It's beginning to look alot like Christmas....

I should say that it has looked like Christmas for quite some time, but things have been too crazy lately for us to even think about the house. In true fashion, as I type, Adam is painting the dining room so we can host my family's Christmas celebration at our house this Sunday. We don't have a dining room table or even a table to sit around, but we will figure it out and make due. Adam has spent most of the past few weeks painting and I will post the finishing touches soon, but here is our house decked out for the holidays! Happy Holidays Everyone!!!!

A little surprise......

I have been really stressed out and very tired lately. I was laying in bed the other night while Adam was working. He called me into the hallway where he was working, but I really didn't want to get out of bed. I finally dragged my feet to see the "new color" he was sampling and found this!

Adam is very artistic and while I love his intentions, we will sadly be covering this up shortly. Adam is working as I type, so we can start to paint the rest of the front room and hallway. We might even get a little bold with the color choice so stay tuned!!

I love new things!

Out bedroom furniture finally came! We love it! I really wanted to title this entry as "My Big Girl Bed," but Adam doesn't like it when I refer to our bed as my big girl bed! I sort of see where he is coming from. We also picked up a new flat screen TV from Best Buy this past weekend. Although it is a little smaller then we wanted (we were going to get a 49"), we couldn't pass up such a great deal. Just $498 for a 42" LCD! Thanks for telling us about it Drew! To be honest I am not quite sure what we are more excited about. The TV or the new bedroom set!!! I am afraid we may never get out of bed now! We plan to mount it on the wall at some point, but that is going to be a project in itself. The one room that is almost done will have to back to being under construction as we are going to run the cables through the wall.

Out first hurdle.....with a happy ending!

Fairly soon after we became homeowners, we discovered our first setback. Adam discovered that the linoleum underneath the washer and dryer was a little too soft and buoyant. We knew we were going to redo the floor in the laundry "closet" but didn't think we would need to do it this soon. He figured it was damp under the linoleum, but we were not sure if the foundation was wet. As he started ripping up the linoleum I quickly found myself not being able to breathe very well. I am very allergic to mold, so we were pretty sure we had some mold. He had to wait for me to leave the house to figure out just how much.

Later that night he told me there was some mold on the floor boards, but the foundation didn't have any. He cleaned it and we dried the area out. Easy as that. What he neglected to tell me for a few weeks, which was probably for the best, was that there was a lot of mold, that looked very similar to cauliflower. That freaked me out in itself. Luckily, Adam got to it early and dried it completely out. He spent a few days tiling the floor and now it looks great. I never realized what a process it is to lay down tile, allowing for each step to dry. He did an amazing job! We admired the new porcelain tile for about a day before our brand new washer and dryer came!!! Thank you, Connie! I absolutely love them. They are so great that even Adam did a few loads of laundry while I was in Mexico (that is still sitting in piles on our guest bed and I have been home for over a week!!!).

Here are some before and after picture. Notice the great paint job on the walls. That was all me!

Life is a marathon, not a sprint...

Another life lesson that proves to be so true! Our house is living proof! I started a blog about how we are starting with the master bedroom and bath almost 3 weeks ago. We have now finished painting both rooms, but still need to add the finishing touches to the bedroom, which is my favorite part! We need to pick out curtains and definitely need to make sure they match our new bedroom set! I could not wait for the curtains in the bedroom to be hung to post about the amazing job Adam did on the bathroom, so above are the before and after of the bathroom. I just love the colors!

Adam has been working what most would say insane hours the past few weeks. The poor guy. I can't believe he is still in good health. He basically wakes up goes to work, then to football practice and then goes straight to the house to work on it. He has been pulling 16+ hour days and I am so fortunate for what he is doing. I know I do not tell him enough how much I appreciate the time he is putting in to our house. While working like an absolute dog, he is also being really patient with me and teaching me how to do things. I am not always the best student, so this is a job in its self for him! We are basically walking zombies these days! For the past two nights I have set the alarm, but did not turn it on. That is not like me! We knew it would be like this, but I don't think we were entirely prepared. We are in crunch time because we are moving this weekend!

So, here is an excerpt of how I started my original post 3 weeks ago...

As I mentioned, we spent the holiday weekend putting up samples and prepping the rooms for painting. Most of you probably don't know this, but when it comes to his work, Adam is a perfectionist. His philosophy is we should always do it right the first time. He is very meticulous when he paints and it definitely shows in his work. I, on the other hand, have no painting skills whatsoever, so I feel like most of his time is spent going over what I already did, but such is life. Adam is being very patient with me and I am learning a ton.

After a frustrating weekend of prepping to paint the master bedroom and bathroom and trying to tape off the master and living room, where I probably wasted more tape than I put on the floor (don't tell Adam!), we finally started to paint this week. It turns out I can paint! So, maybe I used too much paint on the bottom of the trim and I didn't "whisp" enough and perhaps I painted the ceiling a little crooked and even missed a few spots. Ok, and I may have dropped the brush a few times, but I am getting it. I even have the blisters to prove it! We started with painting all the trim and the ceilings of the master bedroom and bath and then moved to the walls. I had no idea how much detail there was to painting. We decided to change the trim color in the entire house to a light beige, so it is taking more time to get everything done than we originally had planned, but everyone tells me that always happens. Plus, the previous owners did not do a very good job, so we need to fix a ton of their mistakes. And by "we" I mean Adam. When it comes to painting, Adam has very high standards. I am actually surprised he is letting me paint! I just hope he isn't lying to me when he tells me I am doing a good job!

Decisions, Decisions....

Sorry it has taken me a while to post, but we have been busy almost every night at the house. As I type, Adam is starting the first coat on the master bathroom! We are almost done!

Two weeks ago we spent the weekend sampling colors for the master bedroom and bath and the living room. We knew we wanted the master bedroom to be a light beige and a darker brown for the bath. We decided on Sand Trap for the bedroom and Mocha for the bathroom, which are in the 1st and 2nd picture. The brown on the lower left side is the one we chose. Adam originally thought he wanted to use Dover White for the trim, but we realized that was way too stark white even though it looked slightly off-white in the paint fan. So much for the $60 we wasted on the 2 gallons we already bought. Adam is beating himself up over jumping the gun, but we'll find another use for it somewhere. We would rather have it look perfect. Since our house is a little retro, we decided to go with a very light beige for the trim and ceilings, which is light beige in all of the pictures. We are hoping this warms it up a little. It won't be easy to paint all of the trim and ceilings, in addition to the walls, but w are hoping it turns out great in the end.

I originally thought I wanted to do a sage green in the living room, but after sampling that I quickly realized I did not like the colors I chose. It looked more like a pea green and it looked very close to the color we already have in the kitchen which we don't like. We decided to do the main walls in beige with 2 accent walls in the living room. The wall above the fireplace is going to be a very dark slate color called Smokehouse which matches the color of the fireplace. We are going to paint the wall that separates the living room from the kitchen a red color, Caberlia. If we don't like it, it will not really matter. We will be tearing down part of that wall down eventually when we remodel the kitchen, so we can change the color then. We will most likely run the beige in the kitchen and dining room after we move in.

Here are the samples we put up in the master bed and bath and living room. We are almost done with the master bedroom and bath. I will post some before and after pictures this weekend! We bought a new light fixture for the bedroom and put that up last night. Now we just need to find a new bedroom set. I am so excited to have a big girl bed! We have had our mattresses on the floor for the last 3 years!

The "Before"

We started doing some work to the house this past weekend, but wanted to show you some of the the "before" pictures. As you can see, we already put up some paint samples, but more to come on that in my next post. The house is 3 bedrooms to baths and about 1,400 sq. ft. Great starter home that we will probably have for about 5 years. The house was a rental for a few years and the renters did not keep up on the house or the yard, but I don't blame them! Our landlord just came over today to do a bunch of yard work we apparently neglected because we are renters! Our plan is to work on the inside of the house first, painting, remodeling the kitchen and re-finishing the floors darker (do you like the white wash 80's look?) and then start landscaping the yard and paint the exterior of the house starting next spring. Adam is really excited to start on the yard and already has ideas in his head from HGTV (our favorite channel these days!). I, on the other had, absolutely hate yard work and am not looking forward to working on it. I am going to have to find some excuse when the time comes!

Below are pictures of the living room, guest bathroom and kitchen. I will post before and after pictures of the the master bedroom and bath after we are finished with those rooms. We just started to paint them this week! I wanted to post more, but I discovered that moving pictures around is not easy and I am still trying to get the hang of this whole blogging thing!