Our Christmas Eve progress

So on Christmas Eve, Jimmy and I got right to work on (a) installing his Christmas present---which was given to him on the day in demolition, in ceiling speakers for our house, just like he wanted. He looks like a goof, but he was happy when they were finally revealed to him!

and (b) finished the kitchen/dining room demo.

So when it looking this this....outside....with some flurries and snow falling down...

My wonderful dad went over to our house the day before and finished off putting up the trim, putting up the boards that made it all look like there was never ever a wall there. So I worked hard on painting the trim and making it look just right...

...while old Jim was busy cutting the sheetrock in the ceiling in the 4 spots he was planning to put the ceiling speakers. Hence why you see all the spots in the previous picture, there was lots of dust flying in our house! And it was all over our kitchen, living room and dining room...

And this was the result of all his hard work, muscle and eventually apparently a torn rotator cuff? Not sure, but the results were good if the latter is really true, but I guess it's good that he made perfect circles for the speakers :)

But then he had to figure out how to connect them all to the receiver in the family room, in addition to the speakers that he already had. The best part was when I got to play the "middle man communicator" between my dad and Jimmy. My dad was in the attic stringing the speaker cord down through the wall to the family room and telling Jimmy to pull or stop or eh, anything else that was on his mind :) Like a few token cuss words when the wire got stuck. Yep, I was just repeating them to make sure Jimmy knew my dad was frustrated. Haha. After that, Willy and Jimmy spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to figure out why he couldn't control the volume of the downstairs speakers. That's when he won the original remote on eBay. Hmmm- I'll let you know how that one turns out.

But there are the finished speakers. In the ceiling and fully functioning and blasting out some wonderful Christmas music to get us in the holiday spirit! I loved it. When he turned the game on, I felt like our house was a bar...so we'll have to work on that aspect. But overall....he loved the present! Which is always a good thing!

And here is it. Finished view #1, with a clear view of the finished trim that is painted white and all nice. You can't even tell that the trim above the painted part is the old stuff can you?! Great job Roger!! And then check out the floor transition and new tile. Yep, looks like the wall was never there.

View #2, which is what you see when you walk up the stairs from the family room. Love how it's so open!!

And here it is standing in the kitchen. Ah, loving this!

Ok, that's it. But another thing I love is that we replaced our big, bulky bar chairs with the old stools that actually came with the house. I'm going to paint them black and then they will slide right under the overhang on the island so it will be an actual island that you can walk all the way around. NICE!

And that is how we spent our Christmas Eve, with a few breaks to wrap some presents. But it was done! Jimmy's Christmas present was installed and we got showered and were ready to head off to the Christmas Eve festivities! These involved going to mass with Jimmy's parents and grandma, then to Capital Grille for dinner and then to Church of the Resurrection for the always amazing and favorite service of the year, which is candlelight christmas eve service. Ah, I just smile thinking about it and all the wonderful and amazing things that Jesus' birth brought to the world and am so thankful for Christmas. Thankful because of his birthday and time on the Earth and also thankful for family and holiday season because of the time that we get to spend with them!

Here we are posing in front of our first completed wall demo :) Hope everyone had a great holiday with family and friends!!!