The construction continues...with smiles on our faces!

Wow, I didn't realize that it had been 3 weeks. Whoops. Sorry!

This past weekend was great! Mom and dad Kirkpatrick came in town to spend some time

with mom and dad Puffer and us. We went out to O'Charley's friday night and then came by the apartment to show off Shane's hard work. Then we finished off the night with cake, ice cream and coffee at the Puffer house. Saturday, ALL DAY, the dads and Shane put up the ceiling in the kitchen and garage area (downstairs). They worked from 10am-6pm, and the dad's help was huge. We are so thankful for that. I'm really bummed because I forget that I'm documenting everything and I didn't get any pictures of the 3 guys working together...so all I have is the final result. Just picture them all working and completing sweating through their clothes. With that said, they deserved the steak dinner that the moms prepared. After dinner Shane and I wanted mom and dad K to experience Good Berry's, a local frozen custard place that is so delicious. I think they loved it. I got pictures there, but I took them on the disposable camera we took on the honeymoon, and they aren't developed yet.

Sunday we all went to church together at Vintage 21, minus dad Puffer because he was teaching sunday school at Summit. After church everyone but me went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, La Rancherita. I felt horrible and today is the first day I am feeling better. It worked out well that I had Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. I hated missing lunch at La Rancherita, but I know that we can make it happen again. We look forward to getting out to Monroe to spend some time fishing, shooting clay things, and eating at Jason's with the parents! One thing I wish my dad could experience is riding the dirt bike, but it's gone. :( Hopefully we'll get another one in the future.

Alright, and here are some picture of the apartment. Last post I think we were just finishing up the insulation upstairs. So here is what has happened since then...

Shane is boxing in the wires downstairs because they couldn't show in order to pass inspection (I'm learning a lot through all of this, I'm sure some of y'all already knew this)

A close-up of the wires...boring.

Shane putting up insulation on the ceiling in the garage.

The drywall upstairs! Matt Wall helped Shane with the drywal from the wall to the ceiling, and then Shane did all of the storage space drywall himself. He sweats through 2 pairs of jeans each time he works usually.

We work well together. :)

Shane picking up some drywall to take upstairs

Shane next to his WALL! He put up the drywall on one side of the wall downstairs.

There it is again.

The other side of the wall doesn't have drywall becuase we had to get the insulation on the ceiling and the walls downstairs checked before we could cover it up with drywall.

And here is the ceiling that the dads helped Shane with! Ah, I am so bummed I don't have pictures of them working. From what I hear, they had a good time.

The ceiling on the other side of the wall.

And onto the next thing...

Mudding begins! Mudding upstairs that Shane did last night.

And Shane is mudding the left side as I sit here, lazily, on the computer and write about it.

And here we are! Thanks for keeping up with us everyone! We thank God every night for what He has given us and the opportunities that He gives us to serve and love Him. Good night!

Now for the good stuff...

Wow, so Shane has been hard at work and I have been his little clean up crew. I'll give you a few pictures to show you what we have been working on.

Long story short, the insulation upstairs was not to code, so we moved everything downstairs into the garage, took the dry wall down, took the insulation out, put new insulation in, and are now in the process of getting a few more outlets put in upstairs, finishing up putting insulation in, and then putting the drywall back up. We have been living with Jeanie in one of her spare bedrooms, which has been neat. We have had a couple breakfasts together, and a dinner. We are still working on getting her to come out with us sometime. I think I may take a yoga class with her in downtown Apex if she goes while I am not at work. We are enjoying getting to know her. She's a school teacher, so she has the summer off.

So here is a glimpse of the past 2 weeks.

Moving stuff downstairs...

Putting plastic down...

Taking the molding off...

Taking drywall down...

After a long night of work...

The next day Shane finished tearing down the drywall while I was moving the stuff in the storage sections downstairs.

I decided to help take the drywall off since Shane was putting insulation up on the other side of the apartment.

This is the insulation that Shane took out. He is saving it to use in the ceiling downstairs.

This was Shane's genius way of getting to the ceiling above the staircase. He propped a 2x8 and 2 2x4's on the stairs and on the latter...I'm glad I was at work when he thought this up.

This is me demonstrating how it worked...as if you really needed to see that. Shane just got camera happy.

Some of Shane's NICE insulation installation work. As I am writing this, he is filling in the 6 or so inches at the top with insulation so that can be complete! I am trying to hurry through this so he has his assistant back...not that I'm much help, but we'll see what he can use me for tonight.

This is all of our stuff stacked up in the garage.

This is kind of funny. The entertainment center became our closet, everything didn't fit though, so it's just laying around wherever there was room. I think I may have to make a trip to the laudrymat when this is all finished to make sure all of our clothes are clean. Eakes.

While Shane was at work on Monday, I made my way upstairs. Shane had asked me to throw all the insulation out the window (the stuff Shane tore out and is re-using downstairs) onto the driveway to get it out of the way for when he had to put the drywall back up. I also picked up all the plastic and swept and vacuumed so that we wouldn't have AS big of a mess to clean up after the drywall was put back up. Shane works so so hard so I wanted to treat him somehow. It actually looked like what we used to live in when I finished, it was exciting.

That's all I have for now. Jeanie and I have had a couple breakdowns, but life could be a lot worse than this. While all of this is going on in the garage, Jeanie's A/C breaks in her house. She doesn't seem to catch a break. The A/C parts that we need were ordered and will be installed on Friday.

Hope everyone is doing well! Congrats to MEGHAN for finishing up her MBA this coming Friday! Woo! And little Will will be 8 months at the end of this week! Lots of exciting things going on.

Back-tracking

These are some pictures from before we were all moved in. My mom took them, and emailed them to me a couple week ago.

This is a picture of the downstairs before the wall was put up.

This is where the cabinets were before Shane moved them, and before the window was taken out and replaced by the door.

And this is just the upstairs when we were in the process of moving in.

Ok that's it.