We have been so busy with moving that we haven’t had the time to give you a little update on how everything is going (plus, we don’t have internet in the house yet). Here’s what’s happened since we last posted:

We rented a U-Haul on Saturday and loaded it up with all the large items (washer, dryer, bedroom furniture, chair, bikes, surfboard) to bring over to the house. We also had a mini-caravan of my car, my mom’s car, and my parent’s SUV filled with items. And no, that did not hold all of our belongings. I still have all the boxes in my closet (various items like office supplies, yearbooks, etc) that I need to bring over to the house. I want to wait until the first load is all unpacked before taking over more stuff. We stayed up until midnight on Saturday setting up our bed and then headed back to my parents house to sleep since we didn’t bring all of our stuff over.

On Sunday, our beautiful kitchen table, set of 6 chairs, and buffet were delivered!! Oh my are they beautiful. Here’s a picture of the table (excuse the iPhone photo).

Missing one chair in the photo but it’s so beautiful!

I’ll post a picture of the beautiful buffet once we have it in place.

The time has come! We will officially be moving in this weekend!

I’ll be posting some before & after photos of the kitchen after the stove vent (or whatever you call it) is replaced. Somehow, our contractor ordered one that is 6 inches smaller than what we expected. When we first walked into the kitchen after all the appliances were installed, CJ and I both paused and stared at it thinking to ourselves, “Hm… not exactly how we envisioned it to look”, mostly because there were several inches of space on either side of the vent. It was not intentional so our contractor plans on exchanging it for the right one. You will not believe the difference between the before & after photos! It literally looks like a different house. We can’t wait for you to see!!

To help get the house ready for moving everything in, I came over to the house tonight to clean the sawdust off of every surface in the house. It got on everything! When Lauren and I were at the house last week painting the master closet, I went into the bathroom to change into painting clothes and placed a shirt on the bathtub. When I picked the shirt up, I could see exactly where it was placed. A clear sign that the house needed to be dusted and scrubbed down before moving in.

Here’s a close-up of what the bathtub looked like:

Gross! So much sawdust.

After using a magical Swiffer duster, the bathtub ended up looking like this:

Squeaky clean 🙂

We should be able to go back into the house on Sunday as the last coat of stain on the hardwood floors was applied yesterday and the smell should be aired out by then. Sooo that means that we could possibly start unpacking things on Sunday!

Inspector gadget came and did the final run through today and signed off on everything. So we are good to go. The house will have all the finishing touches done throughout the week and then we will be able to start filling boxes to fill our new boxes (also known as rooms). Yeah, there is a bit more painting to do but who’s counting?

The next item on our agenda is closet construction. With the nice new closet, we now need some shelves and racks so our clothing isn’t sitting on the floor in little (actually quite large) stacks of cloth and shoe.

What our closet kind of looks like right now, except the floors have been redone and we now have baseboards

Then I must keep on digging, keep on digging in the backyard to move out the rest of the bricks and fill in the holes I’ve newly created. Then, clean things up in and outside of the house.

We might have been keeping you in suspense on what’s going on in the kitchen so let’s talk about that, shall we?

So far, our cabinets, granite, oven/microwave, sink, hardware (knobs and handles), and faucet have been installed. The walls have been painted a nice neutral color. The area in the kitchen where we were adding the hardwood has been filled in and has gotten it’s first coat of the stain. Everything is coming together SO beautifully.

What’s left? The backsplash of travertine tile, installing all the appliances, and hanging the light/chandelier that will go over the kitchen table. We are super close to being done! It should be another week or two before we can start moving in. The biggest gating item is finishing up the floors because, obviously, if the floors aren’t done, we can’t put anything on them. 🙂

Here’s what we’re thinking for the backsplash over the stove. The only difference is all of our tiles will be square. And, obviously, our cabinets will look completely different and we won’t have that humongous hood.

Diagonal square travertine tiles

We’ve decided to wait until the kitchen is completely done before posting any more pictures of what it looks like. We think it’s better to save it for a Big Reveal. 🙂

Have you ever remodeled your kitchen? What was your most/least favorite part of the process? 

Floors

If our information is accurate, the first coat of stain has been put on the floors today!

On Monday, we stopped by the house to check out the two stain options and luckily, we caught the Floor Guy right as he was leaving. He recommended the more brownish stain so it wouldn’t match the cabinets as much and we agreed. The Floor Guy told us that they would either start staining Tuesday or Wednesday.

Also, apparently (fun fact of the day), when you stain floors, it will darken over the next 6 months to a year to its final color. So, the initial color you choose won’t be what you see a year from the staining. I definitely didn’t know that before this whole process!

I stopped by yesterday on my way home from work to check things out and things are coming along. They sanded the floors yesterday so they are now super smooth and look like brand new hardwood. Since they didn’t stain yesterday, I’m assuming that was on their to-do list for today. Let’s cross our fingers that’s the case!

Family Room

I also talked to our contractor briefly yesterday and he said they’re going to try to paint the back room in the next few days and lay out the tile backsplash.

Picking the color for the back room was a whole other process but luckily, we were able to make a decision. We went back and forth on doing a fun color or a neutral, and finally settled on a neutral. Below is what I think our couches will look like. We ordered them in the store and chose the fabric color from a swatch so we haven’t seen it in person yet.

But since we haven’t seen the couch in the room, it’s hard to know what would look best so we thought the safest bet (since we had to make a decision before the couches were in the room) was to do a nice light tan. Here’s what that looks like:

Kelly-Moore Oyster

We’re planning on getting some fun colorful pillows for the couches and getting some colorful artwork for the walls to spice things up in the room. I LOVE these ones from Pottery Barn.

Sooo last weekend we set our sights on removing the plethora of leaves that had taken over our front yard. We had an enthusiastic volunteer at our side to help with the project (thanks Stephanie) who brought a leaf blower, rake, broom, and shovel for the big project. When we arrived, her first words were, “Wow, those ARE a lot of leaves.” Yep, we weren’t exaggerating.

Luckily, a mysterious kind soul had already cleaned up our sidewalk and most of our driveway so that part was already done for us (too bad though, it’s the easiest part to do).

Exhibit A: You can only see leaves on the front yard, no dirt.

Off to work we went on cleaning up the leaves – I started with the rake, Stephanie started with the leaf blower, and CJ went to the backyard to continue the brick removal. We soon realized that this project was much more difficult than anticipated. The bark on our front yard had become one in the same with the leaves. Want to remove some leaves? Sure. Only if you also remove the bark.

This is in the beginning of the cleanup.

After working on it for several years hours, we gave up. There was no hope in us getting all the leaves off unless we wanted to remove all of the dirt from the front yard. Today, we called a gardener and scheduled regular visits.

Our pile of dirt/leaves

We’re happy to do other gardening in the backyard like remove weeds, plant flowers, or anything of that sort but no longer are we willing to attempt cleaning the leaves off the front yard.

We’re considering putting grass on the front yard (in a few months, of course) which will make the leaves easier to clean up. Otherwise, we’ll have to keep refilling the front yard with bark because there’s no way to avoid losing it when leaves are removed. Our gardener suggested gravel as a second option but that doesn’t make for a welcoming front yard, in my opinion.

What do you love/hate doing in your yard?