so, i have been so busy with school, work, buying a new home and planning a wedding, i have barely had time to breathe let alone blog, but i'm going to try and start up again. i've come to the realization that i'm a bad blogger because i honestly had nothing to blog about before. well, now, between the wedding and the fact that we purchased a house, it seems i have plenty to blog about, just no time to do it.
so i will have to fill you in. about a month ago we decided to buy a house. my fiance, Jesse, is a carpenter, so we obviously opted for a fixer-upper that we could hopefully put some money into and end up making a profit on. unfortunately, when all your best friends are building stunningly modern starter homes in brand new communities with pristine tile, gorgeous granite and beautiful appliances, its hard to be too excited about the dated kitchen, ugly lino and crazy wall colours that come with buying a 1978 4 level split in an established neighbourhood. i keep telling myself that i have to be realistic - i know that the home we purchased is an amazing investment property which we will, unless the market takes a nose dive, make a pretty profit on - none the less, the amount of work we need to put into the home can be incredibly overwhelming at times.
for example, we get possession on feb 21st, this monday. for all my other friends who have recently bought homes, possession day = move in day. but... that is definitely not the case for Jesse and i. feb 21st means cleaning, tsp, cleaning, more tsp and then again, more cleaning. feb 22-24 means painting; not only painting the walls, but the ceilings since she was apparently a chain smoker, which also means that feb 24th means that 2500 sq ft of carpet need to be deodorized and sanitized and the furnace needs to be cleaned and chimney need to be checked. hopefully, we will be able to actually move some furniture in on feb 25th- 27th and it will all be clean enough that i am willing to actually move my furniture and wardrobe in, and have everything perfect for my birthday, mar 1st. yikes, are you overwhelmed yet? because i am. i am exhausted typing up everything we have to do i cannot imagine what it is going to be like doing it.
to be perfectly honest, i wanted to build - who doesn't want a brand new home customized to fulfill their hearts every desire? but, Jesse really wanted to buy and flip, so that's what we are doing. I have to confess, at this point i am just being whiney, because honestly, the house we ended up with is not even half as bad as it could have been - its actually going to be beautiful. one of the reasons that i wanted to build was the openness of modern homes, i absolutely adore vaulted ceilings. to my amazement, my amazing fiance found me a home that captured the airy, openness of a new home in an area where we can actually have a front yard and back yard, hell, we even have a side yard; we have two decks, one concrete and one wood so we can have plenty of bbq's in the summer - we even have a fire pit. our yard makes it worth it. the one downside to the new developments is the lack of lot; everything is on zero lot lines, most homes don't even come with grass, you have to lay the sod and do all the initial landscaping yourself. let me tell you, one major perk of buying a home off a 78 year old lady is the fact that the gardens are immaculately kept and incredibly developed (do you know a woman over 65 who doesnt live for their garden? i don't) - the only thing Jesse wants to do is add a vegetable garden in the back, apparently the previous owner favored flowers over veggies. also, since we bought in a older neighbourhood we got about 1500 sq ft more living space for out money; we have a massive master bedroom, 2 spare bedrooms, 3 living areas, an office, a gorgeous fireplace, a wet bar, a massive laundry and storage room, an a huge open concept kitchen / dinning area. the majority of the work that has to be done is cosmetic, like i said before, we have a ton of cleaning, tsping and painting. two of the bathrooms have been updated and almost all the carpet is less than a year old - for the most part - the only seriously sore spot is the kitchen but i recently discovered that you can paint
point being, and what got me started on this rant, is that i will be posting before and after pictures of the house in my blog and documenting the various projects we take on during this incredibly exciting time in our lives. i will post before pictures asap when we get in on monday, then as we make some progress on the cleaning and the painting i will update the blog with more pictures. while some of the work will be done soon, most of it will be done later. since i am still a full time student, am working 24 hours a week AND and trying to plan a wedding, time for projects that i truly want to do, such as:
* refinishing my night side tables
* creating a tufted headboard
* figuring out how in the world to construct a quilt
* sealing and painting out my cedar slatted walls (yikes)
so please, stay tuned, i am really, truly hoping that this time around, i will be a better blogger.
i may even add the occasional wedding post, who doesn't love a wedding?
