New Home

We've moved AGAIN.  Since being married I've lived in five different apartments.  I'm am pleased to announce that our sixth place of residence is a home!  We bought a house!!! I'm so excited.  It has been a long emotional process and I don't even know where to start.  I'll start with some before and after photos because I know some of you are anxious to see what the house looks like.  I'll post more of the story below the pictures.  Here goes....don't worry...we've fixed up most of the place already.

We have some plans for the front and outside of the house.  We are going to prune the trees and get rid of a lot of the bushes.  We want to plant grass and paint the outside of the house.

Here we want to plant some grass and get rid of the bush. we also need to pressure wash the outside and paint.

the back yard already looks a lot better because Jeff got rid of all the trash.

We need to pressure wash the patio and replace the ceiling fans.  I have big plans for this space.  I want Jeff to make a little kid picnic table.  I also want a Wooden table and bench from Knock Off Wood.  If we can figure out a way to get them I also want the patio furniture set that is in my parents' basement. It belonged to my Aunt Maire and it is made out of Bamboo.  Add those and an outdoor rug and some pillows and we will have a nice cozy outdoor living space.  Oh and Jeff wants a grill. 

Austin's Room Before

 The closet Doors were filthy and broken. While we were prepping the room to be painted....which took forever, we found a soft spot of drywall under the window.  Jeff poked at it with the spackle tool and a big chunk of soft drywall peeled off. Then a ton of ants started pouring out of the wall.  Both Jeff and I were kneeling down looking closely at the wall when it happened. We screamed! Luckily the little shop vac was nearby.  We sucked up all the ants and then sprayed it with pesticide.  Did you know that ants can jump? I didn't know until that experience.  Poor Jeff was the one to suck them up so I stood behind him and swatted at his head as they were jumping at him.

You wouldn't believe how much anguish all this coloring caused us.  We couldn't just paint over some of it.  We had to clean and prep the walls and then we used primer and KILZ on it because they used every type of writing instrument they could fine.  The yellow highlighter was the worst to cover up....who knew!

Austin's Room After.

 We put a light kit on the ceiling fan.  We replaced the carpet in all the carpeted areas of the house.  I guess it is more of a During picture because I still need to hang up his curtains and his big train picture.  I also have some other ideas for art to hang on his wall.

This is the closet.  I LOVE it!  The storage is great.  We will be putting some doors on them.  It's on the list.

The Hallway between Austin's room and Bennett's room Before.  I'm standing in Austin's room when I took the picture.  Across the hall is Bennett's room and to the right is their bathroom.

What an endearing message.....NOT! That lovely wall message was eye level for me so I'm pretty sure an adult wrote it. Once again I was standing in Austin's room.  That hall goes to the family room.

 We changed the light bulb and cleaned the globe.  We cleaned the hallway and the closet and the air conditioner closet.  We also painted.  The color is the same as the family room and kitchen.  It is called Topsail.

View from the family room.  You can see the kid's bathroom. 

Kids bathroom before. I couldn't capture the grunge and pee smell on camera.  It was awful. 

I got the shower curtain at Target.  The bath mat is from Ikea.  It has little nubbs on it and it is so soft.  The green is the same color as Bennett's room.  Eventually we will put in a new vanity and medicine cabinet and frame the mirror.  It is on the list. 

Bennett's room before. We replaced the ceiling fan because the other one was broken. We threw away the blinds because they were garbage and we painted. We also got new carpet.

 Bennett's room After. 

 I want to replace the tupperware with a dresser. I've been looking on craigslist.  I also have fabric picked out to make some curtains. 

 His closet needs doors.  Another thing on the list. 

I have some plans for art for his walls.

I'm going to show some other pictures of the house.  We've since done some things to the kitchen and family room but we have some more work to do.  

Dinning Room.  View from the living room right as you walk through the front door.  That is a very large TV.

 Living room.  View from Dinning room. 

 Wall art and fake cactus. 

 Wall between kitchen and family room.

 Family room.

 Double sliding doors with no handles.

 Family Room fan.  It didn't work.

 view of family room standing in front of sliding doors.

 Family room.

 Kitchen

 Hole in the tile under granite counter extension.

 Garage.  Look at all that "free" stuff they left us.

 Master Bedroom. Also has a screen door.

 Master Bedroom.

 Master Bedroom.

 Master Bedroom closet. The pictures don't do it justice. It is really big and the floor was covered with clothing sales tags.  The washer and dryer weren't working and hadn't been used in a long time so I think they were just buying new cloths and throwing their old ones away.

 Master bedroom hallway.

 Master Bath.  There isn't a door for the master bathroom.  We plan on encasing the entry and then adding a pre-hung door.  It is on the list.

 The cold doesn't work for the bath tub faucet. 

 We have two vanities.  Jeff likes to make little jokes that the big one is his.  You can see the toilet room to the right. 

 AAAAHHHHHH!!!!  Shower

 And then I opened it.  I don't know why I did.  Morbid curiosity maybe? At that moment is when the first tears started to flow.  You can't tell from the picture of there was thick black mold all throughout the shower.  The glass door is supposed to be clear.  It wasn't hard water either. It was mold. The shower also didn't have a shower head.

And Behind the fridge.

Friday April 27th we did the walk through for the house.  It was a short sale so I was expecting it to be dirty and there to be a little bit of trash left behind.  I was shocked when I opened the door and went in.  Every room had drawing on the walls.  Everything was filthy and the house was full of garbage.  It was worse than when we went to look at it before we made an offer on the house two and a half months before. The contract stated that the house had to be in swept out condition.  After a half hour of negotiating we got the seller to agree to give us $300 so we could rent a dumpster to throw the stuff away.  We closed on the House and then we got to work.  I called around and had a dumpster delivered by 4:00pm. Jeff went to the house with our good friend Brother Mesa and they got to work hauling everything out of the house.  They filled the 10 ft dumpster and we still have a few big items left but we can put it on the curb for the large trash pick up our community has once a month.  We just have to wait until May 19th because the large trash pick up already happened a week before we moved in. I got a lot of help from friends to watch the kids. It wasn't safe to have them in the house and I didn't want Austin to see the coloring on the walls and get any ideas.  Jeff and I worked all day on Saturday cleaning and prepping to paint.  There was so much to clean and so many little odd jobs to do that we didn't get to start painting until Monday.  Every light bulb in the house was burnt out except for one. Tuesday we painted for 10 hours with the kids with us and we finished Austin's room, Bennett's room, their bathroom and the family room and kitchen.  We moved in on Wednesday.  We have been here a week.  I've been focusing on more cleaning and unpacking.  Since moving in we've replaced the washer and dryer, fixed the garage door and we will be replacing the AC unit tomorrow. Even with all the maintenance we are so happy to be in a home.  It has been wonderful for our family. There is still a lot of work to be done. 5 years from now when we start thinking about buying a home please remind me of this blog post so I remember to either NOT buy a shortsale OR pay someone to do all the work for me.