Knit Night

Our first get-together in the new house was when I hosted my knitting group one Thursday night. It went very well, everyone seemed to have a great time. We had an excellent turnout, even though very little knitting got accomplished! After the awful kitchen setup in our old house, I really appreciate having a good floor plan with room to entertain. We've been having people over fairly often now that there's not carpet in the kitchen!

Here are Brandy, Jackie, and Valerie enjoying drinks and edamame at knit night:

Blooms

We have two gorgeous dogwood trees, one white and one pink, in our front yard. They bloomed in late April and were still in full bloom for Derby, when our guests were here! It was getting dark in the pics, but hopefully you can see how pretty they are. We've had tulips, daffodils, lily of the valley, irises, and really pretty peonies pop up so far. It's kind of neat to be surprised with what's out there...but there's A LOT of yard work to be done this fall once we decide what we're keeping and moving.

Kitchen floor

Our new kitchen floor, aside from being gorgeous, is the same color as Mikey!

Buh-bye carpet

We no longer have any carpet on the main floor of our house, and it used to be everywhere...including a disgusting mess in the kitchen, as seen below:



On the last Friday of Adam's vacation week, I was also off, and we pulled out the crappy, dirty carpet that was infesting my kitchen. The carpet was glued to funky 70s linoleum underneath and we kept sticking to it, but it was such a relief just to get the grossness out of there! Here's Adam ripping up a corner, and carrying out the last remnant of carpet.

Babysitters

Before we moved into the new house, but after closing, we spent a lot of time painting and pulling up carpet and such. But we were able to leave the dogs at the old house for a few hours at a time. It was great, because the houses were only a couple of miles apart. When we had our recent project week, however, we had to figure out what to do with Mikey and Zoe while we painted, installed flooring, etc.

The answer: chew toys.

The bacon-flavored rawhide stick thingies I bought were awesome. Kept them occupied for quite awhile, as seen below.

Enjoying our efforts

We've got lots to update about and quite a few pictures to post, but I just wanted to share my excitement about our first get-together in our new house! It's tonight...I'm hosting the weekly Stitch-n-Sip (our very chic gathering of knitters). Adam's going to throw some tasty tidbits on the grill, I'm serving white chocolate-covered strawberries, and the weather is supposed to be awesome.

We've been working this week on recovering from all the projects we did last week: putting away tools, cleaning up, and moving appliances back to their rightful places. We have a beautiful new kitchen floor that makes me actually want to spend time in the kitchen (!!) and the yard is starting to look greener all the time. Even though it's by no means finished, the house feels like our home and I'm pretty proud to show it off.

Stay tuned for pics from tonight and from recent projects. And coming up...we prepare for our first overnight guests on Derby weekend!

Frogs No More

Another project this week was painting the bathroom. Believe it or not we were tired of the brown walls with blue, hand painted frogs on them. We plan a total bathroom redo in the not too distant future so this was just kind of a quick fix to hold us over. Nonetheless here are the pictures.

Amanda and Zoe prepping the ceiling for paint:



And the frog's final moment:





Final pictures are yet to come as we haven't finished the 2nd coat yet. I had to take the day off today to play golf so we will be finishing it tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Spring=yard work

Adam mowed the grass this week for the first time! It was pretty exciting. We don't have much actual grass yet, but there are lots of various other things growing in the yard, including pretty purple violets. Unfortunately, we decided to reign in the wildflowers and try to grow...grass! A few weeks ago we had the yard aerated and seeded, and we've been waiting to see if anything would come of it. Now we have tiny little grass buds. It's awesome! Adam gave the yard a trim, which took about 3.5 minutes because it's quite small. In fact, the photo was staged because he was finished before I could get a picture. Here he is in all his cuteness:

A Week Off To Work

I took this week off from work to get some things done around the house. First on the list was finishing the quarter round molding. My uncle and I had already put it down in the master bedroom and dining room before we moved in.
I bought 120 feet of quarter round and painted it before my uncle and cousin came over Sunday. The hard part is getting the angles right so two pieces will meet even and flush on corners. The area under the bay window was especially difficult:



It took us about 5 hours but we got the foyer, living room, hallway and office finished. Here is a before picture:



And a couple of afters:

Big Blue Bag

We returned from our very first trip to Ikea yesterday with all of the above. I got a magnet board for my office at work, and we got some neat things for the house: wall-mounted utensil holders for the kitchen, wine glass racks, magnetic knife board (also to hang on the wall), planter, and two candles. We managed to have decent self-discipline, and I think what we got will be useful. I'm especially excited to get some things off our very small kitchen counter.

Overall thoughts about Ikea: it's huge, and some of the stuff is great and inexpensive, but a lot of it looks like dorm furniture. We did find a desk "system" we like and a TV stand, both very reasonably priced. It was definitely an enjoyable trip, especially since it was topped off with a soft-serve ice cream cone.

Special thanks to Loree and Rob for making it possible...

Slowly but surely

Sorry it's been awhile since the last post (Loree says she's tired of reading about March Showers). We've mainly just been unpacking boxes and cleaning up from the basement leaking. We've made a few donations to Goodwill, and it always feels good to get rid of things.

Last week we celebrated our third wedding anniversary! We're very thankful to be in our own home this year, and are looking forward to many years of memories here.

Adam is off all this coming week, and I'm off Monday and Friday. We have quite a few (ambitious) projects planned. We'll see what all we're actually able to accomplish. This morning we took down the wallpaper in the kitchen, and as I type this Adam and his Uncle Mike and cousin Tyler are putting in quarter round in the living room.

We finally began hanging some things on the wall. It was a little painful considering all the work that went into patching and painting before we moved in, but it's nice to see things coming together and looking like a home. Check out our first wall hanging in our new home; I bought it for Adam in St. Louis:

March Showers?

We had a soggy week in Louisville and ended up with water in the basement. With all the snow from a couple weeks ago melting and lots of rain coming in, the ground was just too wet. We had water coming up through the floor (this happened occasionally at the old house, too). Adam was on shop-vac duty for several hours on Wednesday. Luckily, it was sunny and fairly warm yesterday, so things had a chance to dry out. And don’t worry, we moved the poker table to higher ground before it got wet!

Ah, the glories of home ownership! It’s quite glamorous…

Realtor...to have or have not?

We were blessed to stumble upon a great realtor. We accidentally met Candace Bornstein Byrne (of Keller-Williams) when I called her about another house we’d driven by. Within a week, she was representing us as we made the offer on this house.

I think it’s really important to:
A. Have a realtor…especially for your first home purchase
B. Get along with and trust your realtor.

Candace was adorable. I feel like she should totally be a cartoon character. She is cute and animated and funny, full of charisma. But we always felt like she knew her stuff and was being honest with us, and if we needed something or had a question, she was on the phone taking care of it immediately. Candace is also close to our own age, so we felt like we had some things in common. And we got to work with her husband (of Old Town Mortgage) and father (the closing attorney). They were all really great.

Some people may try to do real estate transactions without a realtor in order to save some money, but I felt much more comfortable having one and think the right realtor will actually save you money, even if you’re selling and have to pay their fees.

Three reasons to have a realtor:

1. They know the process and do the hard work for you.
Even though we actually found the house we ended up buying, Candace made the calls, set up appointments, researched the comps, knew the area, walked us through the steps, advised us on the offer, outlined the contract, etc. Yes, it was our first experience with all that, but simply having her expertise was a big comfort, not to mention timesaver. Having her handle the details helped me keep some sanity and probably my job.

2. They can make recommendations and referrals.
Candace was not only related to several of the other pros we used, but she’s got lots of experience in the industry and was able to give us great recommendations on things like insurance and inspectors as well (Yay, BrickKickers!). They work with these people all the time, so they know which companies and people are good to deal with. Much easier and more reliable than if we had to find out all these things on our own.

3. They are problem solvers. I think most of the time in real estate, something with the deal doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to. Realtors have seen tons of various situations, plus they have resources to figure out what to do in every situation. And they can make the uncomfortable phone calls. Candace was the one dealing with the selling realtor, so we didn’t have to. Had we not had her representation on that one, Adam may be living in jail instead of our great new house!

And that’s my final point: Not all realtors are as great as ours. There are definitely some out there that don’t know what they’re doing and have no integrity. We got lucky with Candace and her peeps, who all treated us really well.

Now, more pics of our worker bees:

Amphibian Invasion

Our house has been overrun by frogs. Of course, since they were there first, I guess we’re technically the invaders. Either way, the giant blue frogs on my bathroom wall are not going to be our housemates for long.




Their tiny plastic compatriot I found on the floor already bit it. These two are next!


But it makes me wonder: Why?

I mean, I like frogs as much as the next person, but who in their right mind would paint giant blue ones on a diarrhea-colored bathroom wall? Especially a bathroom most recently belonging to adults, senior citizens even. I have discovered that examining retrospectively the decorating choices of people you’ve never meant leaves much in question. Geez. My wildest imagination cannot fathom some of the choices. There are the obvious dated light fixtures, ugly wallpaper, and of course the old-person’s obligatory carpet in the kitchen. And I guess the primary-colored fan blades IN TWO ROOMS might just have been on sale or something. But these frogs took effort. They weren’t stenciled, and there are two. Enh?

Sorry for the delay...

Apparently renovating a house leaves no time for blogging about renovating a house. We started the day we closed and were still working on the house as we were moving in. Here is a quick list of the things we have done so far:

Painted 4 rooms, a hallway and a foyer including ceilings, trim and closets (used over 14 gallons of paint so far.). Pulled all the carpet, padding, tack-strip and staples from every room on the main floor. Changed out almost every electrical outlet and several light switches. Re-caulked the shower. Fixed a gas leak and a sink leak. Installed 7 sets of blinds. Replaced 2 light fixtures/ceiling fans. Put down quarter-round trim in 2 rooms so far. Installed cable jacks and phone jack. Changed out door knobs and dead bolts. Installed all new smoke detectors. Removed several shelves, hooks and other random junk from the walls and patched roughly 984,776,239,901,226 screw, nail and anchor holes in the walls. And of course cleaned the place from top to bottom.
We didn't do all this alone, we have to thank lots of family and friends who spent nights and weekend time helping us get all this done. And if that weren't enough they came out and helped us move all of our junk too.
Here are a few work pictures and a couple of before and after shots. Enjoy!











Master Bedroom Before:



Master Bedroom After:



Living Room Before:



Living Room After:



We still have lots of unpacking and work to do but the place looks much better and we are glad to be moved in. Thanks again to all those who helped. More to come.

We're Homeowners!

We bought a house! Closing went well (and a lot faster than I thought) and we worked until about 8 p.m. Here's the first picture of us with a mortgage:



The flowers on the mantle are gerbera daisies. I read they are good for cleaning the air, and with as much paint and cleaning products as we're going to be using, I figured it was a good idea to put a few in the house.

This is a picture of me eating Qdoba in the living room...our first meal in OUR house!



And finally, Adam with the paint and supplies. We were able to get started on the bedroom ceiling, and I got a lot cleaned, so we're feeling pretty good. It was weird going to work today when there's so much to do on the house, but it's really fun and we're very excited! Can't you tell from the photo how excited Adam is?

drum roll, please

We're closing on our first house tomorrow. It's an adorable Cape Cod in St. Matthews, less than two miles from Seneca Park and walking or biking distance to almost everything. It's exactly the location we wanted. The house needs some cosmetic updates, but we've already bought 18 gallons of paint to get started on that issue...

The plan is to close tomorrow and immediately begin cleaning and painting. The big move is March 1, so hopefully we'll have dry walls by then!

We stayed with neutral colors, and my favorite is the bedroom color. It's a really chic silvery tan color called Linen. It just makes me want to relax. The other colors so far are tans and greens. We're painting the bedroom, office, bathroom, hall, living room, and dining room, plus the ceilings and trim. Crazy.

As soon as the walls are dry we're going to yank up the old pink and cream office carpet and live with the original hardwood underneath. We're going to put new floors in the kitchen and bath, hopefully sooner than later.

It's good times!

It begins...

After a short delay, and a lot of arguing (not with each other), we will be closing on the new house tomorrow (2/19/08) at 2:00 P.M. It should be a pleasant time at the closing table after all the name calling and screaming that has gone on. For those of you that don't know...
We were supposed to close last Thursday (2/14/08). Amanda and I had taken a few vacation days so we could get started painting/cleaning/fixing right away. A problem with the roof arose after some storms came through and before the current owners could get it looked at it, it snowed. The insurance adjuster was unable to look at the roof since it was covered in snow and we were stuck. The sellers basically wanted to go ahead and close and for us to just take their word that they would get it fixed later. Obviously we did not agree to this and they just could not understand why. Apparently the phone conversations between our realtor and theirs got pretty ugly. No deal could be reached so we had to postpone the closing.
The roof has since been "fixed", we did our walk through tonight and it appears everything is a GO for tomorrow.
So, it begins...