Our next adventure... the saga continues

The kitchen.... the heart of most households... is not unpacked.

It is not unpacked because we have not cleaned the adhesive from the old contact paper and painted the cabinets. Nor have we painted or given everything a good scrub.

We have picked out paint- apple basket can you guess what color that is? as well as a back splash that we can intall easily (or at least thats what wendy and kerry say)

I am hoping that the rain will not dampen our enthusiasm and that sometime this weekend we could tackle the kitchen and sort out our grocery situation so that we can stop eating out so much. Maybe then the walking that I do with the dogs would help melt the fat instead of just maintaining the current weight. High hopes you know

Happy rainy day.

Taking Time

I have been away from the blog for a few days and I was taking time to comprehend my life in general. Having taken a cut in hours and having to reorganize my life has made me think about what is really important. Family, quality time, friends, simple pleasures.

It is important not to get bogged down in the foggy, bad days but really rejoice the good days. The sunny, or rainy good days that are only going to be around once. No need to sulk or wallow in sorrow of a lost routine but to be thankful of new found time to organize and enjoy activites that I formerly did not have time to enjoy. Walk the dogs, feel the breeze, sleep in, read a book, unpack our beautiful house, spend endless hours looking for my lost wallet. No need to get frustrated but continue to be proactive and know that everything is going to be okay.

So after a few rough days, I am going to enjoy my time and am looking forward to my future challenges.

I have said this is a growing up year and that is exactly what I have done.

Moving part two

We are almost done and ready to unpack the house... we have probably one more round of stuff to come over.

I had a bad day yesterday.... my hours got cut in half...so I went from a 40hr salary employee to a part time position starting yesterday.... needless to say it was a bit of a shock. Having just bought this beautiful house and a car payment. So times are going to get pretty tight.

the economy has really affected me and my family.... and its not fun.

hope everyone is doing well.

cheers

Moving

let me say I HATE MOVING... Saturday morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I felt unprepared, unorganized, annoyed and not feeling like doing anything at all especially not moving. Don't get me wrong I am so excited to have a shorter commute, to live in an awesome neighborhood and to live in the house that we bought. But I was having a hard time getting motivated. I finally got my act together and we got a lot cleaned and a lot moved
As of right now we are not completely finished moving but we are sleeping at Miami. The dogs have made the transition Moose was running up and down the stairs while Harry peeked around the corners and checked everything out.

it will be so nice to be done with the ashland house, we still have some stuff to move and cleaning and painting that has to happen. By Wednesday we will be done. I can't wait.

a rest break

thanksgiving was nice... the food was good... and today the shopping should be even bettter

Yay for black friday!

Hope you enjoy the before pictures

after pictures to come possibly this weekend depending on the move!

flower theme in bathroom... got to go


kitchen cabinets with ten layers of paint

the floor i ripped up... I am woman hear me roar

Before we walked in the door as home owners!


Nasty sticky floor that was a b*tch to rip up
over the hard wood(who would do that)



Nails, nails and more nails

me having a spackling party!

Some before pictures

Pink Room Oh my


living room with poop brown


Kitchen



view of living room to dining room




Our beautiful house

Paint the town blue

The master bedroom was painted an awesome blue... so calming and refreshing
Now for the trim and windows oh and doors. Bright white and blue is a good combination

I have the sneaking feeling that we are not prepared to move everything this weekend because the ashland house is not packed... but we will push to the finish line and see what happens.

keep our fingers crossed for agreeable weather

We have to get the treadmill today, and move that as well as figure out what we are doing about the fence, so that the dogs have a safe place to be after we move

so many decisions so little time.

New water heater coming today Yay! for us

Small victories of a grown up homeowner

So we discovered the other day that the water in the sink was not getting hot... hmmm very unfortunate. We called the home warranty people and they sent out a guy from perfect plumber who discovered that......

It was installed wrong.... since 1992 the hot water has run in the cold and cold runs in the hot side he was like " I'm not sure how these people took baths because it wouldn't get more then luke warm" and "with the bugs in the house it seems they weren't the cleanest folks."

G-r-o-s-s

So he convinced the home warranty people to give us a new hot water heater on a week old contract... good day for us... small victory.

the saga continues.

Weekend Warriors

The weekend began on friday Christy, Wendy and I began the arduous process of pulling up flooring. I started with the "dining room" which consisted of subfloor stabled to the hard wood and covered in tile, what the heck, so I popped up tile and then pulled up board. It was an interesting experience my knees and elbows were feeling the pain.

While pulling up the floor I hear christy and wendy giggling from the other room with the stripping machine, as they were stuck to the floor due to large amounts of adhesive, so I went to the store to get adhesive remover and then not only were they giggling from being stuck but also because they were getting high off of chemicals. VERY funny stuff when you just walk out of your shoes.

There was also a priming, painting, cleaning, spackling party which was something else.

Thank goodness for good friends that are willing to do the hard work, Marg and Wendy my favorite weekend warriors.

Thanks guys

finishing last weeks of classes while trying to move

Just a thought probably not the ideal time to be finishing my masters degree while attempting to pack one house and fix the other to move in. Probably should do homework rather than blog but it just seems so UGH. I have acutally done quite a bit today but decided it was time for a break.

Note to self... don't look at the ikea catalog you get too many ideas.... more ideas then money

Went looking for the painting we want to base our colors around at pier one and then didn't have it at the one on this side of town, so our mission before tomorrows color picking extravaganza is find the painting.

Oh and at some point this weekend between cleaning and painting I will have to finish my homework.... Nanny's house here I come.

ready to be done at work so I can go to work in miami

Feeling refreshed after good nights sleep

It was nice to get in the house last night and have time to really see what we have gotten ourselves into. I'm sure at every turn we will find other amazing finds. Like gum and scotch tape that has been painted over, gaps in wood floor and doors that don't open or really close. At some point we also need to tackle the glass in the backyard from the busted shed windows, so that the pups won't hurt their toes when the come over on moving day. I was too tired to have a conversation with Moose and Harry about the move last night... its on my list to do for the weekend.

I want to spend all my time at the new house and get as much work as possible done, but we are not done packing at the ashland house so that needs to occur as well (well christy did pack the kitchen in a packing frenzy and then was wondering where the bowls and spatulas were) I call that packing induced amnesia...pretty funny stuff.

Today the contractor man is at the house JACKING it up LOL so that he can replace the sill in the left corner that had previous wood destroying bug action on it. I'm sure that the sellers love the fact that they had to pay that $600 but I am just happy it is being taken care of. He said that we made a smart choice and that we have a really nice house, so even the paint is hideous and I have pulled out 100 nails I am glad this was our pick!

Mission of the day is to go at lunch and count how many outlet covers we need to replace in the whole house because surprise surprise all of them have been painted over OH I would say at least five times. :)

We also got our first piece of new furniture yesterday a pub set table with bench seating stools and I am so excited to get the floors and everything done and painted so we can unpack that and see how it looks

challenge of tomorrow is to figure out what paint to use, I will have to call my brother the home depot paint expert to see what he thinks would be a good choice

The adventures of the Spackle king and us

SO we (Tim, Christy and I) did go to the house and get started on the nail removal and the beginning of much spackleing extravaganza. I think one bedroom (the infamous pink room) had twenty plus nails what the freak is that about.



Tim was brave enough to pull down the wood rail in the dining room, which we found was hiding the hack job of cabinet hanging in the kitchen with big holes the wall and some of the longest nails I have ever seen so there is lots of patching to do on that . WOW



We are officially owners of a house with bugs and holes in the walls and pink doors.... SO exciting

Nails

I am not exactly sure what the renters were doing in our house.... there are so many nails I think I must have pulled out twenty nails in just the living room... so not only is it a completely horrific color but it has nails every where.

So at lunch today I decided to go on a nail removing mission... it wasn't quite as fun as I thought it might be. Pretty much strained to pull them out got dust in my eye (hopefully it didn't contain lead paint)

Wendy joined us for our first meal at the house a lovely fair of wraps and smoothies on the plastic table and folding chairs it couldn't have been any better. Its so nice that our friends are excited and that we have lots of help in tackling the fun painting and floor dealings.

Can't wait to get started thank goodness I have friday off so that I can really get some work done.

Mission for tonight talk to the dogs and tell them we are moving to the city ( Harry is not going to like this one bit, he's not one for change. Moose, well she likes an adventure and so do i as long as it doesn't mean her escaping from the fence and running the neighborhood)
We'll keep our fingers crossed!

Buying a House

So the whole house buying process was beyond stressful... at the beginning I was dreaming of redoing the floors, painting and decorating. A lot of lost sleep. More decisions then I ever thought we would have to make. Our Agent was awesome, she educated us and lead us through the whole process and it was fairly painless (except for the day we thought we might not quailify for the loan we were told that we were preapproved on0. We had to shell out a lot of money for inspections appraisals and so on had a last min near disaster with the termite inspection but closed on time.

Woooohooo!!! just knowing that we bought a house is incredible. I can step on that dirt and say this is mine.... as i did with almost everything in the house yesterday afternoon... this in mine(washer) this is mine (dryer) this is mine (sink)... you get the drift.

Now comes the fun part... getting in this house and getting down to the cleaning and painting and dealing with those dreamed about floors. A whole new set of challenges await but I am so excited for the possibility of what it could be. Not only a roof over our heads but an acutal home, that we can live in and happily share with friends and family. Oh and running water is always a plus, can't wait for trash pick up either(no more trips to the dump).

so I am exhausted and can't wait to get some sleep.... but work awaits me after instructing pool class tonight!

Will have to post some before and after pictures