Moving

For many of the followers of this blog, you might have noticed an extended period with no posts. That is because we have been moving in. A few important date bullets:

• Over Memorial Day weekend, May 27th - 30th, we moved out of our apartment and into our house.
• We spent our first night here on Friday, May 27th. 
• Jeremy put up our mailbox just in time on Monday, May 30th. We had already started forwarding our mail. Nothing like waiting until the last minute.
• We finally closed on the house Thursday, June 9th.
• We've not been able to blog since moving in because until Friday, June 10th we were without Internet. After hours of getting the runaround from Windstream we decided to go with Affordable Internet Solutions. They put a small receiver on our roof which communicates with the water tower and gets us decent speed for being in the country.
• We planted our first garden at the new house on Tuesday, June 14th. 

The girls love the house and are enjoying being "country girls". They have parodied John Denver's Thank God I'm a Country Boy and enjoy singing that.

We're hoping to get some pictures posted soon to show all the fun stuff we've been doing, but we have been moving constantly since the big move (and even before that) so be patient and we'll have more fun stuff for you.

Overall, we've had a few issues, but we are loving our house and are starting to really feel at home there.

God is so good to us.

All decked out...

Despite wind, sprinkling and all out storming, Jeremy build our deck with the help of his dad and brother.

Finishing Touches - Floor 2

Guest Room:

Felicity's Room.

Bernadette and Clare's Room:

Going up the stairs:

We will post updated pics of the Master and the two bathrooms upstairs when we take updated pics. :)

Finishing Touches - Floor 1

Flooring is in and finishing touches are being applied.

Felicity can't believe it is almost done!

Kitchen with appliances in, countertop on. FYI - the black light shade won. Stay tuned for pics of that.

Dining room with chandelier and wood laminate flooring.


First floor bath.



Dinette with wood laminate flooring.

Kati and the girls enjoying the carpetted living room.

We will post updated pics of the school room and office when we take updated pics. :)

Yes, Please

Sunset pic from our front porch.

Shelter Belt

We planted 29 Spruce trees to the north and west of our house. We had to put cages around them to keep the deer from eating them like they did to our neighbors. Some day they will grow up and provide some extra privacy as well as shade and a wind break.

Decision Time

This has by far been the hardest decision we've had to make regarding the house.  In the kitchen, there is a bar area with 3 hanging lights over it.  At one time, we had picked out the perfect light covers to hang on the bottom.  However, when we went to install them, they were the wrong size.  So, we went back to the store and picked out 3 that we liked, hoping that once we installed them, the choice would be obvious.  We installed them and we still can't decide.  We are inviting you, dear readers, to be a part of our dream house by helping us decide which of these lights we should keep.  (There is a poll to the right which will be open for a week.)

Here are the three choices...

Choice black:

Up close:

Choice Red:

Up close:

Choice Swirly:

 Up Close:

Help us out, please!

Drive

So our house is getting ever closer to being done. We now have finished the staining the windows and sliding door and painting all the rooms. This week they are installing the wood laminate floors, the interior doors, and the trim. We are also expecting a visit from the plumber and electrician.

Our most recent update is that we now have a driveway and sidewalk. Yesterday they framed and poured the drive, sidewalk, and a little pad on the north side. It is really starting to come together! By the end of this week we should see some major progress.

We also started working on planting some trees. We have 28 trees to plant, so we've got our work cut out for us, but we made a lot of progress last night in getting them all staked out and dug. We have to build some small cages for them - we don't want them to get away! Just kidding. It is actually to keep the deer and rabbits from destroying them. We are hoping that we can take really good care of them and have a nice little wind break in 5-10 years. We'll try to finish planting them tonight, but we have 28 cages to build, so it might take a little while.

On another note, when they did the dirt work in front of the house (for the drive), they also leveled out our back yard. This is exciting for both us and our girls as we will soon be able to get their play-set moved out set up. This will also be exciting for us because the girls will have something to keep them busy while we work.

Jeremy is starting to get anxious about planting the lawn, but we can't do that until we have running water. We have our well, but trying to get the plumber and electrician coordinated to get this all set up has been a tough job. We are hoping to have at least some running water by the end of the week. In the mean time, we haul it from the apartment in ice cream buckets or milk jugs with the occasional 5 gallon bucket.

More updates to come! We hope to have pictures of the floor plus a poll coming in the next week so stay tuned!!

Choosing Paint

A word of advice from someone who knows:
When choosing paint for you next painting project, please allow us to recommend Valspar paints. In particular, their signature series. This is something we are very passionate about. We have tried a number of paints over the years that we have been married and what we have found is that Valspar Signature Series is head and shoulders above other paint. It coats better, it doesn't run as easily, and it will cover almost anything in two coats. It is a little more expensive than other paints, but you really get what you pay for. And plus, with other paints, you end up applying more paint to get the same coverage, so you end up spending just as much.

We've used Behr and Pittsburgh, and those aren't too bad, but other brands, in particular Olympic and Dutchboy have left us wanting.

We tried to save a few bucks by going with a plain white Olympic, but we found that it didn't coat well, it was runny, and it took two gallons to do just one coat on our closets. We will be returning the third can and getting a good quality paint to finish it.

So when you get ready for your painting project, stop into Lowes and pick up a gallon or two of Valspar Signature Series and your project will be much more satisfying.

Painting - Take 2

The painting is winding down. We now only have the laundry room and a second coat on the closets left to go. We are hoping to get those finished up in the next couple of days. On another note, our power has officially been trenched in as of yesterday! That line still needs to be hooked up, so our temporary line is still the "hot" wire, but soon they will get that changed. 

Here are some more pictures of our painted rooms:

This is the girls' room. The bottom is a darker purple color (like grape soda)
and the top is a pinkish purple (like raspberry sherbet).

Our bonus room is a gray color called "Wet Pavement". Not the prettiest
room in the house, but it will definitely be good for what we intend it for.

We really like how the master turned out. Jeremy had his doubts about
whether we could pull off the stripe in here and in the girls room, but
it turned out really nice. We really like the light blue/ dark brown combination.
 A special thanks to Adam for use of his laser level! 

Bernadette and Clare were out of town this weekend. They went to stay with
Grandma Patti. We missed them a lot, but worked hard so that when they got
back, we could surprise them with their room and ours. They loved both of them.
Bernadette wanted to showcase our room in this shot.

Painting - Take 1

We are making good headway painting. As of today, Wednesday April 13th, we have the school room, kitchen, living room, dining room, office, entry way, stair well, upstairs hallway, guest room, baby room, and master bathroom completed. We still have a small amount of the girls bathroom to finish as well as the master bedroom, the girls bedroom, the laundry room, downstairs bathroom, and bonus room to paint. Also, we will put a coat on the closets. Lots left to be done, but with our great help this past weekend, we made great progress.

The school room is a pale orange.
You might notice handprints on the walls - those were intentional.

 

The bar area in the kitchen. Our kitchen, dinette, living room,
and the entry way are faint maple - a light brown color.

The living room.

The dining room is a deep red - almost cranberry in color.
However, the light coming in makes it look kind of pink in this picture.

This is a little better idea of what it looks like.

The office is a deep green. It is called Grandmother's Linen.

The stairwell and upstairs hallway are a deep
steel blue called Twilight blue. 

Bernadette shows off the upstairs hallway.

The guest room is a periwinkle. 

The baby room is a canary yellow - very springy.

The girls bathroom is a sky blue.

That is just plastic - we aren't crazy enough for a green shower... yet.

The master bathroom is a lighter olive.

Some of the colors are hard to see on a picture - the flash makes it difficult to show the real color. You'll have to come see for yourself once it is finished. We are working hard on the master bedroom and girls room as those rooms are getting a special paint job.

Cabinets

We had a little difficulty picking out our kitchen cupboards. Jeremy wanted something kind of dark - Kati didn't wan't a lot of grain to the wood. We settled on birch with a briarwood stain. Tuesday evening, a guy showed up and started hanging our cabinets. We were very excited with how well they turned out. By the way - we intentionally didn't paint the bottom of this wall as it will be covered with cabinets as well.

Getting Primed

Our painting crew showed up late Friday/early Saturday. It consisted of the 5 of us, Jeremy's mom - Patti, Jeremy's Grandma - Karen, Jeremy's brother - Adam, Jeremy's cousins - Meg and Melissa. Another of Jeremy's cousins, Abbey, watched the girls all day - they wore her out. Kati's brother-in-law brought his boys out to help with some staining as well. We didn't get a picture of them, but here are some you might enjoy.

Kati and Felicity

Meg, Grandma Karen, and Melissa taking a break

Grandma Karen, Abbey, and Patti

Melissa, Meg, Grandma Karen, and Adam

Cleanup

The drywallers are all done and so we headed in to clean up so that we could paint. Here are a few pictures from that adventure.

Bernadette helping with her dust mask on.

Clare hard at work - enjoys washing down the walls.

Felicity just wants to help.

Kati getting some air and emptying a bucket of dirty water.

Siding and Septic

We've been busy, so these updates are getting slower and slower, but we got our septic system installed. While we don't have the water to flush a toilet, it now has a place to go. Also, the new siding has arrived and they have two sides done.

The septic system is in. They had to dig three long trenches.

Our blue house - the east side of the house is now sided.

The north side is sided as well.