We bought a house!

Well I realize this isn’t really news any longer, but we bought a house! It all started on Easter Monday when our realtor was able to get us in to see the place. We knew there was already one offer made, and that several others were going to be looking at the house that day.

I knew I wanted to buy the house after 15 minutes. We’d been looking at houses for over 2 years at this point, I was losing hope that we would find a place we liked in our price range. Then lo and behold, the perfect house appeared. I’m very glad we were patient.

So we got the keys on June 16 and the work began on June 17. On the 17th Kirby and I enjoyed our first breakfast on the front porch and tried to soak in the surreal feeling that this was now our home.

Then Bill and Sylvie arrived and we got to work. Our first project was tackling the wallpaper in the kitchen. Here is the before picture.

And here we are in full wallpaper destruction mode.

In some places, the wallpaper came off relatively easy. In other places (closer to heat sources) it was a very slow process. Kirby had the privilege of removing it from the places where Sylvie and I were too short to reach.

We also discovered the previous owners were big fans of hooks.

And this is just a few of them! We must have taken down about 40 hooks in the process of painting.

And while we worked away on the wallpaper my dad got started with painting the living room and dining room.

My dad stayed at the house over the following week to paint. It was very helpful because we also had an electrician come in to upgrade our electrical panel, instal light fixtures and a baseboard heater. We also had a window guy come and replace a leaky window upstairs and a few couches being delivered. So it was very helpful to have my dad there to coordinate all of the work and meant we didn’t have to take extra time off work. It also meant that when we moved in the next weekend, almost all of the work was done.

And although I can’t post all of the before and after pictures (because then I’d be here all day) I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.

Look at our beautiful living room!

And look at our beautiful kitchen!

 

We officially moved in on June 24. Shortly after my mom and Michael came to visit. My mom helped us get a handle on our garden and helped me identify which plants were “weeds.”

And we cleared a space in the corner to plant a few vegetables.

Working in the garden was very nice and really made me feel like I was making this house a home.

My mom also brought me to Costco to get a “few” things. I think this is where I really started to wrap my head around the concept of having lots of living space, realizing that I don’t live in a 1 bedroom apartment anymore and can buy things like a life-time supply of ziplock freezer bags.

After mom left we spent a few days dealing with trying to get a fridge from Sears which we’d paid for and was never delivered. Thanks to Sylvie and her persistence, she found another store in town with a fridge that would fit in the space we have and could be delivered the next day. When they arrived the next day (my last day off) I was ecstatic. Here the delivery guys are carrying off the old beast and the new fridge is waiting to be brought in.

Throughout all of this, Stanley remained rather hidden. He spent most of his time in our room, hiding in our bed.

Although occasionally he did make an appearance and poked his nose around.

And now that we’ve started to settle in, we’ve turned our attention to repairing and maintaining things around the house. We went and bought our first lawn mower and Kirby mowed our lawn for the first time.

As I write this Kirby is on the roof cleaning the gutters. We work on the garden every weekend to try and tame the jungle a little. But we are so happy to have such a gorgeous garden.

And the best part is, now we have room for people to come and visit and stay with us!