It’s been a long time since I’ve done a blog post called the Craig and Jo show. For anyone new here, Craig is my son-in-law, married to my daughter Kalissa.  Craig is a great guy.  He honestly is like a son to me and we’re super close.  He is handy and happily, he doesn’t mind helping me.

Craig used to work as a mechanic at a farm implement dealer.  After my husband Kramer died, he ended up switching jobs and started working for the same farmer Kramer did.  Craigs hours have changed dramatically and he isn’t around to do some of the jobs he used to.  That’s one reason why there aren’t as many Craig and Jo Show posts.

That’s totally okay.  I have fewer jobs to do.  But still, some jobs still add up.

Craig was here the other day…Kalissa was home sleeping after the overnight shift and Craig asked me if there were some jobs he could do for me.  Well…why yes.  There were.

Craig rolled up his sleeves and said, “Well let’s get them done.”

Oh, my word.  Joy to this girl’s heart!!!

Here are the little jobs Craig tackled.

I have a bathroom in the basement.  It’s not finished.  When Kramer was still living we hired someone to put texture on the walls and paint it.  The person did a horrible job.  He didn’t put any texture behind the toilet and the paint job in the the bathroom is embarrassing.  No joke…a 12 year old who has never painted before could do that well.  The guy didn’t even paint behind the toilet.  For real…no joke.

Well that has always bothered me.  So Craig took the back of the toilet off and he textured that area.  Now I need to go through and paint the walls.  But I’m so happy.  The project is one step further along just by having the texture on the wall.  I’m hoping I can get this painted before Christmas.  The bathroom is small and it shouldn’t take long.

Previously Craig had done some other work in the bathroom.  He put up the wainscotting on the lower wall.  That jut out is there because of plumbing.  We thought the wainscotting and shelf would look good.  I’m debating on whether to paint it or leave it as is.  The walls are going to be painted gray.

Kramer put the built in here.  It has doors and it’s on our plan to get them installed and trim put in around the cabinet.  The bathroom is super small that the cabinet space is needed.

Craig also painted trim to go here.

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WOW!!
I spent some time going through the archives from 2014.  I was putting together a parade of quilts I made that year.  Let me say it took me forever to get through it all.  It was the year we remodeled the house.  If you want to see a real live makeover of a foreclosure house, go through the archives of 2014.  The ENTIRE YEAR was spent working on this house.  There is an archive button on the right hand column of the blog.  You can click to 2014 and have a look it you’d like.

I was so happy to find this picture.  It was of my old kitchen and shows the portion of the house that we took off.  The kitchen was small and terribly laid out.

If you’re new here Kramer and I bought a foreclosure house in 2013 and spent all of 2014 remodeling it.  We moved in with it unfinished in 2015.

We knew from the moment we looked at the house that the kitchen would get a remodel.

If you look at the picture you can see studs where the shovel is leaning.  There was a wall there with a small door into the room.

Left in the picture was a terrible small bathroom and a closed in back porch with a washer and dryer.  To get to the bathroom, we had to go into the porch.  It was all pretty shoddy.  It had been a rental house for some time and owners made small improvements but none were really done the way the house deserved.

There was so much fuss over the new kitchen and layout.  I remember really struggling with it all.  I had wondered if we would ever come up with a plan.

I drew things out by hand.  I knew this was my one and only chance to pick and choose what I wanted.  I wanted it to be done right.

The architect originally put together something I really didn’t like for this area…like a laundry area right next to the door with no door.  NOPE.  That would never have worked.

I did so much “cutting and pasting”.  I made copies of the plans, cut them all apart, and moved pieces around.  I did it for hours and hours.  I’m so glad I did as now living in the house, I can see I would have hated features of the original plan. This is… Continue reading →