Home Sweet Home

It's hard to believe it's been almost a month since we've moved in!  I've been meaning to put up new pics, but it's harder to take time to write a blog when you're surrounded by chaos, messiness, and a never ending to do list.  It has taken me several hours over the past two nights and lots of trips to the kids' candy jar, but I've finally taken the time to do it.  (please ignore any typos.  I was too tired to go back and re-read it).  There is still lots to do around the house, but at least it is finally starting to look like a home.  Good news is we got the ancient fireplace insert to blow hot air Saturday night so it was much more comfortable around here...at least in the living room area.  Hopefully we will be able to get our hvac in the next week or two. 

We haven't had a chance to hook up all our speakers and such so there is just a big pile of equipment and wires to the right of the fireplace.



First I'll post some of our more recent pictures of the house.  I hesitated to even post some of these since the house isn't near finished, clean or staged, but enough people having been asking -some begging- :) for pictures that I'll just post where we are at now.   Disclaimers (I can't help myself): I took several of these tonight so the quality and lighting is bad.  We haven't had a chance to update/install any of our new light fixtures/ceiling fans.   I have not taken the time to decorate.  If you see pictures or decorations out its because they have just been removed from a box and placed in the best place I knew where to put them for now.  Plus you will still see boxes in several rooms.  We are downsizing on closet and storage space so I don't have places to put everything yet.  We are having to get creative!  :) 

A sweet friend gave us her sectional couch since it didn't fit in their new place.  I still need to recover our ottoman to go with the room.

LOVE all the built in book shelves!  Most of our books have been in boxes since the Mason was born and our office turned into a baby room 

Master closet.  This is after we got rid of a lot of things, packed up off season clothes, moved dressier clothes to A's closet, and moved most of our shoes to the laundry room/mudroom.

This will be our extra office/craft room/reading room.  We have a desk, crafts, sewing stuff, kid books, puzzles etc.  This room still needs some organizational help.  You cant see it but there are a lot of boxes on the other size of the love seat.

It's been a bit of an adjustment not having a bathroom right off the master - we have to go through two rooms to get to it-  but I'm getting use to it.  The boys bathroom isn't done so we are all sharing this one.  I'll be ready to give them the boot! 

 

 

 

Here's part of the boys bathroom.  We are SOO over tiling!!  We will do some and then not touch it for a several days because it's so time consuming.

 Here's our sweet little boys sleeping in bed.  They have been doing pretty good down there as far as not being scared.  They will stay up late giggling, sneaking out of bed, etc late into the night.  Usually the next night they are tired so they fall asleep earlier the next.  We are still in the cycle, but I feel like the silliness doesn't last quite as long.

 I had told Zac before we move in I want a new more secure exterior door down here.  Well that is going to be tricky since the door is smaller and not even an exact rectangle.  So for now we keep a sheet over the window and box full of their bathroom stuff in front of it.  At least Zac did put weather stripping on it this past weekend so you don't see the outdoors along the sides of it. 

 Kitchen still needs a backsplash and some dry wall mudding work around the fridge - can't tell from this pic.  I also plan to put a dark glaze on the upper cabinets.  The uppers were original.  We just had our great cabinet maker from church make the doors to match as well as remove one self about the stove to make room for our microwave. 

Here is the eat in nook.  The legs of the table were literally built into the floor so they weren't going anywhere.  We are removing the top and replacing it with butcher block.  I got the old chairs off craigslist - Patty and I recovered them this weekend with burlap coffee bean bags.  We are also going to get a bench for the back right section of the table. 

The wood paneling/wainscoting along the back wall was removed from our entryway ceiling - it was way to low there.

Next I thought I'd share some of the not so glamorous parts of the reno.  It has a little rough moving into an un-finished house reno.  When we moved in we had one toilet and a bathroom sink, but no tub/shower or hot water.  We got kitchen cabinets and sink after a several days, and we got our shower about 10 days after we moved in.  It wasn't ideal, but who really needs to shower everyday?  Some of our good friends only live 5 minutes away so we crashed their shower every couple days.  The other thing that sucked was that our washing machine broke the day before we moved and wasn't fixed till after two weeks of moving in.  Some friends who let us do laundry at their house, but we just couldn't keep up with the mounds of dirty laundry that kept piling.  Plus it didn't help that when it broke I had about 3-4 loads of laundry that I planned on doing right before the move.

 

So my family moved to the country when I was in 5th grade.  My parents have a huge garden, bees, chickens, fruit trees, and lots of pretty land.  But with country life also comes lots of dust, bugs, spiders an occasional mouse.  You would think I would be ok with the latter list, but I guess I have lived in city life long enough now that it has been an adjustment.  I'm happy to say that I am learning to go with the flow!  Plus I had a bug guy come out and spray the inside and outside of our house like crazy.  :)   I still dread the day that we will probably get a mouse (come spring we will be getting a cat pronto).  We haven't seen any live ones yet, but when we were cleaning the place out there were some dead ones as well as mouse poop in a couple rooms.  Not to mention the dead squirrel that was in the basement.  Eww! 

So most that know me know I like a pretty clean organized house - it's not as organized with toddlers, but I've just accepted that.  :)  Anyway, I am again stretching my personality by living with things that one year ago I would not have been cool with.  Thought I'd share some...

The hole in our bedroom wall houses to electrical boxes that send wires to the exterior part of our house.  The problem is that there is a hole where the wires leave.  So when you look out the hole you can see the light from the outside.  Didn't get that recovered till we had been here almost 3 weeks.  Needless to say our room was a little drafty especially the first week we were hear and the night time temps were in the forties.

In our kitchen when we removed the old backsplash we noticed a 1-2 inch opening that extended all the way across our kitchen window. (The pic below shows a pic of it from afar)  When you look inside you can see an old wasp nest and cobwebs.  Plus you can feel a draft coming from there.  That didn't get filled with foam till Friday. 

This was a pic of our kitchen from about a week ago.  Now we have cabinet doors and part of the backsplash done

The creepy cellar.  I am stoked about having a cellar for great extra storage for all our future garden stuff and produce, but ours just creeps me out right now.

After months of not stepping foot inside I finally braved it because I didn't like the idea of moving in with a room full of mouse poop and 80 years of nastiness right next to the boys' room.

So I told Zac that I didn't want to move in till: 1. the huge hole from the cellar to the crawl space was sealed off - I envisioned mice, spiders, and snakes in the crawl space.  Well that didn't happen till we were there about a week.  2.  That the door that lead into the house (from the cellar to the basement) was sealed and locked to keep out the musty smells and spiders.  That didn't happen till almost 2 weeks in.  Which is partly why I had the boys sleep on the floor in our room the first week.  3.  The wood shelves removed and a thorough cleaning down there to again help with musty smells.  Zac removed the shelves this weekend, but still no deep cleaning yet. 

Here is the creepy cellar door. We actually used the old master closet door since what they originally had was nasty.  Obviously it still needs a lot of work but at least it's contained.

 

I took this pic Friday and am happy to say that the pile of trash is now gone and a new roof has been installed

The siding on the back of our house was rotten so we ripped it off and nailed up some black plastic till we were able to get the siding back on.  Plastic is still there blowing in the wind looking all white trash.  Hoping we find someone to come and do some siding for us since Zac's to do list is still pretty long.

 

I am looking forward to the laundry room, but there are days where I about go crazy stepping in there.  First of all we have tons of boxes and junk in there right now.  We are getting shelves built since it will also be our pantry area, but for now lots of our stuff is just in boxes. 

 

I haven't had a chance to paint the wood wall to the left so it still has that musty old people smell.  Although I think we may just put bead board over it since it's in pretty bad shape.  Oh and yes that is a crack under the door.  Need to install the new threshold.  :)

There is still lots of work to do - I'm dreading all the painting (my job) of all the doors, windows, baseboard, and trim. It will take me weeks to get it all done.  However I am thankful that it is finally starting to look like our home.
I know this is such a long post, but I was going to end with some pretty pictures of the trees around the house.  All the fall colors are gorgeous out here.

Notice the gorgeous trees and new driveway - not the pile of trash and dirty walls.  Thankfully we got our driveway done for a fraction of the cost of going through a company.  Some guys that work for a company during the week came out and did it on their own time over the weekend for half what it would have cost.
 

We are so thankful for all the friends and family who have helped us!  There have been sooo many!  We would be in pretty bad shape without their help.  We had people help us work on the house, watch the boys, give us great contacts, borrow tools, and we even had around 15 guys come out to help us move all our junk.  We are so thankful for your love and support during this crazy time!  Can't wait till we can have a big get together out here.  I'm thinking a bonfire will be a must.