THE HARGRAVE HOME

All right everybody try to control yourself. After long anticipation we have the updated pictures of our house. We have been living in our first home for well over a year now and as some of you know I am days from leaving on a wonderful year vacation in tropical Iraq!! So we have done a few improvements we have been saving up for and some little conveniences that will help Haley out during my "vacation". So enjoy the show!!

So we have a small home and the laundry room is in the garage. So one day we got the bright idea to continue the tile from the entry hall into the garage to kinda give Haley something better to walk on instead of cold, dirty concrete!
(FYI, it was like 110 degrees the day I laid tile!!)

View from the entry hall.

These are some of our first improvements. This is the dining area painted for those that havent seen.

This one is to show the box light in the kitchen. The house came with this florescent light fixture that belonged in a garage. I added another one and built a box around it so Haley would have more light to make all that yummy food that makes me get fat!!

This is our new and improved living room. We were sitting around with our neighbors and we decided the old mantel was ugly so we ripped it down and then thought, hey whats behind this wall so being a college grad. I took a hammer and knocked a hole in the wall and then built the new mantel and mounted our TV over the fire place which opened up little room to make it a little more cozier. Also the mantel holds a secret.



So here we have a closeup. Nothing really to write home about just a simple colonial inspired design. But wait..........where is the rest of the entertainment center????




BAM!!! The front of the mantel flips down to reveal a surprise inside. DVD player on the right and Dish Reciever on the right. This was actually pretty tricky and took some wiring talent. I'm not a big fan of electricity. (ask Haley sometime about me, the fan, and stopping my heart! Great story, but yeah it hurt! A LOT!!!) Any way we really like it cause now our entertainment center is not the focal point the fireplace is and we can actually hook pictures to the TV and it just looks like one of those rotating picture frames over our mantel.



Again did a little more painting. But I also installed a drop lamp over the tub that is on a dimmer switch. The fixture actually came from my Mom's house. It's pretty special to her. When she visits she always checks to make sure its still there. Haley likes it and its worth the hurt, pain, electrocution it took to install it. Anything for my girl!!



Of course this is "My room" very Texas. Believe it or not Haley actually really likes this room. I quote, "I like this room better then the master bedroom".




Our guest bathroom, nothing to different.



I am very big (and yes sometimes a little paranoid) about the safety of my family. So for my "vacation" we had an alarm system installed. Its actually very cool. I wont go into to much detail on the system but lets say "bad guys bring it on" and if you make it past the first line of defense my wife will execute her second ammendment rights with extreme prejudice.



Also no more opening that garage door by hand we have entered the 21st century, and yes, Haley will be able to park the car in the garage.
(notice the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling? That's so Haley knows how far to park in the garage)

As Haley said on the last post these are the infamous bags that have packed, I believe going on 8 times now. I'm betting an even 10 before I get on a plane.

This is the best back porch ever! We installed a screen door so haley can hear Bennet breaking something when she is inside. Also Haley and I decided we could lay concrete by ourselves. Notice the grill on the right side. Yeah we did that. I estimated we would need 4 bags of concrete, and 14 bags later and 3 trips to the hardware store we were done! I was a little off, but Haley was pretty patient with me. She is the best!

So Haley could park in the garage we had to move a lot of items to a shed we built in the back yard. Bennett loves this place. Its like his little hangout. Just him and his mower. Life just doesn't get much better.

And of course the front all finished. No dead spots and the garden is finished. Haley and Mom did a great job. Somebody actually stopped and asked Haley what company we used for our landscaping! Yeah my girls rock!

Of course to finish it off here is my little flower next to her flower's. She sure does a great job taking care of our home. I just love leaving work to hang out with the two best people in the world! So there it is our first home. It has been fantastic and quite the journey. Thank you to all that have helped us make it so and of course to Haley for all the hard work she does in making it beautiful and for putting up with my million and one projects that I always seem to come up with, no really all the time, always a project. She must love me!