Life is Beautiful

Motherhood, Sewing, Family

My husband’s man shed

~ Jay's DIY

Jay’s dad came soon after we had the baby to help Jay build a shed.  Jay learned how to build from his dad when he helped his parents build their 3 houses in Hawaii from ground up.  Did I mention Jay’s dad built their very first home in Utah when he was in his early 20’s from ground up?  He couldn’t find any houses he liked so he thought to himself, “Why not build one myself?”.  So he went to the bookstore and bought a book on how to build a house and that’s how he learned to build and renovate.  Genius?  Yes, I think so.
Here are the pictures of the process, enjoy!
the girls being little helpers by cheering on while eating popsicles. 🙂
Jay’s friend came and wanted to learn and help, thanks Wayne!
no Achilles, it’s not a dog house for you, sorry!
look how little Aiden was!  and my husband looks HOT!
And the finished result!  it took them only a week to build but these pictures were taken last month.
Now Jay has a place to store all his tools!  And a place to sleep when I don’t want him anywhere near me. Haha, jk jk.  As long as he behaves, he’ll be just fine.
It sure is nice having a handyman in the house.  We are going to renovate the upstairs of our house this year and last time he renovated our towne home that we used to live in, I was pregnant so I couldn’t help out much, but I am so excited to help him and learn a lot!

See similar posts:

Dream Home DIY Episode #1

my husband’s got skills.

~ DIY DREAM HOUSE, Jay's DIY

i’ve mentioned this in the past, but my husband’s hobby is to buy and move into an old home and renovate it himself, then rent it out and then buy/move into another old home to renovate it and so on.  so after he renovated our previous house, (to see the house go here for before/after pictures.) he couldn’t wait to renovate the house we live in now and he’s already renovated our whole basement and was about to tackle the main floor, but when my parents retired and moved back into their house in the states, jay offered to renovate their whole house for them.  isn’t he such a sweet son-in-law?  my parents sure adore him and love him dearly.
so while our house is on a pause from the renovation mode, my husband’s been busy renovating my parents’ house.  he’s not completely finished yet, but here is his work so far.
pictures of the kitchen and the dining room before:
(just to note, my parents are meticulously clean,
these were just taken right before packing and moving for the demolition.)
you can say it, it was pretty bad.
but i’m going to miss this green room. 🙁
and now the comparisons of the before/after:
this is the wall of the dining room but he broke it down to make the kitchen bigger
and to open up the dining room to the kitchen.
so instead of a wall now, there’s a kitchen island and the whole place is open!
and he painted the walls, took the carpet out and replaced the floor with a wooden floor in the dining room.
and some more pictures of the after:
my mom picked out the colors and and my husband designed the layout and executed the whole thing.(oh, i do have to give a shout out to my brother michael who learned from the master and helped out or he’d give me a hard time. :D)

 

i call him the DIY king.
my husband that is, not my brother. hahaha

jay is the MAN

~ Etc.

this week i want to showcase how talented my husband is. one of his favorite hobbies is to purchase old homes and renovate it himself.  he learned it from his talented dad who built his first home by reading a book when he was just in his early 20’s. yes you read that right, by reading a book on how to build a house! talk about a genius, right? and the house still stands strong today and someone else lives in it now. so jay helped his dad build their 3 houses in Hawaii when he was growing up so he can do pretty much anything; plumbing, electrical, you name it, he can do it.

so this is our house #1.  we used to live in this townehome until last fall and as you’ll see from the pictures it was really outdated.  to see a more detailed video of the before see here.

the backyard before:
 the kitchen before:
i helped a little too haha. but i was 4 months prego so i couldn’t help out much.
the after:
just omit the mess of the kitchen in the pics below. 😉
the wall by the entry door was shortened a lot so it’s more open
and look how little miss A was with her two teeth on top and bottom!
she was excited for the renovation too.
and jay’s friends/cousins/family came to help in the process too.  thanks guy!
we’ve now moved into another house because jay was getting the renovation itch again but my dad retired recently so my parents moved back to their house here from Korea(YAY!!!) a few weeks ago and jay graciously offered to renovate their whole house before he gets to ours. so i’ll have to post pictures of my parents’ home too when they’re all done!
the backyard before:
the after:

the fireplace before:
the after:
then he broke down the huge wall upstairs
and built a new wall/doorway facing the other way
so the bedroom would be connected to the bathroom(which it wasn’t before)
the bathroom before(after we painted the stripes):
the after:

(and the closet you see with the clothes hanging used to be the hallway.
but now it’s being used as the walk-in closet.)

i wish i could find more pictures of the before/after of this house,
especially the bathroom on the main floor, bummer.
but as you can see, he is amazing.  i’m so proud of him!

don’t HATE…just renoVATE

~ Etc.

Due to the mass amount of peeps contacting me, wondering y I been MIA posting blogs, without further adieu, I am back by popular demand. Being one year older and wiser too, I can’t start without showing much love for my beautiful wife Sarah, my lil ham boo boo, my pops, my bro’s Mikey, Josh, and Matt, my cousins Granny and Jimmy and BFF’s Brennen and Jared for the L O N G hours of work that they all put in to help us on our place. We didnt do the best at taking before and after pics, but I’ll one up that and show before and after vids. I’ll post this teaser vid of the reasons we bought this fixer upper. Pardon my mumblings as I just saw immediate potential. B4 vid from jayT on Vimeo. You can’t really beat $71 a sq ft, esp with the market these days, this really was the year to buy. A buyers market coupled with low interest rates and on top of that you got the Housing Stimulus and with our place, you can’t beat the location, location, location! Granted our house was stuck in 1970’s with the nastiest green kitchen appliances, countertop, green shag carpet and old lady smell, when I bought this place to name a few. I bought it for the potential of what I saw in it and what it could become, not what it currently was (this also applies in life as we should always look for the potential in others and not judge them for what they currently are hahaha man I’m becoming my wife!). I was blessed to have my bro Josh as my engineer and he drafted up my plans from my ideas and made sure that everything was on point. I’m also blessed to have Tim the Toolman Taylor mixed with Bob Villa for a dad who pretty much echo’s “the field of dreams” moto “if you build it, I will come” He gets the building itch every couple of years and just couldn’t resist when I told him I wanted to renovate. For two weeks of work, you will be absolutely AMAZED and think your watching a show on HGTV just because how different everything looks. My neighborhood thought we were CRAZY to try to do so much in so little time all on our own, but now everyones trying to get a sneak peak of our humble abode. I won’t spoil the fun just yet, but between scraping popcorn ceilings, gutting the ENTIRE 2nd floor and kitchen, the 15-16 hour work days, and all the craziness that goes into making an old house new…trust me-the bags under my eyes and the aches in my ever aging body were ALLLLL worth it when I took my wife over for a sneak peak yesterday of her “90% completed newly renovated house” and saw her get suPER duPER excited!