One year: Before and After

It has been exactly one year since I closed on the house. A lot has changed, both in the house and in my life, blah blah blah. Maybe if I weren't such a hack of a writer, this is where I'd present the case that the house is a metaphor for my ascent into responsible adulthood. Like the house, I was flooded and my walls were dirty, but after lots of hard work, tears, and paint jobs, now we both don't smell like cat pee nearly as much, or something. Maybe I'm bad at metaphors though. Luckily, for your blog-reading pleasure, my atrocious sense of humor remains the same. On that note, here are the before and after photos of all the work I’ve done on my little bachelorette fort.

Dec 25, 2010 (my first time seeing the house):

Jan 05, 2012 (just over one year later)

Now for the inside:

Basement before

Basement after

Kitchen before

Kitchen after

Living room/hallway before

hallway after

Living room before

Living room after

Master bedroom before

Master bedroom after

2nd bedroom before

2nd bedroom after

3rd bedroom before

3rd bedroom after (still a mess)

Bathroom before

Bathroom after

(it has a real light now, I just don’t have a more recent photo)

I still have a ton of work to do (the next project on my harebrained radar is to do something with that huge empty wall in my living room), but it’s getting there, if by "getting there," you mean starting to look like an actual living adult lives here. Cheers!

It has been a while

I know I let this blog fall by the wayside.  It’s not because I haven’t been working on the house, but some changes in my life since the last update in June made it too painful to come on here and talk about it. I am stronger for it, however, and this little casa makes me happier than ever.

Anyway, things that I have done in the past 6 or 7 months:

-installed a forced hot air heating system (propane) (aka $$$$$)

-got new exterior doors

-put in a wraparound driveway

-insulated the attic

-new back steps

Here I am all driving the tractor and grading the driveway and stuff:

Here are the doors:

(yes, house needs a paint job in the spring)

(for comparison, these are what the doors looked like before…)

You can see the old front door in this one, just awful!

I have completely lost track of expenses, but between the heating system and doors and other stuff, I’d say we’re well up to $16,000 or $17,000 at this point! NBD… I have to go cry now.

Another two week stretch between postings, but we’re moved in

As the title says, I’ve now gone another 2 weeks without posting. I am SUCH a bad blogger. At least I have good news to report—we have been moved in and occupying the house for over a week now, which is pretty darn awesome. Unpacking and decorating is another story...

Anyway, we’ve done quite a bit. For starters, we put up a new light in the kitchen. Crazy, I know. And the light is forever ruined for me because a friend mentioned that it looks like a boob, lol!

Here is the kitchen! As you can see we still have a lot of stuff to put away. And Adam is the WORST at shutting the cabinets, haha

Here are our outdoor solar lights, our new grill courtesy of my mom, and our fire pit—which resulted in the cops and fire department being called on us on our 2nd night here (Welcome to the neighborhood!)

Thanks to my mum for the awesome grill!

And here’s the living room. Please forgive the random crap scattered across the couches, coffee table, and floor. We’re still in the “getting there…” phase of unpacking.

The green couch in the last picture was a spur-of-the-moment decision. The couch was my aunt Nancy’s couch that she gave to us, and I found a cover for it and decided to move the loveseat into the living room, and I like it. The room is not very feng shui, and I’m not sure how to remedy that—but we had some friends over the second night we spent here and we were all crammed on the one couch, so we definitely needed something else in the room. And my aunt’s couch is possibly more comfortable than our leather couch!

And, finally, the bathroom! I am super proud of the bathroom because I think it had one of the most major transformations of any room. And adding that shower curtain was instantly gratifying because it hides our ugly shower!

As a comparison, here are the before pictures of the bathroom:

AMAZING, right? I do plan to do a master before/after post, but I need to finish unpacking the bedrooms first.

Expenses: this is why I was procrastinating about writing this post. I have receipts everywhere and I can’t remember what I’ve added in and what I haven’t. But I’ll do my best…

To start, Adam and I each spent $50 at Stop & Shop getting stuff to get us “started”—butter, eggs, bread, other household items = $100

Then I spent $38.64 at Walmart on a fan and a throw pillow.

-$27.89 on garbage bags and spray-on something or other

-$6.99 on a silverware organizer

-$31.78 on plumbing supplies

-$85 on stuff from Bed, Bath, and Beyond: chip clips, hand towels, a doormat, a pet drying mitt, a hand bag organizer for the closet, a curtain rod and a curtain for our hall closet, hand soap, a full-length mirror, and picture hangers

-$300 between Adam and I for a weed wacker, a kitchen light, and some other random stuff

-$101.86 at Ocean State Job Lot on a lamp, a reed diffuser, aluminum foil, paper plates, a solar light, love seat cover, 2 spare bath rugs, band aids, almond extract, dish towels, ziploc bags, a plunger, a placemat, oven mitts, dog dish, vanilla extract, another rug

-another bathmat for in front of the sink $25

-a potability test for our well $110

===== $9480.73

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That’s $800 something dollars since the last time I posted…

I’m going to try not to think about it.