New Family, New Home, New Blog!

Dave and I celebrated our one year anniversary a month ago by purchasing a home! With the market down, the $8,000 tax credit, and the money we've been saving up for a down payment now was definitely the time for us to buy. We are SO glad to be done with the insanity known as renting!

It’s the perfect house for us! There's a gazebo on the side of the house, and it's right across the street from the elementary school. It has a kitchen, living room, three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, then a MONSTER family room down stairs (the size of the upstairs living room and two bedrooms), a bedroom, bathroom and a huge laundry room. The upstairs was remodeled about 3 years ago so we have new marble counter, and everything. 

We’re in the process of converting the laundry room into a second kitchen so we can rent out the basement. The two of us really don't NEED a whole house, so might as well put someone's rent towards our principal for a few years. Dave’s brother Blaine and his fiancé Angela plan to move in when they get married in October, so they have set our deadline. They’re fun and I’m excited to have them move closer.

It’s been quite the process! We had to tear out cabinets, tile and a wall, but we’re now into the building phase. We had to extend the depth of the back wall a bit so the plumbing and electric could be run behind where the sink will be. Just last night we finished dry walling the new wall and we’re ready to start taping and mudding! I’m pretty excited, but everyone keeps telling me how messy and not fun mudding is… We’ll see how it goes.

Last night while Dave was cutting 2 by 4’s I headed into the basement bedroom to see how much work tearing out the wood paneling on one wall would be. Side note, I don’t understand even in the 60’s why anyone thought wood paneling looked good! SERIOUSLY! This specimen is particularly heinous, because it was sanded down and refinished at some point in the 30(?) years it’s been in the house. To compliment this beauty the other 3 walls are a BRIGHT yellow color. I think the previous owner had a thing for yellow. She had two of the bedrooms painted this color, and the living room painted a mustard/baby-puke green color.  Anyway, I found there was drywall underneath the wood panel, so I pulled out the crow bar and went to town!

The wood panel was glued on and now the drywall paper is peeling off. I’m wondering if we can just sand it down and Kilz over it, if we should do a thin layer of mud over it, if we could just texture-ize over it, or if we should scrap it and buy new drywall. No matter what we do it will be better than having to look at that wood paneling! Not that we use the room, but I have complete sympathy being a recent renter myself. I even told Blaine and Angela they could help pick out the color of the new walls. We’ll see what comes of this project and if we actually make our October 9^th deadline.