Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Our old house

Justin had the Washington State archives pull the assessment photo from 1937 for us. The place doesn't look much different on the outside 80 years ago.


Sunday, April 19, 2009

Milestones


Yesterday was our deadline, but we beat it by a mile. The goal all along was to move into the house and host Justin's 29th birthday in the new place. We had an awesome party on Saturday night. Like proud parents, we were able to put our project out on display and welcomed the admiration and compliments. Justin had a keg of beer and a favorite meal and a bunch of friends over to help him celebrate the last of his 20s. I made the cake, a tried and true recipe for a delicious chocolate on chocolate confection. And everyone sang Happy Birthday.
Sunday was a delight...we took the day off and not just to nurse hangovers from the birthday party. We decided to check out the bike routes and took the inagural bike ride of the year, a whopping 9 miles which just about killed me since I'm so out of shape and there was a nice big hill to climb to get home. We read the paper and just relaxed, away from the tile and caulk and paint and home improvement projects that have claimed our weekends for so many months.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Photos

Here are a few photos showing off the place now that we've moved in:

Here's Justin enjoying some ice cream and surfing the web in our living room. Here's our kichen, mostly cleaned up with our new island (the countertop will be in next week!).
Our dining room with our fun new chairs.
A special guest in our new chairs. (And Tink sharing a seat with her new best friend, Ahna)

Friday, April 10, 2009

Quick Update

I have no pictures to show today but we've had a lot of fun this past week moving in. Yesterday, we received the cabinets for our kitchen island unexpectantly so we were compelled to install the island. I ordered the butcherblock countertop on Thursday afternoon once I realized the cabinets were on their way. Justin had started the installation by the time I came home. I punched holes in all of the doors to install the knob & pull hardware and by 8pm, we had ourselves a kitchen island sans countertop.

UPS has been making regular stops at our place since we moved in. We had a delivery of the bathroom towel bars this week and the pendant lights for the kitchen island, ordered on Thursday, have been delivered today (how's that for speed...and delivery was FREE!). I've been busy getting a few of the things I've been longing for over the past four months including some new hiking shoes and a cute mini-muffin tin. The shoes came yesterday and the tin is on its way today.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Making the house our home

We've spent more than a week in the bungalow now and it is starting to feel more familiar. There is a certain different feng shui to this place that has me moving through the place differently than I had in the last home. It's not good or bad, just different and will take a little to get used to, to make a habit.

We have a list about a million items long to "fix" or work on so we are still spending our evenings and weekends working at the house. It is about a million times more convenient now though. This past week (and a half!) we've finished grouting the upstairs bathroom, moved an outlet to make tiling easier, hung up a bunch of hooks and even a few pieces of artwork, hosted some friends for dinner, framed out a linen closet and painted it, started priming the trim in the living room, removed all of the ugly coax cable hanging off the exterior the house, unloaded the extra doorframes to make room for outdoor furniture on the front porch, swept and mopped all of the floors, installed the "magic corner" in our corner cabinet, hung the towel bars and toilet paper holder in the bathroom, and well, you get the point. We've been chipping away at the list. Our big upcoming jobs really have to do with prepping the trim to paint and painting.

One of the super great things is a return to cooking for ourselves. I'm really loving the new range that we have. The jury is still out on the dishwasher. It is definately quiet as a mouse but I'm still wondering how clean it is getting my dishes. I think it is working but the first few things I pulled out were definately not as clean as they could be. We have the bbq set up outside and have employed it for a few meals already.