The first weekend

This was the first weekend in our new house. It started early Friday morning when Dan left the apartment at 6am to drop The Girls off at my in-law's house and pick up the U-Haul and his friend who would be helping with the move. I, the lucky one, got to go to work all day and leave the heavy lifting to the boys. I also went in early so I could be done early. My new commute involves a lot of rush hour traffic, so Friday was the first day of my new 6:30-ish - 3pm schedule. I arrived at the house before Dan and the truck. It took him nearly 7 hours to load the truck and drive to the house. But the unloading went quickly. The guys hadn't eaten, so I left to get some pizza. By the time I got back, all the furniture was in the house. It only took 2 hours to unload. When my mother-in-law got home from work, I picked her and The Girls up and brought them over. Clover instantly got to digging. I got to work unloading what boxes I could without getting in the way. By 10pm, we'd started hanging pictures and hung out just enjoying being along in our first home. We sipped some wine and sat on the couch and discussed our redecoration plans.

Saturday was even busier. I had to go get a haircut in the old 'hood in the morning, then stopped at the apartment to pick up the few things Dan had left behind and ran a few errands. My dad came up in the afternoon to help with some projects. We all ran to Lowe's and picked up some new light fixtures. The previous owners were apparently obsessed with polished brass lighting. Not our style, at all. So we replaced the entry way and porch lights with silver fixtures that are more our taste. We also picked our paint colors and got to work. We spent Saturday night and all day Sunday painting. We painted until we couldn't see straight. Then we painted more.

Our kitchen went from boring white to red:

It's the same red we used in the apartment, just on a bigger scale.

The master bathroom went from this awful green and gold...

... to this warm "milk chocolate." Isn't it gorgeous?




The guest bathroom, also known as Dan's bathroom, is the same beautiful color. He chose it, and he won't let me forget it. "Isn't my color awesome?" Yes, honey, yes it is. I cannot emphasize enough how awful that green was. And it was everywhere. They painted everything green: the ceiling, the toilet paper holder, even the baseboards. Let me tell you what a pain it is to paint baseboards when they're already installed and touching your brand new carpet. We also replaced the light fixtures in both bathrooms. They used to have light bars with 5 plain ball bulbs that reminded me of hotel or something. So we switched them out for something prettier (I'll update with pics from the real camera later), and it really made as much difference as the paint.

Last night, we headed to Lowe's to "just look" at the appliances, although we'd already done that. They were having a sale that ended that night, and the range model that we'd liked but had been out of our budget was $200 off and now firmly in budget. Not to mention, the matching dishwasher was $100 off. We also had a 10% off coupon for being new home-buyers, which basically made the whole deal too good to pass up. So I currently have a stainless steel Frigidaire Gallery range sitting in my living room waiting for its home in the kitchen to be finished some time this week. The dishwasher should be here Wednesday. Renovation on the tile counter tops starts this evening, and we're hoping to be done Thursday. And then we'll be done with projects for a while.

It dawned on me that we'll have so many stories to tell our kids about our first weekend in the house. About how Dan taught me to mow the lawn with the lawnmower Dan's parents gave us that's missing a wheel. About how friends popped in here and there to see the place and congratulate us. About how I dripped red paint from the garage to the dining room and fast-acting Dan and the Spot Bot (seriously, love that thing) saved the day. About how my dad spent the whole weekend with us, doing almost nothing but painting and enjoying every minute with us. About how Paisley spent as much time in the yard as she could, literally soaking up the sun.

It was a weekend of wonderful firsts. I'm exhausted and sore from painting baseboards and badly in need of more hours in the day. I'm actually so excited to get home today and unpack more boxes. I couldn't have asked for a better first weekend.