Trick or Treat!

There are a handful I've things I've been waiting for my whole adult life:

1) Having my very own full-size Christmas tree. That happened in 2006 right after Dan and I got married.

2) Painting the walls of my house. As you have seen, I have definitely crossed that one of the list.

3) Handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. Seriously, I've been waiting for this for at least 10 years. Up until now, I've lived in places where that didn't happen either because I was in an apartment or because I was living in a less than desirable area to which people do not bring their children at night. This year was finally my year!

Because we have an enclosed front porch and no doorbell at the moment, I decided to just park myself on the porch. Here I am waiting with the candy for the trick-or-treaters to arrive!

Dan heated up some delicious butternut squash soup, but I didn't want to leave my appointed porch spot and miss the chance to give out candy, so Dan brought dinner to me!


We probably had about 75 trick-or-treaters. I was in heaven seeing all the kids in their costumes and handing out candy. I honestly think I was almost as excited as I used to get about trick-or-treating as a kid. Oh, how I love holidays!

Dan and I were too preoccupied with the house this year to get to any costumes or decorating, but we are already daydreaming about what we will do next year. Our house and our porch will be tricked out. It's going to be awesome. . . I can't wait for next Halloween!

More Color, Please!

Saturday turned out to be a snowy day, which meant it was the perfect time to hole up in the house and take care of some house projects! Here's a view of some of the ice and snow as it started to collect on our skylight (with one leaf to remind us that it is, in fact, still fall!)

Though we finished painting the dining room and bedroom several weeks ago, we've needed to go back and take care of some details, including some touch ups and detail work. We finally got those rooms 100% painted this weekend, including some final finishing touches like getting this beautiful grate back in place in the dining room!

The big project for the weekend was getting a good start on painting the living room. This was huge task because not only did the walls need to be primed and painted, but so did the ceiling and all of the trim, including three windows and two doors! Here's the room as we were just getting started. Like so many of the rooms, it has that yellowy white paint that I've been dying to get rid of (with a lot of lovely scuff marks on the walls as well).

Dan started out with painting the ceiling--never a fun task!

He also pulled out the wood putty to fill some holes on our door trim. It looks just like peanut butter! :)

We finally got the room primed. . .

and then it was time to add the color! I love the moment when you get to open that fresh coat of paint and see the color waiting for you inside! I've had this gallon of paint purchased for weeks now, and I had the green color of my living room picked out long before we bought the house.

Here I am happily adding color to the walls. . . .

and here's a preview of the finished product!

This is the painting I did strictly with the paint roller. We still have to go back with the brush, of course, and the trim still needs to be painted (it's just primed right now), but I'm so happy to finally see that green in the room! I'm also exhausted--Dan and I painted pretty much all day yesterday and today, and my muscles are killing me. Luckily, we're going to spend the rest of the evening cozied up with apple cider, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," and "The Nightmare Before Christmas" to celebrate Halloween in our "new" living room!

Mid-Week Progress

Dan and I continue to bask in the beauty of our new floors. Here's a cute picture our friend Joellen took of us in our state of new floor bliss:

As the week has chugged along, we've managed to get a few small projects done. For starters, Dan hung a closet rod for me so now I have a place to put my clothes in our bedroom! Yay! This is extra exciting because our bedroom has two closets, so this means we finally each get to have one of our own after sharing tiny, tiny apartment closets for most of our relationship.

In addition to having the hardwood floors installed upstairs, we've been planning to replace the green carpet on our steps. We brought some carpet samples home over the last few days and narrowed down our choices.

The carpet order was placed today, so in the next two or three weeks we should have our new carpet installed and then all of the new floors will be in place (and all of the green carpet in our house will be gone forever). Woohoo!

Another project for the week was finally finishing up the upstairs bathroom vanity. I started this project several weeks ago but got derailed with all of our efforts to get pre-floor projects done. As you might recall, it started out looking like this:

Here's the difference that some sanding, painting, and new hardware can make!

Another great development this week, thanks to the new floors, is that we've been able to move some more things upstairs. Not only am I being reunited with old friends like my dresser and nightstand, but we're finally able to free up living room and dining room space so that we can start using those rooms as intended and not just for storage! I'm hoping we can get started on painting the living room this weekend and then start putting that room in order. I'm so happy that the floors are here so we can finally get moving on stalled projects and start having something resembling a real house!

Saturday, 4:35pm: The Big Reveal

Given my propensity for waterworks, I find it amazing that I have not cried once about this house. Not once during the home-buying process, not on closing day, not as a result of exhaustion, not during moments of horror and frustration such as the discovery of lead paint and the water invasion in my basement. When I saw our new floors, however, I have to admit that I definitely felt some tears in my eyes. For the first time, the house I was standing in looked a lot like the house I've envisioned in my head since we bought this place three months ago. And, if I say so myself, it sure is pretty!

The new floors are glorious. Even more glorious I imagined. Get ready for the big reveal, with a few reminders of where we started!

Our two back bedrooms began with everyone's favorite hunter green, pee-smelling carpet. . .


. . . then evolved into the discovery of our lead-painted floors and the emergence of our good friend CAL.

Check out the bedrooms now!


In keeping with the early '90s forest theme, our hallway offered us a lighter shade of green. . .

. . . then continued the lead-painted floor trend along with a lovely cut-out right in the middle of the floor.

Look out, world, it's a whole new hall!

And let's not forget our bedroom, a previous refuge for the depressed with its drab colors and floors with peeling paint. . .

a fresh coat of blue gave it some new life. . .


and now it's just a few steps away from being a gorgeous, relaxing retreat!

Truly, we could not be happier with our floors. We knew they would make a huge difference, but they really make our whole upstairs feel like a brand new house. Of course, we still have our fair share of painting and a number of other projects to do, but we feel like we just made a HUGE leap in our house progress. We can unpack our bedroom! We can walk around without shoes on! The lead paint on the floors is hidden away forever! We are no longer surrounded by unending ugliness! Our house is. . . dare I say. . . starting to be beautiful!

Dan was so excited, he broke out the break dance moves!

We are so, so happy that we made the decision to have the floors installed. And we are so, so happy that we don't have to talk about the floors anymore. The floodgates are opened and now we can move forward with so many things. . . starting with finally having nightstands next to our bed! Hooray! I love you, new floors!

Saturday, 9:46am

The floor guys arrived just before 8:00 this morning (early! yay!). They are friendly. They seem to know what they are doing. They do not appear annoyed when Dan occasionally hovers for a moment and asks questions. All of this is very good.

On the downside, poor Dan woke up with a bad headache, so he is now sleeping on top of several sleeping bags/blankets in the basement. The floor guys have to keep the front door cracked open in order to run an extension cord out to their equipment, and they have the upstairs windows open, so it is now about 62 degrees in our house and dropping. The cats are not happy that they are locked in the basement. And it is one noisy scene here between the circular saw, pieces of wood being moved about, nailing, pounding, and the addition of the floor guys' radio playing an assortment of cheesy dance music.

Still, I cannot help feeling as though I am on HGTV episode waiting for a big makeover reveal. Even though I hope the people on HGTV are not as cold as I am right now.

Saturday, 1:15am

So. . . it's late. Really late. But I'm happy to report that all the floor repairs are completed (thank you, Dan!). All upstairs carpet has been removed (again, thank you, Dan!). Rooms have been cleared. Confirmation call from Lowe's has been received. And in a late-night push fueled by Joe-Joe's 'n Cream ice cream and Phoenix (the band, not the city), I now have all the upstairs baseboards painted. And so, my friends, we are ready to go.

I will now wait like a child on Christmas Eve for the installation of the floors tomorrow (insert squeal of delight). Less than 24 hours to a whole new phase of house!

Prepping for the Floors

Sorry for the delay in the weekend update! I've been sick all week with a nasty cold (boo!), so I haven't yet been able to muster up the energy to get this post done.

On Saturday and Sunday, we focused our efforts on preparing for the big floor installation later this week (yay!). Dan started with taking up the last of the carpet at the top of the stairs (aren't those stains just lovely?).

Dan's next task was to try and minimize some of the squeakiness of our floors. Since our hardwood floors will be directly installed on top of the ones we have now, he ordered some special screws with snap-off heads that help tighten up the floors against the joists. Thankfully, they have worked as claimed and have really helped eliminate most of the squeakiness!

Chalk lines for the joists in the hallway

Getting those floors screwed down!

Spreading some cheer

Elsie gets some blue chalk on her little white paws!

In an ideal world, Dan and I would finish up all of the upstairs painting before the new floors are installed. We realized pretty quickly that wasn't going to happen, but we did set a goal of trying to get all the ceilings and baseboards painted.

Before I could paint the ceiling in our middle bedroom, I had to try and do something about this terrible mess of a patching job the sellers left behind.


We definitely couldn't get it perfect, but some sanding and spackling did improve things.

And here I am donning my safety goggles!

From there, it was just me, Dan, and some quality time with the paintbrushes!


We managed to get quite a bit done over the weekend. Our goal was to keep working on getting the rest of the floors screwed down and the baseboards painted during the course of the week. Unfortunately, due to my cold, I've been completely unable to do anything, but Dan is just about finished with repairing the floors and shouldn't have any trouble getting that done by Saturday morning. As for the painting, we'll do what we can depending on how much time we have and how I feel. If we can get all the baseboards painted, that would be ideal, but if not, we'll still be able to paint them after the floors are installed. If I've learned anything from this house, it's the difference between "ideal" and "good enough". . . and right now, good enough is just fine with me!

Anniversary Joy

Friday was our fifth wedding anniversary (yay!). We are planning to take a day trip in a couple of weeks to officially celebrate, but for an unofficial celebration, I set up a little pumpkin pancake dinner for Dan as a surprise when he came from work. When he saw the table he said, "It's the first nice thing we've had in our house!" It was indeed the first time that our new house has remotely resembled places we've lived in before! I added the lovely fall-colored flowers that he brought home for me, too (because he's sweet like that).

The traditional five-year anniversary gift is wood. On Saturday morning, we got exactly that when our hardwood floors were delivered. Hooray! Now they will just sit waiting (and acclimating to room temperature) until the installers come on the 22nd.

To give you yet further evidence as to why we are so excited that the new floors have arrived, I'll share these pictures of our hallway floor, complete with its own special floor cut out.

This weekend most of our house projects revolved around preparation for the floor installation. Right now freshly baked cookies and warm apple cider await me, so I will be off, but check back soon for the full recap!

Weekend Recap

On Saturday morning, Dan and I got moving nice and early. By noon, I had taken the car in for a few repairs (it was a three-hour job, but I did catch up on my magazine reading!), our new dining table and chairs (a Craigslist purchase) had been delivered, and our new gutter complete with a leaf guard had been installed. The weather was gorgeous and the weekend was off to an awesome start!

We took a short walk to soak in the sunshine, and then Dan's Uncle John and Jen arrived. Ever persistent with our heater, he spent a good six or seven hours working on it. Thankfully we just have one more minor humidifier repair to go and then it looks like our heater will be in good working order for winter! Yay! We are so very grateful for all of his help!

Jen helped me out with cleaning and wiping down the new dining room table (it was in pretty good shape, but I'm not so much for strangers' germs). Here we are showing off the shiny "new" table! It feels so nice for our dining room to actually have a dining room table in it and not just be the catch-all room.

On Sunday, Dan and I had a busy morning at church, and then we took a quick stroll through the Media Food & Crafts Festival, so we got a bit of a late start. Unfortunately, I also got quite a headache, so I didn't really get moving until 5:00. Still, Dan took care of a few things while I napped, starting with still trying to sand down that darn front door threshold so the door doesn't stick! He also took a look at one of our gutters outside, which (we think) leads to the street and which appears to be clogged. Yet another project on the "to do" list!

Once I got moving, we both got to painting. Now that we know our upstairs floors are coming in a couple of weeks (yay!), we're going to try to get some more painting done upstairs. At the very least, we'd like to get all the baseboards painted so we don't have to worry about painting them after the floors are installed. Dan got the baseboards in the bedroom painted and primed while I got back to the bathroom painting project (which was abandoned last week due to some gorgeous fall weather that I couldn't ignore).

We have a number of really awesome-looking heater grates in our house that are in need of some repainting. Dan took care of stripping the old layers of paint off of them, and then I got to work getting them primed for a new shiny coat!

And, as usual, we have funny kitties around doing things to keep us smiling. Here's how we found Nessa downstairs after painting. She loves that blanket and it always cracks me up when she somehow manages to make her way under it!