House to Home: Part 1

I've been absolutely horrible about updating, mostly because we've been so busy that I've been falling into bed without doing anything at the end of the night. We have made so much progress though that you wouldn't recognize our house, or my belly lol, and it's starting to look like a real home. 

Last we left off, the walls had been washed, primed, ripped full of holes, patched and then the floors had been sanded.

Since then, our living room has gone from: 

To this:

To this:

Unfortunately this lovely clean room only lasted a night, as we moved a full truckload of stuff over and most of it ended up stacked in that clear bit of floor space. We're missing all electrical plugs but we do have the new LED retrofits in and a temporary switch so we have light. And the progress is not just in the living room. It's all the rooms! Except maybe the garage. 

The master bedroom has gone from this:

To this:

To this:

While our master looks pretty much ready to go, it also has no LED retrofits, electrical plugs or switches, not even a temporary switch, and until the house is a little more animal ready, we can't actually move our brood over and sleep there. 

The baby's room has had similar treatment which helps ease some of the crazy need to nest. I'm actually so tied when I get home that even my hormones are zonked and only heartburn or the need to pee can pull me out of bed. 

The pay off is worth it though :) The nursery has gone from:

To this:

To this:

The rest of the house has gotten quite a facelift too. The second door to the guest room was closed, the stairs refinished, the risers painted red and the front door painted grey. 

More photos are soon to come, there's still so much we need to finish before the baby arrives!

31 Weeks

Somehow, time keeps rushing by and we are getting closer and closer to baby arriving. Last Thursday marked 31 weeks and if baby actually makes their appearance on time, we'll be meeting our little bean in less than 10 weeks! 

According to our every 2 week check ups, baby is doing really well. Active, growing, doing all the things a baby is supposed to do. There is still a good amount of room in there for moving and lots of fluid so we've got a lot of position changes going on. The baby usually doesn't hang out in one spot for too long, not when there are somersaults to be turned and a bladder to bounce on.

I'd love to show you pictures of an in-progress nursery, sweetly painted with furniture being assembled, but the truth is our house is still in the electrical stage. We have made really good progress though and are at the point where things start happening really quickly. We passed our rough electrical inspection for all the rooms except the 3 that weren't ready to be inspected yet. Both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms were patched AND painted, holy crap two mostly finished rooms, and the second round of inspections is this Thursday. Once the last 3 rooms get signed off on, low voltage stuff can be run, patching can be kicked into overdrive and the floor refinishing crew can do their thing. This month is going to be a flurry of activity and I think we have a really good shot at actually moving, with nursery furniture, in the early part of December.

Although we have a lot of stuff in storage, we've got a pretty big shopping list going of things we're going to need. The biggest is definitely the sectional for the living room, followed by nursery furniture (crib, two dressers, lamps, bookcase, rug, chair), side tables and lamps, a desk and filing cabinet, bookcases for the living room, possibly some chairs. We're going to have more space than we've ever had and while we don't have to furnish everything at once, I'm very aware that if I don't do it now, it's not likely to get done once the baby is here.

I've got another appointment coming up at the end of this week and will hopefully have photos of fully painted bathrooms to share!

House Progress

 

Progress on our new house has been pretty slow but we are making headway. We now have what we're affectionately calling swiss cheese with doors. All the rooms have been washed and primed and our new electrical has almost been roughed in completely. I think we only need new wiring in the guest room and nursery and after I took these shots, little plastic boxes were added to each new outlet and switch. 

 

Dining Room

Living Room

Once the electrical is fully roughed in and we have actual outlets and switches, we're going to use the same holes in the walls to run interconnected smoke detectors, ethernet cable for the internet and cable TV. That should conclude all the behind the walls work so we'll be able to patch the holes and prime over the new patches. I think we'll also replace the recessed cans with LED lights because the cans are pretty old.

Guest Room

Guest Bathroom and Entry Way

That scary hole in our entry way where you can see right outside was where the electrical was replaced for the outdoor porch lights. It was actually closed up pretty quickly but it was freaky to look out through what should be a solid wall.  We also picked some really cool vintage/industrial style light fixtures for the entry way and entry hallway that I'm excited to see up there once everything is painted.

Master Bedroom

The master closet looks about a million times better primed white. We went back and forth on leaving it stained cherry red or painting it a neutral color and I'm now 100% sure we made the right choice. The room is so much lighter and brighter, so much so that I think we might leave it white instead of painting it grey. 

Upstairs Hallway and Stairs

E and I have been toying with the idea of eventually adding a skylight to the stairway. It has a good spot for art with a little ledge but then there's all this ceiling space where a skylight would really lighten things. It's not high on the priority list so maybe we get to it sometime next year but I think a Solatube would look pretty awesome there.

Nursery

The nursery is probably the room I'm most excited about. Planning it out is fulfilling all the nesting instincts I can't indulge because we can't move in yet. Since the shape of our room is so different from the mock up we originally came up with, I've redesigned it to fit our actual space with all it's character filled nooks and slopes.

 

I can't wait to actually start decorating the nursery for baby :) It's such a tangible reminder that a real, healthy baby is actually on the way.