Thank You Gram!

Yesterday was our 3rd anniversary.
Three wonderful years, man they go by fast!

Gram, ever the thoughtful, sent us this most lovely plant.


We are ungrateful heathens who in the midst of moving and unpacking selfishly forgot Gram's birthday. She remembered our anniversary. I hope it is something that gets better with age? Gram, we won't forget again and Thanks SO much for this plant. It is huge and healthy. Now it feels like home!

A Place to sit in the Place where we hang our hat!

So, without further ado (I know, I know, I have been adoing and adoing, alright already!)
It is true. Tim and I finally became grown ups and bought furniture. Real furniture, from a store and everything! Not from a yard sale or a hand me down anymore!
So, I won't write too much but will show you how the house is shaping up...

Here is the new and improved living room. We painted the walls a very light blue with yellow trim. Matches great with our new furniture. Here is the big comfy chair and our coffee table. This is just as you walk in the front door looking into the house.

From the other side of the living room...our new couch!

The bookcases on the right still need to be organized and the tv is being hooked up on Friday, but we are getting there.

This is the view from the living into the dining room. The table looks tall because, well, it is. It is counter height.

This is a closer view of the BEAUTIFUL hutch we got. The sides are glass and lit which is SO nice! We actually have unpacked and can now see so many of the wonderful wedding gifts we received.

Here is a closer view of the table. It actually expands to a square, seating for 2 on each side. We love that because everyone is equal, no heads of the table.

This is looking back to the dining and living rooms from the kitchen doorway. The dining room is a light tan now. NO MORE Kangaroo poo for this crowd!

And to really give you the full experience, here is our downstairs bathroom...Oh yeah, tilt your head.

And now what?!!?

Yes, I know that today is the 20th of September.
Yes, I realize that I haven't posted anything since the 11th.
Yes, we did move into the house, we haven't been sleeping in the truck or anything.
Sorry for the delay. We've been, well, moving.

This is the first post that I am actually writing from OUR computer, in OUR office, in OUR house. My Mom is probably really happy to get her computer back!
And I did have to ballerina dance my way around, over and around some more, a few boxes to GET to this computer, but here I sit!

There is A LOT to get you up to speed on. We've been pretty busy over here. Although I would love to just show you the final outcome, you need to get a walk through of what the heck has been happening over here.

First, Janet decided that she agreed with Tim and we had the floors stripped! What this translates to is, 1. We no longer have to live with outrageous teal floors in the dining room and living room. 2. The previous owners, all of them, were crazy. There were 5, yes, 5, layers of different colored paint on the floors before we found wood! 3. My husband is brilliant and thank god he pushed to have the floors done. They are amazing. I was ready to deal with the teal as I just really wanted to get in the house and unpack. It added 4 days on and was well worth it.
Here are some in progress photos for you. The legs you see are the floor dude. Tim did not do the floors. He could've mind you, you probably know that, but thank goodness, Janet paid to have the work done!

Bye Bye teal!

We had the stair treads done too. We still need to paint the risers.

It looks so much brighter and bigger now.


Okay, that is it for now. I know there is lots more to share but I can't throw it all at you at once you know! More later...

The final push

Although Tim has been really great in that everytime he drove from Brooklyn to Saratoga this summer he took a full truck load of our things, we still had quite a bit in Brooklyn that needed to be moved up. Friday afternoon we rented a 16 foot Ryder truck. Dad, Tim and I hopped in and drove to the apartment. We had a lovely dinner at Patois, one of our favorite restaurants in our neighborhood. It was a bittersweet meal. Happy to be closing one chapter, but saying "good bye" is always tough.

We were up by 6am on Saturday to finish the packing and load up the truck. Dad finally got to see the deck we built.
Luckily for us, Sackett Street was planning an evening block party so the street was closed and parking right in front of our building was no problem.

It continues to amaze me how much stuff Tim and I are capable of fitting into a place. The kitchen had to be packed up but most everything else was boxed and ready to go. We had two light fixtures to take down and reinstall the old, but that was it. How in the world did it possibly take us 9 HOURS to load the stinking truck I ask you?!!? AND, we filled the truck...16 foot truck, FILLED!


We really loved our neighborhood and our neighbors. They will be missed. We close this chapter and move on to the next...

Making it our own

It has been a crazy last week and I have had no time to post.
In order to prove to you that this is not because I have been sitting around eating bon bons, I will try to get you up to speed on what we have been doing.

Janet decided to let us do our own painting at the house. This is great because it means that we can pick whatever colors we want. It also means that we have our work cut out for us. Man, the place needs some paint. Tuesday Tim and I went to the house and took care of the kitchen. At first we didn't think the color yellow in the kitchen was too bad. Hey, we like yellow for a kitchen. However, the previous yellow was so hot and intense that after about 4 minutes of standing in the room one could feel agitated enough to want to rip the heads off of small animals. SO, that needed to be taken care of. We had a gallon left of the yellow Tim had used a year or so ago for my parents kitchen. That made it much more comforting. We also cleaned up the molding and wainscotting with a fresh coat of white.

The kitchen, ahhh, that was the easy part. Now on to the dining room and living room, which as you saw earlier, without furniture could be interchangable due to the fact that they were painted exactly the same. Which would be a lovely light eggshell on the walls and, as my father and I aptly named it, trim coated lovingly with a color that can only be described as "Kangaroo Poo". Yeah, that had to go.

Thank goodness for retirement. My Dad was able to come and help me and once Tim and my Mom had finished with their days, they came to lend a hand as well. We selected a very light yellow, almost white, to paint the trim, for the living room. The walls will be a light blue which will compliment our new furniture (I didn't forget to fill you in on the whole "how we quickly filled it up" portion of my last post. Bare with me here, it will come.) We started that room first as not only does it have a lot of trim but also has the rather large bookcases to deal with. The previous owner of the house either had absolutely no color sense, or an odd sense of humor. I say this as the back of the bookcase, on the top portion only, was painted in what one would have to call Peppermint Green or Pepto Bismol green if it were green, you get the drift?
Here we are so you can see the progress...one coat of that yellow will not slay the Kangaroo Poo, we will need to do another coat!





We smartened up when we did the dining room next. We put primer on the Kangaroo Poo to help cover that. It worked much better.



Both the front and back doors have screen doors that SLAM! For me, hearing a door slam is the feeling that some get when fingernails run down a chalkboard! Tim is taking care of that for us.


The next day I painted the dining room trim, well, most of it, with white. Man, there is A LOT of trim!
From there, it was onward and outward. We left Friday afternoon with a 16' Ryder truck and the trusty moving team of Daddy, Tim and Kay and headed for Brooklyn.
That will be next, but for now I need to go eat breakfast and get ready for another fun filled day of moving...

Oh What a Day!

This morning we met with Janet, our new landlord. Turns out that she is really lovely. Both Tim and I took an immediate liking to her. Always a good thing with a landlord, and hey, we have been around the block and know the whole landlord gig!

After signing the paperwork and handing over a bunch of money, we had a key! We went directly to the house...to take pictures and measure. Yes, I took the camera out of the car this time.

Let's see if I can walk you through. We are still going to paint, so it will look a bit different, but here is our canvas to work with...

Here is looking from the kitchen to the patio, backyard and to the shed


This is standing in the dining room looking into the living room...the front door is to the right of the double window, with the stairs going to the second floor across from that. Yes, the floor is a crazy teal. We are thinking of either having it sanded or painting it or just covering it with a rug...

Here are the builtins on the other side of the room for the tv and books and such

After walking through the front door and the living room, you walk through the dining room to the kitchen. Here is the dining room

Yes, it looks very much like the living room...just wait till we have furniture, that is part II of this post. After the dining room is our HUGE kitchen. You can sort of see the doorway from the dining room photo, but here are two more of the kitchen
From the dining room into the kitchen

From the backdoor to the other side of the kitchen...our kitchen is big enough for two sides!!

Um, yeah...did you see that...a dishwasher, microwave and OH YEAH...a garbage disposal in the sink which you can't see in the photo.
Then we move to upstairs.

This is what will be the guest room. It may not look that exciting now, but once we paint and put some things in it...whatever, the closet in this room is larger than some of the rooms we had in Brooklyn! The carpet that you see here is throughout the upstairs, with the exception of the bathroom. It needs to be cleaned, but is in really good shape.

This is the middle bedroom, basically at the top of the stairs. As you can see, it was formely a kids room. We are going to leave the painting on the windows because it is so fun. BUT, we will get rid of the plaid paint and the text on the walls. This will become our office/computer room.


These next two are our bedroom. It is a really nice size with vaulted ceiling and fantastic closet. I don't know how to turn these photos, so, just tilt your head, you'll be fine.




So that is part I as dinner is now ready.
Part II shortly is where I tell you about how we have filled it already...

Hanging, Hanging....HUNG!

For those of you that have been checking back the last few days to get an update about the house and have been frustrated at my lack of posting to give you an update...Whew! You should have been on this end with me! I waited until I actually had information to share with you. Which means, yes, we have been waiting since we told them on Monday that we wanted the house to find out what was happening.

Janet apparently had told another realtor friend of hers that they could show the house to a perspective tenant couple. She told me this when I spoke with her on Wednesday. The couple was supposed to look at the house yesterday. She also told me that she was "pretty sure" she wanted to rent to us, but needed to honor her word about allowing the other couple to see the house. From what she said they were also prepared to pay more per month in rent than we were. If this was to become a bidding war on the house, we would quickly back down. Yes, the house is perfect and everything that we are looking for and a HOUSE, not an apartment. However, it is also at the cap of what we can afford to spend a month. And another thing, Why waste the time of the realtor and the couple if you are going to rent to us?!!?

So the lovely waiting game was played until 10pm last night...nothing like dragging it out, huh? I have no finger nails left from all the anticipation! I received an email from Janet last night saying that she would be happy to rent to us!!!!!! HOORAY!!! We have a home, a nice one!

We are expecting to hear from her today to make arrangements and decisions as to when we move in and all those things. She has had the whole building, including the carpets and windows cleaned. She said she has a plumber and an electrician scheduled to be there this week. Something about when you turn the dishwasher on the lights in the kitchen dim...Um, a dishwasher, whatever, I would run that sucker in the dark if it meant Tim and I didn't have to actually do dishes anymore! But, she is fixing all the problems that arise in a house that old. She is also having a medicine cabinet installed in the upstairs bathroom.

I am not sure when we will have keys to get in, but as soon as we do, we will go and see the house and bring our camera. This time, I won't leave it in the car!