Sunday, December 2, 2012


We did it! After two years of searching, we finally found a house to call a home. We put an offer on it and they accepted! It’s a cute 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house only 1.5 miles away from Barry’s work. Talk about convenient!
This blog is going to be where I “journal” what’s going on with our home improvement. Our plans so far are to install a new kitchen, expose the hardwood floors, get rid of the wallpaper, and re-drywall the ceilings (as well as other things down the road). Maybe this will turn into a daily life thing, maybe not. We shall see.
11/28 – SETTLEMENT DAY! We settled at 4:00 at the Hostetter Realty office in Gap. Barry’s parents and sisters came over afterwards and brought pizza so we could enjoy our first dinner in our new home! My mom, dad, and brother stopped by to congratulate us as well. We started peeling the wallpaper in the living room, only to discover there are about 5 layers. Oh joy. My dad also pulled back some carpet corners to peek at the hardwood underneath. We liked what we saw!
Thursday, after work, I went over to do some more wallpaper slaying. My mom and dad came by too. In my opinion, a mixture of fabric softener and hot water in a spray bottle worked best for scraping off the layers. Unfortunately, we got to the last layer, and it seemed to be some brown paper bag-ish material that was glued to the plaster. IT WAS A PAIN TO GET OFF without chipping the plaster. I wanted to think we could get as much off as possible and then sand down the walls, but had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy.
On Friday, Barry and a friend gutted the kitchen. They were able to save three of the four original cabinets. I see a future project ... The person drywalling our ceilings told us we were pretty much wasting our time taking off the wallpaper. It turns out it is Sheetrock, and the only part of the house that is insulated is the attic. Go figure. We decided to take out all exterior walls, insulate, and drywall. It wasn't what we originally had planned, but will be worth it in the long run. 
Saturday was a lot of driving around in an unsuccessful search of appliances. That afternoon, my brother met us at the house to go over electrical things. We told him what we wanted and where. Then, Barry started taking off trim, brother started tearing out walls, and I took all of the nails out of the trim. We got the exterior wall in the dining room taken out. 
Today, my brother asked if we were going to be working on the house. We hadn't planned on it, but he had two friends that were looking for something to do. By the time we got to the house, they had both walls in the "creepy room" knocked out (you'll see pictures later and understand)! We left with both bedrooms done and the living room exterior walls almost finished as well. Now that's progress! 
Pictures will be coming soon, I promise. That's all for now!

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on your first home! You guys are already movin' and groovin'....I look forward to following your journey.

    PS. Welcome to blogland! :)

    ReplyDelete