Quick Recap

Unfortunately we have been short on two very important elements required for posting blog updates: time and internet access. We were signed up to get our internet connection hooked up on June 1, but they're apparently working on the infrastructure in our area and won't be able to connect us until mid July. Meanwhile we feel like cavemen. And we do feel bad about not updating more often... seeing as a lot has happened since the last post. And I mean a lot. Like, somewhere between a barrel full and a hogshead. So I'll do my best to give a "quick" overview of all the work we've accomplished in the last week or so.

As Leslie said in her post awhile back, we decided to repaint the downstairs to a different shade of grey. We finished the kitchen and great room first so when we finished we could move some furniture into place (mainly the piano and TV stand). That allowed us to free up a lot of floor space (since we no longer had a massive mound of boxes in the center of the room) to organize kitchen things. And by organize kitchen things I mean that we took everything out of the kitchen we had previously moved along with anything we still had boxed up and spread it on the floor. We then were able to see all we had and place it in drawers and cabinets accordingly. I also installed a few new light fixtures in the kitchen so we can actually see what we're doing in there at night now. So yay for a basically complete kitchen! We also got some of the other important things done like setting up the TV and getting the movies unpacked. The few areas that we finished later were the two walls in the small hallway between the kitchen and the den (our newly official name for the former dining room), and both sides of the beam that runs in the middle of the family / living room area. We are incredibly glad to be done painting grey.

Our Lovely Mantel

Furniture Moved to the Walls

Kitchen Things Everywhere!

New Paint, Light Fixtures, and Full Cabinets

We also finished painting our bedroom a nice shade of navy blue before we moved in. No pictures had been posted of it yet, so I figured I'd add some just so it doesn't feel left out.

Hey Look, a Window!

Hey Look, a Door!

Leslie also mentioned that we had carpet installed. That went smoothly for the most part, but not without a hitch. They called Leslie on Thursday saying that they pulled up carpet in the bonus room and found wet subfloor and obviously didn't want to just lay carpet over it. So that night I worked on fixing that while Leslie worked on painting our bedroom. I was expecting to find a huge area of floor that was ruined, but it was really only a pretty small patch - about 1.5' x 3' of damaged floor. So I cut out the old stuff, sprayed bug killer in it to kill the ants (oh yes, lots of lovely ants), and dried it out with a fan. I came back the next day to finish it up (I took a half day from work to get an A/C quote... more on that later) and got it all patched in the early afternoon. I forgot to take pictures after I finished, but I'm forgiving myself for that one since I was trying to get out of the way quickly so the carpeting could be finished.

Damaged Area

Why Hello, Ants

Added Sister Joists Ready for Subflooring

We also discovered that our air conditioning didn't work the week before we moved in. So I spent some time getting it checked out to see what the problem was, finding out the evaporator coil and condenser needed to be replaced, having three different companies come to the house to give me quotes, and then finally having the work done. I took awhile to look over all the options and decide what I wanted, but I suppose that's what happens when you're an HVAC contractor and you have HVAC work done at your house. It worked out pretty well though, since we got a good deal from a good company on some good equipment. We got the coil replaced, the outside condenser unit replaced, a new line for the refrigerant, a new whole house humidifier, and they even threw in a one year service agreement. Now, as cool as all that is, my favorite part is the Nest Thermostat that I installed after they were done (and it'll be even better once we actually have internet installed). Call me a nerd, but how neat is that?

New Coil and Humidifier

New Condenser Unit

Nest Thermostat and New Humidistat

Another fun thing we've been up to is getting furniture picked out and ordered. We went up to the Kittles in Castleton for their Memorial Day sales and ordered a sofa, a chair, and two end tables for the great room. Easy enough, we thought. Well, a week later Leslie gets a phone call saying that the fabric we picked is fine for the sofa but doesn't work for the chair. So we head back up and pick out fabric again. Not too painful, but just another thing we had to add on to our week.

And I believe that about sums it up for what we've been doing on the house. We have also been keeping busy with family events, seeing friends, grilling out, and lots of other stuff that might get a separate blog post. We also spent an evening cleaning out the old apartment to get it ready to hand back over. It was kind of weird saying goodbye to the apartment. It was our first home as a married couple and we had a lot of good memories there. But time to move on, and we love our new house. We're very excited about making many fun and happy memories here, hopefully lots of them involving you - our friends and family.

Thanks for reading and hopefully we'll be blogging again soon!