Carpet Time!

So its been a long while between updates, mainly because we've been working very hard to get everything done. Finally we have the big change we've been waiting for, as we got our carpet installed yesterday. To say it makes a difference would be an understatement. Pictures don't really do it justice, but here are a few, complete with new curtains that we put up yesterday as well:

First the Master Bedroom, which has undergone a nice transformation from baby blue walls with cracks and tears in them, to a nice finished room with new brown walls, curtains, carpet, and of course that lamp that seems to sneak its way into every picture.


A quick shot of the walk in closet. Not much to see here, but a nice picture of the carpet.


And into the Family Room, now complete with carpet, vertical blinds, new paint everywhere, and a rug we picked up yesterday (have to keep the new carpet clean.)


And another shot of the Family Room, with our finished windows as well.


Move in Day is Monday, October 20th. 2 weeks, and we can't wait to get a few more little things finished up, and get moved into our new place.

Living Room Before & After

I've officially given up on my quest to make all of the post titles be song names. Anyway, some more before & afters, this time the living room. Unfortunately we only took 1 before picture from 1 angle, but I think you'll get the idea:



And a few afters:






Its amazing how much the new paint adds to all of the spaces, especially the white that makes it all pop out. We just added some white wood blinds to the window, and have somemore furniture to bring in and arrange to our liking. But that's another room that's done and ready to be lived in. Tomorrow we'll continue working the paint in the few rooms we have left, and get our NEW Washer and Dryer delivered, as well as our NEW Grill. Can't wait, and I'm sure they'll be pictures to come.

After The Rain

I guess I never realized just how difficult it would be to blog when we're devoting every moment to the house. If we aren't at work, we're at the house, or exhausted and in bed. But its all worth it when you see the progress we've made. After a week full of rainy days, hard work, and more help from the family (thanks Mom, Dad, and Brandon!) we finally have a few true Before & Afters to show. There will be more pictures once we get moved in and have all of our furniture in place, but enjoy for now the before and after of the Dining Room.




Clean floors, new paint on the walls and trim, new outlet covers and air duct covers, and finished off with a new and updated Chandelier. We absolutely LOVE it. It really makes all of the hard work worth it to see the pictures next to each other.

Paint It Black

Among other colors. Its been almost a full week since my "before" post, and we now have 3 rooms officially FINISHED. No after pictures quite yet, as I have some setup left to do. We've been working all week, getting tons done, and getting more help from our great families. Its nice to have everyone willing to chip in and help us to really make this house into the home that we want to have. Last weekend when we first took possession of the house, everyone chipped in and helped. My mom Cindi, my sister Katina, my brother-in-law Jody, my niece and nephew Kaja & Kyson, Jamie's parents Jim & Karol, Jamie's brother Brandon, and even his new girlfriend Emily. We had a few good pictures captured from the weekend work:



My mom putting in some work up top in the Family Room.



Jody getting his roll on.



Kaja painting, yet staying so photogenic.



Kyson painting his name....



And then getting some work done...



And then being.........Kyson.

Thanks to all of our family members that helped us get a huge head start in the first week.

Good Riddance

Warning: This post, and many to follow, will be big. Dial-up Beware. And shame on you anyway.

So today is Monday, and I haven't got a chance to blog since Friday when we signed our documents, because we've been busting ass every day since then. Thank god for our families, because we wouldn't even be 1/4 as far along as we are if it wasn't for them, and especially my Mom Cindi who took a break from her busy work life to help us all weekend, even while we were at work on Saturday and Sunday night. Anyway, we'll get to that. Right now, lets take a look at, and say bye-bye to, the OLD house. This will be the one and only time you get to see alot of these, but it'll be fun to do before and afters. So take a tour of the house we bought, and we'll journey together as we transform this bad boy into our home.



I realize we forgot to get a picture of the outside, but its filthy anyway, so we'll get to that. You walk in and see our living room. Not a very good picture, but a quick shot there of the fireplace. You then move through and see the Dining Room, pictured on the bottom.



Next we turn back around through the living room, into the Hallway of Doom. Its a little place, probably a total of 20 square feet, with 5 doorways, and 2 closets. Its awesomely ridiculous. We look into the Spare Bedroom, the only room we aren't painting, and because of that, it quickly became the room for all of our stuff.


From there we peer into what I'm calling the Den. Its gonna have a desk in it, so Den works for now. Door #4 in the Hallway of Doom leads us to the bathroom, pictured here on the bottom. It'll be getting some makeover love as well, although we're undecided exactly what as of now.



Finally we leave the crazy Hallway, and enter the "Long Hallway". We've found alot of confusion distinguishing between the two hallways, so we've got to think of something here. Anyway, you pass through this and check out the kitchen. Do you like Fuscia? Hope not, cause that stuff is history.



As you leave the long hallway, you had into the Family Room. I provided two pictures here. Has a fireplace, no floors (currently), and a sliding glass door that leads to the Patio and big backyard, which are two other things I forgot to take a picture of.



Not a very good picture here of either the master bedroom, and the master bathroom. Its okay, because both will be getting some serious change to them. I also should've snapped a pic of the walk in closet, but forgot in an episode of heat stroke after taking on the next project:



It sort of breaks the tour, as this room is off of the living room, back at the beginning, but I figured I would save the worst for last. The Utility room. It had linoleum tile that I'm guessing was 30 years old, and a decent sized patch in the middle was missing/broken/coming up. I decided it'd be a brilliant idea to scrape the 17 x 10 room and get rid of the tile. I was dying about halfway through AND had to go to the work for the night. Much to my surprise and dismay, I returned from work at Midnight to find the rest of the room completely scraped. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I love my brother-in-law Jody. And I owe him 2 cases of beer now.

So thats the tour for now. Not pictured is the exterior of the front and back of the house, the back-deck, the garage, the driveway, and probably a ton of other stuff. This post was plenty long though. Coming up in the next few days: The power of family and their will to paint. The transformation begins!

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

So we are home-owners. After a short meeting at the title company offices today, we signed roughly 3,000 pieces of paper, and officially became home-owners. We collect the key later today from the sellers, and finally get to go in and get our hands dirty, so to speak. I can't wait to see the place all emptied out, and finally get all of these ideas out of our minds and onto the walls of our new house. Many more updates to come shortly. It feels SO good to be done with all of the boring, mind-numbing work, meeting, paperwork, phonecalls, etc. Its time to have some fun.

Relax

So, tomorrow is Wednesday, and the days continue to drop like flies as we move towards the weekend, and finally officially (kind of) closing on our house. Check out the pic above and you'll see our brand new Ottoman. We'd been searching tirelessly around KC for an Ottoman that would work with our furniture. We wanted something with that same Microfiber/Suede look that ours had, and with storage as well. We finally found this one online, and decided to go for it, because both of us were tired of looking at Ottomans. Anyway, a few simple screws on the tops, and it became part of our Living Room. Can't wait to put it into the new place, along with our new (old) Recliner.

Now to that new place. For the last month or so we've been building towards a September 1st closing date (the date originally suggested by our Lender.) I expressed to the Lender and to the Title Company the fact that September 1st is Monday, Labor Day, and everyone assured me it wouldn't be an issue. And wouldn't you know it, it IS an issue! But it appears we've got everything worked out now. We'll go in Friday to officially sign all of the documents, and the loan and settlement won't officially post until the next available day, which would be September 2nd. Luckily we're dealing with some very nice owners, and they have said that they have no issues getting us the keys once everything is a done deal and the documents are signed. Just another bit of stress and frustration to this final week, but we'll make it. We're waiting for official word that everything was great on the Appraisal (according to our Lender: "no news is good news") but the home-owners told us that things went great on Monday night with the Appraiser. Is it bad when we get more updates from the Home-Owners than from our Lender? I guess another one of the crutches of buying For-Sale-By-Owner without a real estate agent. But keeping that potential 3% commission sure is nice :)

The Final Countdown

Just one more week and we will have our house. Waiting through this month of August really hasn't been that bad. I thank Preseason Football starting to keep me occupied and from thinking about it all the time. We've got one room in our house quickly becoming the "stuff for the house" room, with boxes, bags, and random odds and ends everywhere. But now, just one more week. We shouldn't have any issues, and we'll have our fingers crossed that we won't run into any problems.

Bed of Roses

So I came upon our first awesome steal of what I hope is many while we're buying things for the new house. I went to meet my Mom and a friend to help them move something that they bought at a Home Decor place. After looking around the place, they asked if I wanted to run over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond with them before I went back home. I'm very glad that I did.

In addition to my Mom buying us an awesome Woodwick Candle, she also spotted something on the clearance rack -- that being the above King size Bedding set. I told her that we didn't really need a new bedding set, since ours was only about 1.5 years old, but I let her go ahead and check the clearance price anyway. Fully expecting to see at least 150 bucks, we were all a little blown away by what we saw:

Yes, that says "Was: 24.99....Now: 12.98". I was a little worried, because it was supposedly a Display model, and was listed "as is". But hell, it was 13 bucks, so even if I got it home and it had a big hole in it, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. My mom's friend Sue actually ended up buying it for me to thank me for coming and helping them with the artwork, so it was really a win/win for me. We all held our breath as we went to the check out, but sure enough, the clerk simply punched in the 12.98 price tag, and we were on our way (after the alarm went off because she forgot to remove the zipper lock on the bag. I was worried we were gonna lose it there.)

So I get it home, unpack it, and it looks perfect, aside from being wrinkly due to being bundled into a plastic wrapper for who knows how long. From the way it was packaged and folded, I really don't even think this was a floor model. Anyway, being the interested and savvy googler that I am, I typed in the full name of the bedding set to try and find out why it was so cheap. The first hit I got was for the Bed, Bath, and Beyond website. It looks like somebody messed up, just a little bit:

Wasting Time

So, not much to really blog about while we wait (and wait) for September 1st to come. Jamie has a nice excuse, since she's back in Western Kansas this weekend for some bachelorette/bridal shower festivities for her friend Angie, who is getting married in October. I'm still stuck here, thinking about the house, and all the stuff we're gonna do to it once we get in it. I guess the first 1/3 of the month went pretty fast....I guess.

So, here's a little look at our Anniversary gifts that we got each other this year. Our 4 year Anniversary was on June 26th, and I spent some time googling looking for ideas for gifts. I found out that the 4th anniversary traditionally has a gift of Fruit. Well, I was trying to think of something cool with Fruit, and found this great place called Edible Arrangements. They do all kinds of edible fruit bouquets for all occasions.

Unfortunately, Jamie thought of the exact same thing. 4th year. Fruit. Bouquet. The only difference is she is creative, and I'm lazy. I bought a giant fruit bouquet, and she made me a pretty awesome fruit bouquet of my own. She felt kind of bad that hers was so much smaller, but I told her that a) it cost alot less money, and b) had alot more thought into it. Regardless, both of them were awesome, and we had way too much fruit in the house for the next 2 or 3 weeks.

And no, we didn't even come close to eating all of it.

Freeze Frame

So like I mentioned, I might be stretching for content while we struggle through this last month on our way to September 1st. At least football starts, technically tomorrow with the Colts v Redskins opening preseason at the Hall of Fame game. Thank god for NFL Network and something silly like 55 preseason games.

Anyway, I put these posters together last night. Our awesome summer vacation to the Cabin in Grand Lake ended up taking us through Fort Collins, Colorado where we toured my personal favorite maker of beers -- New Belgium Brewery. As part of the tour you also got to sample 4 beers of your choice, which was cool, tasting some of their products that I'd only previously had in bottles. They had these awesome 12 v 16 posters available in the merchandise area, which I acquired at a discounted rate. I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with them, till Jamie suggested slapping them all into one big poster frame. I one-upped her and went with 2 awesome New Belgium posters, which will soon adorn the walls of the 3rd bedroom/den at our new house.

I Want a New Drug

Well, a new rug actually. I was browsing craigslist (I'm becoming a major addict since we started into this house buying venture) for random household items, furniture, etc. and I stumbled upon this pretty sweet 4'x6' area rug. It totally fits with alot of the colors we're thinking of for many of the rooms, so I picked it up for a cheap 25 bucks. It isn't that I think its so incredible that I had to make an entry about it, but I really want to test out and get used to posting pictures on here, for when we get into the big stuff come September. Regardless, this rug rules, and I'm digging it.

Two of a Kind....Workin on a Full House

Welcome to the blog of Jamie and Jamie. I am a chronic failure when it comes to blogging, but I thought this would be a great idea and way to communicate the important things in our lives to people that are smart and educated enough to be able to use the internet. Congratulations if you've made it this far.

So if you know Jamie and I from back in Hays, from College, from Wichita, or from currently in Kansas City, this is a good place to catch up with us, or just stay posted with whats going on in our life. We got married 4 years ago on June 26, 2004, and its been a wonderful 4 years, even if its been a little pedestrian. Its hard to blog about going to work, going out drinking, watching football, and just generally enjoying life. However, we've recently embarked on a new blog-worthy adventure that I thought would be great to detail here as we go through the steps.

We're buying a House! Finally, after years and years of living in apartments, rentals, and bouncing from place to place virtually every year, we're ready to settle down in a space we can call our own, fill with our ideas and concepts, and make into a real home. This of course will also enable to take that next step -- filling it with a family. And before you ask...no, not quite yet. I'll keep you posted.

We had a pretty particular idea of what we were looking for in a place. We wanted to stay right here in this area (near 95th and Metcalf in Overland Park, just block away from both of our jobs), we wanted 3 bedrooms and hopefully 2 baths, and enough room to not only live in now, but to grow a family in as well. Oh, and of course it had to be in our fairly average budget. Well, I don't want to spout to much hyperbole, but we essentially we found what is our perfect house. It fits all of our criteria (and then some) and needs just the right amount of work to let us add our personal touch to the place.

We've gone through most of the difficult steps already. House hunting was fun, and the pre-approval process was a bit tedious, but we made it, and checked another step off of our list this morning when we had a very successful inspection. Virtually the only thing left is the bank's appraisal of the property, and then it should be smooth sailing as we progress to our September 1, 2008 Closing Date.

I plan on supplying this space with TONS of before and after pics, our experiences doing the work we're doing on the place, and a great place to re-visit the memories of creating our first home. Pictures will be coming, likely not until September 1 or shortly after. I pledge to at least attempt to keep up with this thing, and hopefully someone out there gets some joy and information out of it.

Peace out!