Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I went home to California for a few days and my awesome friend Sarah watched over the house (and my kitty) while I was gone. I got quite a few house related gifts and Home Depot gift cards, yay! I received some really cool storage shelves for the garage, so I'm excited to get started on organizing! I do have to tackle the decoration take-down though, which I'm not really looking forward to. Maybe I can convince Stan to help again ;) Or I could be one of those awesome people who leaves their Christmas lights up all year long because they're too lazy to take them down!

Oh yes, yesterday marked my 6 month anniversary of home ownership! It doesn't really feel that long ago that I got the keys and started this crazy project. I feel like I've done a lot, but then again not much at all. And honestly, I couldn't have done any of it without the help of my friends, so THANK YOU to all!! I heart you mucho.

Well, most likely I won't do anything until after the New Year, but I'll try to take some updated bedroom/living room pictures to show off my new layouts and furniture pieces to tide you all over :) Besides the garage organizing, I *really* need to prime the walls and ceiling of the kitchen so I can move forward with finishing it off!

-Megan

*breathe*

Well, it has been just over 2 weeks since my kitchen and bathroom has been fully functional! It is great, let me tell you :) So far, I've cooked a few big meals, had some friends over for a "soft opening" of sorts, and I've enjoyed brushing my teeth in the bathroom for a change! And can I just say how much I love my dishwasher?! Who knew that a dishwasher was the one great thing that was missing from my life? :P While I definitely still have a ton to do, I feel like I have just been catching my breath for the last couple of weeks. It felt like for a while, every day was a stressful push toward functionality, and now I'm just relaxing and leaving the aesthetic stuff for later! :) Also, not to mention, all of that work in such a short time definitely cost a TON and I'm trying to lay off on the spending for a while so I can catch up.

I did clear out the spare room and sort of "staged" it for when I had people over, but now the garage is a mess of boxes! I think my next big project will be organizing the garage...fun!

I'm off to California for a few days so obviously I won't make any house progress this week, but I'll post some pictures when I get back! I hope everyone has some happy holidays and a great new year!! :)

-Megan

Running Water!!

Yesterday I had a plumber come in (recommended by my friend John from the gym!) and he pretty much wrapped up all the loose ends and now I feel like I have a fully functioning house! He installed the kitchen sink, faucet, and dishwasher, and also installed the bathroom sink and faucet, and switched out the shower knob...which opened up a whole new can of worms *sigh* But! The important thing is I can COOK! And wash those dishes after I cook! And I don't have to go into the garage to wash my hands after I do my business! :)

Sink, faucet, & dishwasher

Other side of the kitchen with the fridge in its rightful place

Spice drawer!!

And now for the bathroom sink:

Yippeee!

I didn't really have any groceries at home so I haven't had a chance to break the kitchen in yet, but tonight I will make my very first home-cooked meal! I also haven't tried running the dishwasher yet...I need to read the manual! I've only ever lived with a dishwasher once for less than a year so I'm not entirely sure how they work :P I just know that it will make my life easier!

Okay, up ahead: prime, paint, backsplash and open shelving for the kitchen. I also think I'm going to re-paint my bedroom soon...lately it just seems too dark and heavy.

-Megan

P.S. Thanks to Wendy for taking the photos!

Cabinets and Holiday Decorating!

Yay finally! The cabinets are installed! The bad news: I need to get a plumber in to actually adhere the sink to the cabinets as well as hook up the pipes and such, grrrr. So I have a range, refrigerator, cabinets and countertops, but still no running water and no dishwasher (yet). Someday I'll be able to use the kitchen! Well, a girl can hope :P They only sent one guy to do the assembly and installation, and he was at my place for 10 hours yesterday and got this far:

Lookin' alright so far!

I wasn't told it would take almost 2 entire days to do this, so I had to scramble and take all but 2 hours off work today, which I didn't want to do but oh well! Today he finished up, and it looks super nice! The cabinets are actually a white-washed birch, but they look plain white in the pictures...

The finished product with countertops and door handles

You can also see the toe-kick grate peeking out under the left side cabinet...that's where the re-routed heating duct comes out now. I have heat in the kitchen, woohoo!

This weekend Stan helped decorate for the holidays! You can see the tree in the background of the above picture, but here's a close up:

Sparkly!

This is my first "real" tree since I've lived on my own! I got my fake mini tree I think 9 years ago? And before that I pretty much lived in the dorms, so no trees there. Anyways, I'm really excited about it :) And I had accumulated so many ornaments over the years that it's not sparsely decorated at all!

The other big thing: I have lights on my house!!! I started putting them up but after a while I couldn't really reach the gutter because of my short t-rex arms, so I recruited Stan to help :)

My hero!

Pretty!

So far, I'm the only one on my block with lights...apparently I'm the only awesome person that lives there! Well, I'm not sure when I'll be able to get someone in to hook up the sink and dishwasher, but hopefully within the next couple of weeks...I'm dying over here! I need to cook!!

I still need to do quite a bit with the kitchen unfortunately...I still need to patch some of the cracked areas on the walls and ceiling, put in the baseboards, deal with the whole wall behind the sink, and much more :-/ While it feels good to have the cabinets in, it just kind of highlights how much *more* needs to be done! Oh well...it will all get done...eventually!

-Megan

Heating Duct Re-route

So I mentioned a couple posts back about setting up a re-route for the heating duct that was being obstructed by the range and one of the cabinets. Well, last Friday I called to confirm the tentative appointment for Saturday morning, only to find out that they couldn't actually do it after all. Thanks for wasting a week of my time, guys! Naturally, I panicked. I ended up calling another place that I just found via google and right off the bat they were incredibly nice and helpful! They had an opening at my lunch hour for a guy to come out and give a quote. So I busted my butt to get home and met the guy just in time! He was super nice, and actually the owner of the company. He said I reminded him of his daughter because she's around the same age and just bought her first home too! After discussing what I needed done, he told me the price, but I talked him down a bit, woohoo! And then we set up a time for one of his guys to come in on Monday (yesterday) while I was at work. I've been nervous to have anyone in the house without me there, but after meeting with him and finding out he does background checks and drug testing with his employees, I felt pretty good about it. So yeah, I think I lucked out because this was a good company that did good work and happened to have the time to fit me in exactly when I needed it on short notice (this needed to be done before the cabinet installation which is next Monday!)

So yes, all of that went smoothly, and I came home to this last night:

That's an inappropriate looking hole in my floor...

The air no longer comes out of where the grate is, so I could either take out the grate and patch the wall, or just leave it (which is easier...and free). The cabinet that goes directly on top of the new air pathway will get a grate in the toe kick, and I'll officially still have working heat in the kitchen, yay!

So I'm not sure what I'll get done this weekend...I do have Thanksgiving day off, but will be cooking and watching football all day at my friends' place (thanks Nick & Leslie!), and then I have to work on Friday, boo. Saturday is the Civil War (my school's rival football game, for those of you who don't know) and Sunday - weather permitting - I plan on putting up my very first Christmas lights ever!! :) Well, on the outside of my dwelling :) I got gutter clips and a couple of strands of colored outdoor LED bulbs. I'm very excited! I'm still debating whether or not to get a real tree this year, or just keep using my mini fake one. Thoughts?

-Megan

Range is Installed!!!

Oh man, SOOOO happy! The range has finally been installed, yay! It's only been sitting in a box in my living room for about 3 and a half months! Wow...when I think about how long I've been putting this off it's kind of unsettling haha! Anyways, I ended up having to take all of yesterday off of work, but pretty much everything got done! The city inspector came at about 9:15 and it was a quick 5 minute approval. I was slightly nervous that they wouldn't approve it because I don't have a range hood (yet) but the guy didn't even mention that at all...the only thing he was concerned about was if I ever added another line (for a gas fireplace or outdoor barbecue or something) and that might be too much for what my little house could handle. Anyways, after the inspector came, the gas plumbing guys came back and installed the range! It's so dang pretty! And I'm not sure if you can tell,  but the left front burner is like a "super burner" that can boil water in 60 seconds or something crazy like that. I *cannot* wait to start cooking!! There is still the problem of not having a sink to wash dishes or countertops to prepare food on though... :P

I'm in love!

The electrician also came in to run a line for the dishwasher, and it ended up being more simple and taking less time than he thought it would, so I asked if he wouldn't mind also hooking up my new light fixture! Yay, one less thing for me to do...which is good since I don't know how to do that haha.

Wee!

The scale of the light looks a little off, but I could always add more track to it and more light heads as well. It's a heck of a lot better than what was there before though:

Kinda far away...I forgot to take a good pic before he started taking them down!

I was a little concerned that the little bulbs wouldn't be bright enough but they are plenty bright and I like how the light is directed where I want it instead of having the big weirdness that was there before :)

While all that work was being done, I concentrated on the bathroom! I replaced the shower curtain, curtain rod and rings, and painted the medicine cabinet white to match the rest of the trim (it was light wood before):

I plan on replacing the light fixture at some point...

And I added a towel bar, for which I had to buy my very first drill so I could install it! :) I also replaced the dingy heat grate and got a little tiny door stopper...it's so cute!

*sigh* The nail heads in that trim are killing me!

And not pictured: I replaced the toilet paper holder because it was gross and the edges were still caked in the old yellow paint, and I caulked around the base of the tub and the base of the toilet. Even though I still don't have a sink, the bathroom actually feels complete haha. At least now that the bathroom is pretty much fully done (for what I can do, anyways!) I can move on to the spare room or the living room while the kitchen is still being finished. Yay progress!

Oh! And also, I've gotten compliments on the kitchen floor from all 6 of the guys that came in to do work over the last few days! They all couldn't believe it was vinyl tile, and they all asked how I did it and where I got the stuff. Awesome!! :D

-Megan

Mmmm....Gas!

I had yesterday off for Veteran's Day, but some people were still working! The gas plumbers came in (albeit waaaaay later than they were supposed to, harumph) yesterday and ran a gas line from my furnace up through the kitchen floor, woo! I also took today off of work because the city inspector was going to come in, sign off on the plumbing, and then the guys would come back and hook up the range. BUT I got a call this morning from the gas plumbing company saying that the city inspectors needed to push me back to tomorrow (Wednesday). UGG!

I also had the cabinet delivery set up for this morning (9am - 1pm window) and also an electrician was supposed to come in between 12 and 1 to set up electrical for the dishwasher. As luck would have it, the electrician called saying that their morning job was going to take longer than they thought, and asked if they could come by tomorrow. So I said sure, why not, I have to be at home tomorrow now, so might as well!

Anywho, so as I was waiting for the cabinet delivery I painted the ceiling and trim in the bathroom (white), and then put another coat on the walls (grey), so tomorrow while I'm waiting for everyone to do their stuff I'm going to install the new curtain rod, curtain, towel rod, and toilet paper holder. I also still need to caulk around the base of the tub and toilet. So with that, the bathroom will be all done....except for the sink that is :)

The yellow line is brand spankin' new!

The line coming up through the floor in the kitchen

So anyways, I ended up coming in to work for a half day...I should save these vacation hours because something will inevitably be pushed back or go wrong again! Oh and another thing, I had quite the freak out because of the heat register in the kitchen that is all sorts of in the way of things. I called and a ductwork company is going to come out early Saturday morning to do some re-routing and eventually it will vent through one of the toekick's of a cabinet. Ugg, so much stuff! Here's hoping tomorrow run smoothly!

-Megan