This Great New House: Front Door

I've been making a point to go into our house through our front door instead of the garage so I can take a minute to be happy with myself for our DIY front door :)

Pre-makeover

Since making this wreath, a bird has made her nest in the flowers which makes me feel particularly spring-y.

 I saw a welcome sign similar to this on Pinterest, took a trip to Home Depot, and there ya go.  Since I love painting and holidays, I'm psyched about this switchable sign.

 The finished product

This Great New House: Powder Room

This is one of my favorite rooms in our house because this is where I get ready.  We painted it grey and put in a few other little things to improve it including a medicine cabinet, a rug, and some white towels.  I'm so happy with it :)

Original

Living Room Addition

When we bought our house, we started thinking about upgrading to a wall mount TV, but could never decide.  Thus, the old TV has been sitting on an old quilt in our living room for the past 5 months.  So it was time for a longer term solution in the form of a TV stand from Nick and Sean's old room that his parents gave us.  So we repurposed it to fit our current living room's colors and here's the handiwork.

After we took the shelves and doors off

Taking all of the pieces apart

Sanded and Primed

Painted and put back together

And the new World Market knobs that take the place of the old bronze handles

Overall I was pretty happy with this project after it was done, but it did prove to be much more work than I had anticipated thanks to the faux wood taking a LONG time to dry in between layers, and then we couldn't get the shelves back in which ended up being alright because I think I like this piece of furniture without the shelves anyway.

This Great New House: Master Bath

A couple of weeks ago, Sean went on a business trip, so I used my time alone to do some surprise improvement in our master bathroom.  I originally had plans that I soon realized were more delusions of grandeur in that I was going to paint the bathroom (and be done EASILY by 11 am), and then move on to the master bedroom and the tray ceiling.  8 hours later, I was still putting the bathroom back together and figured that maybe the bedroom and the tray ceiling would have to wait for another day.

My color palette.  A decision that was much tougher than anticipated.

Pre-paint job

Pre-paint job bathtub

My helper

Beginning my mess

Progress...

And more progress...

And more progress...

A finished product :)

I love it.

Hanging pictures for some wall improvement

So we officially have like, 15 tan rooms, and 1 green one.  I love paint.

This Great New House: The Breakfast Area

And my second project, and one that I was really excited about, was the breakfast area.

Previously, our move-in trash collecting area

 And now, our breakfast area.  This table was also a World Market clearance find and I was really excited when I saw it.  I had actually given up on finding a reasonably priced breakfast table and had bought my second favorite table at Big Lots.  And then, I went to World Market for my aforementioned umbrella and found this, exactly what I had in mind, for the same price :)  God smiled on me in World Market that day.  So I returned my Big Lots table and spent the better part of an afternoon doing "some assembly required" with 28 pieces.  Eventually, I'd like some curtains for this room, but for now, I love it as it is.

This Great New House: The Patio

Obviously, with a new house and relatively few possessions, each room is its own project, full of things that we'd eventually like to get for them, and aspects we'd like to change about them.  Since it's so pretty at night, the patio was up first.

My new Craig's List patio table find

Flowers

 I planted some english ivy that I envision traveling up this wall :)

 And my sanded/freshly painted patio table with its clearance World Market umbrella that I love :)

I'm going to go ahead and say I'm pretty impressed with how this patio turned out, and we love eating out here.

This Great New House: Our Move

I haven't posted anything in a while mainly because we haven't had internet in our new house, but finally, it's coming together.

We moved on Wednesday, May 26th to this wonderful new house and kissed the old APT goodbye.  It's been a lot of work, but definitely worth it.  We have a YARD, which is a little thing that we LOVE.  Sean's contributions were mowing and edging.  Mine were hanging baskets, flowers, and a table off of craigs list that I re-did.  I'll post some pictures later.  Other than that, we're still waiting on living room furniture to be delivered, so the house itself is still looking bare.  I'm guessing that after that, we'll just take it room by room for the next several years.  But for now, here's a few unpacking pictures that I do have.

Kitchen and breakfast area

Master Bath

Dining Room

Front Door

Firepit

My favorite house things are: having a microwave, having a drawer for silverware, a separate shower stall, more than one bathroom, the fireplace!, and the backyard firepit.

In other news, Jake graduated from high school!  We're a proud big brother and sister-in-law.  He's playing football for Averett, a college in Virginia, in the fall, and we're so excited about being able to go watch him play.  I wish that I had some pictures, but left my camera in a box somewhere in our messy just-moved-into house.  But we went down to HHI for the weekend, celebrated Jake, and caught some beach time.  Awesome.

This Great New House: The Feeling and The Contract

While our year in the 700 square foot apartment has been charming and fun, we don't want to have guests sleeping on the floor forever, and we'd eventually like a drawer for silverware.  Thus, we've spent the last 3 months in full swing of looking for the perfect house.

I have learned, and really knew beforehand, that it doesn't take much to please me.  I felt like no less than 10 times, I walked into a house as excited as ever, knowing that "THIS" was "our house".  And then, inevitably, my all-too-down-to-earth, ever-the-most-logical, civil engineer better half would see the house and have a reason why "THIS" was NOT in fact "our house", for any one of a variety of reasons that he switched back and forth between.  Location, location, location, the backyard is too small, it's too close to 485, it's too far from your work, it's too far from my work, the traffic on that road goes in the wrong direction at the time of day that we travel (welcome to the BIG city), the master is too far away from other bedrooms, it needs too much work, the yard is too steep, there's no pool in the neighborhood, it's too small, it's too big, the neighbors don't take care of their yard, and it goes on and on.  We joked throughout that Sean had a "bag of negatives" that he could just reach in and pick from.  In reality, anyone who knows Sean knows that he's just incredibly meticulous, detail oriented, a wonderful provider, someone who cares what time of day that his not-the-best-driver wife has to travel down I-77 on the way to work, etc.  I have to say that as frustrating as consistent denial can be, I knew that when Sean finally felt that "THIS" was "our house", that it would be the right decision.  And that moment came last Thursday night.  The 11-teenth house that I wanted him to see that I loved online, he looked around, looked at me, and said "I think this is it".  And after sleeping on it, we came to agreement that THIS house, is the perfect one for us.

So after calling and negotiating what we both feel to be an extremely fair deal, we went and signed our lives away on 46 different pieces of paper, wrote a check, and are officially under contract on our beautiful new house :)  Afterwards, we both felt a little sick, which is normal I think, and pending our loan coming through, closing is tentatively set for May 26th.

Sean signing...initialing...signing...initialing...signing...

Switching out the green "available" Monopoly house in the community to a red "sold" monopoly house