We're Back!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long wait between posts - we were spending a lot of evenings at the house, which is prime blogging time, and then just this past week my sweet grammie passed away, so our family took a break from old houses and priming and spent our time reflecting on her amazing and giving spirit. We are only now just getting back to the house and trying to remember what needs to be finished next, so this post is long overdue.

There's been a lot going on since I last posted. Last Saturday, our windows were finally in and ready to be installed. However, there seemed to be a problem. Shane had ordered the wrong window, as evidenced below:

Doesn't this look like a genuine moment of confusion? You can almost hear Shane going "Silly me, I ordered the wrong window!" Convincing, right? Well, it turns out it didn't happen, dad and Shane just wanted to trick me into believing that this window was the one that was ordered for the kitchen. Great joke. It might have worked a couple of weeks ago when I didn't know anything about houses, but guess what? I actually noticed that this window was the one that was supposed to go in the living room. I'm learning things about houses! Joke's on you, house builder family members.

Get back to work, you clowns.

While the windows were being installed, TJ and I kept working on priming the walls and trim. Priming has been making a huge difference in the house, it looks a million times better already.

We also had to get ready for the floor sander to come in, which meant moving everything out of the sunporch. This was the first time we were really able to see it entirely empty. I hadn't realized how much space there actually was!

So that was last weekend. We were then kicked out of the house so the sander could get down to business.

When we came back on Wednesday and Thursday, the transformation was incredible:

I LOVE these floors! The even better news was that they get even better. And even better is always better! Our floor guy, Lee from A-Z Flooring, was there today and it was finally time to get started on the stain. I wish I would have taken a picture of the master bedroom all stained because it was beautiful, but I guess the upstairs hallway is the next best thing:

Isn't it gorgeous? We went with a stain called Golden Oak, which is what we had seen down at Annie's Table Culinary Studio, as well as Annie's house. I thought that hers was a little bit lighter, but I'm so happy with the way that it came out on our floors. 

We thought that the downstairs would stain darker because of the hardwood, but once it went out it looked very similar to the softwood upstairs.

Lee is working on the dining room here. We were a little concerned about what would happen in this room since it is hardwood around the edges and softwood in the middle, as the stain was likely to come out two different shades, but luckily it came out incredibly similar and you can barely notice. Phew! Now we just have to disguise the 500 nail heads embedded in the softwood...if we invite you over to dinner and you keep getting distracted by the glint of shiny nails, we'd appreciate it if you stayed polite and pretend that you don't even notice them. Thanks in advance.

Thomas and dad also joined us today and worked on scraping the paint from the outside window frames:

TJ and I kept tackling the trim inside. This door has been driving me insane:

So now we're just waiting for the floors to finish being stained and then given a good coat of polyurethane before we can come back in and keep painting. We chose our countertops and flooring for the kitchen and back porches, and someone should be coming to take measurements in the middle of next week.

Basalt Slate counters and stone grey floor.

So hopefully everything will really come together in the next few weeks. Our kitchen is due to arrive around October 20th. We're really looking forward to having the house start to be in livable condition.....especially because we gave our month's notice to our current landlord and have to be out at the end of the month! Gulp.