You've Come a Long Way, Baby.

My blogging efforts have been a little weak this week.  See what I did there?  Weak and week.  Clever.  I love the English language, don’t you?

I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath wondering what could have possibly happened to Allison to prevent her from her daily blogging efforts.  It turns out that she is a wee bit allergic to wasp stings.  That’s right.  I could probably compete with the elephant man on the size of my tricep that now rivals a sumo wrestler’s.  I got stung by a wasp and two days later I can’t bend my arm.  When you touch it, it’s about 125 degrees.  I sure hope the steroids kick in soon!

So, since the itching of my arm was driving me slowly insane,  (I’m sure my brother would disagree with that statement.  Maybe insan-ER) I did what every normal person would do.  I started organizing pictures.

While organizing pictures, I came across a few little ditties that I thought everyone might enjoy.  The third generation of Bradys have been fixing up and putting our mark on Toad Valley for the last nine years.  Nine years doesn’t seem like much until I start to look back on all the projects we have taken on and completed over the years.

On a later date, I’ll go into more detail.  For now, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

When we first started in 2004, we had a big to do list.  Our first order of business was to update the clubhouse.  We began that summer by remodeling the back of the clubhouse and putting in the bathrooms, kitchen and storage areas.  The Golf Shop, front desk and Links Cafe area were tackled in the winter of 2004-05.  In the spring of 2005, we opened for the season with a new look.

Here we are today.

Here’s a side by side view for ya!

During the summer, we hired out most of the work.  In the winter, our family set to work taking out walls for the inside of the clubhouse.  We had insulation up to our ears.  It was a family affair and even my small children, at the time, pitched in to help.

This picture is looking at the destruction of what were our former bathrooms and storage area that were located at the front of the clubhouse.

When we were done with that part of the remodel, we had a new snack bar and dining area.  Here is the view from the same angle when we opened for the season in the spring of 2005.  I will never forget that year when golfers kept walking to the location of the old bathrooms out of habit.  They would get over to end of the snack bar and stop dead in their tracks.

A year had passed, so in 2006, we decided to tackle the back side of our building and put in an events center.  Luckily for us, our maintenance was attached to the clubhouse.  The plan was to remodel our maintenance into an events center.  Originally, our contractors had given us a month long time schedule to get all of the 30 years of mowers, supplies, and small equipment moved out of this building.  When they called and said they could bump us up a little, I jumped all over that option.  The sooner they started, the sooner it’d be done, right?

You should have seen my family’s face when I told them that we had three days to get ready for the remodel.  Once all the mowers, small tools and equipment had been removed, we were left with just a small pile of miscellaneous items. Tongue in cheek.

Today, our events center is host to wedding receptions, plus graduation open houses, anniversary celebrations, birthdays, business seminars, bridal showers, holiday parties.  It’s never ending all of the fun events that we have gotten to host over the years.

Here it is from the same angle today.  It’s amazing what a difference a little drywall, windows and carpeting can do for a space, huh?

How about you?  Do you like to remodel in the winter?  We’ve finally run out of square footage to remodel.  I think the family is pretty happy about that!