Home Sweet Home

As of Saturday we are all moved in!  We cleaned our apartment yesterday and turned in the keys.  Done.  I only cried a lit....okay a lot.  :)  Brandon and I were reminiscing about all of the things we had done in the one year we lived there.  He got ready for our wedding there, we left and returned from Europe there, my Grandma died while I was there, we spent time with many different friends there, I first decorated for all of the holidays there, in many ways, I learned to cook there, we took lots and LOTS of walks there.  *Sigh*  But we are moving on!

We discussed how we are into a new phase of our lives in the car.  I said, "Brandon, our next phase will be middle-aged."  But then we decided to shorten the phases a bit....next up would be "Parenthood".  Don't get any ideas, I think a golden retriever will be enough parenthood for me for awhile.  No, we don't have one yet...I'm just planning my future.  Haha!  Brandon likes Australian sheperds and now that I saw one at his mom's kennel, I want one of those too.  I'll take one of each please!  :)

Anyways, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures for you.  "Stupid Comcast" as I now refer to them, came to our new house to set up our internet and left me with no internet.  Don't even get me started.  Basically, my modem (which is on their approved modems list) doesn't work with their cable.  So, unless they can figure out a way to get it working....Brandon and I will have to purchase a new modem.  Oh Stupid Comcast.  I still prefer them over AT&T though.  Anyways, so no internet at the house means I cannot upload my pictures to my blog currently.  I do have them ready to go as soon as we fix this problem though! 

As for the house, we are all moved in but definitely not unpacked.  It took me a while to find all of the clothes I needed this morning so that I didn't go into work looking like a risque model!  Haha!  We have our new bed that looks SO nice in our bedroom!  Almost every room has been repainted already, but I found out this morning that our painter got in a severe car accident yesterday so one of our upstairs bedrooms and our back entry won't be finished for several weeks.  I'm just glad he's okay!  I love the colors so far.  Our living room is a "Seascape" blue and it looks wonderful with our dark wood!  I changed the color of one upstairs bedroom to light yellow.  I thought baby pink would look best with my guest bedding but I refused to have one baby blue and one baby pink room upstairs.  That's just too much!  lol

As for the rest of the house, boxes are everywhere!  Literally.  Brandon and I are so whooped that we are just ignoring them for the time being.  We want to enjoy upacking and setting up....not hate it, so we are pacing ourselves.  My parents have been super helpful, as well our brothers and friends.  Just remember, if you show up to see the house on moving day, you're going to get put to work (Alex and Anna)!  :P  I want to especially thank Anna and my mom for helping me get the kitchen unpacked.  That was so nice!

Our biggest dilemma so far has been closet space.  I have never had this tiny of a bedroom closet in my LIFE!  Soooo, sharing that tiny closet with Brandon is not ideal, but I'm a nice wife, so I gave him one rack.  :)  We decided to go to Target last night around 9 to look for a dresser that will fit in our room....but oh duh, it's Sunday and they closed at 8.  That's what happens when you skip church.  Oops!  So, that's for another day now.  We also seriously lack bathroom storage.  The hallway closet will essentially become our bathroom cupboard when we unpack.  But it would be so nice to get a mirror over the sink with a cabinet behind it.  If only I could find one that is not so UGLY.  I have been unsuccesful with that so far also.  If you see a cute one in white...let me know :)

So anyways, that is where we're at.  Hopefully "Stupid Comcast" will come through for me and I can get my pictures up soon!

The First Couple Days...

The day finally came!  We have the house!!!! 

Our house :)

We also still have the apartment!!!  Haha!  We purposefully overlapped our time for the next week so that we could fully clean and prep the house without the hassle of furniture and boxes.  The apartment has basically turned into box-land.  :)  This picture is older; it's gotten worse since then! 

The apartment is taking on a "warehouse" feel :)

So we actually got the house on Saturday night after spending the day with Brandon's family and his Aunt and cousin from the Netherlands.  Saturday was the sellers only moving day so they were cramped for time to get out, but they made it work.  We pulled up into the driveway of our new home around 9:00pm.  It was a wonderful feeling walking into "our" house.  Brandon's mom had not seen the house yet in person, so it was her first time walking through it.  We only stayed about an hour, enough time to bring in our cleaning gear, look around, and shut windows.  But we were so excited, I think we would have been happy to sleep on the floor had it not been for all the cat hair.  Haha!



Coming in for the first time :)  Sorry about the fuzziness.



The New Homeowners!

Sunday morning after church, my side of family (plus Joel) joined us for a day of "deep cleaning".  It was pretty intense and turned out to be an interesting day! 



My dear husband, getting some of that cat hair sucked up!




Our first meal in the house. :) 



Preparing to start tackling the kitchen.



It was absolutely disgusting behind the fridge :(



While my mom and I cleaned upstairs, the boys had a project in the basement.

Project Tear Down Disgusting Old Coal Room:

There it is.  It just added a musty smell to the basement, so why keep it?



Another angle of the room

Meanwhile, I was upstairs scrubbing the floor!  Doesn't that look like fun? :)

Making progress back in the basement.  It was nice that they could pass all the junk right out of the window and onto the driveway.

Don't worry, Brandon did leave this hallway :)

And then it hit.........our housewarming gift from the house.  Mom and I had been cleaning the fridge shelves and such in the sink all day.  When she drained the sink, we heard all the guys downstairs yelling "turn off the water!!!".  Great.  Well, the pipe behind our tiny dishwasher broke and was leaking the water into the basement.  GAHHH!  I was so upset.  But in retrospect, I'm glad it happened day one and not after we were all settled in.  Our inspector had warned about that pipe so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.  It just blew my mind that it would happen on our FIRST day!  So anyways, that was the end of our kitchen cleaning for the day....the fridge.  lol.  My dad and brother managed to get the dishwasher out of its tight little space to look at the damage.  They decided we should call my uncle who used to be a plumber.  Luckily, Uncle Brian could come. 

Checking out the damage.

 Aunt Billi and the kids helped us out while Brian worked in the kitchen :)

Cleaning screens



Yuck.  I probably shouldn't have looked :)  At least it didn't ruin any cabinets.




THANK-YOU Uncle Brian and Dad for working so hard to fix our kitchen!



Meanwhile, the guys finished up tearing down the room in the basement.  Doesn't it look so much nicer? :)  (OK it will look nicer after we paint the floors and walls!)

And TAH-DAH, Uncle Brian FIXED the problem.  Here are our spankin' new pipes :)  Never have I cared so much about plumbing in my life....lol

Oooh pretty :)

Finally we finished up for the day and everyone went home.  The house smelled so much cleaner and everything was pretty much sparkling except the kitchen (which will be finished tonight!). 

~

My absolutely fantastic parents surprised us with a wonderful house-warming gift - hiring a painter to paint any rooms we wanted re-painted (which is pretty much every room)!!!!!  So we spent Monday night shopping for, get this, *13* gallons of paint.  Yes, we had to buy this, and yes I don't think I will ever buy a single thing again....okay we know that's not true.  But, we considered it a good investment. 

Ooh la la!

Hello Paint Department!



Oh my goodness!



Good-bye Lowe's...until we meet again.

This is going to be awesome!

Can't wait to keep you updated on our progress!  This has probably been one of the most exciting times of our lives!  I want to thank my family once again for all of their help and time they have been giving to make our home beautiful!

Mr. and Mrs. Awesome

Ok, so I may have an inflated view of Brandon and myself...but we have done so much these last couple days!  Packing and painting is one thing, but let me just say that "changing addresses" is a whole different ball game.  It was like getting married and changing my name all over again.

First of all, there are so many phone calls to make.  So many.  I didn't think I'd have to make this many phone calls until the day I find out I'm pregnant!  (I'm not, don't worry!)  But here is what it looks like so far....and this is excellent:

Trash- Check....delivering our trash and recycle bins next week!

Gas- Check....we will have heating capabilities by Saturday.  lol

Electric- Check!  Our apartment and house are taken care of.  Self proclaimed meter reader here. :)

USPS- Check!  Not actually a phone call, but with a few clicks of the mouse, I have a new postal address and a 10% off Lowe's coupon!  Ka ching!

Home Insurance- Check  ~THANK YOU BRANDON!  You are the best husband in the world for calling multiple companies multiple times and getting us the best dang deal in town. :)

Internet- UGGHHHHH Check though!  In the war between AT&T and Comcast, Comcast won.  Cable companies won't screw this girl over. ;)

Water- Check.  The easiest switch there was.

Anyways, I think you get the drift.  Between all of these phone calls, we didn't get much more packing done since we were brain dead by the time we got home!  Haha!  So tonight is mega pack night!  We officially get the keys in 4 days!!!  So no more Mrs. Lazy.  I gotta get my butt in gear and my stuff in boxes!  But don't think the phone calls are over....there's always the ones we have to make AFTER we move, letting the all the banks and jobs and such know about our new home sweet home!  But for now at least, we are all set. 

Mr. and Mrs. Awesome :)

Packing, painting, and packing some more!

Sorry about the long pause....we've been super busy trying to prepare for our big move!

Anyways, it's time for some updates!

Below is the stalker picture I took of the new roof!  YAY!  If you remember, we were SUPER excited that the sellers agreed to re-roof for us.

Beautiful isn't it!  Look at those nice roof vents!  Didn't even know those existed a couple of months ago...I'm turning into a home improvement pro, right?!  Haha!

So, we originally had a move in date of August 9 but the sellers said they'd probably be out early.  Unfortunately their closing on their new house was delayed so they asked us if we could wait until Aug. 11.  We were a little bummed but it's really no problem for us, we don't want to hassle them with a double move because of a couple days.  So, we still have a little bit before we move...but that hasn't stopped us from packing up as much as we can!  Take a look at our progress:

My new little pig and cow for the house :)  So cute!



Books get packed first!




Slowly adding up...



I have lots of books!  (And toilet paper...don't judge, it was on sale!)

And it's getting bigger!

And BIGGER!

OK now it's just plain taking over....

We've also started painting primer over our walls that we painted when we moved in.  This is required by the apartments :(

What Brandon did (plus the bathroom which isn't pictured)

What I've done...lol  And I did the all of the edging in the bathroom :)

Whew, it's a lot to do!  I am absolutely HATING my apartment in this messy state....I am a neat freak to the core and so is Brandon.  So we are trying to paint quickly so everything can go back in its place for a while. 

We did take a nice break last weekend and headed up north with friends!  Here is a picture of us all sweaty and gross mid-bike ride around the island!

If only I could go back in time and tell myself to buy sunscreen and LATHER it on!!!  Idiot!

We're Homeowners!!!!

It's official!  We are the proud new owners of our house!  Of course, the sellers still have 30 days to move out but they were pretty confident that they would be out early.  There were quite a few stressful, frantic moments in the last few days where we thought the process might be delayed.  But, in the end, everything worked out on time and okay. :) 

It was wonderful to be able to meet the current homeowners.  They we so nice and reminded Brandon and I of ourselves a lot!  They had lots of positive things to say about the neighborhood and our new neighbors.  We can't wait to move in and start the newest phase of our life.  We already started packing up this weekend and made our first (of many to come) visit to Lowe's.  We'll keep you updated!

So When Do We Move?

Sorry I have not posted in a while!  I have been busy transitioning from teacher hours to office hours and I miss my 3-5pm relaxing time I used to have in the afternoon!  But, I can't whine, it's nice to be making some extra money.  :)  I know I promised pictures from Niagara Falls, but I have been too lazy to upload them when I'm at home.  I guess I'm having to much fun emjoying the summer weather! 

Many of you have been asking me when we move.  Well, we have received our final approval and we close on Monday!!!!  The bank sent an appraiser through the house and he did not find any problems that needed to be corrected.  That was an answer to prayers. :)  We gave the sellers 30 days to move so we can start moving-in on August 9.  We sort of hope they will move faster so that we don't have to pay any August rent on our apartment, but we did allow them the full 30 days.  Now we are working on getting home insurance because that is the last thing we need before we can close.

Brandon and I already have a page long, front and back, list of "To-Do's".  Though it may seem daunting, we are actually excited to have some projects to work on.  I sorted the list into 3 categories:  Easy Fixes, Sorta-Simple Fixes, and Hard (meaning expensive!) Fixes.  We hope to start hacking away at some of those before we move all of our stuff in!  We've also joked that we may need to add two lines to our budget:  "Nicole's House" and "Brandon's House".  This is because I want to save money for things like a new bathroom vanity, a bedroom set, new furniture, etc.  And Brandon wants new pipes, insulation, more boring manly stuff, etc.  Hahaha!  I joke with him, but we both agree that certain things will need attention before I start dragging him to UBU in the mall to look at couches!  As soon as we have the keys I will update you on our projects and get pictures too!  What fun is a blog without pictures, right?

Anyways, we've only "creep stalked" the house, as I put it, once or twice in the past month.  Haha!  This has been sort of a hurry up and wait process.  You have to hurry to "get" the house and then wait to really have it. :)  At least we know that our sellers have bought a house and will be closing soon.  Anyways, we are BEYOND excited to start moving.  Of course, that will require me to actually start packing all of the boxes I've brought home from work...  :)

Inspections

Last Saturday we had a guy named John come out and inspect the house.  He did a GREAT job!!!  Naive me was thinking an inspection would take 45 minutes or so.....3 hours later, we were done.  :)  Everything went well with a few exceptions.  The house is in great shape for it's age and many things have been replaced.  The biggest problem was the roof.  It had 3 layers of shingles on it and less than 3-5 years left.  A roof is only supposed to support the weight of 2 layers of shingles.  So, this was a major problem.  Brandon and I were freaking out....okay mostly just me.  :)  We cannot afford to replace a roof and we were pretty sure the sellers wouldn't want to either. 

So, over the weekend, we found out that a lot of guys at church would be willing to help us replace the roof.  They were MORE than willing actually!  I was so surprised!  A few people even offered to help us get safety equipment because the roof has a steep peak.  With all of this volunteered help, Brandon and I were trying to figure out how and if we should ask the sellers for some monetary compensation. 

But again, God surprised us with different plans.  Before we could even let our realtor know what we were thinking we received an e-mail that said our sellers had agreed to re-roof the house if we would agree to accept the house "as-is".  We were blown away!  God clearly has His handiwork in this!  We had not even ASKED the sellers to re-roof.  Our realtor said that they probably knew that if our inspector found the roof to be such an issue that every other inspector would too.  Apparently they do not want to lose us as their buyers!

So, now that we have inspections out of the way, we just have to wait for them to fix the roof and then the bank appraiser/inspector will come through.  We are on schedule to close July 9!  So excited!  And we just got back from Niagara Falls where we celebrated our one year anniversary (and the house!).  I'll post some pictures next time.  :)