progress! and how many trips to Home Depot can you make in a day?

Apparently my Aunt Ginger needs an update and I need a nap, but since I'm such a good niece I would post about our recent progress on operation get this house the way we want it and hopefully someday move in.  And move in we will - with our moving party this Saturday, we're talking coffee, pizza, friends, moving and fun.  And Aunt Ginger, I expect that you'll be here to help?

It's exciting to be wrapping things up, to peel off the painter's tape, to clean up and call it done (well...I'm kinda dreaming, because there's still tape on the floor, paint to be painted and touch up...but, ahhh soooo close).  Here's some pics from the past few days.

This past weekend was fully packed with lots of work on our place.  Our projects are finally nearing an end and it is great to see how far we've come.  The closets in the bedrooms are sparkly white and now have some nice organization systems in them to maximize our tiny space.
The bathroom is dramatically brighter after we lightened up the paint!  My dad spent a good part of a day re-doing the last grout and caulking work in here.  We've gotten new baseboards in here that are made out of real wood, not the awkward foam stuff that was in here when we got it.

He's such a hard worker!  I'm serious!

We spent a lot of time waiting for joint compound to dry.  I feel like we've patched at least 60 percent of the walls.  But now, the walls are DONE!  All with a fresh coat of paint and re-textured and all sorts of wonderful.

On Monday, Dad and I took the day off and started our day at Home Depot at 7:30a and finally wrapped things up at 9ish.  Needless to say, I'm still exhausted.  
One part of painting the main area was to clean up the lines on the ceiling where we have these beautiful casings/plaster molded walls. 
We've only got a few more days before the big move in and some deliveries from Crate&Barrel!  But, we're also venturing to Casa Bonita on Friday for a friends birthday!  Lots of fun in store for us.

fat quarter swap

Finally, my fat quarters for the Sew, Mama, Sew swap are ready to go.  I went with some Amy Butler Lotus collection plus some buttons from Great-Grandma's collection.  Two are going to Australia...meaning, two packages from Australia (and two from the US) will be coming my way shortly.

When did this become an episode of "This Old House"

We're just missing Norm McDonald from the PBS series.  We would have gladly welcomed his expertise.  We had plans this weekend to paint.  Just paint.  It's funny when the house looks pretty decent at first glance, but once you get closer - ummm....not as good.  The walls took all day Saturday to prep.  Then we decided to paint the ceilings.  Then we decided to renovate the closets.  You can't blame the house - it's 53 years old.  Here's Kalin - the master of the drippy paint trying to cover the hideous lime green walls in the second bedroom.

Setting up shop in the living room.  We decided we also needed to paint the doors.
So here are the doors - ready to be painted.  For future reference: just because you already spent a lot on paint, don't skimp on the white semi-gloss special at Home Depot for the doors.  5 coats later, I hope they are covered!

The Master Bedroom is starting to look AMAZING!  I love the blue color on the wall!

Dad is the master of taping (well, at least we hope - we need to pull off the tape to verify):

All the windows in the house have these painted white sills.  Whoever painted them last must have painted them in a hurry.  We peeled off the paint to find some sweet original tile!!!  Here are the before and after:

Oh the closets!  What a surprise you were to us once the former owners stuff was out!  A lovely shade of periwinkle, warped boards and shelving.  We decided it all needed to go.  We got some joint compound, prybars and lots of spackle to conquer your years of neglect:

Well that's it for our first weekend on the job.  I'm taking the day off today to do more fun house stuff that will include my absolute favorite: Crate&Barrel.  Oh, and maybe I'll stop by and paint some more doors (or buy some higher quality paint).  It will be really great to have this place totally move-in ready when that day comes!

late v-day

Since we got our house this past Saturday, Valentine's Day, we really didn't have any plans (or planned) for much.  BUT, if I would have seen this earlier, it would have totally been Kalin's Valentine's card:

Oh my gosh - so funny!  I particularly like the Ice-T one.  Perps on the L&O:SVU don't get no respect from Ice-T.

we're officially homeowners!

It's true! Yesterday, we closed on our house. So you could call us homeowners, but my dad did remind me that we technically don't own the home...we own the debt that we now have with our mortgage! Either way, it's awesome.

Tomorrow we start cleaning and painting so that everything is good to go for the rest of our stuff to be moved in later on. Pictures to come once it's all decked out.

And...a puppy should be making an appearance in our lives hopefully very soon! Perhaps, I'm more excited about the puppy than the house....it's a toss-up.