Leaving For Home

Tomorrow morning we will be heading back home to resume the project of moving in to the new house. Our Christmas excursion to Lake Tahoe has been fun, but I will admit that we are very ready to get home. We both miss our dogs and miss the familiarities and conveniences of DFW.

When we get home our drywall work should be complete. The contractor we selected did work on the townhouse that my parents rent in Southlake and he does really good work. So we are really excited to get home and see the job that he has done. I'm sure it will look great.

We decided that due to budget constraints we will be doing the painting. So this weekend, we should be painting and will have some more updates.

Fin.

As of today, we have officially said goodbye to homewood. It was a sad day, but we need to keep looking forward to the joys our new house will bring (hopefully, eventually). It's hard to not feel like you are leaving a part of you in a house that has seen so many significant benchmarks in our life. Now we have to move on and look forward to building even more accomplishments in the new place.

Weekend Recap

This weekend I felt like we did a lot of work and got very little results. A lot of the electrical still needs to be done and the pool is still not quite up to par. Hopefully this week our fortune will turn a bit with respect to productivity.

I'm still gathering quotes on scraping popcorn ceilings and doing some drywall work. So hopefully we will have some updates on that soon.

Inspiration #1

Finals are over, so it's back to work on the house now. I thought I would try keep track of some of the items that I've been using to get ideas. I always gravitate towards a neutral color palette, so that's pretty much a reoccurring theme through these.




I really dig the layout of this bedoom. It's big like ours, and similarly has a fireplace, so I can see us drawing a lot of ideas from this. Don't really like the drapes though.



Other view of the bedroom. I like the clustered frames over the mantle.


I like this bathroom. Not sure if I can use anything out of it though.


I think that I really like this shower and wall color combo. The vanity is a bit too modern, but the colors are nice.


I mainly just really like these fixtures.


I love the cabinets (not the doors), but the hardware is cool. The countertops (honed granite - absolute black) are fantastic and the backsplash is great.

I love this chair for some reason.

I love these floors and the simplicity of this room.


same deal.

Oh the joys

Well I spent 7 hours working at the school, so I didn't so much work on the house this weekend. Nick and I bought stuff to clean up the brown pool (seriously I think someone took a poo in it). I figured I would leave school early (well like 4ish) and clean out some of those leaves that are completely covering the bottom pool.

After 10 minutes, I realized a couple of things.

a. There are more leaves in this pool than there in the whole world.

b. Cleaning out a pool is not enjoyable.

c. I just might get rock hard abs from lifting the overloaded leaf net out of the brown pool over and over and over...

I poured 2 pounds of chlorine into the pool because that's what the guy at the pool supply store said to do. Hopefully that will help clear it up a little if we can just get those leaves out. Of course it rained a lot tonight, so I'm guessing about million more leaves found their way into the pool.

I over filled the garbage bag with wet leaves, so I was stuck with nothing else to do while I waited for Nick to get off work. I checked to see if the shock was clearing anything up. There was a turtle trying to get out of the pool, but I poured the shock near the steps. I got the net and pulled him out. I let him down by the back gate, so he could find his way to the pond on the golf course. He was a quick little turtle by the time Nick got there he was no where in sight! He looked exactly like the picture above...red ears and all.

I really can't wait to get the pool clean. I will feel like I've accomplished something. Plus it will be one more thing we can cross off the mile long list! I just hope I didn't kill any turtles that may or may not have been left in the pool.

Test Entry and An Update

This is me testing the lifecasting app from my iPhone. It should make it easy to keep up with this turd of a blog we have going.

Things should be slow around here for a couple of weeks until I finish my finals and we sell Homewood. After that things should pick up drastically.

Posted with LifeCast

Before Shots Pt. 1

I've updated a flickr set of the before shots from the house. Check them out here.

The Official Game Plan

I thought tonight would be a nice time, for organizational purposes, to list out an Official Game Plan for the home updates we plan accompanied by a (very tentative) time line.

All the updates we plan can be categorized into 3 main categories:

1. Before we move in
2. In the near future
3. At some point

Before we move in

• Scrape popcorn ceiling
• Retexturing walls and ceiling
• Paint walls
• Change hardware
• Update intercom system (including iPod dock)
  
• Update lots of electrical
• Change fans and light fixtures
  
• Run sound system
• Update half bath
• Change outdoor lighting
• Clean up landscaping

In the near future

• Update the kitchen (countertops, appliances, possibly cabinets and fixtures)
• Update the wet bar (cabinets, countertops, and beverage center)
• Outdoor surround sound
• Convert pool to salt water
• New Windows
• Wood Blinds

At some point

• Update the master bath and full bath
• Update back siding
• Landscape lighting
• Furniture for whole house
  

Black Friday

Since we closed the day before Thanksgiving, we didn't go over to the house the next day. Black Friday was a different story. Amber was sick, so she wasn't able to do much. Instead, Cody stayed with us for the weekend and helped a lot.

We started at 3am, lining up at Fry's. I got pretty much everything I was wanting (mainly items for the game room):

• LG 52" 120Hz LCD TV
• Sony BlueRay Player
• Polk Audio Surround Sound Speakers

After that we spent the day moving items over from Homewood to the garage.

We don't want to move too much into the house right now until we finish our pre-move updates (more on those later). So as for now, it's just nice to have a bigger garage.

Closed

It's official. Today we signed the papers on our new house. We are super excited, and a little overwhelmed all at the same time. This sucker needs a lot of work, but we think it's going to be something to we'll be very proud of once we are finished. Until we update further, here are some specs on the house:

Home Facts:

• 3 beds
• 2.5 bath
• 2,771 sqft
• Lot 15,507 sqft
• Built in 1985
• Golf Course Lot (#6 on Rolling Hills Country Club)
  
• Pool