Productive Sunday

We got a lot done today! We painted most of the trim work in the dining room, hung up drapes in the living room, sprayed the perimeter of the house with bug killer, and we managed to do 2 loads of laundry!

We have our housewarming party set for August 14th and I have to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about getting everything done in time for the party. The dining room painting is going a lot faster than painting the living room did, I think it's because we're more determined and motivated to get it all done! We hate painting! The mess, getting paint all over your hands and legs, random blue tape getting stuck to your clothes, almost dumping the whole gallon of paint on the floor, sweating, blisters....yeah we hate it! And just think after we get done with the dining room we have to paint the hallway and all the doors downstairs. It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have 8 doors to paint!!! How construction workers paint day in and day out I have no idea!

My toughest design decision so far is which fabrics to put where. Our dining room features a lovely window seat with a nice size bay window. It's one of several main selling features of our house. We are super excited about it! I think all the excitement of it and looking forward to using it is why I'm so stressed out about how to decorate it. I'm trying to be bold with my decorating by choosing patterns, not just my usual safe choices of solid colors or stripes. I love stripes! My love for stripes is a whole other topic that I won't bore you with. I'll just say, I think it started with this bright striped Bible cover I started using and then a matching journal/notebook that soon followed and then my obsession began. Anyway, I'm thinking about bringing my samples to my girls Bible study on Tuesday to see what they think. I really need at least a few people's opinion on this. I think the pressure comes when I think about having people over and then someone saying or thinking our window seat looks ugly because of all the clashing patterns or colors. I'm probably setting myself up for a bad dream tonight about this, lol. Speaking of dreams, we are living in our dream house! I never thought I'd be able to say that. The only thing that could make our house more enjoyable would be if we had a wrap around front porch and/or a 2 car garage. Those would be nice, but we don't have to have them in order to say we're living in our dream house. I often find myself thinking, "I live in a 5 bedroom house! That's crazy!" Then I have days when I think, "how are we going to keep this house clean? It's so big!"

That's enough blogging for now. Thanks for reading our blog! - MOT :)

You know what bugs us? Flies in the house. The past couple of nights I've had to kill an average of 6 while watching TV. The most frustrating part is not knowing where they're coming in from. I've sprayed Raid at 3 locations we think they're coming in from. So far, none of them are the sources. I'm fed up with it, so it's off to Home Depot to get bug killer to spray around the foundation of the house.

Another thing bugging us is what sounds like a bird's nest in our chimney. There's two problems here: 1)We have an insert and know nothing about it and 2) the chimney is taller than the roof, so I can't get up there and look down the chimney.

Given the condition of the yard when we moved in and all these flies and birds, I'm beginning to think the previous owners did zero maintenance on the house for about 2 months prior to the sell.

Despite all this and all the painting we've been doing, we still love our house. I especially liked how I finally flew my R/C heli in the backyard Thursday night. It was nice and relaxing. We like how quiet it is at night here. Each night we fall asleep to the music of cicadas and crickets.

O speaking of painting, we got the dining room walls painted blue today. Good thing we did too. We've run through the two gallons of paint we bought for the walls. The green that was in the dining room was darker than we thought and it took two coats to cover it. Hopefully tomorrow we can get the trim painted and be able to start using the dining room.

-N.T.

Fourth of July Weekend

This weekend was a longer weekend because we both had Monday off from work. Saturday we went to two Fourth of July cook-outs, one at lunch time and one at dinner time. It was great seeing our friends and family. It was also nice getting a small break from painting and housework. On Thursday and Friday before the weekend, Nick mowed our entire yard, all .73 acres! It took him about 8 hours between those 2 days. The reason it took so long is because we're guessing the grass hadn't been mowed in 3 weeks so it was extremely long, especially in the back yard. We got home at about 9:30 on Saturday night so we didn't get any painting done. On Sunday we painted for 12 hours! Nick painted most of the remaining trim work that needed to be done. I would say that we equally painted the entire living room. I did most of the paining in the beginning and he did most of the painting towards the end. Once all the trim work was done and we removed all the blue tape, the living room looked amazing! It looks and feels so much brighter and bigger than when we first moved in, prior to all the painting. We are super happy with the final result. On Monday my parents came over and helped us position the furniture and set up the room the way we wanted. We got our entertainment center situated and electronics plugged in, and all our movies put away. We have still not put anything on the walls, I'm hoping that will change this weekend after I have a chance to buy some white picture frames and print off some wedding pictures. We've been married for over 3 months now and I have not printed a single wedding picture or honeymoon picture, how sad is that??! We will have plenty of wedding pictures hanging up around our house once it's all said and done. For now we are enjoying our living room. We can relax on the couch, watch TV, play the Wii, spread out on the floor with a board game, and watch movies. Last night I thoroughly enjoyed being able to watch The Bachelorette while my hubby watched some airplane show in our guest bedroom. We usually like to watch shows together, even if it's the other person's favorite show, but sometimes it's just nice to watch a show by yourself.

I can't wait to have our house warming party! I'm hoping we can finish the dining room by the end of this month or by the middle of next month so we can invite all our friends and family over to see our house! Tomorrow I am going to start taping up the dining room so we can start painting. The living room took us 2 weeks, let's hope the dining room takes less time since it's a smaller room...we'll see! - M

Updates to Our House

Living Room painted blue - check
Locks Changed - check
Light fixtures changed - check
Getting a nice lawn mower - check
Organizing our master closet - check!

We still need to -

paint the trim work in the living room
paint the dining room
paint the trim work in the dining room
paint the trim in the downstairs hallway
paint all the doors white
change the house #s on our mail box
change out the outdated ceiling fans
find window treatments for the every room
change out a bathroom fixture
find a rug for the dining room
put blinds up in the kitchen and dining room
and then I can really begin to decorate!

I really hope for Nick's sake that we're able to get all this done fairly quickly because I hate painting and I don't enjoy doing things on the weekends so I can be a bit cranky to deal with at times when I have to spend my Saturday painting or even worse, sweating while I do all this house work! I hate sweat! I don't like seeing other people sweat and I especially don't like it when I sweat. I am extremely grossed out by sweat. Every time I touch Nick when he's sweaty I immediately make some comment like, "you're sweaty! gross!!!" and then I race to the bathroom to wash my hands. This weekend being a 4 day weekend we should be able to get a lot of work done on the house. - M

The Adventures of Moving

Moving day came & went! We decided not to get a moving truck on the day of our move because one place we went to didn't have anything bigger than a passenger van & the other place we went to was going to charge us over $123 to rent a 16' truck for the day & that didn't include the .89 per mile we'd have to pay, which would have been another $28. So we drove away feeling defeated and frustrated, but we were hopeful that our parents would be willing to make multiple trips to make up for our need to save money by not getting an over-priced moving truck. We were not surprised when we shared the news with our parents that they were more than nice & were willing to make as many trips as we needed to move everything. On a side note, in the moving truck store, at the over-priced company, (which I won't name) as soon as the lady told us the price & that there were no AAA discounts, I blurted out, "THAT'S RIDICULOUS! THAT'S WAY OVER-PRICED!" Nick and I walked out & as soon as we got in the truck he said, "that was rude!" I was rather happy with myself for letting that lady know how I felt about their prices and I said to Nick, "I'm sorry, I felt like it was important for her to know that they are charging too much!" The move went great, despite not having a moving truck & the unbearable hot temperatures & humidity. We had two pick up trucks, one van, and one sedan that took 2 trips to and from our apartment to our house. By the way, it's kinda crazy to think that we currently have 2 residents. Our lease at the apartment is up on June 30th so technically we could sleep at the apartment or house. We feel so blessed & thankful to have such supportive parents and friends that were able & willing to help us move! It was such a big day for us to move into our first house! Thankfully, no one was hurt & everyone was in good spirits during our move. It was funny moving our couch into the house. There's stairs right when you walk into our house so to get the couch in we had to have 4 people helping & they ended up having to turn the couch on its side & then over the banister. It reminded me of the Friends episode where Ross & Chandler are trying to move a couch in a stairway & Ross keeps yelling, "PIVOT." I thought of that episode because it felt like it took forever for us to figure out to get the couch inside.

Saturday was our first night in the house. We woke up on Sunday & it was our three month wedding anniversary! I said, "Happy 3 months!" Then Nick said, "so on our first month I took you to Nags Head, on our two month, we signed our loan application papers, and now on our three months we're waking up in our first house, don't expect to get anything on our four months!" We love our house! We have been busy cleaning - the bathrooms & the floors. We are hopefully going to start painting on Friday. Once all the painting is completed then I will post before & after pictures. For now we are just happy to have a house, one that is definitely big enough for us & will soon be turned into a home! - M

Excitement

Great news - We received an email from our realtor today saying that the sellers have ordered the carpets to be shampooed before we move in!!! This was a total surprise to us! We had not asked for the carpets to be cleaned nor did we even think they were dirty because if there were, believe me we would have asked them to be cleaned or asked for a carpet allowance. I am super excited about this! We have had the best sellers this go around. Oh & we finally read the appraisal report for the house and we are starting out with equity! I won't go into the financial details, but I will say, we made a great investment! Anything we do to upgrade the house will add even more value to the house. I am so pleased with how smooth the home buying process has been for us. We are 3 days away from closing and we are super excited! We feel so blessed to be buying such a big house! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would one day be able to say that I own a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house! I am starting to get overwhelmed by the idea of having that much space to decorate! We are going to leave 2 of the bedrooms empty because we figure that one day we'll have at least 2 kids to fill those bedrooms so why get use to having that extra space when one day you're going to have to give it up?! That's our way of thinking anyways. Oh & our realtor also told us today that the entire upstairs has been emptied so when we do our final walk through tomorrow we'll really get to see the living space for what it is. I am starting to get really excited about getting to have a destinated space for my scrapbooking stuff. I never realized how much scrapbooking stuff I have until I had to pack it all up for our move. Speaking of packing and stuff, we had a yard sale this past Saturday. We got rid of some stuff, about 2 containers worth of stuff. We made more money than we thought we would make, but it would have been nice to get rid of everything! I have been actively posting stuff on Craiglist hoping to recoup some of our money rather than donating it all. Oh & I am really looking forward to not having to share a sink with my husband! As much as I love my husband, it's hard to share a sink with someone when you both are trying to use it! We are constantly bumping into one another in our tiny bathroom at our apartment. I am also really looking forward to being able to host events at our house. We are hoping to be able to host Christmas at our house this year which will be nice because it will be our first married Christmas together and we'll be able to have my family over on Christmas morning which will be very special. My dad has already joked about staying the night in our guest bedroom. I told him that was fine as long as he is willing to be in charge of cooking the turkey! It will be so nice to have the space to have overnight guests when we have babies! Ok I should probably stop myself right there! - M

Reality Setting In

Great news, our mortgage loan has been approved and the appraisal came back fine!!! Huge relief! As if we weren't excited before, now we are super, uber excited about our house! Hearing the official word that our loan has been approved makes everything more real. We are going to see the house again tonight to see how the repairs are coming along. Nick was not there for the inspection so I thought it was important for us to go back to the house so I can point out what was on the inspection report and what the sellers are fixing. Oh & we need to take some measurements so we can decorate! I am most excited about decorating the living room and dining room. The layout of the house is you walk in, the living room is on your immediate right, it's very open and the living room opens to the dining room with a serve through window with a bar. I had the hardest time falling asleep last night because I was fantasizing about eating breakfast every morning at that bar while I watch the news. In our apartment we eat our breakfast during the work week on the couch so we can eat quickly and watch the traffic and weather report on the news. I also started thinking about how much of an adjustment it's going to be to have a two-story house! Our master bedroom will be upstairs so we'll have to allow time for eating breakfast downstairs and then shower and get ready upstairs. It takes me an hour and 15 minutes to get ready during the work week so I'm going to have to allow extra time for going up and down those stairs! Hey maybe we'll get in shape! ha! And speaking of adjusting, our house will be 24 miles away from my work so I will have a slightly longer commute time. Right now we live about 18 miles from my work and it takes me 30 minutes to get there. Nick and I have decided that posting before and after pictures of the interior spaces of our house is a must! Right now the whole downstairs has medium brown trim - chair railing, baseboard, and crown molding and it makes the rooms feel dark so our first task when we move in is to paint all the trim work white! Just that small change will make all the rooms feel brighter, modern, and more open. We also plan on changing out some the out dated light fixtures. While we aren't remodeling the house, we are optimistic that these small changes will completely change the look and feel of the rooms. I can't wait to move in and start painting! We are so excited about our first house and making it our home! How many times can I use the word, "excited" in this blog??!