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

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

Halloween & Kitchen Floor

Oh hi there! My first Halloween in my very first house was a success! All told, I only got about 25 trick-or-treaters, but I also got a surprise visit from Sarah, Brian and Brenden! I left work a little early to get the place ready...I wasn't sure how early the little kids would be coming by. I decided to rake the front lawn so no one slipped on all the wet leaves but about 60 seconds into it, my brand new rake snapped!

I guess I don't know my own strength!

I should probably splurge on a sturdier one anyways! Here's another pic of my front door decorations:

I think the spookiest thing is the gross screen door

I will say that I'm excited to get all these big projects out of the way so I can decorate a little better next year :) But I'm also VERY excited to decorate for Christmas! I'll need to decide if I want to go for white lights or multi-colored lights...so many decisions! :)

As per my kitchen renovation schedule, Stan helped me start laying down the vinyl tile on the kitchen floor yesterday! It started slow but we quickly got into a rhythm and got it almost all done:

Here we gooooo!

Mostly finished!

The most annoying part was that my fingers got sticky because of the strength of the adhesive on the backs of the tiles! It was hard to put down the spacers without them sticking to my hands, so Stan helped a lot with that part. He also pulled the backing off each tile for me because it was hard to do one-handed! I still need to finish all the tiles that need to be cut around the edges, plus a couple more rows on the other end of the kitchen (not pictured). I plan on doing that tonight & tomorrow night...hopefully all tonight but I know how frustrated I'll get :) And then at the very latest I'll grout the tiles on Wednesday night! I'm trying to set up the gas range conversion/hookup hopefully for late this week or early next week, and then I'll be cooking with gas! ;)

One last pic to share...Stan snapped this while Kahlua was keeping an eye on the neighbors:

Guard kitty!

Until next time!

-Megan

I'm Baaaaaack!

That's right, back from Disneyland! I had way too much fun, sometimes I wonder why I don't just pack up and move down there! Oh that's right, because I bought my project house :P Well after being gone last weekend, and being under the weather this weekend, of course nothing got done on the house. Although, I did put up some Halloween decorations! I have to say, I'm VERY excited to get trick-or-treaters! I live about a block away from an elementary school, so I'm hoping that means I'll get TONS of them! :) I have yet to ask a neighbor about the usual volume of kids, but I'm sure I'll be buying way too much candy anyways :)

And the spider lights up!

I suppose I should mow the lawn before the big night, and maybe rake all of the leaves (that means I need to buy a rake!) I'll need to replace that ratty doormat before Halloween too :) Oh and it turns out the grout I need to use for the kitchen floor (or at least the one that is recommended) is only a special-order item from Home Depot, so that will need to happen this week. I hope to have more updates for you all soon!

-Megan