We've been busy!

Another weekend has come and gone and we're a little bit closer to moving in!

This weekend's projects included:

• shovelling snow off the driveway and sidewalks (!!!)
• painting our bedroom (pictures of the new color coming soon)
• painting the entryway (it's the same color as before, just cleaner)
• installing a programmable thermostat (15 minute installation? Yeah right. Jared persevered, though.)
• installing the pull-out trash and recycling cans in the cabinet
• installing our new pendant lights in the kitchen (another headache for Jared, but they look so much better than the ugly lights before!)

• putting some insulation above the garage space and getting a rough estimate of how much more insulation we'll need for the rest of the house




We over-estimated for the garage, but haven't bought insulation for the rest of the house yet!


• spray painting the ugly ceiling HVAC grates white (they're still drying, but here's the before)

• working on getting the last two bedrooms ready to paint
• cleaning out the entry-way closets (I found a bathing suit and goggles, and a really awesome blue marble, among other items... and lots of spiderwebs.)

We're hopefully getting the carpets in the bedrooms cleaned this week so we can start setting up our bedroom. Our new washer and dryer get delivered on Friday! Slowly, but surely, we'll be able to move in! February 1 is our target date, since that's when our first payment is due (and it just seems rude to have to pay on it and not live there)!

What kinds of projects were you working on this weekend?

Painting, painting, painting some more

We spent most of the weekend at the house painting. I'm thankful that my parents offered to help.

Friday night we taped, spackled, sanded, caulked, and drop-clothed.

Saturday morning started out with breakfast at the Skillet (because we needed a hearty breakfast) and then we started the painting party. Jared and I started priming the wall with paneling while my parents started on the ceiling. Luckily only the paneled wall and the two walls we stripped wallpaper from needed primed because that stuff was SMELLY!

(Note: I tried taking "during" pictures, but my phone camera did not cooperate, so they disappeared into nowhere. Oh well.)

Surprisingly, the zero-VOC Olympic paint at Lowe's was the cheapest, so we went with that! If our house doesn't smell like fresh paint for weeks, I'm quite happy with that! (In case you're curious, the color we chose was called Astral.)

Enough talk, on with the pictures!

(Yes, the angle is different and one is at night and the other during the day, but really, the difference is quite remarkable! The room feels a lot lighter now.)

Since the floor plan is so open, we decided to paint all of the walls the same color. We plan to add some sort of accent to the non-window wall in the dining area, but we're not completely sure yet what it will be: stripes, tone-on-tone stencil, chair-rail with a different color above or below...

Pardon the ladder!

We also painted the hallway back to the bedrooms in an off-white, but since they were already off-white, the before and after isn't quite as exciting.

The plan for this weekend is to paint the three bedrooms. It's amazing what a difference some paint can make!