Happy New Year!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a great time ringing in 2020!
Listen, December was quite a month for us. Not only have we been doing all the holiday parties and celebrating with family… we also have finally MOVED IN!!! It’s been such a long time coming, it hardly feels real. It was a quite memorable first night – I came down with a stomach bug and spent most of the night in the bathroom. Things never go quite like you think they will!
Luckily, that only lasted 24 hours and the rest of our first week here was a fun adventure! The hardest part was moving our cat, Asher, who is not good with change. He stayed in his little cat room the first day, but then set about exploring and now seems pretty settled here. He’s been making himself comfortable in all the new little nooks and crannies.
As you might have assumed since we’ve actually moved in now, the house was largely completed over the last month. We focused on doing everything required to get our occupancy permit. This included things like installing window opening limiters for child safety and finishing the railings on the deck that had to go back to the shop to be adjusted.
The office also got installed. It has a double desk along the back wall with a shared peninsula in the center. We chose leathered soapstone for our countertops and Chad put a beeswax sealer on them, which is still curing.
On either side of the pocket doors into the office, there are large built-in bookshelves and on the side of the room with the window, I have a large built-in window seat (still currently missing the seat portion) with shelves up the sides. There’s still a little bit to be completed in the office, but it’s mostly useable now.
One of the main reasons I didn’t give you guys an update sooner is because I just didn’t have my computer set up for a couple of weeks while we were moving. I had boxes and boxes of stuff all over the house that I needed to get put away. There was quite a bit of running around my own house and I wore holes in many a pair of socks.
The same soapstone in the office also got put on the vanity in the basement bathroom and the loft bar upstairs, pictured below.
The kitchen is also mostly finished. We need to have the open shelves installed but that will happen after we seal the brick backsplash, which needs a full month to cure after being installed.
I have all my kitchen supplies and small appliances tucked into their spots and I can’t tell you how much I love working in this space! I only wish I could do a bit more cooking in it, but as it stands now, we don’t have a fully functioning cooktop and the oven isn’t working at all. Appliances are tough, guys. More on this to come.
Last you saw, the laundry room was ALMOST useable with just the washer and dryer needing to be installed. They have now been well broken-in. I have already done SOOOO much laundry here and the machines are worlds better than my old set. I’m very satisfied with them! There are still a few things to be finished in this room, too though, like the wood top for the window seat, and a wood countertop over the washer and dryer.
We brought over the vast majority of our furniture and worked on putting things in their new places. Most of Chad and my bedroom set is down in the spare bedroom now, cat claw marks and all. We reused one of the rugs from our old house in that bedroom and I spray painted our old bed frame black and we’re using it in that room, as well.
Most of what I’ve been working on each day is getting things organized and cleaned. It’s still a hot mess around here, but that just comes with moving. One day, it will all be cleaned up and put away and I’ll make sure to take lots of pictures because that will probably only last about five minutes before I need to start all over again.
Thanks so much for following our journey these last NINETY weeks!!! Wow! I can’t believe that much time has passed since we broke ground on this dream. Keep following me here because there is still a lot to be done and now that we’ve moved in I’ll be posting to show you each of the finished rooms and spaces as we get them together. And of course, no house is ever really “done”, right? There will be many, many projects and updates to come!
Here’s to a most spectacular 2020!! Wishing you all love and joy this year! I’m looking forward to waking up to a whole lot more of these gorgeous sunrises!
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