Fabulous Floors!

This week I had the most amazing morale boost! We have put a huge dent in transforming the look of our house. Last Tuesday we got our basement floor installed. If you remember from previous pictures we had this suspicious "adhesive" in the basement... so we were told by our inspector to put some sort of barrier between us and the floor. We went to Home Depot and fell in love with the cherry colored Trafficmaster Allure flooring. Good value for the price (or so we believed). How do you like it??

Before

After



Albeit dirty, this is the basement with the drywall...
this was our Saturday project

Also this week, they started the daunting task of refinishing our hardwood floors. As some of you could attest, our hardwood flooring throughout the house was pretty badly damaged by the former tenants (we believe mostly from their large dog and poor housekeeping skills). Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture (at least that I've located yet) of the hardwood floors, but the before picture below shows it with carpet... now, so you can get an idea.. all the spots on the carpet that one might think is simply just marks just from walking on a "nice carpet" are actually pet stains. With that in mind... look at the before, and now the beautiful after.

Before

After (Living Room)

Below is the before picture of our bedroom...
Again, remember spots mean yucky stains
and please, appreciate the lack of graffiti on the walls
4 coats of heavy duty primer later... I WON!

After... isn't it beautiful?! LOVE IT!

Well... that's it on the home front! I hope everyone else is enjoying their 2010! I'm starting to actually get a vision for OUR house!!

Happy New Year!

Jeremy and I wanted to extend to everyone the hope of an amazing 2010. We have several friends who are moving into new homes... having new babies... and just a ton of excitement all around! We pray the best for you. And if there is anything that we can do for you to help you out... please let us know. With the close of the 2009, I did a little bit of reflecting. Jeremy and I have been truly blessed to have such great families. We also have great friends who have blessed us so much this year.

Keep up the blogging! I love to see what's going on in everyone's lives. I'll do my best to keep updating. The excitement has just begun!!

Happy New Year! May God bless you and your family richly in 2010!

Kellee

A missing treasure... found!

Well, I guess "treasure" is not quite accurate.

You see, during the course of waiting for our house, we were asked 3 times to get an inspection for wood destroying pests. And all 3 times we came back with, no wood destroying insects were found, inactive (aka dead) ones were found... recommends seasonal spraying.

Well, today, we found the jewel. When the guy who is installing our new bathtub took down the old surround, down with it came a whole slew of carpenter ants!

Turns out the"inactive" carpenter ants were living under the plywood the the yucky bathtub was sitting on. Luckily by the grace of God, they were only destroying the plywood that was attached to the bathtub, and left the rest of the bathroom alone (or so it seems right now). It was odd, because there was also a large amount of concrete also helping support the nasty tub. Needless to say, we are trying to move past this, and head into the wonderfulness of a new bathtub... hopefully that project will be done by tomorrow.

Hammer Wielding Woman

Oh yes! I totally got to knock a wall out at our house. Here are the pictures! I am soo excited about how it all came out. There was even an amazing surprise... under the one wall, is also beautiful hardwood. Where we thought we'd have to have it "fixed"/patched actually looks great! So, it shouldn't be soo bad.

Personally, hammering out the drywall was so much fun. Any frustration or stress I had from this week or moving or whatnot... TOTALLY gone! I am also very pleased with our progress.This is my masterpiece

We recruited my cousin Andrew to take out the 1/2 wall
I think he may have even enjoyed it! (See video below)

My same wonderful cousin pulling out little tiny staples
that once held the carpet pad down to the floor.


We had some visitors come check us out.

Mine! Err... Ours!

This picture says it all! But alas! We are homeowners.... or as I say "mortages assumers."

Thank you to everyone who kept us in their thoughts and prayers over the last 3 months. It has been such a crazy ride. We are really excited about the adventure allowing us to embark on.

Furthermore... anyone want to help, we'll be having all sorts of priming parties, painting parties, moving parties etc. No experience necessary. We will feed anyone who comes to help. It will be loads of fun! The more the merrier!

Lets all go under the limbo stick....

So yeah, we're still in limbo waiting for all the paperwork to go through.

Guess, you'll have to continue to scroll down to see the pictures again. As an update goes, we did have our home inspection. The inspector found nothing new... or nothing that we didn't know about. The VA inspector from what I've been told, didn't stay very long, and asked only a few simple questions of our inspector. (Typically, the perspective buyers do NOT meet the VA inspector... they come when the buyers aren't there..) So, we're just waiting for the VA inspector's report to meet it to the bank... and allow for our closing. So, keep praying. God is moving (and hopefully so will we!)

I'll update when we hear anything.

We've fought the good fight, we've run/won the race....

I've been holding off for a while with posting pictures of the house. But... since I just found out that our bid was accepted... I thought it was safe to do so. Now, the next step is to get a home inspection. (So, put that to the top of your prayer list... the home inspection.)

Obviously, this is the outside.
This is the 1/2 bath.
This is the living room.This is the kitchen. It will need some updating, but
it's workable. :-)

Dining room off living room & kitchen

Bedroom #1

Bedroom #2

Bedroom #3
Bedroom #4
Like the graffiti?Full bath (really, there is a shower to the left.)Basement. There used to be a wood burning fireplace on that slab.
We saw it one day, then the next time... we didn't. It's MIA, so if
anyone sees it... would you kindly return it?m (I suspect the listing agent.)

So that's it. Please join with us and pray that the home inspection goes well. There is one area of concern. As the (angry) evicted residents left their home, they smashed the vanity in the half bath. They have to turn the water on, so we pray that it won't be all crazy, and ruin things. We're just trusting in God to lead us through this. At this point we're looking at moving the week before Christmas (good timing, huh? ), so if anyone wants to help, let me know. (I WILL FEED YOU!) And if anyone needs a place to stay starting in January 2010... let us know.

Have a good one!

~K~