And we're in!

So we finally moved into the house last Saturday. I'm so glad the move is over. I've always thought the move to be the worst part and unpacking was always great. Unpacking is only fun when you have a place to put things. If I unpack all of my stuff I am just going to have to move them again once we paint- which will hopefully be this week.

We cleaned our old place last night. Lucky for us it wasn't too dirty. We just have 1 more load of miscellaneous stuff to bring over. It will be nice to have the apartment done so that we can focus on the house. We haven't really done anything major yet since we've had no time. After tonight it will be complete!

The ceilings look amazing!!! I didn't get any great pictures of it this time around. The guy we had mud and paint did a great job. In fact, the ceilings are the only thing that looks finished. Sigh. We put up two new pendent lights in the dining room that look AWESOME! You can't really tell from the picture but they are amber. The dining room will be painted a grey green color so they will be perfect. I took some pictures of the furniture layout.

I think that is enough rambling for now. Enjoy.

The moving is almost complete

We have about 1 more load of boxes and miscellaneous items to bring over. We are hiring movers for the furniture. They'll be bringing it over tomorrow. The ceiling will be complete today which means we havre ALOT of cleaning to do tonight. It'll be so nice to see the floors again. Everything has so much dirt and dust all over it.

I picked out some paint colors for the dining room. We are still deciding on a living room color. Our house warming is going to be sometime in early February, I can't wait...

Of course...

I get a call from the taper this morning. He says that his car has been stolen and all of his tools are in it. What!? Why!? Why does this crap always happen when it's my turn? Couldn't this have happened when he was working his last job?

He went on to ask me if I could just pay him the amount for yesterday. Nope, not until the job is complete. I asked him when he planned on coming back out to do the work and I swear I could hear him scratching his head over the phone. After coaxing him to continue his job, we agreed that he could be there by tomorrow. Of course now I won't be able to go in and clean until Friday night because this sets us back a day. I have to buy him tools to use as well.

Ahhh, the joys of dealing with contractors. It's a lot different when they are working on your own property. Hopefully everything gets completed.

Thank god it's over

The sheet rock is complete! The ceilings are up and the house is beginning to look less and less like a construction zone. I will never sheet rock another ceiling again (well atleast not for a very long time).

My brother in-law, Jim, came over to help us begin the mudding process. Well, the ceiling is pretty uneven; it's going to be a big job. We decided that it's in our best interest to bid this out. To be honest, I'm done working on the ceiling. I had been contemplating suicide up until this was thrown out there (not seriously of course). So this is good news. "Wait a minute... How could spending more money be good news?", you ask. I have someone going out there tomorrow to begin mudding for $20/ hour. This typically costs between $30- $50/ hour. Not only is it CHEAP, he will have it complete by Saturday (out move-in date).

Ahh, the connections I have through work. Andy, the VP of operation of the company I work for, has helped me out left and right. He's got the hook ups and since we have some large contracts with these companies I reap the benefits. I don't know what I would do with out the help. I'd be poor. Guess who forgot their camera this weekend? I'll grab it and hopefully take some pictures tonight. Stay tuned!

Pictures of the ceilings sheet rocked, a scary game piece that is getting burned, and some Christmas cards that fell out of the ceiling.

Fun with sheet rock

Last night we began sheet rocking the dining room. Putting the sheet rock in isn't all that bad, it's the mudding/ sanding I'm worried about. We're never going to finish before our move-in of next week. We need help mudding and sanding... Bad! Otherwise it will be countless cups of coffee and 16 hour days. Seriously. I'm not looking forward to this.

I'm excited to get everything up though. It's been difficult working 8 hours and then coming directly to our home and putting more hours in. The days we accomplish most are on the weekends, so we are looking forward to working our fingers to the bone. I'm excited to see how far we get. I'll post pics of the ceilings once they are up.

Almost there...

All of our lights officially work! We are ready to start sheet rocking the ceiling this weekend. It will be nice to walk in and have it feel like a home again. We're moving in on the 26th so we're hoping that all of the dust from sanding the ceiling will be completed before then. How awful would it be to get that all over your furniture?

Right now we are working on random things here and there. We are in the process of installing a new wire doorbell (and as far as we can tell, the first one ever). The walls are nice and mudded and waiting to be sanded. Hopefully I'll have some great pictures of the new ceilings on my new post.

Here are some pictures of the exterior of the house and THE NEW LIGHTING!!!!

Whew!

For our first project we decided to attack was the ceilings. The ceiling in the dining and living area were pretty fugly. The living room had ugly ceiling tile and the dining room had a bad popcorn texture sprayed on it (it was also sprayed on the crown molding). Another issue with the ceiling was the only light we had was in the dining room. The house got pretty dark at night.



We decided to take down the living room tiles first. We found a textured plaster ceiling that bowed pretty bad. After finding this beneath the tiles we decided to gut the ceilings. What a mess!!! I didn't take any pictures of the mess, but I'm pretty sure all of the dust knocked a few years off of my life. I'm so happy that part of the face lift is OVER!!!



Once we removed the ceiling we found the original wiring in the ceilings. We brought a contractor out to give us an estimate on how much it would cost to rerun all the wiring throughout the house. He said he would rewire everything for the low, low price of $12,000; and thats a deal, he works with my employer and hooked me up. Lucky for us, Quentin is a brilliant electrician and I am a great assistant. Ha ha. We've rewired most of it ourselves and everything works (believe it or not).



Another issue with the old ceiling was that there was only one light in the dining room and nothing in the living room. The house got pretty dark at night. We added recessed lighting to both rooms. It looks amazing! The lights are up and working!



Here are some photos of the old tile ceiling, the missing ceiling, a few randoms including a childs boot that came out of the ceiling near the fireplace. Last but not least, our recessed lights in the dining room. Living room lights to come!!!

My 1st post!!!

So we just bought our first home in NE Minneapolis! The purchase of the home was the most frusterating 2 months of my life (OK, I'm lying, I probably have had more obnoxious thing happen in my life) This is definately up there!!!

The house had no heat and had been winterized. The house was a foreclosure, which means we dealt with a bank. A bank who wanted to fix nothing, yet sell the house. The trouble is you can't get finance for a house that doesn't have heat or water. Some crack head ripped all of the copper piping out and the furnace had a transformer that went out. All of which the needed to be fixed before the lender would process our loan. We loved the house so much that we took a gamble and fixed everything before we owned the home (idiots, I know). Luckily there were no other issues and everything is up and running. We passed the appraisal and got our keys to the place on the 3rd of January.

That brings us to the work that we are faced with now... Yikes... More to come.

These are pictures of the Living room and Dining room