We're in!

We moved in last Friday.  Other than no one having any idea what happened to the Persian rug Patrick bought in Bahrain a couple years ago, the move went very well.  The moving guys remember loading it on the truck and I checked it off on our moving sheet when they were unloading.  Very odd, and I hope we randomly find it in our garage when we start shoving stuff in the attic this weekend.  No one screamed at me during this move about not providing them with a buffet of food and drinks, so it definitely went better than the last one.

Carpet was installed last week just a few days before we moved in.  Juan and his fellow installer did our whole house in one day!  Granted they worked from 9am-8:30pm and we had to repaint some of the baseboards when they were done, but they did a really good job.

Hallway with painted trim and carpet.

Family room with carpet and painted ceiling beams.  That fan must go soon!

Master bedroom.  Patrick was playing with his fish eye lense.  I can't really say that I dislike having closet doors at the moment other than it makes the room look cluttered.

This weekend involves a trip to Ikea and putting in French doors and a window.

Mother's Day weekend wrap up.

For Mother's Day Finn and Patrick gave me chocolate covered strawberries and a garden cart.  The cart has a built in seat and actually came in very handy while painting trim.  I could sit on it and wheel myself along the wall which just proves how lazy I am.  I'm sure it will be used quite a bit when we complete the Great Shrub Removal of 2012 later this summer.

Garden cart.

We got quite a bit accomplished this weekend.  Dad worked on trim every night last week and our new heat pump was installed on Friday.  Let's recap the type of a/c Patrick and I have lived with since 2005.

Hague Towers 2005-2007 - I lived in the Hague in Norfolk when I met Patrick.  My apartment was on the 12th floor of the apartment building with great views of downtown.  The building had central air and heat, but for whatever reason only one could be turned on for the entire building at a time.  Apparently the City of Norfolk dictated when heat and air could be switched over at each season.  Hague Towers was inhabited mostly by the elderly and residents at Eastern VA Medical School.  Long about mid-May, the elderly would be begin to riot (which meant they congregated downstairs around the front desk) and demand that the a/c be turned on.  When your 90 year old neighbor is too hot to sleep, you know it's pretty hot in your apartment.  When the a/c was turned on I could finally close my windows and sleep without the noise of tractor trailers bouncing down Brambleton Ave from the Midtown Tunnel all night long.  Then I met Patrick who lived across the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth in brand new apartments with wonderful central air that could be turned on at the whim of the dweller.  Good thing I made that first trip through the Downtown Tunnel after skeptically saying "You live in Portsmouth?  Are you sure it's safe?".
Marina Shores apartments 2007-2008 - The unit froze frequently and I would have to chip ice off it with a screwdriver.  I'm not sure this is in the maintenance manual.
23rd Street 2008-2009 - No central air.  We had window units in every window which were strategically plugged in so not to trip the circuit breaker.  It took me an entire day to figure out how to plug in everything that needed to be plugged in without the power going out.
Williamsburg rental house 2009-2012 - We felt like we hit the jackpot when we moved in and had central a/c again.  We quickly realized the house had little, if any, insulation and no matter what you set the temperature to the upstairs would always be 10+ degrees warmer.  When I was pregnant during the summer of 2010 the a/c went out multiple times and we had to stay in a hotel in order to me to sleep.  We learned pretty fast that the owners were going to continue to put band-aids on a worn out unit rather than replace, so we just prayed it wouldn't break again before we moved out.

But now we have a brand new Trane heat pump and air handler and it works so well!

Back to house projects.  Saturday's big project was to take out one of the sliding glass doors in the family room and put up a wall and window.  Dad and I ordered the window on Friday night when we bought out Home Depot and it should be in hopefully later this week.  Dad and Patrick handled the wall while I finished painting trim.

Before

"Norm" and "Mini Norm" working on the wall.

Part of a wall!

Ta da!

Primed and painted by yours truly.  Now we just need a window!

My big contribution to the wall/window project, other than painting the finished wall, was to walk by and say "Good job!".

We put up light reducing blinds and blackout curtains in Finn's room because His Highness cannot sleep in anything but ideal conditions.  This is a nice change from the aluminum foil over his windows in our rental house.

Finn's room.

I finished up the trim in the rooms that Dad didn't do last week.

Master bedroom with painted trim.  It will look so much better once we replace the windows.

We also managed to get most of the kitchen painted!  I'd hoped to finish this before we move in, but wasn't sure if there would be time.  The ceiling is Behr Bicycle Yellow and the walls are Behr White.  We need to edge the ceiling and trim once it's dry.

The walls look beige in this terrible photo, but they are white.

All in all it was a good, productive weekend.  We hit DEFCON 2 on Saturday when one of us realized their watch battery died and it was not 1pm, but 5pm.  We recovered and managed to get everything done, but Saturday was a 14 hour day.  Putting up the wall was probably the biggest project we have to do in the house, so I'm glad that's done!  It really finishes off the room.

Upcoming this week which is our big move:

Monday - Cleaning up for the carpet installation.
Tuesday - Packers arrive in Williamsburg/Carpet installation in Va Beach
Wednesday - Packers finish up in Williamsburg/Carpet installation finished in Va Beach
Thursday - Truck is loaded in Williamsburg/Cleaning Va Beach house before our stuff arrives
Friday - Movers deliver our household goods!

Next weekend will be spent unpacking and organizing and then my Navy fantasy world of a predicable schedule comes to an end and it's back to sea duty.  I already have weeks of underways on my calendar, but I have plenty to do like paint kitchen cabinets and new doors.

In case you wondered where Finn was during all of this, he was hanging with his grandmother again.  He sat through an hour long church service on Sunday and most of an hour of adult Sunday school.  This is the child who spends the better part of a 30 minute library storytime rolling around on the floor, trying to talk to the other children who are sitting quietly, or trying to escape from the room.  Amazing!

Who says you can't paint a house in a weekend?

We were lucky that Patrick had a 4 day weekend last weekend and we could get a head start on painting.  We needed to paint every room that is getting new carpet put in next week.  We were able to move pretty quickly since we didn't have to worry about drop cloths and nonsense like not dripping paint on the floors.

Patrick did most of the ceilings, my dad edged every room, and I primed the trim and rolled most of the walls.

Remember that red wall in the living room?  One coat of Behr's Wheat Bread covered it nicely!  We used Wheat Bread in most of the rooms of the house.

Living room.  Goodbye red wall!  Trim is only primed in this picture and will be painted with Behr Ultra Pure White.

We used Wheat Bread to cover the red on the fire place in the family room as well.  One coat did ok, but it definitely needs a second.

Living room.  Ceiling beams and trim are primed and walls are Behr Wheat Bread.

No more red fireplace and it's hard to tell, but Patrick pulled up the flooring.  Sliding door on the left will be replaced with french doors and door on the right will be replaced with a window.

We painted Finn's room blue.  I can't remember off the top of my head the name of the paint, but it was another Behr.

Finn's room.  Trim still needs to be painted.

We also had our new kitchen appliances delivered last weekend!  Considering that the door of the oven that came with the house didn't close all the way, we definitely needed to replace it.  Sears was having an appliance sale a couple weeks ago (we bought appliances before closing and lived to tell about it!) so we bought a new refrigerator too.  The old one still works so we stuck it in the garage.

Kenmore Elite French Door Bottom Freezer

GE double oven.  The doors are stainless, we just haven't pulled the plastic off yet.

One grumble about Sears in case they stumble across this.  We paid for delivery and installation.  The delivery guys tried to leave the appliances in our driveway.  They were not happy when we stuck to our guns and made them bring them inside.  Patrick ended up installing the oven and range hood himself.  I'm not sure the delivery guys could have gotten out of our house any faster.  I was surprised by how terrible delivery service was because that was not our experience at all when we bought our washer and dryer 3 years ago.

The next post will have pictures of painted trim and hopefully over the weekend we can install new doors if they are delivered in time.  We are also having a new heat pump installed because our a/c conked out on us last Friday.  Yes, that would be 4 days into home ownership.  We knew it was old and it actually had to be fixed after the home inspection because it wasn't working then.  It was worked through closing, but the first 90 degree day did it in. 

I leave you with our kitchen decoration.  Should we leave it up as a reminder of how much we painted?

We have not painted the kitchen yet.  Those stencils need to go!

We bought a house!

Shortly after the Navy decided to grace us with orders in late February, we decided that our time as renters was up and started to look at houses.  Make that 1 house because we put in an offer on March 15 for the first house we looked at.  I'm pretty sure this a cardinal sin of house hunting.  What we found was a house that needed some love in a great area of Virginia Beach.  After some haggling, our offer was accepted on March 16.  We closed on April 30 and the real fun began.

The listing read as the house "needing some TLC."  That is the understatement of the year.  It needs a total makeover.  Luckily, we have an extremely handy father on retainer whose motto is "What Would Norm Do?" (that's a This Old House reference).

Friends have been asking to see pictures of the house, so here we go.  We have bought a late 1970's ranch, so it's the opposite of what House Hunters on HGTV want.  You will not hear us utter the words "open space" or "this gets good light" but HGTV can suck it when it comes to "sweat equity."

The living room is to the right after you walk in the front door.  Note the "lovely" dark red wall and windows that seriously need to be replaced.  Apparently this shade of red was popular in the recent past because the rental house we're moving out of includes a master bedroom in this color.  We are not fans.

Looking straight ahead from the entry is the dining room.  The sliding glass door with ugly wood glued to the wall above it will be replaced with french doors.

The next series of pictures is of the kitchen which is next to the dining room.  The backsplash is navy blue and white which we like and will be keeping.  The cabinets are in good shape, but will be painted white.   The appliances are gone except for the dishwasher which might be the slowest machine on earth.  It works though and quite honestly our credit card needs a break.

 

Eat-in area of the kitchen.

Next to the kitchen is the family room.

Oh look!  The previous owners had some of that red paint left so they decided to paint the fireplace and the space above the sliding glass doors with it.  Note the blast from the past parquet floor.

The bedrooms are down the hall from the living areas of the house.  There are 4, one of which we are turning into Finn's playroom.  We are living in denial that toys may actually stay in this room.

Finn's room.  It is no longer purple.

Playroom.  The floor is in good condition, so we are throwing a rug over it and calling it a day.

Master bedroom.  It was 3 shades of pink.

Guest bedroom.  Maybe we'll put a bed under that light so guests can lie awake wondering when it's going to fall.

There is a hall bathroom and a guest no bathroom.  They both need serious help.

Hall bath.  Doesn't everyone want a pink flesh colored toilet and window without frosted glass at chest level in the shower?  That's not wallpaper on the walls either.  Someone was thrifty and used contact paper.  We'll be flipping a coin to see who gets to scrape that off the walls.

Master bath.  Those plastic hooks stuck to the wall are a flashback from college.

This about wraps up the inside of the house.  We have our work cut out for us.  Last weekend we painted all the rooms that are getting new carpet before we move in.   We'll work on the bathrooms and kitchen later.  Upcoming for this weekend are putting in french doors if they are delivered in time and finish up any painting touch ups.

For future reference, when I say "we" in terms of renovations let me break down what I really mean:

Dad - He is the only one of us who actually knows what he's doing.  He tells us what to do and we do it.  Hopefully we will learn a little something along the way and be worthy of using his tools. 

Mom - She has the hardest job and is generally on Finn duty while we're working on the house.  Even she is not fast enough to keep his hands out of wet paint!

Patrick - So far he has been the muscle for this operation.

Elizabeth (me) - I just do what I'm told.  Prepare to be impressed in my next post where I show the painted rooms because I rolled most of them.