painting, floors, and a FIRE!

we've had a busy week and have accomplished a lot with the house!  After three weeks of scraping, sanding, and spackling, we've finally gotten to the stages where we are ready to paint!

We started by priming three rooms upstairs- two bedrooms and the office, these will be our initial focus for painting.
Last weekend I was at a bridal shower in PA and was gone the entire day.  Trevor was a hero and painted all three rooms the first coat himself!  When I got back the next day we finished the other three rooms with the help of our parents.

Verizon Fios also was installed, but we don't have our tv our furniture in yet so we sit on picnic chairs and watch on our tiny tv.  the cool thing is there is an iphone app for fios so we can control the tv through our iphones!

Michael, Dad, and Trevor worked on removing all the carpet upstairs. Katie helped to remove all the nails and staples that had tacked the carpet down.  tada!!  beautiful oak floors were hidden under the ugly carpet for all these years!  We still have no idea why she put carpet down in the first place.  In the pictures below you can see our finished paint job (aside from trim work) but the old floors:

Guinness had one final run around the living room before the floors were redone:

We had our floors refinished the past couple days by a flooring company.  this involved them sanding and using an oil based finish on the wood.  We had heard this was a very messy job that would create a lot of dust all over the house but were pleasantly surprised, it was not messy at all.  the guys did a great job at cleaning up the dust that was left over.

Here;s what the floor looked like right after sanding:

And here's what it looked like after the finishing was redone... I will take pictures of all the rooms soon and post them over the weekend.  for now, this is all i could see from the foyer!

There was another adventure that occurred with the hardwood floors.  The workers left their garbage which included oil covered rags in garbage bags at the end of our driveway.  I thought nothing of it, but apparently the heat of the very hot weather caused this to burst into flames when we were not at the house!! fortunately, our neighbor saw it burning and ran and got his fire extinguisher and put it out.  We felt so bad, and were so grateful he was there to look out for us, that we made him brownies and brought them to him today to say thank you.

here's trevor after we learned about the fire.  best part about this video is the next day we found out his name is jonathan, not bob.  just another way we are impressing our neighbors.  *sigh*

Moms to the Rescue!

Memorial day weekend- we had parties with friends and family on both Saturday and Sunday which were great but meant we had only Monday to truly dedicate to the house.

Trevor's Mom came for a visit on Sunday night and we went to Home Depot late that night right before closing to get our first Weber Grill!  She bought it for us as a housewarming gift which was so awesome and we are so excited about it.  We were adventurous and crammed the grill (boxed up) in my Murano trunk with me driving, Trevor's mom in the front seat, and Trev crammed into the remaining crevices of the trunk to drive home with it that night.  Today (Monday), both Moms came over to help on the house.  Trevor worked on setting up the grill for an hour or so this morning but unfortunately we are missing some of the bolts needed to complete the set up, so we need to call Weber to get them this week.

My mom and I went to work on painting the ceilings and were able to do it in the dining room, the upstairs bathroom, the master bedroom, the office, and the two guestrooms.  WOW I could not believe how tiring and hard paiting the ceiling was.  It was definitely much harder than I expected.  I had paint all over my hair, face, and clothes.  I also fell off the ladder once and have some nasty bruises.  It also is pretty straining on your neck, back, and legs to be looking up the whole time to paint but after a couple rooms, we got down a system and started moving along quickly.  Trevor's mom helped get the kitchen ready by lining the shelves with a new liner and cleaning out drawers.  We practiced testing some paint samples in various rooms and are starting to figure out the colors we want in various rooms,  but before we get there, we still have more ceilings to paint, we need to touch up the ceilings that were done today and give them a second coat, and buy paint at the various stores.

We are so grateful that our moms were here this weekend to help us out!  it definitely made the time go by faster and we got a lot accomplished.

My brother Michael comes home from Paris tomorrow and we will appreciate some extra hands in the free time he may have to come help us out too.

Below is a video of Trevor starting to remove carpet from the stairs:

Wallpaper=Evil

After closing, we picked up subs at our favorite pizza place, Vito's  and brought them back to the house where we sat on the floor eating our sandwiches and drinking champagne to celebrate the exciting first moments of owning a home.

here we are right after closing

about to walk into our house for the first time!

champagne and subs

We then took before pictures of all the rooms to remember what the house looked like in its current state.

Two things about the house (in its current state) that are irritating:  

1.  wallpaper everywhere!!!  this was our first challenge to undertake.

2.  where there is no wallpaper, there is creative and ugly stenciling.  (see example below)

there were 3 bedrooms, one dining room, and one bathroom that needed to have wallpaper removed.  We actually started removing paper in one of the bedrooms the night of closing and spent the entire first weekend removing all the paper.

It was a complicated process because there was a variety in the amount of time and way in which the wallpaper had been done.  Some wallpaper had been applied relatively recently, probably about 15-20 years ago, and although timeconsuming, did come off more easily.  We scored the paper, sprayed it with wallpaper removal gel/solution, and then scraped it off, then scraped off the remaining glue.  In other rooms, we learned that the paper had been on for probably about 30-40 years.  We learned that using the traditional scoring/spraying/scraping method did not work well in these rooms as it was tearing off the paint as well.  so we had to literally just chisel this wallpaper off.  There were three "easier" rooms and two of the more difficult rooms.  Here's a video of some of the process for us so far (and the mess we've been making)

it was definitely an exhausting process but we are so happy the paper is off because the rooms look bigger and it's definitely already increased the value of our home in removing the paper.  

Unfortunately, the scraping process left many many holes in the walls and the next step was using spackle to seal up the holes, then sand.  we bought a ryobi sander with a built in vaccuum but the dust still goes EVERYWHERE all over the house.  we have spent multiple days just cleaning off all the dust and wiping down the walls after the spackle dries so that we will be able to prepare for painting.

One of the things Trevor has been looking forward to, and talking about for MONTHS is mowing the lawn.  Here's a video after he mowed the lawn for the first time!

Our New Home!

Hi Everyone,

We wanted to start this blog to keep you all informed of all the work and excitement involved in the purchase of our first home!  We are so excited and busy on all of our projects at the house that we thought this would be a good way to share our latest and greatest and share some of the funny things that have been happening to us.

Here's an abridged summary of where things stand to date.

We started looking for homes shortly after the new year.  In one weekend, we saw 13 homes.  Each one we visited, we would find things we liked and some things that we really did not like.  This was the 8th home we visited and we loved it from the first time we were there.  What has made us love it even more is that our good friends Erin and Jim live two blocks over!  The home is 4 bedrooms (one very small- will be an office), 2 and a half baths.  It has a living room, family room, dining room, and HUGE mudroom- big selling point.  It also has a deck and is on a nice quiet street which we really like.

Negotiating the home price was a very stressful process.  We purchased the home from the original homeowner, an elderly woman who had lived there for 40 years.  There was definitely emotions running high in this process but we eventually got her down to a price that was right for us!  There were many other bumps along the road along the way in order to finally land the house and many sleepless nights.  I often made Trevor "promise" that we would get the house, and I am very glad we finally did.  It has certainly already been a lot of work and money so far, but it's good to know that our hard earned money is going into something as an important as our first home and an investment.  We also were grateful that we had lots of families and friends to guide us along the way in the homebuying process.

Our subsequent blogs will be on the projects we've been working on along the way and the excitement in what we've been learning!

Below is a picture of us on closing day: