We Made It!

Whew!  After months of nail biting, teeth gnashing and endless pity parties (ok, maybe it wasn't that bad), we are FINALLY in our new house!  We closed last Tuesday evening, which had a few hiccups of its own, but here we are.  Not in the least bit settled, we are basically living out of the master bedroom while we and our contractor work downstairs.  The other rooms upstairs are inhabitable, but we need to get the carpets steamed before we move any more furniture in.

Without going into too much project detail, here are some shots from around the house this week:

One of the house's major issues was that the fireplace in the great room had a leak running down the sides and under the house, which damaged some of the floor.  Our contractor and his helper have pulled up the damaged portion and let it all air dry, sanded all of the floors and are now finishing laying the new wood.  We are going to stain both the great room and the sunroom a darker wood color.  Woot!  In unwootiful news, this morning we discovered that a portion of the roof adjacent to the chimney is rotted through and needs to be replaced (and when I say "we," I mean our contractor Jeff).  Luckily, we have leftover materials from the floor that can be used, plus some shingles from the original patch job, so we just need to pay for the labor.  Not the best news of the morning, but certainly not a worst-case scenario (yet).

One of our other major projects currently underway is sprucing up the kitchen.  My mom and brother Geoff have been putting in lots of hours this week sanding and painting those dark wood cabinets and molding in the kitchen.

Geoffrey shows up ready to work.

Remember how dark, dated and dirty the kitchen looked?

Here it is now, at the beginning stages of our makeover:

Patrick noticed I start piddling more right before my mom arrives. His new slogan: "Chris is coming.  Look busy."

We also started to pull up the carpet downstairs.  We thought it had a water stain, but it turned out someone had actually poured some smelly oil on it--straight to the dump it went!

This room has since been turned into our cabinet door paint-space.  Once the kitchen is finished, we'll rip up the rest of the downstairs carpet and replace the floor with vinyl tile. 

In addition to the kitchen redo, Patrick has made countless trips moving our belongings from the storage shed (that's right, down to one!) into the garage.  There have also been several smaller projects to make the place liveable, plus a thousand trips to Lowe's, and oh, did I mention that Zeph started to crawl last week?  Trying to move and renovate a house with a mobile baby is definitely a challenge!  Although he did love rolling on those hardwood floors in his walker!

The last week has completely flown by, and while some days it felt like we made next to no progress, this lovely house of ours is finally beginning to feel like home.  And the sunsets aren't so bad, either.