Home Owning Update

This is our HOUSE. We are so proud of it, I'm sorry that these two pictures were taken in the afternoon though, it put shadows in the front :( sad.

I do not have my absolutely disgusting before pictures because they are on my other camera which was not packed by me--so I don't know which box it is in, but these were all during our 2 massive days of painting (which doesn't even BEGIN to describe the amount of work that has been done on this house since June 30th).


My mom painting one of the hall bedrooms.

My dad and Mom Julie painting baseboards. I am very happy with my color choices, most of the house is this creamy color that has some yellow in it--you can really tell because I picked white white for the trim, it looks awesome.

This is Mike working in the hallway, he did alot of up high painting while my mom did the lower half in the same room.

Mom really loved those baseboards, she did almost the whole house! Plus she painted the kitchen for us. Woohoo.

Eric's parents painted our first mural on the wall. I was sad to paint over it the next day. This is the awesome green I put as an accent wall in my living room. I'm so glad I did this. I really love it, I also decided to paint the inside of our front door the same green to match, it needs a second coat, but if you don't look too closely it is great, at least color-wise.

Eric working the edger, it helped us out alot, but you have to be careful not to get too much paint or it drips, just fyi.

The screen door and my front door are now black. I think it looks great from the street. And don't worry, once it it gets cooler out our shutters will join them in the world of painted black awesomeness.

This is my dad. He is a rockstar. He was at this house everyday for nine hours or more working for over 3 weeks. Most of the time he was here by himself, or it was just him and my mom. Most of the things they did to help us, no one asked them. Just walked in and "oh, this is awful, I need to fix this." I can't list all of the things because I probably don't know every single one, but I know he redid every outlet and lightswitch in the entire house, fixed the internet cables that used to all come out of just holes in the wall in every room so there is actually a jack, took out and installed new baseboards where they were gross and damaged, painted and added trim to the hall bedroom closet shelves, made new hanger racks (what are those actually called?). One day I came home and he had redone our closet, completely. He added shelves and a third hanger rack, then the next day he painted all of the new wood. Our bedroom door was in the hallway when we bought the house, so when he went to install it one day he realized it was bowed and could not hang on a wall, so he and I went to the door place, I bought a new door and he installed it that day, drilled all his holes and everything, because the door place charged 40 bucks to do it for you. Wow. He completely redid the gate for our fence--which was falling off of the house and installed backwards. Plus there was all of the painting and sanding and who knows what else because I wasn't here to see it. I am a very lucky child to have a jack-of-all-trades for a dad. It helps that he is not working right now because he never would have been able to do all this if he was, but I am just so blessed by all of the help we received. From everyone. We are very lucky. Thank you.

And just so you know, we are officially living in this house now, we moved in July 25th. Yesterday we handed in the keys to our rental. But I still can't put most things in place because we have no carpet yet. It was on backorder. (Something they neglected to mention until AFTER we had paid for it.) At the last we heard it will arrive in Mesa early next week, so maybe I will have carpet by the end of next week, keep your fingers crossed. I want to bring my furniture in from the garage and decide where things go. Dang carpet. It's a serious hold up--but we decided that one month of frustration was worth years and years of this freaking amazing carpet. Just wait to you feel it, it is sooo soft. Our blinds are also ordered, my brother Josh has a window and blind business and he got us an awesome deal. Who would have thought I could afford real wood blinds? Thanks so much Josh.