Living Room Progress

Our living room before-



Living room after some paint (and the bay window install)-



Yes, the fridge is still in the living room...

Kitchen With Appliances

Last but not least...my giant sink



This is the view into the kitchen, there used to be a wall and a boarded up fireplace/chimney here. There's some plumbing that needs to stay, but it the rest will be open (and everything will be drywalled.)



The before:

Moving Day(s)

So I think actual moving day was horrific enough to deserve a couple paragraphs. It went like this:

Find out Budget moving van we rented 2 months ago is available, but not tow dolly we rented 2 months ago. No one at Budget really seems to care, they string me along until actual moving day, when I give up and finally get one at U-haul (and u-haul didn't have any either, but one showed up at like 4pm.) Pay about $200 extra because the dolly with budget had been a package deal. Meanwhile, our large group of moving helpers has dwindled to just a couple. So...takes us 9 hours to pack up the van, which includes when we drove the van to get the dolly and a bookshelf toppled over in the back, which made a gallon of paint spill on a bunch of stuff. Including the one piece of furniture I've ever bought NOT at Ikea or Target. Awesome. We roll out of Ventura at around 7pm and quickly discover that when Budget tells you not to go over 55 mph they mean it...what they fail to mention is you can't even go over 40. So we roll into some place south of Sacramento at about 2am. This is the one bright point of the trip. It was a Holiday Inn Express and it was NICE. Super comfortable bed, really cool bathroom. I didn't want to leave. Did I mention the A/C was broken in the moving truck? And it was literally 103 degrees outside most of both days? And both dogs wanted to be on my lap? And I get a rash from Jack that starts out as little bumps and turns into giant welts and itches like crazy? So I was covered in sweat and rash and dog hair and the seat was burning my thighs. It was awesome. Oh, and the first leg of the trip was immediately after packing everything. We didn't take showers. At least I wasn't driving. Brian really got the short end of the stick. We finally got to the new house at about 11pm on June 28th. Climbed through the truck to get the box I had set aside to be the LAST BOX PACKED. It was labeled LAST BOX. It was nowhere near the back of the truck. Thanks to my limber monkey skills I was able to get the flashlights, air mattress, blanket, and dog food. Then we went into the house and I went into a full blown panic. Keep in mind I had only seen the kitchen in pictures...and all those "before" pictures? That's what I was seeing....and let me tell you, this house photographed amazingly well. It was much worse in person. To put it in perspective, one of the first things I did was lift up the toilet lid to use the bathroom....and then scream and run out of the bathroom. The toilet was filled with black gunk that was much worse than any sort of toilet matter, or mold, or both. It seriously looked like someone trapped some kind of animal in there. We got new toilets very soon after that incident. Luckily, after a couple days (really once we got all our stuff in the house) I was no longer convinced it was haunted and/or should have been condemned.

Here are some pictures to commemorate the occasion:
(The one of just me was after we packed everything and cleaned the whole condo, right before we locked it up. The picture is too small to actually tell, but I was 95% dead.)

When in doubt, paint it.

I've never met a piece of wood I didn't want to paint. Unless it is really really nice wood, I think it'd be better white. Or black, brown, green, blue....pretty much anything but its natural state. When I was a kid, it drove my parents crazy. They used to buy $5 bookcases at garage sales and get all upset when I wanted to paint them because they had 25 glass rings on them. I was supposed to appreciate the wood. Whatever. The obsession has proven to be valuable. I first put it into real action in the condo. The cabinets were gross dark brown from the 60's. I painted them all white, took off some of the doors, and painted the inside of those cabinets. I think it turned out looking much better than before. Now that we have the house, I've had a ton of wood to paint. There was a pink built in dresser and an ugly 1980s vanity in the upstairs bathroom, I painted them both a really dark brown so they would match and at least look ok enough that we wouldn't need to do anything more expensive for a while. Then I painted the cabinet above the toilet in the downstairs bathroom (big improvement!) Next I have to make the decision of whether or not to paint some of the trim in the house white. The majority of the trim in the house is white, and then there's some that is dark wood. It looks cool in pictures, but in person it is pretty beat up. It would be so much easier to sand, prime, and paint than it would be to refinish it all....plus then it would all match. I feel bad though, I guess I have developed at least some appreciation for wood. Bookshelves from garage sales should still definitely be painted though.

Kitchen

So, I haven't written on here in forever because so much has happened that I don't know where to start....we moved on June 27th and got to Oregon on the 28th (after over 20 hours on the road....apparently you can't drive a 24 foot moving truck very fast, especially when its towing a car.) The house has gotten a lot better already, but the work has been very slow, because we have the world's worst contractors. First the world's worst escrow, now the world's worst contractors....but its almost done, so yay. The biggest change so far is the kitchen, which ended up looking pretty much spectacular.

So here is the kitchen before we ever even moved in:



Not only did the kitchen just look ugly, but apparently almost all the cabinets were gross and semi rotted, there were layers of old nasty peeling wallpaper, all the electrical was questionable, the appliances were definitely not usable, and the wall the fridge was on was getting torn out. (The opposite side of that wall has the fireplace/chimney that didn't work and was torn out, and the dining room.)

By the time we actually moved in, all the cabinets were ripped out and most of the walls had lath and plaster exposed. (If you are wondering what lath and plaster is, don't worry....you'll know soon.) We had planned to refinish the floors (there was hardwood under several layers of ancient linoleum,) but the floors were so badly damaged that we decided on tile instead.

For about 4 months this was our kitchen:



That was our kitchen because this is what the actual kitchen looked like:



THAT is lath and plaster. Old houses don't have drywall, they have that freak show behind the walls.

The whole kitchen area got re drywalled, all new electrical, plumbed for a dishwasher and water for the fridge, plug and switch for a garbage disposal, all the good stuff. We painted the walls and I think the color turned out perfect. (Behr Oatcake.) The contractor was supposed to do the kitchen, but since he sucks we ended up going to Home Depot, and got a totally better kitchen for less money. The best part is, well what do you know?! The kitchen is actually done!



All the appliances are in now too, except for the fridge. The contractor is doing the tile, so its no surprise that the tile isn't finished, and we don't want to put the fridge in until the tile is in. Last night the mini fridge died though, so the new fridge is plugged in in the living room so that I could refrigerate last night's leftovers. I'll have to take pictures of the appliances so everyone can see the full effect. They're all stainless steel and by far the nicest that I've ever had. The dishwasher actually cleans EVERYTHING, and the stove is gas. Gas is by far better than electric...and I've had electric since I moved out on my own. So nice to have it back.

So now that I've actually written something, I'm assuming I will keep it up....we'll see.