House

New Appliances

We have new appliances! After several weeks of electrical work it was safe to install much needed new appliances in the kitchen. The appliances in the house when we bought it were a little old, to say the least. From some notes found about, the oven was new in 1968. It still worked, but the oven’s heating element was held in place by one of the racks and it was a little slow in getting to temperature. The dishwasher was the type that we had to roll across the floor to hook up to the sink, and made a ton of noise when it was running.

Our kitchen before the new appliances:

In preparation for the new dishwasher installation, several drawers and a very useful pull-out cutting board needed to be removed. We also had to find a kitchen cart to replace the storage we would lose, and to use as a work surface next to the stove. There was also the added bonus of finding out when the appliances were delivered that the refrigerator would not fit through the doorway. Our house is not an open floor plan, which meant there were still two doorways the fridge had to fit through once it was inside the house. The result – it sat in the living room for a week while we had some molding removed from the doorway into the dining room. Once that was done the refrigerator was able to be moved into place in the kitchen.

Our kitchen with the new appliances:

I am super happy with the new stove; it is induction which takes some getting used to, but I did use both of the ovens the other day while making dinner and it was great. We plan on changing out most everything else in the kitchen when finances allow. For now am going to freshen up the white paint on the cabinets and possibly paint the walls another color.

Settling In

The first month in our new house has flown by. It seems crazy that our second month is almost gone as well, but it is starting to feel like “our” home. For the first month in the house both Chris and I were working full time so it was a little hard to settle into the house. Now home ownership it is getting exciting since I have more time to work on projects and our first major project start date approaches. That project is a update to the all the electric in the house. Once that is done then I can start to paint rooms and really decorate the house. I have been holding off taking photos of the house until then, so stay tuned photos are coming.

In the mean time we have unpacked almost everything and sold some of our extra furniture. I made some new curtains for the kitchen and reused a bunch of old t-shirts to make a rug for in front of the sink. Even though we are planning on remodeling the entire kitchen in the near future it has helped the house feel more “ours” to change out the prior owners curtains.

We’re Home!

Skyline

View from our (current) guest bedroom at 10 pm on our first night. Seen are the Olympic Mountains.

Hello again… long time, no see. Things have been a bit busy since our last chat. We did, in fact, get keys to the house on June 13th, but we didn’t wait until the end of July to move. Through a bit of serendipity and hard work, we moved a full month earlier than planned. We also lost Jean outside for two full weeks during that time and had family visiting for a long weekend, so things have been hectic. I won’t go into either much more than to say we’ve been on autopilot and a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

Other than unpacking all of the living areas, there hasn’t been much development on the house. We’d hoped to get appliances in before us; nope. We’ve decided on what we want, however we’ll need to upgrade the wiring to be safe. While we’re at it, we’ve decided to replace all the knob and tube in the house… as well as add a few outlets and swap over all two prong outlets to three prong. This is as big a deal as it sounds and, due to the robust housing market, isn’t scheduled to start until September. Once that’s done, we’ll get new appliances in and actually paint a bunch of the rooms. In the meantime, we’re still trying to unload a bunch of furniture from the old house and the new that we didn’t have time to sell before moving.

My natural inclination is to list all the things we’ve done and want to do to do the house. Truth be told, I think that obsessive version of me is dying a slow death. I still like everything to have its place, but I no longer feel the need to tell you we’ve installed shelving, new towel rods, rewired all the TV/internet services, fixed the dishwasher, installed new locks, put together all new bedroom furniture, replaced a shower head, mowed the lawn (first time in nearly three years), and hung curtains. Uhh, oops.