We moved everything...except ourselves!

We decided that since the rest of the week is supposed to be filled with rain and stormy weather, today would have to be the day to move everything over to the house.  So, we rented a 10-foot Budget truck and in just 3 trips (2 from Jared's parents' house and 1 from his sister's) in 24 hours, we got everything moved.  Well, at least everything we remembered to move.  We realized right after we returned the truck of course that we had forgotten the couch for Jared's ready room, the gigantic bean bag, and his locker which we still haven't even really figured out how to move thus far as we think it may require taking it apart to move it.  BUT, we got all of the important things moved.  Unfortunately, that includes our bed, so until we actually move over there after the carpet has been installed later this week, we are sleeping on the floor.  Bella doesn't seem to mind, but I have to say that both of us have slept better.

I forgot to catch a picture of the garage and our dining room and how filled they are, but here is a picture of our living room with our brand new huge TV (mega thanks to Grandpa Ken and Grandma Susie), a huge sectional (big thanks to Uncle Dan and Aunt Cassie for their sofa), most of our bedroom furniture, and a lot of the dining room stuff too.  Thank goodness we at least got to keep a walkway through the room.

And I think that is all for now!  Carpet should be coming on Thursday if all goes as planned, so we are starting to feel like this is actually real at last. Yahoooooo!!!

J&L

Sunday - The Day of Rest (well kind of)

We decided today that we really needed a day of rest since we had both worked 9 days solid on the house.  Our bodies are completely exhausted and I think we just needed a mental break too.  Instead, we spent the day getting ready to actually move in by going to Sam's Club (thanks MamaFish for the new membership) and we picked tons of stuff up while we were there.  Unfortunately, the trip cost us hundreds of dollars, but we picked up massive amounts of toiletries, laundry and cleaning supplies, general house supplies, duvets, mattress pads, and all sorts of other things that we will need the day we actually move everything in!  Getting very excited that we are getting close!

Oh, and here is our updated and more realistic timeline.  We rented a moving truck on Tuesday so we will be moving everything into the house on Tuesday although it will not be moved into place until the family room and bedrooms are carpeted on Thursday.  Currently we are looking at Thursday or Friday as our official move in date.

Soooooo close!  We can do it!

J&L

Finishing up painting and taking up the laminate floors

The spare bedrooms are both finally finished at long last...well almost.  We got the second coat of paint on the primary guest bedroom (the first picture) and the first coat on the secondary (the second picture).  We are so pleased with the way this color looks now with white trim!

We picked out and ordered our carpet this morning, so that meant it was time to rip out the floating laminate floor in the family room and back hallway!  Jared was quite the pro and we got it all out in less than a half hour including all the tricky spots in the corner where they had nailed and screwed it into the concrete!  Looks like we have a little more trim to paint now that the floor is out since they put it right next to the baseboards instead of fitting the floating floor under them.  Thank goodness it was a floating floor though because it was so super easy!

On a completely different note, our pool has finally cleared up and is ready for some summer swimming!  Thanks so much to Aunt Cassie for getting this taken care of for us!

J&L

One Week Update!!!

One week update!  We are pretty much done with painting, so we are feeling really great about our progress!  Feel free to check out the before pictures if you need a refresher!  Just in case you are curious, we used the Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint with primer in it.  I would highly recommend this paint as in most room we were able to get full coverage in just 1 coat with re-rolling over a few spots.  In just 2 coats, we were able to cover up very bold colors, so we would say this paint surpassed our expectations significantly!  

We used a few different sheens of paint depending on the rooms: eggshell in the majority of the house, satin in the bathrooms and kitchen, and semi-gloss on the trim and doors.  The colors we used throughout the entire house were and they are linked to the color so you can see them better:

• Gobi Desert: the main beige color you see throughout the house and in Jared's ready room
• Hazelnut Cream: the super light beige in the bathrooms and master 
• Earthnut: the more mocha brown in the kitchen
• Wheat Bread: the greige (mix of grey and beige) found in both guest rooms and as accent in our master and master bath
• Very Pure White: the white on the trim and doors

Here are all of the most recent pictures - we are so very excited to share them with you at last!!!

Family room:

Back hallway to the spare bath and bedrooms:

Spare bathroom:

Primary guest room:

Secondary guest room (Still need to paint the trim and doors): 

Jared's ready room (aka spare bedroom #3): 

Front hallway: 

Breakfast nook (left wall is the Earthnut and right is the Gobi Desert): 

Kitchen: 

Dining room: 

Living room: 

Front door: 

Master bedroom (left wall is the accent wall in Wheat Bread and the right wall and rest of the room is the Hazelnut Cream): 

Master closet: 

Master bath (the wall by the toilet is the accent with the Wheat Bread color: 

We are very excited by how everything is turning out!  Everything is really starting to come together at last!  Now, all we need to do is paint that secondary bedroom and basically re-floor most of the house.  We had a carpet guy come by to do a measure today, so we are excited to stop by their shop and pick out carpet and get it ordered.  Eventually, we are looking forward to replacing the vinyl "hardwood" flooring in the kitchen and front hallway and the gross vinyl in both of the bathrooms, but that will have to come a little later. For now, we are just excited to get some carpet in the house since currently there is not even a single square foot!  Can't wait to see what they say tomorrow...hopefully we can get it carpeted before next weekend!  

Thanks for checking out our one week update!  We are very happy with how much we got done this week and are so thankful for all of our helpers!  Can't wait to see where we are next week with seven more days of progress under our belts!  Hopefully by then we will be carpeted and all moved in! 

J&L

New Additions: Grill and Refrigerator!

Sears delivered our refrigerator and Jared's early birthday grill today, so now we are really feeling ready to move in!  Here are some pictures of Jared putting his grill together and our refrigerator feeling cozy in its new home!  Now all we need to do is buy some ground beef and cook us up some hamburgers! Pool party here we come!

J&L

Last traces of color!

I realized in looking at before pictures that it was actually quite hard to tell how vibrant some of the colors were, so we went back and took some more pictures today of the guest rooms that showed the crazy colors next to white.  I hope it will give you an even better idea of what we have been working with!

Closet doors in Jared's future ready room (the trim was that color too):

Secondary guest room:

Primary guest room:

J&L

New pool decoration!

I had to run by Home Depot to grab some more blue tape this morning and while I was there I fell in love with these hanging baskets that were being sold for just $6.96 each!  Since our pool screen came with 8 wrought iron hanging basket hooks, we had been waiting for the right plant at the right price to come along so we could fill them.  I grabbed these the second I saw them as it is hard to come by hanging baskets at such a great price.  Since my trunk was pretty full, I only grabbed 4 (2 pink and 2 purple) so that I could just stick them in my back seat for a quick ride home.  I am so happy I picked them up because we are just so happy with how they look out there and we are both looking forward to picking the other 4 up tomorrow.  The pink and purple look great, but I think we might try to get some white ones tomorrow too to mix it up!

J&L

Thank you helpers!

Now that we are at the one week point, we would like to say thank you sooooo much to all of our helpers!  The first person over to help was Grandpa Fisher, but unfortunately I didn't catch a picture of him helping me move a bunch of boxes in because well, we were busy moving heavy boxes!  GrandMom and GrandDad came over on the first day of us really getting down to business in the house and she mopped the whole house and helped unpack the kitchen some more and he did some weeding and made all of our windows look brand new!  Thanks so much to both of them! Pictured below is GrandMom with her mop!

A big thanks also to Jared's brother Jordan for coming over on the first night with Mom and Dad and helping us knock out painting a huge portion of the main living area!

An even bigger thanks to Jared's Mom and Dad for being total troopers.  Not only did they come over for the initial painting, but they even took Monday and Tuesday off of work to help us get some more stuff done.  Dad was a pressure washing machine with his awesome new pressure washing drum and extension pole.  If you remember from past pictures, our pool screen and deck were super nasty, and he made them look a million times better.  Our deck will still need a new coat of something, but the pool screen practically looks brand new.  And thanks so much to Mom for being a Rachel of all trades.  She helped us clean, did some painting, lots of taping, and even some babysitting so other people could help out!  I will have to catch a picture of them in action sometime soon!

Two other people I missed in photos were Tyler and Meagan.  Tyler came over two days and Meagan came over one day to help paint.  It is amazing how much more we can get done with a few extra sets of hands, so thanks so much!

Thank you also to Colette and Kevin.  Kevin came over one day and I can't even count how many days Colette was over helping us.  Thanks so much for all of your help painting and taping!!!

And of course, my little nephew, the star!  Thanks so much Jameson for being patient while I used your Mommy and Daddy and for being the best little model out there!

And then of course a big thanks to Jared's cousin Sydney for all of her painting expertise!  I just wish she had gotten the paint a little more on the wall and not so much on her face!  Really though, she was an awesome helper knocking out the trim and doors in two of the back three bedrooms!

Thank you sooooo much to everyone!  We wouldn't even be close to where we are today without you, so thank you!  We are so beyond grateful for all of your hard work in helping us to realize our dreams for this home!

J&L

Painting baseboards, trim, and doors

I have to say that at this point we are getting pretty tired of painting.  We are completely done with all of the walls and now we have moved on to painting baseboards, trim, and doors.  Throughout this process, I have decided that taping is one of the most tedious things I have ever done.  So thankful to have had Jared's Mom and sister there to help us with the taping so that I wasn't stuck with all of it as Jared was rather occupied painting all of our super tall vaulted ceilings throughout the house up on the 15-foot ladder.

An examples of how bad their paint job was...

And some examples of how bad the color was on the baseboards although it varied from room to room as they painted some of the baseboards and doors craaaazy colors:

We are getting there!  Can't wait to move in later this week!

J&L