Home Ownership – The First Week

So it’s official! As of last Monday we are finally homeowners. The last week has been a whirlwind of painting, scraping, packing and moving so I thought I’d get you up to speed. If I’m honest, we’re both completely exhausted, but we’re starting to see signs of improvement around here already so we know the effort will pay off.

Day 1 – Monday

Our appointment for our closing was at 4:00. By 5:30 we were leaving the lawyer’s office. We stopped off to grab takeout for dinner and then headed over to the house. By 7:30 we had all of the flooring in the three bedrooms, the hallway and the stairs ripped up and piled up in a heap in the garage. I’m here to tell you, this was the nastiest carpet you’ve ever seen. (Don’t worry. I have plenty of photos I’ll share later.)

Day 2 – Tuesday

I took the next day off from work so I could get a jump start on getting the house cleaned up. Only, when I got to the house in the morning I realized that the keys I had gotten at closing were the wrong keys. So much for that idea. Instead I spent the morning researching flooring with my buddy Carolynn. (We also stopped for coffee. This was crucial.) At lunchtime I drove up, met Mike at school to grab keys from him, and then headed back to the house to clean. We then spent the entire night pulling staples and tack strips up from the old carpet. I pulled a muscle in my neck and discovered muscles in my forearms I never even knew existed.

Day 3 – Wednesday

Painting commenced. The master bedroom got the first coat of paint, the dramatic results of which were not lost on me. I took about 87,592 photos. (Again, I promise more photos than you can handle in the very near future.) We then decided all of the existing closet doors needed to be ripped out immediately and decided to demo six bifold mirrored closet doors. They met their end in the ever-growing pile of debris in the garage.

Day 4 – Thursday

Thursday brought a lot more painting. The master bedroom got a second coat of Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray and the living room got the first coat of Edgecomb Gray. It then dawned on us that the living room shares a wall with the entry hall and the stairway/upstairs hall so we realized those would need to be Edgecomb Gray, too. So then the entry hall got painted.

Day 5 – Friday

After work I picked up pizza, declared myself completely sick of takeout dinner and met Mike at the new house where he was already slaving away putting the second coat of paint on the living room. We finished that up and then ripped out the old carpet in the dining room, which will soon become our office. We pulled out all the tack strips and staples, spackled a bunch of crazy dents and dings on the wall and then sanded down the spackle until our shoulders burned. Then we ran out of steam and dragged ourselves back to our rental to pass out.

Day 6 – Saturday

Saturday was moving day. I woke up early, made another run to the paint store to grab more paint and by 11:00 we were loading up trucks and cars. It took six people roughly 6 hours to get us from House A into House B, where all of our stuff is now piled into the family room (literally stacked almost to the ceiling) while we wait for new flooring upstairs. We then went back to our rental to crash on the pull out sofa and to continue packing some of our smaller items to move the next day.

Day 7 – Sunday

More packing. More moving. More cleaning. More painting. Lather, rinse and repeat. I finished moving out the last of our personal belongings from our rental while Mike continued painting at the new house. We spent our first night in our new house, camped out on the floor of our family room.

Day 8 – Monday

Yesterday was all about cable/internet installation, scoring more super affordable Craigslist furniture (this time a new bureau that will hold our flat screen television in the living room) and painting the ceiling in the living room. We painted until about 9:30 and crawled completely exhausted into bed about an hour later. Turns out, ceiling paint that goes on pale pink and dries bright white completely amuses me. And it made a huge difference on our previously smoke-stained living room ceiling. Score!

Day 9 – Tuesday

After work today I headed over to our old house for a final walk-through and to clean up after us a bit more. Mike met me there with takeout for dinner (yet again) and we cleaned until about 8:30. By the time we handed off our keys to a neighborhood friend for our landlords and got home it was nearly 9:00. Tomorrow we’ll wake up (from our current “bedroom” on the floor of the family room) and start all over again.

Did I mention that we’re tired? Completely and utterly exhausted.

Master Bedroom and Living Room Paint Colors

With our closing on Monday, Mike and I decided to spend some time today getting our appliances ordered and final paint colors selected for our master bedroom and living room, the two rooms we plan to tackle first. I know I want the whole house to be painted in soft neutrals and shades of gray, blue and greige, that delightful gray area being gray and beige. (No pun intended.) The house is only around 1600 square feet so I know I want to limit the number of paint colors to about four so all the spaces have great continuity and flow from room to room. With that in mind, picking the colors for two of the spaces that will get the most use was an important step in determining the direction things will go.

I knew right away that I wanted gray walls in the master bedroom, a nice medium shade that was decidedly gray as opposed to an off white shade that read a bit gray. Without too much difficulty I settled on Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray HC-170. It’s a beautiful neutral gray with just a tiny hint of blue undertone that is just gorgeous. Keeping in mind that every monitor is different, here is a bedroom painted in Stonington Gray:

{Photo from decor pad.}

Deciding on the living room paint was only slightly more difficult. I thought I had wanted a shade of cream or light tan, something akin to Benjamin Moore French White 1093, but when I played with the swatches against a throw pillow from our soft aquamarine couch, I knew those shades weren’t going to work. They were alternately reading too pink, too yellow, too orange, just too warm in general. After playing around with a couple of ideas, Mike and I both gravitated toward Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray HC-173 so that was the winner. Here is a living room painted in Edgecomb Gray:

{Photo from Blossom Interiors.}

The two colors look beautiful together, but are different enough that I think the rooms will read very differently. Stonington Gray is definitely a bit darker and a decidedly cooler gray, while the Edgecomb Gray reads more like a soft greige hue.

{Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray HC-170 from my perfect color.}

{Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Gray HC-173 from my perfect color.}

I also decided on a shade of white for the kitchen cabinets, which I’ll be painting next Tuesday. Without much deliberation I opted for perennial Benjamin Moore favorite Cloud White OC-130. I’ll be posting full details on the products I used for the kitchen cabinets plus complete before and after photos next week. Let the games begin!

T-Minus 7 Days Until Home Ownership

It appears that nearly all of February has come and gone without my posting to update on the status of the house-buying process, and there’s really no excuse for that other than being tired, busy and sick of thinking about the insane process that is buying a house. There was just about nothing that proved simple during the last few months of working toward home ownership for us and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t at least somewhat envy people who have an easier go of it. Oh well. All is well that ends well, right? And as of this time next Monday, we’ll officially be home owners! One week from now we will likely be sitting on the floor in our new living room eating pizza and drinking cheap champagne straight from the bottle. Because that’s how we roll.

So, with seven days to go and a closing date and time officially scheduled, I figured I’d buck up and share a few more photos of the new digs. Stay tuned next week for official “before” photos of the entire place, which will look nothing like it does now in the coming weeks and months. First up, a reminder of the kitchen we’re inheriting…

And a view of the family room from the kitchen.

About the only thing that will stay in these two rooms is the flooring, all of which is really quite nice. Even the fireplace needs a major overhaul. (Seriously, who puts a woodstove insert into a fireplace and punches holes in the brick surround for ugly vents? Ugh.)

Here is the main bathroom. Please note the the duct tape on the inside of the sink bowl and the sickly yellow paint. Both will be fixed just as soon as humanly possible. The tile is actually pretty nice in person and will remain, at least for the meantime. While it’s not my first choice of color or size, it’s new and in no way visually offensive so many other projects are taking priority over this one.

Among many other little things, the front of the house needs a good cleaning up. The fake brick, the front door, the horrible exterior lighting, the dated window boxes and the stained driveway all need some help. On the upside, we like the siding color and the two-stall garage.

And here’s the backyard, a major selling point for us when it came to purchasing this house. It’s huge, it’s completely fenced in and there’s a huge inground pool. I can’t wait to buy new patio furniture, plant a garden and line the yard with pretty flowers.

So there you have the first glimpse at our new place. I can hardly believe after all the work, frustration, hopes, fears, and more than a few tears it’s really happening. I look forward to sharing every last bit of the renovation process with you so stay tuned! A big thank you to everyone for your incredibly support during this trying process. Your emails, comments, tweets and virtual hugs have been so very dearly appreciated. xoxo

Mission: Furnish and Decorate a Home On the Cheap

As we inch ever so slowly closer to home ownership (a process plagued with hurdles and numerous hoops through which we’ve had to jump), I’ve taken to stalking Craigslist like it’s my job. A couple of weeks ago I scored this pair of solid oak end tables for $50. I basically stole them they were so cheap. Eventually they’ll be painted and get new drawer pulls, but for now they’re languishing away in our den waiting to be moved to the new house. Once they’re all gussied up, they’re going into the master bedroom where we’ve always been sadly lacking nice bedside tables.

Once I had acquired the tables, I couldn’t get lamps out of my brain. I fell in love with these jade colored glass lamps from Pottery Barn when Ashley of Ashley Brooke Designs posted a photo of her bedroom (and subsequently, the lamps) on Twitter. I was even tempted to get them when I wandered into Marshalls on a whim. Low and behold, they had two gorgeous turquoise lamps, perfect for the bedroom. They were $29.99 each, but only set me back $45 after using a merchandise credit from a return. The much pricier Pottery Barn lamps, at $99 each, were momentarily forgotten, but I think I have a plan for them in our living room down the line.

So I got home last night from shopping and running errands. Mike is out of town for a few days so I decided to watch Julie & Julia and bake cookies. I got dinner on the stove and was trolling around Craigslist, yet again, when I happened upon a table with four chairs for $150. The table in our house currently is our landlord’s so I’ve been keeping an eye open for a decent set that wouldn’t set us back thousands of dollars. With Mike out of town, I impulsively decided to call up the guy who had listed the table and chairs to explain that I wasn’t sure they’d fit in my Volkswagen Rabbit. He graciously offered to deliver them and an hour later I had a table and four chairs showed up at the front door. For $150. The chairs are my favorite part – they’ve got great Quaker lines, which I adore.

So there you have it, my recent cheap finds as I attempt to block out the stress of actually buying the house itself by dreaming up lots of renovation and decorating ideas. And stalking Craigslist on a very regular basis.

And the Saga Continues…

Ok, so I am going to come right out and admit that buying a house is no walk in the park. In fact, if I’m honest, it’s a complete pain in the ass. From the initial price negotiations to the dreaded home inspection that didn’t pan out as we had hoped, things haven’t exactly been smooth sailing. Following our inspection, we got hung up for over 10 days haggling back and forth to try and reach a consensus on a credit to be issued at closing. (I’m not sure how it works outside of New York so for those out of state and those who haven’t been through the process, getting a credit at closing essentially means you get part of the price you’re paying for the house back in a check along with the keys to your new house to put toward any repairs you might need to complete.) It was estimated that the house needed approximately $2000 – 3000 in repairs so we asked for what we thought was a very fair $2000 credit. The sellers wouldn’t budge and required multiple copies of our inspection, brought in their own inspector to try and refute the results and on and on and on.

Several times we discussed walking away. I went back to the drawing board and started researching other properties and finally it looked as though we’d probably be spending the weekend house hunting again. We were completely bummed. But the reality of the situation was – we’d already gone higher on price than we had hoped and we had already committed to a house that required us to buy all brand new appliances upon moving in and we felt very strongly that even if we could afford another $2000 – 3000 in repairs we didn’t want to do so. It was that simple. Why should we pay for an issue the current homeowner ignored? It was a classic case of “not my problem” and we decided to put our collective foot down. Pay up the $2000 or we’re moving on and seeing other properties. They called our bluff. We walked. And not an hour later I got a phone call back that all of a sudden they were ready to play nice. Less than twenty four hours later we had a signed contingency release in hand stating that they were committed to issuing a $2000 credit at closing. Woohoo! And onward we go.

Ok, so let’s get onto the good stuff for a moment, shall we? A couple of weekends ago we went out appliance window-shopping so we could scope out ideas, finalize a budget and chat with our friendly neighborhood Lowes and Home Depot guys about delivery times and charges, etc. While we’re still debating a dishwasher, we have our stove and fridge fairly well picked out.

This range is Frigidaire Gallery from Lowe’s. (I’d link to the exact model, but their site appears to be down at the moment.) It’s definitely not a real high-end unit (ohhh how I would love me some Viking in my house), but it has a few extra features I like. It’s stainless steel, it’s gas, it has a self-cleaning oven and it has five burners with a power burner for boiling big pots of water quickly and a simmer burner for delicate sauces. Love that!

The refrigerator is also by Frigidaire and despite my love for bottom-freezer French door models, we decided that the traditional side-by-side style will suit us just fine. We have a very similar Frigidaire fridge in our current rental and it more than gets the job done for us. I have a lifetime to be snooty about appliances, I’m not going to start now. Even though I really wish I could fork up the dough for a gorgeous Sub-Zero, it’s just not going to happen.

This week is all about the mortgage application now that we are finally wrapped up with negotiations. We don’t foresee any issues on that front, but I’m not holding my breath until the coast is completely clear. There have been too many bumps in the road so far from me to rest easy just yet! After that we’ll be onto the appraisal phase and assuming we make it that far, we should be homeowners in the next month to six weeks. I am scared, excited, nervous and absolutely ready to get this home-owning show on the road. Stay tuned!

Dinner – Red Lentil Dahl

We spent today doing typical Sunday things. We slept in. We wondered around the Syracuse Antiques Exchange. We went grocery shopping. And while grocery shopping, we visited all the lovely ladies who stand around Wegmans on Sunday afternoons handing out samples. One of those ladies had samples of Orgain, an organic meal replacement shake. (The Creamy Chocolate Fudge is smooth and pleasantly bittersweet like a nice dark chocolate. I immediately carted a few home.) While chatting with her, she gave us a copy of the Nature’s Marketplace flyer from Wegman’s organic section, which is filled with coupons and healthy living tips. Inside was a recipe for red lentil dahl, a recipe taken from The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Elia.

I rounded up the ingredients and put this on the menu for tonight’s dinner. It is rich and layered in flavor and boasts seven grams of fiber per serving. It is warm and spicy and the perfect one-pot dinner for wannabe vegetarians such as myself on a cold winter’s night. At the last minute I actually added about a cup of frozen green peas and let them cook in the dahl just long enough to be warmed through. I loved the extra addition of something bright and fresh along with the lemon juice amidst all the spices.

Red Lentil Dahl

1-3/4 c red lentils
2 Tbsp oil
3 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp black or yellow mustard seeds
1 white onion, finely chopped
1-1/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped or grated
1 red chili, seeded, finely chopped
3 tsp curry powder
4 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp tumeric
Pinch of chili powder
1 Tbsp tomato puree
2 cinnamon sticks
2 c low-sodium vegetable stock or water
Sea salt
Juice of 1 lemon
Bunch of mint, chopped
Bunch of cilantro, chopped

1. Rinse lentils. Place in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and then drain in a fine sieve, rinse with cold water and drain again.

2. Heat oil in a large pan. Add cumin and mustard seeds. (Stand back – as they hit the hot oil they will sputter and spit.) Cook for 30 seconds. Add onion. (This will reduce the temperature in the pan immediately; be careful not to burn the seeds or the dahl will be bitter.) Cook over medium heat until softened. Add ginger, garlic, chili, curry powder, cumin, tumeric, and chili powder and fry for 3 minutes. Add tomato puree and fry for 1 minute.

3. Add lentils, cinnamon sticks, and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook for 15 minutes, or until lentils are tender and dahl has thickened. (Add a little water if too thick.) Remove from heat, season with salt and add lemon juice to taste.

4. Let cool a little bit before adding mint and cilantro (otherwise they will discolor). Serve warm.

{Photo from Edible Aria.}

Touching Up

I have so much to fill you in on regarding this house buying process. But can I just say – it is incredibly stressful! Far more so than I had expected even though I was fully prepared for this process to be anything but a cake walk. With that said, I’m planning to write about the craziness of the last couple of weeks in the next day or so, but in the meantime I just wanted to share my undying love and affection for Glidden. See, because we’re slowly realizing we can probably start doing things like packing and getting organized for the upcoming move. And we needed some touch up paint for one of the bedrooms, but I really wasn’t all that interested in spending $10+ on a quart of paint when I am still debating paint colors for the new abode and we really only needed a dab or two. Well low and behold, Home Depot carries these sweet little Glidden paint testers that cost about $3. They come in tiny little bottles with a screw top that has a mini paint brush attached to the underside. Yup. Pure genius. So for $3 we touched up the areas in need and have plenty of dabs leftover in case we scuff anything as we move our furniture out next month. Like I said – genius! And for the record, yes, simple things really do amuse this simple mind.

Jessica Hische Drop Cap Prints

It’s really no secret at this point that I love just about everything that Jessica Hische creates. When she launched her Daily Drop Cap project, I blogged about it almost immediately. So I was pretty damn excited yesterday when Jessica announced she is now selling Daily Drop Cap prints in her online shop. I think I am probably going to need this one to hang above my desk…

{Photo from Jessica Hische.}

DIY Clipboards

This post all about clipboards on Desire to Inspire made me really happy this morning. I love clipboards and now I have all kinds of fun ideas on how I can incorporate even more into our house and possibly in my workspace at the office. I have a cluster of six that hang over my desk in our little home office currently. I used scrapbook paper and decoupage glue to give them a little personality. This photo was taken when I first made them about a year and a half ago. They are now covered in all kinds of goodies I can’t part with – photographs, movie stubs, greeting cards, scraps of ribbon and paper that have inspired projects and so much more. Clipboards are really quite handy and they’re super inexpensive – I think this was about a $15 project, including the paper and glue.

{Photo by Cyd Converse for A Year of Marriage.}

Favorite Home Renovation Blogs

For as long as I’ve been around the blogworld, I’ve got to admit to being completely unschooled when it comes to the best home renovation blogs. I’ve long kept an extensive list of favorite home design blogs written by what I’d deem to be professional bloggers, but I’ve sadly been missing out on some great blogs where some truly inspiring people are transforming lackluster houses into style havens worthy of the most fabulous shelter magazines. Or perhaps there really was nothing to miss out on until the prospect of a home of my own to renovate loomed in the future. Either way, I’m working on getting an education and getting up to speed just as quickly as I can. I’m going to share a few favorites and, in turn, I’m hoping you might have one or two to share with me. Pretty please?

Young House Love

Brooklyn Limestone

The Lettered Cottage

1110 Watauga Street

Remodelista