The New House

I was very excited about doing a blog for our family but with all of the things involved with househunting, inspections, closing, remodelling and then finally moving in, I totally forgot about this blog! But, now I'm back and hopefully will keep it updated more often. To start off, we did find a house that we are very excited about. We closed on February 21st and have been working like mad ever since then. We were a little ambitious about the projects we were going to do before we moved in. After moving back the move-in date by a week (from March 1st to the 8th) we decided that we just needed to get things up and running, get moved in and we can wrap up and continue projects from there. So, that's what we did. We've been living in our new house for a little over a week and it's finally looking a little more like a house than a construction zone. I walked around and took lots of pictures last night so that those who are out of town can get a mini tour of our new place.

Sam absolutely loves being in his own house. He and his toys pretty much have free reign of the basement, for now, and he couldn't be happier. Andrew seems to appreciate being in a separate bedroom from Sam and his snoring. We are just excited for the weather to warm up so that we can start working on our list of outdoor projects. One word I have to keep reciting to myself when I see the yard and paint job on our house is "potential". It has a lot of that, now we just need to help it live up to that potential! Enjoy the tour!

This was the first work day after we closed. There was a very ugly tree that had to be taken down so that the sewer could be hooked up, so Joe had some fun with the chainsaw. Now, most of those shrubs are gone and so we have somewhat of a blank slate to build a good looking yard.

Sam got to help paint his new bedroom and he had a lot of fun! Somehow, he snuck out of that room with a blue paint brush and we found his artwork in several other rooms. Luckily, we hadn't painted those rooms yet!

I decided that I wanted to scrape all of the popcorn ceilings before the new carpet was put in. I had no idea what I was getting into. It was a little too ambitious, but we got it done! (Re-texturing them is a whole other project which is on hold for now...)

Here's Andrew..amidst the rubble. What a sport!

Now here's a bunch of pictures of different rooms in the house. Keep in mind that we are still in the unpacking/moving in stage and that's why things are still looking so bare.

This is the living room, standing in the dining room and looking in. The front door and closet are to the left of the window.

This is the view of the dining room looking straight in from the front door. Past that is the sliders to go out the to the covered patio and backyard. On the other side of the wall on the right side of the picture are the stairs to go to the basement. Behind the wall on the left side of the picture is the kitchen.

Here's part of the kitchen, looking in from the hallway. (Joe is washing Sam's hands after dinner)

Here's a different view of the kitchen with our new appliances (yeah!). The countertops on this side are still a work in progress...

Sam in his new blue room. He loves having his own room! His favorite things are the window that he can look out (by climbing on his bed) and the big empty closet that he can hide in.

Here's the basement view from the bottom of the stairs. Just on the other side of the pellet stove is the laundry room and next to that is the 4th bedroom which is going to double as a guest room and a craft room for me.

This is looking the other direction. Note the lovely "cloud" walls on both ends of the basement, gotta love it! You can also see the doorway that we (by we, I mean mostly my Dad with some help from Joe) built. That goes into the unfinishe part of the basement that will eventually be a bathroom and office (separate rooms, of course).

This is the future sight of our 2nd bathroom. The plumbing is all in place, we just have to save up to put in everything else! Sam calls this unfinished area his garage and loves to ride his scooter and other ride on toys in there. I don't know what he'll do when we finish it!