First House, First Post.

Hello Blogosphere!

I never know what top write on the first post of a blog. But here goes.

Hubsbeast and I did it! We bought a house. It's a 1200 sq. ft. above grade two-story, with 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a double garage, and lots and lots of work to do!!  It was built in 2001, and lies on a long cul-de-sac. The style of the house is what we'd call a "laned home"- meaning the garage is accessed by an alleyway that runs behind all the houses on the street. From the road, all you see is house.

Now- at just over 10 years old, the house is in pretty good overall shape. The inspection went swimmingly- there are only a few minor issues within the home that are all small things Hubs can work his way through on weekends. Nothing major that we must do the second we take possession. Which was really important to us. We like improving our home, but not under duress!

So anything and everything we're planning on doing to the house is voluntary. However, we bought the house for it's layout/space/location...not for the way it's been finished. That's for darn sure.

The list of improvements needed (as far as we've assembled it thus, and in no particular order) are:

• Stairs- rip up lino and put down paper and runner, or carpet (jute? seagrass? berber?), or laminate. 
• Paint kitchen
• Paint living room and stairwell, install new baseboards (the current owners did a horrible job of putting window trim around the base of the room after they'd had new laminate installed.)
• Refinish cabinets and update island. 
• Sod backyard
• Paint deck
• Paint front porch
• Tile front entrance and kitchen/back entrance
• Tile full bath
• Paint master
• Paint blue bedroom
• Paint and refinish half bath
• Paint and refinish full bath
• Tile backsplash
• Put in new keypad, rekey locks
• Organize bedroom w/ ikea and bins
• Organize linen closet
• Organize bathrooms
• Install bench in mudroom closet
• Install new fireplace
• Build wall to divide basement into two rooms. 

And I'm sure there will be more that pop up. As I gather ideas and info for projects I'll post it here, and once I actually get underway with them I'll chronicle the (what I'm hoping will be) epic transformations. 

But, before we can start ANY of that- we need to pack up this two bedroom apartment we've been calling home for the last three years and move all the stuff into the new house. Which is proving to be a huge undertaking- despite Hubs' insistence that "all our stuff is already in boxes." I don't know what apartment he's looking at, but it's not the same one I am!