Move-In Prep

Before we moved into our new place, we decided to have the carpets replaced because they were in pretty bad shape. So we decided to get our paint on while we waited for that to happen.

Master bedroom Before:

Master bedroom After (Valspar's Gravity):

Daughter's room Before:

Daughter's room After (Valspar's Grand Hotel Mackinac Blue on top, Seashell Gray on bottom):

Son's room Before:

Son's room After (Valspar's Spearmint Shale):

Basement Before - with crap carpet:

Basement After - without carpet:

I can't wait to tackle the main floor and hallway since the colors (all five of them) aren't my cup of tea, but that'll be awhile down the line...

A Look Inside

These pics were taken during our final walk-through. So we have done NOTHING to this house at this point, ok? So don't judge us by what you see, and know that we have a plan to fix it. And i'm omitting most bathrooms and closets.

This is what you'll see when you walk in the front door. Multipurpose room A to your right will become our open office:

To your left, you'll see Multipurpose room B, our "formal" dining room (we're going to attempt to use it as such, but honestly we're about as formal as a tuxedo t-shirt) and the bottom of our staircase. The staircase is actually the one thing that wasn't my favorite about the floorplan...

...because as soon as you walk in the door, you're invited upstairs. That's weird and honestly a little forward.

Lets get to know each other first and stay downstairs for a minute. If you go through the dining room, you'll find a butler's pantry and food pantry with the laundry room right across the way:

 Here's our living room:

The blinds were hung low to probably let in the light while still having privacy. I'm not a huge fan of that, and the extra rungs were clipped from the blind sets so there's no way i could move them up if i wanted. And have you noticed that there are FIVE different wall colors on this floor alone?? What a way to make such an open floor plan seem so choppy...

To the left is our kitchen with a tiny eat-in space. My plan for this is to extend the island outward and surround the extension with counter-height chairs. Can you see it??

Meanwhile, we'll just keep our bar table here until we save up the money and energy to do that huge project...I haven't even told Chris about it yet. That's how big it is. And the door leads to the back deck.

There's the door to the basement.

 Enormous. Capped off with a chalkboard wall and a kid-height mirror, both of which we're keeping. This room will be turned into a playroom of sorts...there'll be more on that later.

There's a "bedroom" and full bath down there as well for which you can see the doorways here:

It's a pretty nice sized room, which i don't think could legally be called a bedroom because of the small size of the window.

 Ok, now that you've seen my basement, you can come upstairs. Real mature.

The master bedroom is right at the top of the stairs through a pair of double doors, and it is huge:

Seriously, what are we going to do with this much space? "My head is spinning with the amount of activities we can do."

The master bathroom has a double sink. I can't wait for this.

And i guess we have to put the kids somewhere...so we shoved them in a couple rooms on the other side of the house. This will be my sons room, specifically because the closet is smaller. (Also, this photo is courtesy of MRIS as i totally forgot to take any Before's of his room.) He has two windows.

 This is where we'll put the girl kid:

And this fourth upstairs bedroom is pretty small (10'x10'), but perfect for guests as there will be no more Crider offspring from us.

That's it for now. These are the raw Before's and i can't wait to get started on the After's.

Another Announcement...

We bought a house!

Yeah, i know we were supposed to be staying at my father-in-law's place for awhile to save up money and take our time house-hunting. But with interest rates incredibly low (about a month and a half ago, anyway), we just had to get in while the gettin' was good. We made the decision to start looking for a home two days after moving, and it took us about a month to find "the one."

We'd been out with our Realtor a few times looking around only to be disappointed by what was available. I should add in some important tips here for people whether or not they're looking to show their home:

1. Pick at least one pair of your filthy underwear up off the floor, you dirty mammoth. You're disgusting. Not that it threw us off from what could have been our perfect house, but it's just bad manners.

One specific morning when i was ready to throw in the towel after yet another disappointing search, a new listing popped up. I saw the pictures and told Chris, "Call the Realtor and go buy this house!" (I didn't go with him as the kids were asleep, and I'd previously seen the floorplan of this model in person so i knew what i was getting into. I'm not a complete idiot. Plus, we were expecting company, and they were bringing beer.)

And after a battling to get this house and then dealing with the relocation company's bullshit, it's all ours. All five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, multipurpose rooms A, B, & C, all the new stainless steel appliances and granite counters, the two-car garage and huge overgrown yard with a playset and drowning pool pond...all ours.

If you look carefully behind the enormous oak and maple trees that some tool thought was a good idea to plant RIGHT in the front yard (a terrible idea for many reasons), you can kind of see it:

I plan to limb-up those trees until we save the money to have them professionally removed.

Here's walking up the driveway where you can see one of my bay windows that isn't covered by the oak that will surely come crashing down on us during a storm:

The back deck has stairs going into the backyard and a separate set of stairs leading to the driveway:

This is the only time of my life i've had a big backyard ifyaknowwhatimsayinnnn':

 Garden beds/cat cemetery and neighbors for days. You'd never know that there are at least five farms right down the street from us:

A playset for my offspring and husband. And that's the playset leaning - not the picture. Chris is on a mission to fix it with "brackets" or whatever the kids are using these days.

Unfortunately, behind the playset is a pond that is about 5' by 3' - the perfect size for a child to try and drown himself. It is inhabited by frogs, mostly, from what i've seen. And if you're local and you're in need of a pond or pond supplies or whatever this mess is below, contact me. You can have it. Because i plan to fill in this sucker and feed the tadpoles to the koi fish in my dad's much larger pond.

Come around the side with me where you see where our underground basement walk-up is...

...and you can see this overgrown shrubbery invading one of my bay windows:

There it is. Your first look at our new home before we made/make any changes. Even outside, there's TONS to do to whip this place into shape, but i have a feeling it'll shine up nicely.

I'm going to let you change your underwear and then i'll post pictures of the inside in the next few days.