Today marks our 1-week anniversary of not having heat in the house. We’d be more bothered by it if we were living there and had to experience the cold first-hand but luckily, we’re only reminded that it’s broken when we pop by the house for a quick check-up and have to thaw out our hands when we hop back in the car.

The biggest downside is that the floors are now on hold until the heater is fixed. According to the Floor Guy, he can’t sand the floors and start refinishing them because the hardwood needs to be adjusted to the temperature that the house will regularly be at. Or something like that. So we had the Heater Guy come over on Wednesday to take a look at The Situation and the consensus was that our motherboard needs to be fixed. Sounds intense, right? Apparently, it’s easier to replace the motherboard than to investigate what part of the motherboard has stopped working. The part has been ordered and should be arriving on Monday. So until then, no heat and no new floors. Bummer.

What’s funny (not really), is that my parent’s water heater broke at the same time as our heater! I never realized how dependent I was on hot water until it was temporarily gone. While CJ was at work basking in the luxuries of hot water in his office on New Years Eve, I was stuck living in the 1700s for a day. No dishes got done and, if I was determined enough to bathe at the house, I had to heat up water on the stove and carry it over to the bathtub. Needless to say, I went over to a friend’s house to take a shower (thanks Steph!) as I’m all about being efficient and heating up 15 pots of water for a bath was not worth it in my mind. Here’s a photo of one of her adorable puppies greeting me on my way out after the shower.

Luckily, the water heater was fixed by a jolly Water Heater Guy and we are back in business. One down, one to go!

We’re a couple days late on the “Happy New Year” message but we were busy relaxing and enjoying our time off. For our New Years Eve celebration, we stayed in our sweats, made dinner, and just relaxed. Anyone who knows me knows that it’s impossible for me to stay awake when I’m on a comfy couch and especially when I’m wrapped in a blanket. But, CJ made sure I was awake for the ball dropping. 🙂 Next year, we’re hoping to have more of a celebration (maybe in our house??) but we were so caught up in the holidays and house stuff that we didn’t get around to making plans this year.

As the house renovations move along, I can’t stop thinking about our kitchen table and chairs that we ordered. I am so absolutely in love with them and cannot WAIT to see them in the space. We ordered them a week and a half ago and they are supposed to take 4-6 weeks for delivery. Here’s the website photo of them:

When we started looking for tables, the two most important factors were that it coordinated with the rest of the kitchen and that we had the ability to entertain large groups of people.

This table has the best of both worlds. The table top and the chair seats almost match the cabinets perfectly which will really bring in that deep wood color into the half of the room that doesn’t have any cabinets. At the same time, we love that the rest of the table is white which will brighten up the space.

As far as being able to entertain large groups of people, this table has TWO leafs! This was the hardest to find in a table because a lot of these types of tables either (1) don’t have a leaf or (2) are ridiculously expensive. We first found this color scheme in a furniture store and fell in love with it but it was a round table and didn’t have any leafs. We were so disappointed but determined to find that style with the leafs. We searched on what seemed like dozens of websites and furniture stores until we came across this one. You just have to be patient and search until you find a piece of furniture that has what you want at a good price.

One skill we’ve learned when looking for furniture is if you fall in love with something at Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, or another “big name” store, find out who manufactured that piece of furniture. Chances are, you can buy it directly from the manufacturer at a much lower price!! Who knew??

Do you have a piece of furniture in your house that you are madly in love with? What makes it so wonderful?

Our contractors brought in the island today and we’ve discovered that it’s too big for the space.

We have several options: (1) we could cut it down and make it smaller OR (2) we could add cabinets to the right of our pantry and a small countertop.

Option 1 would provide more space than the current size but it’s still less walking space than Option 2. It’s the least expensive way to go.

Option 2 would eliminate the island entirely and would provide a lot more open space for entertaining but then it would eliminate the island entirely. That’s just so hard for me to give up because I loved the idea of an island. But if it’s not enhancing the space, I can see why getting rid of it would be a good option. Another positive is that the new cabinet addition would have glass upper cabinets and we could put our wine glasses on display which would look really nice and would really complete the kitchen.

So, we’ve asked our contractor to provide an estimate for each option and we’ll make the decision from there. We’re leaning towards number 2 because it opens up the space more so we’ll see!

The search for knobs and handles brought us to three different stores – Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Ace Hardware.

We immediately fell in love with these twisted knobs but later decided that they weren’t very practical and that going with ones that are more basic is the better way to go.

None of the windows in our house are currently covered up with blinds or window treatments so we’re on the hunt for the best priced ones. Who knew there were so many different choices!

So we’re on our way down to Orange County for Christmas!! This is our 6th Christmas together as a couple, 3rd celebrated with our families together, and 1st as husband and wife! It’s so wonderful to have both families together celebrating.

Before starting on our road trip down to Southern California, we popped by our house to see the progress of the cabinets. It’s hard to describe the feeling we had when walking into our kitchen but I can say we instantly had huge smiles. Seeing how it’s been transformed into our dream home in just a few weeks is indescribable. Everything is coming together beautifully; it’s truly a dream come true!

Below is a picture of the kitchen cabinets being put in by our hardworking cabinet men. They are speedy workers!

If we don’t make another post before Christmas, Merry Christmas!!!

Today was a GREAT day at the Teuben home!!

We stopped by to see our cabinets that were delivered yesterday and we’re in love!!! Oh my, they look so amazing and are exactly what we wanted. We can’t wait to see them put in! They will probably start doing that Wednesday or Thursday of next week so we’re itching to see the final results.

We should have taken pictures of the closet but completely forgot to. It’s all painted and ready for doors to be put on and it looks magical. SO much more space for clothing and storage!

Not much has happened with the house over the past few days. Something always seems to come up that slows down the project even more so we’re dealing with those hiccups at the moment.

I think the cabinets are being delivered today since today will be one of the only dry days for a while. We don’t anticipate that they’ll get put in for another week or so though.

The termite people are coming over next week to spray so it will be nice to check that box off before we move in! woo hoo!

We also bought our light fixtures for the bedrooms, office, and for above the kitchen table. We absolutely love them and can’t wait to see them all set up in the house!

What’s up next for the house? We’re still searching for a bed set and kitchen table and once that’s done, we’ll feel a lot better about the furniture shopping. Those are really the only remaining pieces of furniture that we’d like to have lined up and ready to go when we move in.

Yesterday, we bought our first pieces of furniture! We drove around on Saturday looking at different furniture stores and seeing what prices were and stumbled upon this store in Dublin that has great prices. After sleeping on it, we came back yesterday to look at the furniture one more time and bought a couch, love seat, coffee table, and side table for the entertainment room. They are special ordered so they won’t come for a few weeks but we are so excited!! We both forgot to take pictures of the furniture so it will just have to be a surprise when it gets here.

It’s looking like we won’t be moving in until the first or second week of January. Because of the slight delay from the termite discovery, the construction had to wait for that to be inspected but we should be back on track starting today. We don’t want to rush on moving in anyway since it will have lots of scents from having the floor refinished and the house sprayed for termites.

We got the keys last night!!!!! Ahh it was sooo exciting, we just can’t wait to actually move in.

We met up with our realtor Lloyd who gave us the keys and did one last walkthrough. He’s going to have the seller’s realtor get someone to blow off all the leaves on our front yard (you can see some in the bottom of the photo). We have a gimongous tree in the front yard that has shed about 2-3 inches of leaves. Pretty tree but lots of cleanup. 🙂 So that’s nice of him.

Today the demolition starts on the kitchen!!! We made a copy of the keys last night for our contractor so I think he’s in there right now ripping things apart. Woo hoo!