We're All In

We have left the rental completely and moved everything to the house. Tom's mom and sister came to help and we were able to borrow a straight truck with a lift from Tom's work. We got everything over to the house relatively quickly! It helps the move was about 5 miles round trip for each load. We have a lot of boxes in the garage and our temporary bedroom will be the living room since we decided to redo the floors in those rooms before moving everything in and having to move everything back out. We're excited for that to get done!

 There's a street light just in front of our house :( Tom and I both prefer a very dark room at night, so this means I am going shopping for curtains! 

It's all about the primer...

Next to the light demo we did removing all carpeting and the stuff from the basement, one of the first things we have done since we took possession of the house is prime the walls and ceilings in the bedrooms and living room with Kilz. Tom and I had both used this stuff previously with construction projects and have always been happy with the results.

We did two coats of primer. All of the walls and ceilings in our bedrooms and living room are plaster. They soaked up the primer so much we decided to do a second coat! And Tom just likes doing two coats of primer to cover smells and any stains that might exist. We got so used to putting a nice thick layer though, that this did cause a bit of a problem in the one small room that had been painted dark blue (I think they might have used an oil based paint. Not sure is this had an influence on the running or not). In the corners of the walls in that room, there were pretty significant runs. Nothing a bit of sanding after letting it dry wouldn't fix. 

We even primed the floor of the living room with 2 coats of Kilz. When we move into the house, we are going to be staying in the living room since the floors aren't done in the rooms yet. And it will be some time before we have enough money saved up to put down new flooring.  

We primed the walls even before we redo the floors. Primarily just because of how timing is going to work out for us to rent the sander and do all that work on the floors start to finish and moving into the house. My preference would have been to paint first so that we didn't have to worry so much about drop cloths and worry about any dust on the walls but oh well!

We began cutting in on the 20th and had everything done (walls, ceilings, and closets) in the three rooms and the living room in the late hours of the 21st. We primed and primed away! We had some Help from Tiff during priming also!

Guest Room Before (sort of... we had already began cutting in when I took the pictures):

Guest room during: 

This picture, if you can tell, shows how we had some running in the corners with the primer on top of the blue painted walls. 

Office before: 

Office During:

Mauve is almost gone!

I didn't include the after pictures or pictures from the master bedroom. I honestly think I forgot to take before pictures of the master. It was the room in the best condition so I don't think I was worried about it at all. The after pictures are hard to tell which room is which after a certain point. I mean, they just all end up being a nice blank white. Use your imaginations. 

Wallpaper Nightmares

Ok. I foresee wall paper nightmares in my future!!!

I took some time from work to continue the demo/reno process before we have to be out of the rental.

Here's what I've been working on...

Small room before. 

 Small room during... the paper was off... Now to scrape off the glue! 

 So 90's, right?

 Small room after. Can you see that 60's mauve paint over the plaster? HAHA!

 the entire hallway is covered :( 

 This is the wall to the right of the hallway which also makes it the dinning room wall. The wall is seen from the kitchen.

 Tiff, my bff, came to help! 

 It also wraps around to the adjacent wall... surrounding the slider door with wall paper... Thankfully this did not continue into the kitchen! 

I finished the wall in the small room. Tiff and I, together, got most of the dining room wall done. Tiff had to get going so I finished it LATE into the evening. We did not even attempt the hallway.

By, the way, I haven't mentioned HOW we did this. We just used gloves, buckets of steaming hot water, and plastic scrapers. VERY Tedious and lots of time. There has to be a better way!

Demo Started

So this is what we have done the first 24 hours in the house! I had a friend over and we cleaned the cupboards of the kitchen and cleaned up the bathrooms. Here's some of other pictures of what we have gotten done so far.

 The pile of stuff torn out of the basement (in fact this is after we had already piled some in Tom's truck and in the small dumpster we had.)

 Basement Demo in progress

 There wasn't paneling here. But this is the corner of the basement to the right of the stairs. 

 A nice little handy room that we will store our reno supplies! This room was partially paneled. 

 This is the main area of the basement. It was completely paneled and had a drop ceiling; complete with glued olive green shag carpet. I was too slow to get a complete before picture. Tom works FAST! 

We bought a house!

Just before we were married we began more seriously thinking about buying a house. My husband got a preapproval and we began looking at listings. We even met with a realtor and checked a few out. But things got really stressful in preparing for the wedding and we put it on hold.

This spring, we picked the search back up. We got a approvals again and more intensely looked. We got a different realtor who was great with communication. We looked at several homes at the price range we were in. It was still pretty challenging. A lot of the homes needed a lot of work. We knew we were in for a fixer upper type home at our price range, but it was becoming more challenging to see how the budget would accommodate all the expenses we would have with the extend of the renovations that were needed with some of these homes. We were becoming bit hopeless.

Finally, we got a call from the realtor; he was working with another client who was looking to downsize, but was struggling with the decision to sell her home. It was the home she raised her children in. The only home her and her late husband had shared.

We got the call late in the afternoon one day saying she was willing to meet us and let us look at the home. She was still undecided.

We went and looked. Talked about an offer just under a tree at the very back of the home. The offer would be substantially higher than what we had considered before. By about $15,000. But the home needed minor renovation, significant cosmetic updating, but nothing unrealistic for us to handle. It also had the pole barn of my husband's dreams.

She decided she'd sell and our offer was accepted. The next process of waiting for the mortgage approval and signing the title and then waiting to move in began!

We will have 2 weeks in our rental while also having possession of our home. This will give us some time for demo & reno before we move all our things. We are so anxious!