Art: Winning!

We are finally hanging some art. Here's the start of the "wedding wall".

Photos (yes, we know they're LONG over due)

We closed on the house on February 25.  Following the closing we took our large envelope full of keys (the previous owners had left us every copy of the key they'd EVER made), and went to run around/scream like little girls inside OUR new house.  We also kept up a tradition that we started in our last move (from apartment to apartment), whereby we eat pizza in the new place--with no furniture.  Last time that meant that we were sitting on the floor, eating pizza on top of a Rubbermaid tote.  This time we were lucky enough to have the kitchen island and barstools (thanks previous owners).  We also glitzed it up a bit by adding champagne.  Nothing goes better with pizza than champagne. 

Following the closing, we spent that first weekend painting, as described in an earlier post. 

First, we took the kitchen cabinets from this:

To this (unfortunately I didn't use the same cabinets for the "before" as I did for the "after"...but you get the idea. We did ALL of the upper cabinets):

We had purchased appliances earlier in the week (dryer, fridge and dish washer), so those were also delivered:

 While I was working on the kitchen cabinets, Jeff was busy priming the dining room.  Now, when you see the "after" picture below, you might think that we basically painted it the same color that it was previously painted.  This isn't true, but the camera certainly doesn't help me show that to you.  The original color was something like a mustard yellow mixed with a hint of orange.  The new color is full on cinnamon orange. We primed it before we knew we were going to paint it a similar color; however it does look totally different now.  Promise.  Here's the "before" (during the priming phase) and then the "after" (after quite a painting nightmare -- Jeff's first time painting):

(Notice that there is now furniture, but no art [yet].  We also need to dust the table and move the bucket o' stuff that you see in the left hand corner of the photo.  I didn't "prep" the room for this picture...haha!)

Also, I really feel like I should mention that we had no food in the house the entire weekend, save for some candy that John and Chelsea were nice enough to put inside part of their wedding gift to us:  these FANTASTIC jars.

That really wraps up what we did that first weekend.  We've made so much progress since then.  More photos to come shortly, as we painted both the master bedroom and the office/third bedroom, we moved in all of our furniture by "we", I mean Kevin and Jeff), had our first overnight guests (thanks to Will and Ashley), moved in the majority of our personal belongings (there are still a few items to pick up from the old apartment), and we also started to hang some artwork.  Oh, there's also that pesky leak that we thought we fixed--only to find out that we actually needed a new sump pump.  Now that we're here and settled, we'll get caught up on all of those updates as soon as possible.  For now though, Jeff is making dinner--so I should ensure that he doesn't burn down the kitchen.   



New Home = New Abilities

We are officially home owners.  The idea didn't really sink it until well after we'd signed the mortgage papers.  The signing itself went pretty smoothly, although, an error in communication from the lender to us led us to be short $1,000 at closing.  By "short", I don't mean that we didn't have the money, but we didn't bring it with us.  One frantic trip back to the apartment later (we didn't bring the check book with us, because we had a cashier's check), and we were set.  That first weekend (last weekend), we were painting like crazy, taking off cabinet doors and dreaming of future projects.  It was a bit surreal.  We didn't feel like real home owners until the downpour of rain last Sunday.  Why would that make us feel the pinch of owning a home?  The rain caused a small leak in our basement.  What do you do with a leak in the basement?  Sure, we're logical, and we weren't completely dumbfounded, but we were still a little panic-stricken.  Off I went to Home Depot on the search for dry-lock paste, while Jeff stayed at the house, watching the little leak.  We were pretty lucky, as luck as you can be with a leak, in that the leak was headed right for the basement drain, and it was moving at the speed of sludge (sludge=slow).  I came back with my dry-lock cement, and we went to work.  It's not the prettiest job we've ever done, but it got the job done.  We crossed our fingers, because it rained all day this past Friday, and kept raining on Saturday.  Luckily, our patch jobs seem to have held.  We'll be adding the additional protection of some dry-lock paint here shortly.  The other good news: our sump pump worked like a champ.  No sweat.  (read: I made Jeff stick his hand in there to raise the water level up in order to trip the on-switch, so that I could watch the water get sucked out of the pump basin....because I was paranoid.)

ANYWAY.  Now that we've got two full weekends of home ownership under our belts, it's time to show you the progress that we've made.  As I mentioned earlier, we tore the cabinet doors off of the upper kitchen cabinets, and then I painted the insides.  We also refinshed the kichen's butcher block island, painted the dining room, master bedroom and office/bedroom #3.  We purchased surround sound, assembled some DVD towers, moved over a bunch of little junk (read: picture frames and lots of wedding stuff) and introduced the dog to the house/back yard (he loves it!).  We also had our first guests, as my mom, Carol and Zephyr (their new Shepskie [Shepherd and Huskie mix]) came to visit for my mom's birthday on Saturday.  I also brought one of my co-workers over during lunch last week for a short tour.  All in all, things are going really well.  

SOLD!