A few weeks ago, we decided that our monstrous tree had gotten out of control and that it was time to give the tree a little haircut. It was getting to the point where the branches were so low that I could even reach them. GASP! I know, you’re amazed.

So CJ called a tree trimming man and had him come over to estimate how much it would cost to trim the tree. It was definitely worth the cost because we did not want to have to deal with any repercussions that a windy day might leave behind if some of those branches fell down onto our roof.

Helpful Hint: Ask your tree trimmer whether or not they have liability insurance (thanks Mom for the tip!). If you hire a company that does not carry liability insurance, you will be responsible for injuries or damages incurred to or by the tree trimmers while they are working on your property

Here’s a before picture:

As you can see, it was on the verge of eating our house

Branches low enough to grab

Bullying the tiny little tree next to it

A few days later the Tree Man, as I’ll fondly remember him, came over when we were at work and did a wonderful job trimming the tree. CJ stopped by during his lunch time to check on the progress and sent me a photo of the finished job. I never knew I could get so excited about a tree being trimmed but see for yourself, it’s a work of art! I had a huge grin on my face the rest of the day and showed everyone who was interested in seeing the before and after.

Woohoo!

The Tree Man said that we will only need to do this every couple of years so luckily this isn’t a regular expense that we have to account for. The smaller tree in our yard  might end up getting removed at a later time because it was being bullied by the monster-sized one. It was gasping for sunlight by trying to lean to the left so it clearly doesn’t look healthy. Poor little guy.

The time has come!! We’re ready to share the official before and after photos of our kitchen. After it being such a long process, we are so incredibly happy with the final result. It truly is our dream kitchen (and home).

When we first compared the before and after pictures, we were soooo amazed! Of course I remember what the kitchen looked like when we bought it but comparing the before and after makes it’s hard to believe that they are the same house.

Click on the photo to make it larger. Pictured on the left: Our kitchen on December 11, 2012 Pictured on the right: Our kitchen TODAY 🙂

Everything in the kitchen was chosen by us. We picked the stain and style of the cabinets, hardware (knobs and handles), appliances, floor stain, recessed lighting, backsplash, etc. When you’re picking a bunch of individual items, it’s really hard to imagine what it will look like when it comes together and it’s stressful because you want to make sure you’ve made the right choice. We spent a lot of time on Houzz looking at example kitchens and figuring out what we liked and didn’t like.

Here’s another view of the kitchen:

One of my favorite parts, we have a little heart in our hardwood floors!

Have you ever remodeled a kitchen before? Did you experience any setbacks? What’s your favorite part?

Home Sweet Home 🙂

Prepare yourself for a novel. We decided to keep track of the ridiculousness of our house process and talk about it after it was over… so here’s what we went through.

Our kitchen when it was under construction (and the termites were discovered)

1. From the date of our offer to the closing date, it was a little over 3 months. According to our realtor, this was the longest closing he’s ever experienced. It started with it being an estate sale so we had to wait for the probate court date which ended up happening two months after we put in our offer. The original court date was scheduled for a month after but the judge got reassigned so instead of them just letting the hearing happen, they rescheduled it for a month later.
2. We were preapproved and underwritten at the time of our offer, but because it took so long, we got reassigned a new underwriter who was just out of training. Because of that, the whole process started over again and took 3 weeks to close when it was supposed to take 2 days.
3. We started work on the kitchen and discovered termites. The home inspection company missed it so they offered to pay for the mistake but it would have been nice to know that beforehand. 
4. Someone, we don’t know who, called the building department on us and because of that, we got “redtagged” and doubled the construction time. We then had to file for a permit and go through several inspections to get approval on the work. Someone really had to have no time on their hands for that to happen because they have to jump through hoops to file a complaint. The craziest part was that we weren’t even at the stage where a permit was required.
5. Our contractors showed up to the house one morning and the garage door was wide open. All of our kitchen appliances were still in the garage but that gave us a heartattack. What they think happened is that, since it’s an old garage door opener, that someone has the same code as us. My dad said that sometimes one of my parents old garage doors used to spontaneously open so it could have been that too. Needless to say, the door got bolted down and the garage door opener got replaced.
6. We had an island built for the kitchen and then decided to get rid of it. After bringing it into the kitchen, we realized it was just too big for the space and instead had the cabinet guys build a china cabinet. It was a good hiccup because we absolutely love the new cabinet.
7. Our contractor opened up the wall in the back room for the TV mount and found more termite damage. Luckily, there weren’t any live termites so he just replaced the damaged wood and continued on. CJ, on the other hand, had to take apart the brick planter box in the backyard that was built against the perimeter of the house. We also called the home inspection company one more time and complained about them not finding this either, so they offered to spray the entire house for free. 
8. Our heater broke. From the time that the heater broke to when it was fixed, it took 2 weeks. It got so cold in the house when we walked in that we could see our breath. It also delayed the floor refinishing process by 2 weeks because the wood was too cold to get finished. We had to let the wood heat back up after it was fixed so that all the moisture was out of the wood. If we didn’t wait, there was a possibility that the hardwood would bow in the future.
9. Our heater “broke”, again. After the motherboard was replaced, it started working just fine. Unfortunately, a couple weeks later the heater started making weird noises when it turned on and would shut itself off after a minute or so. After having the technician come out again, he found that the filter was so clogged that the heater couldn’t take in air which is why it was shutting itself off. So, luckily it just required a new $7 filter and we were back in business.

Moral of the story is nothing ever goes as planned so you just need to find the silver lining in everything and learn to enjoy the process because, in the end, it will look beautiful and it will all be worth it.

Our entertainment/family room (we can’t decide what to call it) is slowly coming together! Our TV was delivered early last week and installed at the end of this week and it’s AMAZING! It’s 55 inches of pure beauty and fits perfectly above the fireplace.

On Valentine’s Day, our couches, coffee table, and side table were delivered and it finally feels like a room. The furniture fits in the room so perfectly and looks amazing!

We’re going to get blinds for the rooms but need to decide which kinds so we’ve thrown these $5 blinds up over the windows in the meantime. Those blinds are a lifesaver so if you ever move into a house and don’t have any blinds, go to Bed Bath and Beyond (or even home improvement stores like Lowe’s) and you can find these for $4.99. We were stressing out over what curtains to buy for our front room because we needed to cover up those windows before moving our belongings into the house but my mom came up with the genious idea of sticking these up onto the windows and Voila! our windows are covered and we can take more time to pick out the curtains we love.

The coffee table is super functional because it has 2 drawers for us to store items in. That was CJ’s top requirement for the coffee table and I’m glad he was so insistent upon us finding one with drawers because it’s so useful!

Another view of the coffee table so you can see the drawers

As many of you already know, one of our first items that we wanted to have done before moving in was expanding the size of our closet. Not because it was the highest priority, but because it involved breaking down walls which would affect our hardwood floors. Since we were redoing the hardwood floors along with the kitchen, we figured it would be best to do the closet too otherwise you would see the funky line in the closet where the wall used to be and that just wouldn’t be acceptable. So, we proceeded to have it expanded to take over half of the guest closet and now it’s L-shaped.

We had NO idea how to organize a funky shaped closet so we decided to research companies that did free designs. The first company, EasyClosets.com designs beautiful (and very expensive) closets and will do it for free. So, we measured the closet, submitted our dimensions along with our “wish list” (aka we want X inches of space for long hang, we have X amount of shoes, etc.) and they got back to us with a design the following day. It wasn’t that impressive and was way too expensive so we looked at a few more options.

Since I’ve always loved The Container Store, we decided to stop by there and see what they had to offer. After wandering the store a bit, a lady approached us and offered a tour of their example closets and then a free design. She said that at the end of the tour, the attendees of the tour would be thrown into a raffle to win a $25 gift card and, turns out, we were the only 2 attendees so we automatically won! Yay for us!

She did the free design and we loved what she came up with, not to mention it was 1/2 the price of EasyClosets so that was also a plus. We ordered the supplies from them, picked it up (which saved us the delivery fee), and then scheduled a time for them to install it. If you have a standard closet size, it’s fairly easy to install it yourself but since our closet is a funky shape and size, they recommended we have the professionals handle it because the materials needed to be custom cut.

Here’s what the closet looked like before the sliding doors were added and the Elfa closet. Notice the beautiful white walls that Lauren and I painted.

On Monday afternoon, the closet installation guy came over and transformed our closet. It looks sooo amazing and is SO functional. We absolutely love it. There are 3 shoe racks, one of which can fit 9 pairs of heels that pull out like drawers. I’m obsessed! All of our hanging clothes fit in there perfectly so now we just need to figure out what to do with all of our folded clothes. 🙂

View with the right sliding door open

View with the left sliding door open

Of course, my heels had to go in first 🙂 These open up like drawers and the top shelf can hold 9 heels, the lower shelves can hold 4-6 pairs.