Progress over the long weekend: Continued...

WARNING: Longest blog post, ever. My bad.

This post has been sitting as an unfinished draft for two weeks. I can't even begin to explain how insanely busy this month has been. Between trying to finish up grad school work before Thanksgiving (including doing 20 hours of observation at a local high school), preparing the new house to move in, packing stuff, working, and all the regular living stuff (like cooking dinner, doing laundry...) I've been absolutely nuts. No time for blogging (for real this time!). I had no idea how much work it was going to be to do all that painting at the new house. After we're done with this round, I don't think I am going to want to paint another piece of trim ever again.

Well, it's Friday, and it's been almost 4 weeks since we closed. After two solid weekends of work with help from our parents, and several after-work evening paint parties, I can say that we're almost there (kind of). I can already see that owning a house is a work in progress-- no matter now much you get done, there is always something else that you're like, "well, once everything settles down, I'm going to paint this, too. It can wait for now... but it's definitely getting painted." Or tiled. Or replaced. Or finished. And so on. And so on. Forever.

At least we're pretty much ready to move in, at this point... Which is great-- since we're doing that TOMORROW.
I've already rented the truck, and invited some people to help. I'm not sure that we will get through absolutely everything in the old house, but at least we'll get all the big stuff over there. Saturday night the paint fumes will be singing us a sweet, sweet lullaby.

Can't wait.

Anyway, I have a load more pictures from the first weekend of work. That was like two weeks ago, but whatever. I haven't been keeping up as well with the "in-progress" pictures as we've been working-- I've been sort of reluctant to grab the camera when my hands are totally covered with paint. Soon I'll have a load of "after" pictures to show you, though. And I know you are all more patient than I am, waiting to see the transformation. I might as well post these bad boys so that I can be ready when the time comes to post the rest; so here you go, a GIANT photo-dump post.



The house has this little "room" that stands in-between the dining room and the living room. I guess it's a foyer? If the house was situated differently, it would probably be the place where everyone entered the house... but since the door sits kind of awkwardly over the hill, no one really uses the door.
Anyway. We finished that room.

Here's the "foyer" before:

The foyer runs into the hallway that runs down the middle of the house. We painted them the same color, Behr's "Pecan Sandie."

Here's the hall, before:

Here's Sean, throwing a coat of paint on the walls in the foyer...

... and the hall:

We finished the foyer two weeks ago. Last weekend we tackled the trim in the hall. Holy shiz. SO. MUCH. TRIM. Here's the foyer at "almost done", and then at "done":

That door is one of those "probably gonna paint it... someday" things. It just doesn't match.

Whatever. That room looks so much better than it did with that grimy, yellow(ish?) paint.


I also have a few pictures of the pink bathroom, meeting its demise. Here's one of Melissa, primering that sponge paint into oblivion. I included a before photo, just so you could enjoy it one last time:

The master bedroom has also had its share of work. My dad came up and demolished that ridiculous closet that took up a huge chunk of the room. It's not really possible to take a picture that shows how much of the room that stupid closet took up, so here is a drawing I made to estimate the amount of carpet I'd need:

It actually went like, 3 feet into the room. The drawing shows two. Just trust me: it sucked.

Here is a picture of the closet:

And here are a few pictures of dad taking it out:

Sorry. Huge jump from "closet" to "no closet." I was painting the living room and didn't know he was actually smashing the walls of it out, or I would have been in there cheering and taking pictures.


Here's a couple of dad putting up the shelf tracks in the pantry:

And finally, here's a couple of the living room progression from hideous blue, to "Gentle Doe." (Cute, Behr. Cute.)

I know-- that "after" picture of the living room is pathetic. Sorry. It was pitch black in there, so I tried to shine a lamp on it and get a picture. I'll get a better one in the daylight.


Sorry to unload so many photos at once. The intention was to do a bunch of posts, like, one room at a time, over the past two weeks. Since I didn't get a chance to do that, you have to endure them all at once. Today I'll be taking a crap-load of "afters" before we move all out stuff in there.

There. I feel better. Now I better get back to packing.

Progress over the long weekend: Dining Room.

This weekend was a long weekend, thanks to Veteran's Day. So that meant three days for house work! We made a TON of progress.

Saturday, Sean's parents came over to help. We taped, then we painted, painted, painted. Ceilings, walls, primer, paint.
Sunday, my dad and his girlfriend drove up to help; they stayed over and helped Monday, too. We did some more painting (no way!), as well as a little construction project and a big demolition project.
When they left around 1:00 on Monday, Sean and I were dead tired; we went into town for some lunch and considered calling it a day... But then we decided to suck it up and went back to work until around 6:00.

Needless to say, we can barely move today. But hey, it was worth it!


I took about a million pictures of our progress, so I'm only going to post one room at a time.

I know, I'm sorry. I know you're all dying to see EVERYTHING at once. And yeah, I'm excited to show you. But if I did, this blog post would be 900 pages long.

So today, I'll show you the dining room, start to finish.

Here is the dining room, "before."

This is the color we decided to paint it, Behr's "Puddle":

Here's Sean's dad getting ready to roll it out.

Sean looks like he needs another cup of coffee in this picture:

Coat one, check.

Here's Melissa, painting the floor trim...

... and me, painting the ceiling trim:

Sean throwing on a second coat:

A few touch-ups later, and we were done! I love the color. It's hard to see from the pictures -- but it's a kind of purple-y gray. Awesome.

(Yeah, the window is brown. I haven't decided whether I'm going to paint the trim around it white... or just let the curtains do their job. Whatev.)

Here's a final before and after:

Sweet, right?

Don't worry. I'll post more pictures of the other rooms later this week.

Paint is expensive.

I went to Home Depot yesterday to buy paint. The poor girl behind the counter, all alone, didn't know what was coming when I ordered 12 gallons and one quart of paint -- all different colors, all different sheens.

I didn't know what was coming when I got the total (even with my 10% off coupon, which was addressed to "current resident").

This is what $400 worth of paint looks like:

And yeah, I edited that photo with Instagram. I didn't want to look like a weird-o taking pictures with the big camera in Home Depot, you know?

Who knew that a roll of tape costs more than $5? Not me.
Nowwwww I know why my dad was so mad at my sister and I, when we were kids... we used to go through three or four rolls of masking tape at a time making "seats" for ourselves in tree branches. At the time, we were like, "dad. It's just tape. Get over it." But now... okay dad, you win. Again.


This is what $400 worth of paint and supplies looks like in the back of a tiny hatchback:

Oh, and I failed to mention that I did not buy paint for the kitchen or either of the small bedrooms. We are still thinking about how we're going to attack that kitchen. And the small bedrooms can wait, for now.

Even though I was ill prepared for a $400 bill... I'm not complaining about it.

Really.

This is the first time EVER that we're allowed to paint the walls of our abode. This is the first time EVER that the landlord isn't saying "no."

So I'm not complaining. I'm PUMPED.

We bought a house.

So here we are, first blog post ever. Well... for this blog anyway. I have a long track record of starting blogs, then never keeping up with them. I just keep saying "I'll get to it, I'll get to it..." and I never do. It starts as procrastination, and ends in failure. Don't judge me.

This time is going to be different -- because this time I have something more to write about than my cats, as interesting as they are.

Sean and I bought a house.

I did an amazing job not posting about the house search/application process on Facebook... as much as I wanted to. I figured it would probably be best to wait until it was ours. That way, if something went wrong, we wouldn't have to keep explaining ourselves.

Searching for a house is a long and frustrating process. If you are about to do it, it goes kind of like this:

Call realtor about house you saw on the internet. Make appointment to see house. Drive all the way over there. Sometimes, before going inside, know immediately it's not the one. Look at house anyway for 20 minutes to be polite. Other times, LOVE everything about the house, but find out there's just one thing that is a no-can-do. (For example, there were two houses we liked, but as soon as we stepped out on the porch we could hear a TON of racetrack noise from the New Lebanon Speedway. Ugh. Not what I want to hear every Saturday afternoon for the whole summer.) Tell the realtor "sorry... it's just... not... um... what we're looking for. 'Kthanksbye." Repeat.

Repeat.

Bang head against wall.

Repeat.

The realtor insisted our search was not unusual -- "everybody takes a while to find what they're looking for!"

It's disappointing. You get pretty discouraged.

We looked at a lot of houses before we found this one. Probably like, 25. It seemed like a million.

Just when we were about to give up, we came to see this house.

It's small. It's rural. It sits on almost two acres of land. It has a full, dry basement. It has a nice view. It has a brand new roof and a brand new furnace.

What's not to love?

So, we made an offer, and waited, and argued, and waited. Offer accepted. More waiting. Bank stuff. More waiting. Waiting. More waiting. Appraisal. More waiting. Inspections. More waiting. Negotiations. More waiting. I am not patient; it was painful. Then...

We closed. Yesterday. 

It's ours!

So today I went up -- no realtors, no sellers, no inspectors -- and took some pictures, measured some stuff, and daydreamed for a while.

I'm going to plant my gardens in the side of this hill:

We own a little ways into those woods -- and the seller said there's a 10-pointer hanging around. Yes, please.

I'm going to give this kitchen a serious makeover.

Then I'm going to cook, and bake, and can a lot of stuff in it.

Check out this sweet hatch over the basement steps:

It drops down so we can use that space as a pantry.

Notice the cat door? Jacques may be too fat to fit through it.

The previous owners REALLY liked this color:

So this living room is going to need a serious makeover, too.

And speaking of makeovers...

Ew.

Here's small bedroom #1:

And small bedroom #2 (more... blue):

We'll probably turn this one into an office for now... I can picture it full of math posters.

And the master bedroom:

Our waiting and patience paid off. It may not be huge, but it's the perfect spot to start. There are plenty of little DIY projects to do without there being anything structurally wrong with it. 

Oh, and there's plenty of space outside for a dog and for backyard chickens -- so Sean's excuses for me to wait to get them are coming to an end. Ah, sweet victory.

This weekend, Sean's parents and my dad and his girlfriend are coming to help us do some painting. 

I don't think I've ever been so excited to move!