Quick and dirty tour of the {empty} house

(All shots taken on my blurry iPhone, better 'before' pics to come soon! These aren't in any sort of order, I'll just describe each one underneath the shot...)

The family room/den/TV room, between the laundry/mudroom and kitchen

The family room/den/TV room, looking at the entrace to the mudroom/laundry room from the kitchen

Kitchen, looking into the den/family room/TV room and mudroom entrance

The dining room, off the kitchen

Built in in the dining room, looking into the kitchen

'Formal living room', which will act as my office/studio, off the dining room

My office

Front foyer/entrace, looking into the dining room (from my office)

Back room, behind my office, which will be Dan's music room for now

Downstairs main bath, right off the front foyer

Bathroom

Looking out to the front door from the bathroom

Kitchen, looking in from the den

Staircase

Stairs and bathroom (Dan's room off to the right)

Victor's room

Looking into the foyer and my office from the dining room

Victor's room

Landing at top of stairs/closets

Nursery

Nursery

Our room

Our room

Landing, looking from the 1/2 bath

Eventual guest room (needs lots of work!)

Eventual guest room

1/2 bath upstairs

1/2 bath upstairs

Mudroom/Laundry room (the first room to be getting a makeover!)

Back entrace into the mudroom (the main door we'll be using)

So there you have it! Lots of work to be done, but tomorrow is the 'big move', and we'll be spending the night there, very exciting!

Be back with the mudroom makeover (for some reason I'm the most excited about this one!)

Enjoy the end of summer, I can't wait to see it go.

G.

House Update

I said I would be back to update you all on the house, so here I am, and I'm VERY happy to say that everything worked out and WE GOT IT!

The last 2 weeks were very hectic for me, getting all of the conditions met, finding insurance quotes, going to inspections, paying appraisers, finding lawyers, and a bunch of other things I had to do to line up our mortgage and 'close the deal'. It was stressful (and pricey), but it's done now so all we have left to do is prove our downpayment to the mortgage folks and get our insurance lined up before we move on August 22nd.

The inspection went well, all of the majors were old but ok, the only thing we weren't really expecting was some (well, a lot) electrical issues, so that was a bit stressful, we had electricians in telling us different things, but in the end we managed to get a bit off the price of the house to bring it up to code, so that's good at least. Plus we got some extra money from the mortgage folks to do a few repairs that we felt were necessary (gutters to draw water away from the basement, replacing the pump that's outside in the shed, and adding a railing to the staircase). Those repairs, plus getting the house ready for winter (and a garden patch ready for next summer), will probably be the only things we'll do for the rest of this year, but we have our whole lives to work on it, so we don't need to be in a rush. The inspection report is really useful, we're going to use it as our 'long term to do list', checking off things here and there as we get them done (trust me, there's A LOT to do).  But it doesn't matter, the important thing is that's it's OURS.

So yeah, 6 weeks 'til we move again, which means we're back to having boxes everywhere and I'm packing up what we don't use on a daily basis. I'm also purging as much as possible, I really don't want to bring anything into the house that I don't either love or find useful...old sentiments and gifts included. This is our fresh start, I want to make it our home and not just a place where we keep our stuff, so only having what I want in there will be very important.  Many trips to the Salvation Army drop-off are planned :)

I think that's everything, I'll be taking LOTS of pics of before and afters, and our progress as we head down this journey of home ownership.  I can't wait :)

G.

PS-The layout above is my first attempt at digi scrapping, yay! I got the template for free from Cathy Zielkse over at Bits and Pieces...she's a cool lady, that one, I'll be using the template again very soon!