Our new home {part 1}

Okay...that was way too long of a break.  Shame on me!  Moving right before the holiday was a wild journey, but we made it through.  But let me back up a bit...  We got the keys to our new home on November 27th.  We had lots of work to do before we could move in, we knew this.  What we didn't expect was a leak to start off our adventure as homeowners.

I went over to the new house to let in the ceiling guys, cause yes the ceiling still had popcorn. Yuck!  That was the first thing to be tackled.  When I walked into the front door I heard something, it sounded like a shower was running.  But nope, it wasn't a shower, it was a leak between the walls of my kids new room!  Panic set in, what should I do?  Thankfully the ceiling guy knew where to find the main water shut off so that we could at least get the water to stop.  Thus started an all day adventure of speaking with my Homeowners Association, plumbers, restoration companies and then having fans and blowers set-up for three days not allowing us to start any work at all.  Grrrrr!  We had waited 5 months to get the keys to our home and now we have to deal with this?  My heart and head hurt, but we knew we could be dealing with worse.  So we buckled up and just decided to ride the ride.
So, once everything was dry we then got to see the aftermath of the leak...

Ummmm...G R O S S!  Yup...that was the stain left by the leak. I won't even show you what the inside of my kids room looked like!  Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't going to keep the baby blue speckled Berber carpet by any means, but it wasn't in the initially plan or budget to tackle flooring right from the start.  Well...plans change I guess.  So, now the carpet was going to have to go bye bye.

The ceilings finally were able to be worked on and then we got the painters in to paint all the doors, jambs, trims and cabinets white.  Here are a few before photos to show you just how out dated this new home of ours was. Don't cringe too bad...I was able to see the potential the bones of this condo presented and am really excited to make it our own.

A few words to sum up this place were baby blue, vertical blinds, yellow doors, brass door handles and brown and gold tile counter tops.  Ha Ha horrible.

So, work was finally being completed and now was the time to tackle the floors.  My wonderful and handy husband decided that he was going to take on creating my dream floors. Concrete.  I like a more modern style and this was my chance to really start committing to it.  And with this decision came some of the hardest labor intensive days of my husbands life.  From ripping out the carpet and pad, to mopping, to drum sanding the floors, to more mopping, to sealing them.  And right smack dab in the middle of this hard work we experienced a break-in!!!  And there you have it, our experience just got worse!  The thief took my husbands tools and a really nice ipod dock radio.  I wanted to cry!  Again, we pushed through.  Off my husband went to Home Depot to purchase a few new items and then he just kept working.

Here is a photo of the before and mid-way through comparison.  It was quite the dirty job!  But, wow, it looks great.

And so that is the first part of this journey...we moved in on December 17th and we are pretty settled in.  Tomorrow I will show you what we have done so far so be sure to check back.  I'm glad to be back with Internet up and running (FINALLY).  I've missed you all!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday.  We are sure looking forward to a new year!