A Home of Our Very Own

After what turned out to be 2 months of waiting to get into our house, we’re finally in. And by in I mean we have absolutely nothing stored in any storage units that we have to pay monthly rent on. After all, don’t we all have stuff stored at Mom and Dad’s house no matter how old we are? I know I do, and I know Angie does. But finally even that could be remedied soon. We actually have a real house with enough room to store everything we have in what would typically be considered storage areas, not stacked under the bed, not piled in the closets. A place for everything and everything in it’s place.

Okay, so we don’t yet have everything in it’s place, but it’s comforting knowing there is a place for it to eventually go. We are actually still living in some state of disarray. After we took possession of the house, but before we emptied the storage units, we undertook several projects upstairs. First of all, paint for every wall. Living room, dining room, kitchen, entryway (took some daredevil painting to complete that), hallway, both bathrooms and 3 bedrooms, all got painted. The main bathroom was subject to a much bigger makeover. Toilet taken up, vanity and mirror ripped out, new floor put down, toilet back in, new vanity in, new mirror up, electrical outlet put it (can you believe there was no outlet in the bathroom?), and new curtain rod put in. Actually, the curtain rod may be my favorite part, and there’s a little story about that too. Maybe I’ll save that for another day. We then commenced to rip out the carpet throughout the entire upstairs and haul it down to our newly designated garbage pile in the unfinished portion of the basement (everywhere except the dining room as we still have some work to complete in there). Underneath this nasty “who knows how many decades old” carpet was absolutely beautiful looking wood floors. We’re talking real wood floors here! The carpet was actually just taped down so removal was easy, but the best part is there’s no holes from nailing the carpet in and no messy glue from gluing it in. These floors literally need nothing more than sweeping and mopping and they look fantastic! We’re so excited about the floors.

We’ve since purchased new blinds that have been installed in the 3 bedrooms (way to go Angie)! Curtains have been put up in our room and the boys room. Fireplace insert has been removed and the entire outside chimney has been weatherized and sealed. Plans are still to redo all the baseboards throughout the upstairs, wainscot above the baseboards in the dining room (hence the carpet is still there), replace all the outlets (we have the really old style that have just two prongs instead of 3), and who knows what else. I’m sure Angie’s got a lot more plans. And don’t get me started on the half finished downstairs which currently has no heating. We’ll get to all that someday. Not to mention that as the weather heats up we’ve got some serious work to do in the yard to restore it to some semblance of life. That too, will come some day, probably sooner rather than later.

We’re just excited to finally be in our place and be doing some work on it. Things look great so far, and hopefully will keep getting better. HUGE THANKS to my Mom and Dad for coming up 2 weekends in a row to help do all that work. Couldn’t have done it without them. Not to mention the fact that Angie and boys lived with them for 2 months waiting to get into the house. We’ll have to do something big for them.

Good news, the digital camera is out of storage, so pics should be coming soon!