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!