All moved in

Last weekend was moving weekend! And I haven't had a free minute to blog about it since then. Part of the problem is our internet isn't set up yet, but hopefully that'll be resolved by this weekend.

So yeah, we're all moved in, and overall it wasn't too painful, despite the 90-degree temperatures. And now we're slowly but surely settling in. It's really, really nice to be back in our own place again.

I'm not going to include too many photos this time because everything's still sort of a mess, but at the top you can see our basement full of boxes yet to be opened. And you can also check out our living room, which will hopefully look a lot different once we finally buy the new couch we've been talking about buying, and move the TV to a location that doesn't require stretching the ugly black cable straight across the middle of the floor.


My project for this weekend is going to be working on the kitchen and dining room. Moving always reminds you of just how much stuff you have, and even though we really did get rid of a LOT of stuff before packing up in Georgia, we still need to pare down quite a bit. (For example, maybe two boxes full of SweetWater pint glasses might be a bit excessive. Whoops!)

New house: Work weekend 2

It was another productive weekend, and now there's less than a week before the big moving day! Still a lot to get done, but we've already finished a ton of the stuff on my really long to-do list, so I'm very happy.

This weekend my helpers were my old college roommate Danielle and my mother-in-law. Jason wasn't able to spend much time at the house because he was helping his dad move -- so it's definitely a busy few weeks for us!

Here's what we got done:

- Painted the half bathroom and upstairs bathroom. The half bathroom, which is right off the kitchen and dining room is painted the same dark green color as the bottom half of the dining room. The upstairs bathroom is an aqua color called Jadeite Bowl.

- We also painted the bathroom cabinet doors and windowsill, which were dark brown, white. I took down the cute little half-shutters, also painted dark brown, and will eventually paint them white and put them back up, but that's going to have to be a project for another time. The doors still need to be put back up.

- Finished painting the living room.

- Reassembled the kitchen cabinets. After a failed attempt to drill new holes for the new cabinet hardware (the first couple worked out OK, then on the second two, despite using the same measurements, the drilled holes didn't match up to the handles. Argh!), I decided to compromise on my original idea and just get the stupid things put back together. So I just put the old hinges back up, filled in one of the two holes from the handles, repainted the doors, and used knobs instead of handles. They look fine from far away, I think. Maybe one day a long time from now I'll re-attempt changing the hinges.

New house: Work weekend 1

So we closed on our house on July 3, conveniently right before the three-day holiay weekend. (Maybe not so conveniently for my amazing family, who gave up two days' worth of Fourth of July partying to come help us start transforming our house into a place I'll actually be proud to say I live in.) Jason's dad and my friend Michaela from work also stopped by to help out, so a huge thanks to everyone involved.

We got a ton done during the first weekend. Here are the big highlights:
- Scraped down two walls' worth of wallpaper in the living room, a border in the bathroom and three evil layers of border in the kitchen.
- Pried huge, ugly mirror down from over fireplace mantle.
- Replaced the toilet in the upstairs bathroom.
- Took down ugly screen door so you can see the front door.
- Pressure-washed siding, and pruned back bushes and trees in the yard.

Here's the rest of what we accomplished, with pictures! Please ignore the huge mess, we were all too exhausted on Sunday evening to do anything more than clean up the painting supplies.

We finished painting 3/4 of the living room, minus the damaged wall area over the fireplace and some of the edging. Color: Pale Gold. Honestly, I thought it would be a little darker than it turned out, but it's growing on me. I kind of like it better in pictures than in person. Hmm. (Bonus: On the floor, you can check out all our painted cabinet doors!)

We completed painting in the dining room. Almost everyone who came through the house on Saturday said they really liked the old paint colors in the room (cream up top, chocolate brown on the bottom.) Personally, I think they were fooled into thinking it looked good because the rest of the house looked so bad. No, I actually didn't mind the chocolate brown, it just didn't fit into my design ideas. Colors: Spring Lily (top), Punk Rock (bottom)

Finally, the kitchen. This and the upstairs bathrooms are the rooms I'm hoping will look the most different post-fixup. We painted the walls in the same light green used in the dining room. We painted the hideous faux-wood-paneling cabinets in Martha Stewart's White Picket Fence. I still have to reattach the cabinet doors and replace the hardware. Unfortunately, I'm having a bit more trouble than I thought I would because both the hinges and the cabinet and drawer pulls don't match up to the standard pulls and hinges you can buy these days at Lowe's. I might have to drill new holes ... not the end of the world, but not as easy-peasy as I'd hoped for.

The new old house

A little background on the new house. It's in Bexley, a little suburb 10 minutes outside downtown Columbus. It has its own cute little downtown with a neat old movie theater, restaurants, coffee shops and stores, all within walking distance of the house.





The house was built in 1942, and its best features are gorgeous hardwood floors, a beautiful yard and a cute little sunroom. Its worst features are a kitchen with a severe lack of cabinets and a half-bathroom with the ugliest cubicle-style drop ceiling you've ever seen.

Here are some before pictures.


Front of the house



Living room



Dining room, looking through to sun room


Kitchen


One of three bedrooms



Bathroom



Back of house

And we're off

These are exciting times in the Mann household. We recently moved back to Ohio after spending four years in Georgia, which meant new jobs for me and Jason. After seven months of living with in-laws, we've finally found ourselves a new house, so we're about to actually have a household again. And finally, we're going to have a baby!

My friend Nikki has been trying to convince me to start a blog to chronicle all these changes, and I'm finally getting around to actually doing it. My plan is for this blog to be a place where our family and friends can keep up with what's going on in our lives, with our new house and, eventually, with the baby -- no matter how far away they live.