Moved in

A month! I can't believe a month has gone by since we left on vacation. So much has happened between then and now, its crazy. Vacation was fun, but as soon as we got back the whirlwind known as the "new house" hit. We spent three days painting as much as we possibly could, then Friday we closed! Woohoo! It was a bit of a nail-biter, but it worked out in the end. And after an epic weekend moving all of our worldly belongings using two pickups and a trailer in about 40 trips, we now officially live in the house.

Now I know I meant this blog to mainly be about sewing and knitting and other crafty endeavors, but frankly there's going to be a lot of DIY home renovation going on here. And until I get some of these boxes empty, there's going to be less sewing. Until I freak out about Christmas gifts. But that's another story.

So a little intro to the new digs. The house is a pretty basic 2 story colonial style built in the late 80s. A little on the boring side. But it sits on a large corner lot in a great neighborhood. It's close to "town" without actually being "in town" and most importantly, its in the good school district. We also got a great deal on it, which is pretty important since we still own our last house in New Mexico. And its a good thing we got a good price, cause this place needs a lot of updating. But it does have "good bones" as they say.

First of all, the whole first floor had baseboard heaters that were disconnected, so off they came, along with their thermostats. The people here before us must have hung tons of pictures, because we spent almost a whole day patching and priming holes.

There's also some major country 80s wallpaper in a few rooms that must. come. down. I managed to get it off of the half bath walls (revealing some crazy brown stenciling underneath) but that was so frustrating, I think the rest of the wallpaper will wait until I forget just how frustrating. Some more views:

This front room was actually redone by the previous owners. It wasn't bad, just not my style. The walls look grayish in these pictures, but in reality they were a purple-y blue.

As you can see in some of the pictures, the trim, windows and doors have all been painted a yucky beige color. All of the light and outlet plates are old, dirty and beige too. More stuff to fix.

It is amazing what a fresh coat of paint can accomplish, though.

The transition between the two room colors gave me a bit of  trouble. I painted a little racing stripe where the two meet - it'll do for now, until I come up with a better solution.


















The carpet is pretty bad, even after we had it cleaned, but we have grand plans to replace the entire first floor with wood. For now, we've laid down some rugs. We painted my son's room, too, mainly because it was royal blue and kelly green, but for now we're focusing on the first floor.

And that's it! I have a couple of sewing projects in mind for next week, so hopefully there will be more sewing stuff next time around...