Saturday and Sunday's advertures

I don't think I've seen my husband as excited as he was on Saturday in a long, long time!  He was like a kid on Christmas morning knowing that his trophy of an elk was arriving today!

His parents were so sweet to come all the way up from Waco just to bring us a few (some more important than others) items and help us unload our storage unit in Dallas to our new house.

When they arrived, we had to first unload the elk from the back of their truck, and we were all a bit nervous that he would not fit through the front door!

But....

HE FIT!!!!!

 

                                  

Thankfully, all went well and the elk made it through the door frame just fine!  Then came the trouble of deciding which wall to put him on (remember we had just stayed up the night before until 1:30 am painting the wall we thought he'd go on).  After some investigation, we realized the painted wall would not work due to what was on the other side of  the wall.  So we had to decide on a new game plan.  The elk will now go on the wall directly to the left and we will just have to remove/replace the light fixture so it does not hang down even with the elk's face.

 

 

 

 

 

We decided not to hang him on Saturday, to give me time to paint the new wall, and so we could focus on unloading the storage unit.  So until the next time his parents can come up and visit, we will have a large elk sitting in our living room!  Once we have him up on the wall, new pictures will be posted.

After getting to spend some wonderful quality time with his parents, we saw them off and then got right back to work.  We had a few hours to spare before a graduation party on Saturday evening, so Lance got started removing the old dishwasher that was in the kitchen so we could install our new one! 

 

Having never done this before, he sure looked like he knew what he was doing!  It didn't take Lance long at all to disconnect and remove the old dishwasher.  This was our stopping point on Saturday night.

 

Sunday morning we were both already feeling pretty tired.  After a Starbucks and Lowe's run, we were ready to get back to work!  Lance start in on installing our new dishwasher while I went back to painting.  I was able to completely finish painting the stairwell and the hallway leading to the master bedroom.

 

 

As mentioned before, Sears Outlet is the place to go for new appliances!  Not only did we get a great deal on our fridge, but we got 50% off our dishwasher!  We got a Kenmore Elite 24 inch built in dishwasher that has so many extra jets it can clean anything you put in there!

 

 

After lost of hard work, reading through the (not so great or detailed) instructions, and four trips to Lowe's for pieces, Lance installed our gorgoues new dishwasher!

 

It's times like this that I am so thankful to be married to a man that can figure anything out!!!

 

I will be using it for the first time today and I cannot wait!!

 

 

 

 

 

 Come back soon to see the house completely painted, and the dog park project getting started!

Moving!

The events at the house started early on Friday with the delivery of our new refridgerator! If you ever need new appliances, I highly encourage you to look into Sears Outlet.   While some of the inventory is used, refurbished, or damaged, a great deal of it is brand new!    

 

  



We were able to get this brand new, out of the box Maytag 4-door 25 cu. ft. fridge, normally priced at $2,599.00, for only $1,472.95. We also paid a little bit extra to have it delivered and the men that brought it were so nice! They set everything up, including taking off all of the inside stickers and tape.

We were so thankful for all of our friends that helped us move tons of boxes on Friday night after work.  It only took us one trip, and within an hour we had moved everything but the furniture from our apartment to the new house!

With all of the heavy lifting out of the way, Lance and I knew we had to get started painting - actually it was just one wall in particular that we needed to paint.  Lance has a beautiful, massive Elk that he shot many years back.  His parents have been so kind to keep it until he had a place big enough for it to hang on the wall (by massive, I mean that it is 6 ft. tall, 5 ft. wide, and 4 ft. in depth and it's only a shoulder mount!).  Thankfully, we found a home with tall enough ceilings that the elk could fit and we knew exactly what wall it would go on (-->).

My in-laws were coming on Saturday to bring us the elk and help us unload our storage unit into our house.  It wasn't until about 10:30pm on Friday night that we realized we needed to have the wall painted and ready so that Lance and his dad could hang the elk on Saturday.

 

 

And so the fun began.....

 

Now I am not one who is easily scared by heights, in fact I usually always love heights!  But once we got the ladder set up to reach the top of the wall, I started getting nervous.  By the time I was at the top of the ladder and starting to paint, I was honestly terrified. 

Thankfully, with lots of help from Lance, I got over the scared feeling and got the wall painted!  This is also the first time Lance and I got to see the color that we are painting the entire inside of the house on a wall and not on a swatch from the paint store. 

 



The paint color is "Summit Gray" by Sherwin Williams and it is the perfect gray for all of the living spaces of a home.  We can't wait to see what it looks like once we get it up on all of the walls throughout the house!

We finally called it a night around 1:30am and decided that, despite our excitement for having a house, we couldn't handle another night sleeping on an air mattress.  So we loaded up the dogs and drove back to our dallas apartment and spent our last night ever in the apartment that we first called home.



And So It Begins...

Thursday, June 6th, 2013
 

As soon as 6 pm came around on Thursday and we were off work, Lance and I raced to get an over night bag packed and get out to the house!  Neither of us could stop smiling the whole drive out there and it felt great to get to unlock the door to our new home for the first time!  The dogs were even more excited, seeing as how they had not been to the house at all yet.  We let them inside and they were off - sniffing every inch, crevice, and corner of the whole house.  I'm not sure if they were just feeding off Lance and I's excitement or if they knew this was home - but the looks on their faces were adorable!  My personal favorite part was watching them explore their new back yard - pool and all!  That's right, our new home has a gorgeous, ginormous pool in the back yard!

 

 

 

 

 

After we let the dogs have their fun swimming, Lance and I got right to work!  For those that don't know me well, I'm a bit Type-A in the cleaniness department, so the first thing we did was change the toilet seats!

 

 

 My next project was to start removing the wonderful popcorn ceiling that is in the house (oh how wonderful the style in the 80's was!).  I read numerous blogs that gave step-by-step directions on how to remove it, so I felt pretty good about being able to do it myself!

After about 20 minutes of working in a 1 sq.ft. area, I realized the blogs were not 100% correct.  It was HARD work, and not something I'd be able to do throughout the entire house without it taking months.

 

So I humbly decided this was going to be my first "failure" DIY project.  We'll be hiring professionals to take over and complete this job in a few years!

 

We decided to call it a night after this and get some good sleep before work the next day.

 

 

Below are all of the before pictures of the downstairs of the house!

 

 

This is the front door, stairs, and the entry way when you walk in the front door

           

                  (Living Room)                                                                   (Dining Room) 

 

When you walk in there is a living room to the left that is open to the dining room

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dining room then leads into the big kitchen that includes a breakfast nook area with a gorgeous stainglass light fixture.

Sharing a wall with the kitchen is the large family room that has a gorgeous floor to ceiling red brick fire place.  The three big windows face the back yard so during the day we get great light that bounces off the pool water into the house.



 

 







More pictures to come of the master and upstairs areas!