I can't believe its been a month since I have posted last. It seems like we don't get as much work done on the house since we have been living in it. We started decorating for the holidays, just a few decorations inside the house and an "imported" tree from Matt's family's Christmas Tree farm. We tied it to the top of my car Thanksgiving weekend and drove it back to Buffalo about 200 miles!

Here's the tree! My parents came over to help decorate.

We don't have a mantle to hang our stockings from this year. So this will have to do.
I haven't made any Christmas cookies yet. But both of us were craving some cookies and milk last night, so Matt made peanut butter M&M cookies. Not exactly Christmas cookies, but delicious!

Here's some more general pictures of the house. Starting to put the finishing touches on things.


















I have a week off between Christmas and New Years, so maybe I will finally touch up the paint when I'm off. We will be visiting Matt's family on Christmas day and staying for a little while to visit and see Jeanetta's beautiful baby Matthew :)

Happy Holidays!

New Appliances & Countertops!

The main focus now is getting the kitchen to a point where we can cook and clean up. The countertops were installed last week, but they didn't finish installing all the back splash and the breakfast bar yet, but you can get an idea of what they look like from a few pictures. We bought a new oven and dishwasher and picked them up yesterday. The oven is installed and in working condition. The dishwasher still needs to be hooked up.

New oven, perfect fit. Microwave will be installed above the oven.

Close-up of the counter top. Its called In-depth surfacing, like an acrylic material with the sink built into it.

View from the back door. New dishwasher. There will be back splash between the counter and the breakfast bar.

Microwave has been the only thing we can cook with. The refrigerator will go where the stool and bucket are. There are still 2 cabinets that aren't put back up here from when there was a leak in the pipes.

Dining room, starting to clean up and finish unpacking.

Looking into the kitchen from the dining room

Matt putting the trim over the sink back up.

Matt the plumber

Floor between the kitchen and dining room. My Grandpa made custom transition pieces for us.

Put up a mirror in the bathroom. Not sure if I'll keep this one here, it used to be over our mantle in our apartment on Cleveburn.

New shower curtain from Grandma. New rug: Really ties the room together.

Bathroom has the toilet and vanity back in. Still not hooked up though.

Got a new curtain rod to put up curtains, but didn't get curtains yet, so these don't match. They are from our apartment too.

Hopefully Matt will be able to install the dishwasher and hook up the sink by the end of the week and we will have a working kitchen. I still have some painting to finish up, but the To Do List is getting shorter :)

2 Months after closing & We live in our new house!

So most of the major projects are done now and we are living in the house. We closed on the house on September 5th and I took pictures on November 5th to compare with the first day we looked at the house. I'll do before and after pictures soon.

Downstairs bedroom: Painted, new molding, floors refinished and repaired.

Downstairs bedroom floor and new molding

Kitchen: New cabinets, new tile floor, painted, walls fixed, half of the wall removed between the dining room.

Coming soon: New plumbing and countertops

Living Room: Painted, floors refinished, New molding

Dining room: Painted, new half wall, floors refinished, new molding
Coming soon: New chandelier!

Hallway: New tile floor, painted

Living room with our furniture moved in.
Matt worked on this while I was away. Still need to do alot of unpacking!

Had to take down 2 of the kitchen cabinets to work on some plumbing to make the plumbing drain faster in the upstairs bathroom :( But we also got an early Christmas present: A new shop vac! Thanks Dad!

The bathroom ceiling after Matt cut open the ceiling and started putting it back up.

Downstairs bathroom: Painted (once, needs to be done over), New tile floor, new light fixture.
Coming soon: Toilet, vanity, new coat of paint and trim.

Kitchen ceiling where it was cut open and the cabinets were taken down. Still wet.

Scott wrote this, when he was helping install the cabinets. Thanks Scott.

Self-explanatory I think

Tile in the kitchen

Unpacking and our makeshift kitchen until we get real appliances.

More kitchen pictures.

Living room: TV is hooked up, but we can't find the remote control or the screws for the stand.

The spare bedroom upstairs, still not unpacked

Our bedroom finally has a bed in it!

Upstairs bathroom: Complete remodel, new walls, ceiling, paint, light fixture, vanity, bathtub, bath fixtures, and floor.

We still have a bunch of stuff to work on, but we can do it little by little as we are living at the house. Maybe we will have a functional kitchen by Thanksgiving :) The countertops in the kitchen are scheduled to be installed November the 13th. We are taking the weekend off, Matt is going to Chicago for Rugby playoffs and I am going to New York City with Lauren for Kim's birthday! Back to working on the house next week.