Operation Housey Home

This is the story of two first time home buyers as we move into our first house and turn it into a lovely little home. We are creating this blog to update our families on our progress as well as document our home improvement projects.

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We recently got our pantry remodeled, and here are a couple before and after pictures. 

The contractor’s we hired completely gutted the room, removed the plaster walls, old lead paint cabinets, door, ceiling, and linoleum floor. Underneath the floor was the original hard wood which they restored. They also insulated inside the walls, put up dry wall, rewired the electrics in the wall installing three outlets and a light switch, put in new shelves, custom built a cabinet into the wall, and painted. I have more pictures of the pantry in progress which I’ll post as well.

There’s still some more stuff to put away in our pantry, but we actually need a step stool to reach the top shelf in the cabinet. There’s plenty of space for everything, and now a nice spot for our microwave, toaster, keurig and mixer on the shelf on the right (plus the outlets for them).

-Jeff

[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

Jocelyn and I went to Kerry, Ireland for a one week vacation from June 12 to 19th and had a great time seeing all the scenic views and visiting the little towns in the Ring of Kerry.

We took a bunch of nice photos during our trip (over 500) and we’ll upload them once we have a chance to look through them and pick out the best ones. But for now, I’m just uploading some of the pictures I took on my iPhone. These are some panorama pictures I took of some of the best spots, including Torc Waterfall in Killarney, and The Druid Circle in Kenmare. More to come soon! -Jeff

[houseyhome]

Our upstairs computer/music room is almost complete! The highlight of this room is the wall with all of our signed CDs on it (with a special section dedicated to Dream Theater's scenes from a memory which I have signed on CD, and on Vinyl), and we love how the grey walls and blue focus wall match the rug perfectly! Now all that's left is to finish up the other half of the room by hanging some shelves and setting up another smaller bookshelf to put the record player on.

-Jeff

[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

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[breemanamv]

[houseyhome]

Robot Restaurant was a “robot” themed Vegas style show in Shinjuku. The show involves multiple segments. Everything from a drum battle and love ballads to, robot boxing and bizarre intergalactic battles. The true nature of what we witnessed was too crazy to explain, so just check out their website: http://www.robot-restaurant.com/

We highly recommend this show for anyone able to go. It was amazing!!

[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

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[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

Some more food, this time all from one day! Today was the paper lantern Obon festival, which took place along the river right by our hotel. During the festival, people can light paper lanterns to set off down the Sumida river to remember loved ones who have passed.

We tried many different foods from the various vendors around our hotel. We tried Takoyaki “Octopus balls”, Yakisoba, a blue lemon soda drink, boba soda (melon flavored), some sort of candy covered plum thing (which we needed to win a pachinko game to get. We won and got two!), beef tongue, fried chicken (not pictured), sausage on a stick (also not pictured), and some strange ravioli fish thing (last picture). Some of it was really good, and some was really strange.

-Jeff

[houseyhome]

[houseyhome]

A variety of food we’ve had so far during our trip. We had the Japanese style breakfast that our hotel served a few times, but then decided to try out some other places like “Mister Donut” and a place that served eggs, toast, ham, and pancakes. We’ve been trying a bunch of Ramen and noodle places which have been pretty good. We also had curry at a Maid Cafe! And tonight we got conveyor belt sushi which was amazing! (As you can see by the stack of empty plates). The food here has all been good and relatively inexpensive. I wonder what else we’ll get to try before our trip is over.

-Jeff