We're all moved in!

As I type I am sitting at our dining room table watching the rain and listening to the sound it makes as it falls on the pond outside. I love this part of our new house. There are a few birds making their presence known and every now and then you can hear a frog calling out as if to say, "I'm here too!". If you looked at the dining room it would look like this

and you'd think, wow they really moved in and unpacked quick! What you wouldn't see is this

what we affectionately refer to as the "staging area" and basically where we are hiding all our boxes. I can't even begin to express how grateful Marc and I were to have my parents here for two weeks. Not only did they help get us to a place where we were comfortable moving into our house but they also helped with the enormous task of moving everything from the condo to the house. Without them, we wouldn't be able to say we're all moved in.

Now that they have returned to California I am left figuring out where everything will go and slowly I'm making my way through the boxes. One of the best parts of unpacking is that I no longer have to store stuff in weird places. For example, my bicycle tire pump no longer has to be stored in a box in my closet because we now have a garage where it can live. My seasonal clothes can now be put away in storage when I don't need them instead of taking up extra space in my closet and my dresser year round. And finally we have enough cupboard space in the kitchen to hold all of our wedding glassware that up until now we haven't been able to fully enjoy.

Oh, and the other best part of unpacking . . . is making it ours.

The Path to Home Improvement

First of all I would like to extend a huge thank you to my parents. They arrived this past week not only with two sets of extra hands but tons of energy and a desire to get things done in the house. It's been fun watching them make discoveries both inside and out of the house and also to have the extra company during the day.

It appears that my dad really enjoys being outside in the garden "finding things". And I have to admit that he and my mom together make a great gardening/landscaping pair. The biggest accomplishment so far was the discovery of a path.

When we bought the house there were these stepping stones leading from the driveway around the side of the house to the backdoor.

They were nice but what I really wanted was a nice wide stone path. Not only would it be easier to walk on but it would make shoveling the snow during the winter that much easier. Apparently, years ago in my dad's house in England he had a similar situation and discovered a very large wide path. My sister even commented that our situation was similar to that one of years ago. So I sent my parents outside, armed with garden tools and look what they discovered. 

Yup. There is a beautiful, wide, stone path from our back door all the way down to the driveway. Here is a before and after for an even better comparison.

After being so successful on the back path we decided to head to the front of the house. This discovery is a little more exciting. You see when we took over the house this is what the path looked like. I have added some arrows to show you that there really was only a very small amount of "path" showing through the grass.

But just like in the back, there is a gorgeous wide stone path from the driveway to the front door.

And another before and after just for fun. I think this is the most dramatic before and after we've had so far.

Marc and I are so excited to have an actual defined path to our house and we really think that it makes a huge difference to the curb appeal and the feeling of welcoming when you walk up to the house. What do you think?

The Bedrooms and the Wallpaper

Our first objective when we took over the house was to update the bedrooms as quickly as possible so we would have somewhere to live. That meant ripping out all the carpet, removing the carpet padding and staples, painting the walls, painting the trim, painting the closets and getting new carpet installed. We were also hoping to update some of the windows but for now that has been pushed to the fall.

Below are pictures of the master bedroom, guest room 1 and guest room 2 as we received them.

The master bedroom had one yellow wall and the rest were white (as pictured). It also had a terrible carpet that was full of the smell of cats and dogs. Guest Room 1 had a beautiful pink carpet and blue wallpaper. Oh the wallpaper. Guest Room 2 was a beautiful neon green color which we came to learn was actually painted over wallpaper.

Our first step was to get rid of the wall paper in the guest rooms.

Which turned out to be a long process. We used WP Chomp which we found at Home Depot along with metal scrapers and pure arm strength. We found that if we could get off the outside layer of the wallpaper, the WP Chomp took away the glue and allowed us to easily peel off the other half of the wallpaper. Marc and I decided to share the removal of the wallpaper, he tackled one room, I took the other.

I have to admit I had the easier room because (1) we had already learned from Marc doing the first room how things worked and (2) I think the paint had dried out the wallpaper which made it easier to pull from the wall. After endless hours of work removing the wallpaper and ripping out the carpet this is what we ended up with.

It turns out that the beautiful blue wallpaper was actually over red paint and a brief moment of excitement about wood floors revealed wood linoleum, not exactly the look we were going for. But at least the rooms were wallpaper free, the floor was clean and the trim had been painted for the carpet installation. 

The master bedroom felt relatively painless in comparison because all it needed was a coat of paint and carpet removal. 

Since these pictures have been taken we have had the carpet installed, but I'll have to save that for a different post as it is time to head back to the house.

Home - Day 2

This will probably be the last of the day by day stories about our new house. Instead of a daily breakdown we'll probably just post project breakdowns in the future. We've had a lot of fun tackling projects on our to do list but I think overall posting every day about what we are up to is going to be challenging. Especially since there is currently no internet or cell phone service out at the house. Before I tell you about yesterday I also wanted to share that today we're taking the day off to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday with Marc's sister Effie and her family. Happy Independence Day!

Tuesday morning Marc and I spent some time getting chores done. He ran up to his mom's house in Brandon to retrieve a lawnmower and a tiller for our garden while I stayed home in White River Junction to clean up the house, do some laundry, and get some groceries for our visitors.

After lunch we were fueled up and ready for our daily trip to Home Depot. I think the guys in the paint department are beginning to know my name. So with our truck full of supplies we headed back to the house. I spent the afternoon painting the master bedroom and Marc spent the afternoon on a variety of projects. He disassembled the heating elements in our bedroom so I could paint behind them. He started stripping wallpaper from one of the guest rooms. He planted tomatoes in our garden. He got the lawnmower up and running. And he setup the kegerator. All in all it was a very productive day but by 6:30pm we were ready to call it quits and grab dinner at the Norwich Inn.

Below is an in progress shot. I still need to finish painting the parts of the wall close to the ceiling. Previously three walls were white and one was yellow. Now the walls are gray with blue undertones (Behr - Manhattan Mist). We still need to paint the trim white, put the heating elements in the corner back, paint the ceiling white, replace the carpet and move our belongings in but it's a start. In the long term we also plan to replace the windows, update the blinds and update the door.

Home - Day 1

It's official, the house is ours!

On Monday morning we had our walk through at 8am followed by the closing at the lawyer's office at 10am.   Then the house was officially ours. To stop from feeling overwhelmed I initially suggested to Marc that we each pick one item to accomplish on closing day. My item was to take photographs of the house in the condition that we received it. 30 minutes and 150 pictures later, I was done.

click on the photo to see a larger panorama of the front and back gardens

Marc's one item was to set up the kegerator. After a trip to the Beverage King and help from a local friend we not only had the fridge setup in the house but the keg was cooling down. The only thing we forgot was the CO2 so while we haven't had our inaugural beer from the kegerator yet, it looks like we might be able to accomplish that today.

Since our two items only took a few hours and we had a lot of energy as new homeowners we thought we would also tackle a couple other items. We picked out 5 sample paint colors and I painted swatches on the walls and Marc headed outside for some weed-whacking.

You see, at the closing, the previous owner had given his canoe to us. He told us it was to the left of the driveway as we faced the road but when we looked there all we could see were 4 foot tall weeds. As you can see below, with a little bit of weed-whacking Marc was able to locate the canoe and now we have something to play with in the pond. Oh! And apparently there is a stone wall hidden among those weeds too.

My favorite part of being at the house yesterday was how calm and quiet it is. Sure we can hear the neighbors roosters every now and then but on the whole what you hear a lot of is the wind in the trees, birds flying around and a frog here and there. Oh and when we left we saw tons of fireflies.

Sunday Dinner

Tomorrow we finalize the purchase of our house. Tonight? We feast!