shot. It was taken on my hubby's birthday a couple of weeks ago. (Yes, the enchilada casserole does say something... It says "Happy B-Day"--in red peppers!)

The only part I helped with was the removal of the carpet. No wonder allergists tell you to have wood floors--the carpet was so dirty, I cleaned up tons of sand and dust that had been under the carpet. Yuck!

The laminate is fairly simple to lay. The most time consuming part is the measuring.

Dusty had a fun time "helping" Grandpa and Daddy.

He was so excited when he realized how fast Hot Wheels are on a hard, flat surface.

Here is the installation of the screen door.

And then... the final product. It would look a million times better without the old table (it turns 20 this year...darn that great quality construction...I could be spending my money on a fabulous new table if it would just break).