Kitchen Progress

One of our priorities for the last few days before we have to be fully moved in to the house is kitchen.  We want to get the kitchen as clean and as finished as we can so that we are able to use it once we are living in the house.  There's no way that a full kitchen remodel will be in our budget anytime soon so the plan is just to strip and paint the walls and cabinets to make it as pretty as possible for now.

The kitchen before:

We've made some progress but also hit a few snags along the way.  Click to keep reading and see what we've been working on!

Fun With Concrete

This week we had some family in town, but we still managed to get a little work done on the house.  One week from today our brand new washer and dryer are going to be delivered, so one of our top priorities is to create a level surface for them to sit on.  The area where we plan to put the dryer was the lowest point in the basement and was the location of a very old, sunken drain.  When we had the sewer replaced last week we had them move the drain a few feet out, but the area was still much lower than the rest of the basement floor (including the location of the new drain).

Garden Variety

Hi Folks, I just wanted to share some pictures from our new garden that I took in the last coupled days.  At some point we're going to have to get out there and start weed-whacking, but for now it is just a jungle of flowering smelling goodness.  For the most part we have no idea what's back there... I received the official garden tour from the previous owner before we bought the house but I should have been writing it down or something because it's all lost now.  I know that there are roses, pansies, lilies of some sort, wild orchids, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, figs, rhubarb, potatoes and garlic among many other things I'm sure, but aside from the obvious I couldn't tell you what is what.  So here are some photos of our future project in it's current state.  If anything jumps out at you, please feel free to comment below and let us know what it is.  Otherwise just send a lot of green thumb vibes our way.  We will need it!  - Caroline

Click for more garden photos after the jump!!

Sewer Time!

Yeay!  Welcome to our first official post as homeowners!!  We went to the title company on Monday and signed all the paperwork and on Tuesday afternoon we got the keys!  Now that the house is ours it's down to business.  Yesterday we started the sewer repair process.  The neighbors have already disconnected their sewer pipe from ours, so all we have to do is replace ours.  The current pipe exits out the back of the house and circles around the side out to the street, so we are completely removing the old pipe then laying a new, shorter pipe exiting out the side of the house.  The whole process amazingly involves only a few holes.  They dug one hole in front of the house where our pipe connects to the main line, one along the side of the house at the exit point and one in the basement where the pipe will be coming through to hook up to the plumbing.  Everything else happens underground.  Apparently they just suck the old pipe out and shove the new one right through.  It's all pretty impressive.

Price Tag

We invite you to listen to the following and consider it a soundtrack to this post :)

Yesterday we received a copy our final closing paperwork to review and had the pleasure of going to the bank and getting the cashier's check for the closing!  We are signing the paperwork and paying our down-payment first thing Monday morning and now we are all prepared.  

Purple in the Kitchen

In between packing I've been doing a lot of thinking about decorating the new house.  One of the first projects we'll have to tackle will be the kitchen.  We want to take advantage of the overlap of the house and apartment to make the kitchen livable before we have to start bringing in food and dishes.  I've always been a fan of light, bright kitchens, but for some reason my mind has been stuck on dark wall colors with the kitchen's already light cabinets and countertops.  Maybe I'm remembering Joi's dark gray kitchen with her white cabinets:

The Appraisal and Moving Forward

 

Today we finally received the report from the appraisal company.  The report brought great news, confirming that the house is worth the price we are paying for it.  In fact, the price we are paying is slightly lower than nearby comparable sales, so that's good news for us!  This is also good news because we can now be confident going forward that we really are getting a new house!