A Week of Home Ownership

Well, we are officially home owners.. and we are excited and terrified and happy and overwhelmed all at the same time. 

The Haughtons buy a house!

After drinking our champagne, we couldn't help ourselves by getting right to work! As I mentioned in my previous post, the terrible light and worn away house numbers were an easy fix.

We quickly found out that we needed an electric box plate to put up the new light so our front of the house renovations were put on hold. 

We decided to go home and change so we could return to start our first big project, painting the ceiling. The goal was to have this done before moving in our furniture, so we started by taking down the nasty lighting and patching the ceiling.

Old track lighting

The ceiling underneath was gross

My job was then to paint the edges of the ceiling so I could use the roller on it in the morning. The edging is the worst and took me about four hours.

Who doesn't paint in spandex?

While I painted the ceilings, Andrew ripped out the trim around the floor. Also, another super fun job.

He was the happier Haughton. Good guy.

The living room was an absolute disaster while I painted and Andrew ripped out all the trim.

This is when we started getting a little stressed out. At this point, we still had all of our stuff in our old apartment and we hadn't even started looking at upstairs. 

We went back to Fairmount around 1:00am and were back to the house by 9:00am the next morning with a Civic load of stuff and ready to finish the ceiling and begin the trim for the walls.

Painting the ceilings is the.worst.thing.ever. It absolutely kills your neck and took me way too long, so it was a relief to start the trim for the walls.

Andrew and I turned out to be a really great team together, so we were able to finish painting the walls in a few hours. The rest of the house was a disaster so we spent the afternoon cleaning up the mess before it was time to start the "big move."

The kitchen was where we dumped all the junk

Moving day was just hectic. We had to be at the new house at 7:00 to receive the washer/dryer being delivered by Best Buy. While Andrew manned the fort, I was going back and forth between the houses, loading up the Civic.

The best Civic

We had reserved a 17' U-Haul online to be picked up at 10:00am to haul the rest of the big stuff from Fairmount. When I went to U-Haul to pick it up, the only vans available were 14' so I asked to be compensated. I was given a $50 credit for the "reservation guarantee," which they never would have told me about it! Saving $$ where we can!

The moving crew taking a much needed break

It was a long day, complete with U-Haul drama (I accidentally hit a car with the truck mirror. I walked away after getting screamed at, but I will never drive a U-Haul in a city again!). We had an awesome parent-team of help so we ordered pizza and took a break after an otherwise smooth move.

We have the best parents!

After the pizza, it was time to clean up and make the living room feel like home! We have fresh painted walls and ceiling, now time to see it all come together.

Like a different apartment!

It was so rewarding to see everything come together! We have some work to do but I am so happy with the initial look and feel of the place.

We are hoping to go with a mix of modern and natural, so of course we had to include the infamous antler engagement present and a beautiful new plant from my mom! We will see how long the plants last with the cats...