All moved in

That is to say that all of our things are on the same place at the same time. We still have a garage completely full of boxes to be weeded through and unpacked and put away but this house is really a home now and all of our hard work paid off.

Moving day started bright and early on Wednesday with the crew from two men and a truck arriving at eight. Jackson and Joey spent the night with nana and papa so they weren't under foot. It turns out that one of the guys moving us actually moved me and the boys into our old house two years ago. Dexter and Scott were great. Fast efficient and most importantly under budget!!! These guys must have played a lot of tetris growing up because these stacks were unreal.

Half way through the move Joshua disappeared. We found him curled up in james car under a snuggie fast asleep. Must have worn the kid out!

Seeing how well the furniture fit in the space thrills me to no end. Our huge sectional fits great and I adore the contrast of the gray with the brown and the blue accents!

The dining room is our final frontier. During the carpet removal process we discovered that the nasty Berber in the room was adhered with a solid glue mat which means it has to be physically scraped up instead of just being pulled up. So we are living with it for now but i already have seven boxes of new flooring ready to go down once it finally gets taken up so that just can't happen far enough for me. Whoever came up with carpeted dining rooms obviously never had small children.

The boys are both thrilled with their new rooms. Jackson's room is truly massive and yes he does get his own tv hooked up to the wii to complete the Mario motif. It also frees up the downstairs tv for adult programming. Joeys room is smaller but so is he.
During the course of taking apart the bunk beds it was discovered that the bottom bunk was cracked in several places so instead of just separating the beds Joey got a new race car bed from Craigslist instead. Yeah he was as thrilled as you might imagine.

So day one went great. I had taken the whole week off to handle the move so I spent today hanging curtains putting up my scrapbook cubes and starting on Mt Saint Boxes. I also ran the kids over to their new Kindercare to do their paperwork to start on Monday. They are loving the huge fenced in back yard and played outside for almost two hours in the chilly air. Since mediacom doesn't come out until tuesday we have no tv or Internet except on our phones. It's kind of refreshing and definitely helps keep us on task with the unpacking process.

Tomorrow I am going to attempt to replace a truly heinous light fixture in the hallway and another run to lowes for new doorknobs since the place was a rental before we have no idea how many keys are floating around so they are all getting new locks.

Anyway. That's the update. Here are some photos of the progress since I am on the blogger app on my phone I couldn't do it as I went but you can connect the dots.

House Reboot Day 5

Tomorrow the moving truck comes!!!  I really cannot wait until 8:00 AM tomorrow morning!!!

I was supposed to work today but all three of my appointments reset - I was already in Newton to drop of a load of stuff so I just stayed out there and started putting all of the kitchen stuff away in my newly lined cabinets.  

Chad and the boys got there a little bit later with more loads - they totally cleared out the house of every stick of food, sheets and pillows so now we have a fully stocked kitchen and a new microwave to finish it off --- all of that and --- I forgot to take any pictures of that...

But I did take pictures of the basement - the boys did an amazing job it was gleaming white all over what used to be a dank dark space.  Even the kitchen and bathroom down there look great after hours of steaming and power washing.  I can't wait to see this place with the furniture in it.

House Reboot Day 4

Cleaning was the name of the game today I got the floors all cleaned up in the living and dining rooms.  Helped mom get the kitchen cabinet liners in the kitchen cabinets and unpacked two loads of stuff!  Moving truck comes tomorrow so we are super excited.

The boys were working SO hard on the gross basement I am super proud of them! I left before they were done but they put a second coat of killz on all of the exterior brick and then painted a layer of it on the floor to seal out any remaining yuckies that are down there. They steam cleaned the refrigerator and stove in the basement so the kitchen is ready to go.  Can't wait to see the progress and take pictures this morning.

Dad did an amazing job on the lawn!!! I forgot to take exterior before pictures but there were vines crawling all over the fence in the back yard - weeds everywhere along the fence line and trees that desperately needed to be trimmed. What we have now is a darling oasis that the kids just adore running around in.  I forgot how nice it was to have a fenced in back yard!!!

Here are the day's progress pictures.  More to come today!

I forgot to post the master bedroom progress photos yesterday  - My Happy Helper Keri did an amazing job turning the pale green walls into a warm inviting clay color!

House Reboot Day 3

As I sit here right now I am in some serious pain. My calves are SCREAMING at me but in that "I have moved my body and I'm not used to it but this pain is here to remind you that you did something good" kind of ways.

I didn't mean to stay until midnight last night finishing the house - I really didn't but there I was finishing the office paint until midnight.  That room was supposed to be easy - but of course it wasn't I think I realize why the previous owners put up wallpaper - the wall is not really even and mottled with all kinds of pits and plaster bumps.  So I spent a good deal of time scraping off the remaining wallpaper goo with a putty knife then fixing the holes in the wall where the ugly shelving used to reside and THEN finally painting.  By the time I would get into a rhythm with the roller and the trim brush something or someone else would demand my attention and I would have to start over.  Thus, me being there until midnight!

I wrote some love letters on the wall the night before I want all of this literally written on the walls in this house.  Father make this place a haven for my family let this be the beginning of a new chapter in our life surround all those who enter with your love.  AMEN.

Meanwhile, James and Josh were downstairs busting their butts to make the main bedroom habitable.  They SCRUBBED down all of the walls with bleach and mold and mildew cleaner.  Then put a layer of killz on it.  I'm serious when I say they worked their butts off and never once complained.  I'm SO proud of them.  The after pictures are so far unimpressive but here is what we were dealing with down there.

Trust me when I say that every time I went downstairs to check on them it smelled just a little bit better - it wasn't bad just musty basement smell.  The shocking this is - people paid actual money to live in that stink hole!  I feels so bad for them!

Meanwhile my amazing Daddy finished cleaning up the yard (there were vines EVERYWHERE out there) and my Mommy steam cleaned the kitchen appliances and the kitchen cupboards and then Daddy Power washed the oven grates and the refrigerator shelving.  What would I do without them.

So today's goals:

Take all the tape off the walls that have been painted

Finish the layers of Killz on the basement

Steam clean the floors upstairs and down

Apply the shelf liners on the kitchen cabinets

MAYBE paint the dining room (if I'm feeling ambitious)

The basement is definitely priority though.

House Reboot Day 2

As much as I did at the house today the guys did WAY more than I could have imagined.  They left the house early this morning - I had a lead to run at 10 so I stayed behind.  It ended up being a no show but by the time I got there WHAT A CHANGE!  All of the carpet was ripped out and hauled away, my mother in law was yanking staples out of the floors (which look amazing btw) and the boys were downstairs hauling the skanky carpet out of the basement apartment.  

All of that is the good news.  The bad news is that under the skanky carpet was an even skankier concrete floor.  Some genius decided to put non permeable reflective insulation over old tile and then laid the carpet over the top.  The result?  All of the moisture in the past however many years grew some pretty disgusting things under that carpet/insulation.  Tomorrow will go down in history as the day of the bleach buckets.  Luckily James and Josh are determined to make that apartment their man cave so they are heading out to the house in the morning to scrub, bleach and primer the basement.  Once the whole thing is done we are going to have a great little apartment down there its the getting there that is the problem.

When I got there, I set to work on the living room - let me just tell you that painting around that picture rail is a HUGE pain in my patoot.  It took me the better part of the day (between chasing the kids around and supervising other projects) to get everything painted and touchup work done.  

Meanwhile, My two happy helpers, Keri and Eliyah, got to work painting Joey and Jackson's rooms.  I'm THRILLED with the results!  I have to find some way to get some of the old paint off the woodwork but all in good time.  Here are today's progress pictures.  Enjoy!

Joey's room "the before pictures - what on EARTH were they thinking when they did this to the walls???

Sorry Keri....disregard the "happy helper"

And after: Sherwin Williams Bracing Blue is to make for the perfect race car room! Gotta put a plug in for the AWESOME coverage the Super Paint has!  The first coat that went on and you couldn't tell this was the Blair Witch Room at all!

And Jackson's room - all ready to become the Mario set.  We used the Sherwin Williams Dazzle color to cover up the pee yellow on the walls.

The picture doesn't do it justice.  This room is crazy blue.

And last but not least the big reveal of the living room and the nice hardwood floors we found underneath!  What a relief that they were nice under there.  If only we were so lucky in the basement.
Sherwin Williams Serious Gray is the color on the walls.  It has a blue tint to it so its going to look GREAT with the blue accent pillows and curtains we have for the living room!

On to Day three!  Only two more days of work before the moving truck comes on Wednesday morning.  Then the real fun begins...decorating!

House Reboot Day 1

FINALLY!  We closed on the house yesterday at one and rallied the troops over to the new house!  The kids were seriously excited and can't wait for their rooms to get painted!  The goal for the day was just to get the wallpaper down in the office area and to get as far as we could on the main level only (if we started spreading ourselves all over the house it would be a problem.  So here is our progress.  Not bad for 8 hours work.  Of course mom and dad were here helping and taking care of the boys and Keri and Eliyah came by after their dinner and stayed until after midnight getting the touches put together.

Aint that a beautiful sign???

 Here is the office before we started.  The wallpaper is a blue plaid pattern all the way around.  Just remember - friends don't let friends put up wallpaper.

And after the first day of work!

The living room before - main concern was the maroon trim going around the top of the wall YUCK.

When I left the house last night this is what it looked like!  It's finally looking like a real residence

Last but not least: Chad ripped up the carpet from the steps going up to the bedrooms there is nice wood that just needs a finish on it under the carpet.  Then it was a process of yanking out hundreds of carpet staples.  Josh helped :) Can't argue with the results.

Today the projects include getting rid of ALL of the carpet in the entire house.  Removing the wallpaper border in the kitchen and painting painting painting and more painting.  What a great weekend this is going to be!  

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Jackson's Room

Well - Jackson actually gets the biggest room of all of us "top floor" dwellers.  But he also gets the least amount of closet space.  I think he will make really good use of the extra space maybe even "gulp" getting a TV and the Wii in his room...we'll see about that but it seems like a logical place to put it since the basement is the big boy's domain.

Jackson has had Super Mario Brothers bedding for a couple of years now so now he wants a full blown Mario Room.  I have some cute ideas but its going to take time to implement them.

Here is the room as it is now.  Jackson has Mario curtains to go over those windows instead of the sheers.

This little built in dresser is SO nice! It solved the problem of who was going to get the dresser when we moved the kids into their own room.

The Yellow is going BYE BYE!

So this is what he currently has as a bedroom set...

So we are going to paint the walls the color of the Mario background and we got these cool decals to go on his walls 

Sherwin Williams Dazzle

and I found this great poster to go up as well.