New Home, New Year, New Beginnings

We're in! We are officially homeowners of a single family home! It's cool how it all happened in agreement with the end of the year. It's nice to be in a new house at the beginning of a new year. It's a great milestone memory if I say so myself.

So packing always sucks but we did most of it Friday. My sisters and brother-in-law came to help out. We couldn't have done it without them. Thank goodness we don't have much stuff though. A U-haul, a truck and a car later and we were moved in.

Here's how it looked after we moved in. We don't have too much in comparison to what it takes for most people to pack and move. Not having much furniture helps. Here's the first floor. The living room.

And the kitchen/dining area.

I didn't take any pics of the other floors being that all of our attention and focus is going into the main floor. So much so that we got to work immediately on our renovations. Check it out! Here are the paint colors that I sampled for the living room area which will be my woman's den. Since I want a grey, I ended up going with none of them. They were all too blue-ish in tone. So I went with a more grey based color.

I definitely want a sky, light blue in the kitchen so these were my first thoughts. I ended up buying something a lot lighter though.

Here's a couple of pics of the painting progression. I was disappointed with the color I chose because it was too white, but it's growing on me. The room is definitely a lot brighter and open now.

 Do you see the difference between the white trim on the bottom and the wall itself? The picture may not do the color justice.

Here's the color swatch. I went with the lightest one on the right. If I could do it all over again, I would pick the middle one.

Oh! I forgot to mention that our closing costs came in WAY lower than we thought, so we went ahead to Lumber Liquidators and bought new flooring for the entire first floor. The carpet and linoleum in the kitchen area HAS to go. I knew that the moment I stepped in the house. Here's a pic of the bamboo flooring we chose. I LOVE the color.

And since the floors are dark, the banister had to be sanded, primed and painted to a darker brown. We finished up one of the rails yesterday. My husband should be finishing up the other part today while I'm here at work.

Sanding was fun! I looked ashy as I don't know what after though!

We taped everything up and started in with the primer.

And here's the finished product! Wa la! Looks nice!

One day, when we have the money, we'll extend the bamboo flooring up to the steps. I hate carpet on steps. But until then, I'll have to live with it.

What else did we do? We changed all the toilet seats out, put up shower curtains, cleaned the bathroom and kitchens, lined the kitchen cabinets and put dishes up, put up a new mailbox and changed out the 2 lights in the front of the house. This is the old light. Hate it!

And here's hubby installing one of the the new ones.

He did a really good job I might add. This is a new experience for me to see him working on a house. I'm impressed!

Floors, new baseboards, crown molding and chair rail in the dining room area are going in next. We sign the contract today and begin work on Saturday. I'll update you soon!