Closets!

Our new favorite handyman/contractor Javier finished our closets in only a few days! Hooray!! Now I have a space for my clothes that is not the makeshift rack next to my bed.  It has been a blast getting the new closets organized.  I'm not completely finished with the organization process but here's some photos anyways of the progress and the completed product!

Finished product after the jump.

More Shoveling

Ugh, I was about to publish this post as the celebratory last snow of this winter, but it turns out there's another blizzard headed our way.  Snow is supposed to be coming in on full force from Friday morning to Saturday afternoon.  Is there no end to this?!

Anyways, here are some pictures from the last snow (yesterday).

More photos after the jump!

House Updates: Photos

I know it's been a while since I posted new pictures of our progress.  Major renovations have thankfully been completed.  We're still slowly furnishing all of our new rooms and enjoying the little discoveries that come with living in a new (old) home.  Here are some photos I took of the downstairs.

More photos after the jump!

Houseguests

Many thanks to Raquel and Yasmin for spending the weekend with us a few weekends ago!  We had a great time and it felt like college again (in a good way) with so many wonderful Wes alums under the same roof.

Come back soon!

Home for the Holidays

One of my favorite part of the holidays was decorating our house with Christmas lights. Our neighbors have complimented us on our decorations several times! So exciting!!

After brief stint in LA for Xmas, it was nice to come home to our little bungalow. While I was out there, I got to see Chi Young and Elliot and their GORGEOUS new home (also a bungalow) of which I will not post pictures here because it puts our house to shame. But, it gave us a lot of inspiration for what our little bungalow can become one day!  It was wonderful to see my family (who I hope will all come to visit the new house soon)!

Let it Snow!

One of the joys of homeownership that we were in no way prepared for was shoveling snow. The DC area got a massive amount of snow during the blizzard of 2009. And, of course, we had no snow shovel. Shout out to Ginny and Randy, Gil, and Jeff and Becky, our generous and kind neighbors who lent us their shovels at various points throughout the 3-day-long snow shoveling marathon!

After shoveling out two cars and our sidewalk, my arms were about to fall off. So we jumped in the snow to celebrate. Here's Masai after jumping from our porch, face first into the snow. Yikes! It was actually really fun...and cold. Here's hoping there is no more shoveling until next year =)

Thanksgiving

We were so excited to have our first Thanksgiving in our new place and even more excited that our moms (Chantal and Diane, wearing matching jackets) came to cook for us! Here are some photos of the finished kitchen and the delicious dinner!

Settling In

Well, we did it. After a crazy couple of months of moving and unpacking and refinishing floors and dealing with leaks and all other kinds of disasters, we have just about settled into our new home. A big thank you to our moms, Chantal and Diane, who gave us the help we needed to get it done and to Pete for coming to our rescue and helping us move at the last minute!

Our last picture in our apartment

Pete and Chantal

Many things remain to be done, but for now, we're just happy picking out new furniture and rearranging things to our hearts content.

Progress!

This weekend, we were pleasantly surprised to see major progress on the house. We are moving in next weekend so we were also quite relieved.

Tiles in the bathroom!

Walls in the living room!

Walls in the kitchen!

A fridge!

Randy and Jay stopped by too!

Backsplash

Here are some inspiration tiles that my mom found for the backsplash!

House Numbers

I was looking all over for craftsman style house numbers but all of the ones I found were way out of my price range. Then I found these at Restoration Hardware. At $10 a pop, they are in my budget and I love the look!

(photo courtesy of Restoration Hardware)

Seriously Final Kitchen Plans

For real this time. The main differences from the last plans are the placement of the sink, the upper cabinets which now have glass inserts (which I love), and there is no upper corner wall cabinet. No more changes will be made (whoohoo)! Seriously, we ordered these last weekend (so no suggestions, that means you mom =).

And here are the cabinets we ordered for the kitchen in the apartment.

And below, is the apartment kitchen with a breakfast bar.

The breakfast bar and the cabinets above it have not been ordered yet...

...so suggestions are welcome =).

The cabinets and appliances will be arriving next Saturday (Halloween), and judging by the progress our contractors have made so far, they will probably be installed sometime next year. Sigh.

20% off of a Backache

After months of toiling over different kitchen designs, today was the day that Masai and I decided to go to Ikea and place our order for the kitchen cabinets for both our kitchen and the apartment kitchen.  I already went once last Wednesday to get an invoice for the kitchen plan, then of course we had a plumbing debacle and had to change the plan.  So, we brought our newly designed plans and reluctantly left our warm apartment for the Sunday afternoon Ikea craze!  And Ikea did not disappoint; it was jam-packed with couples, singles, families, screaming babies.  It was a hot, stuffy, crazy mess.  After 3 hours of standing in front of the Kitchen Consultant desk, I had a backache, a headache, and was convinced that the poor air circulation was going to get me sick from someone else's germs.  Masai was none to pleased, to say the least.

Below is the breakdown of our day:

9:30 am   -  Rise and shine.
11:00 am - Swing by Tastee Diner for breakfast.
12:30 pm - Arrive at Ikea, College Park, put our name on the waiting list for the Kitchen Consultants.
12:50 pm -  Meet with John (the most wonderful Ikean ever!) to go over revisions.
1:30 pm   - Finished with revisions, John starts entering our order into the Ikea computers for processing.
(Masai and I take a tour of Ikea and check in on John intermittently to see how the progress is coming)
2:15 pm   - Masai has a meltdown and has to go to the Ikea cafeteria for coffee and deep breathing.
2:45 pm   - Cabinet order is complete!  Pay for cabinets.
2:50 pm   - Go to the delivery desk with completed order to arrange for pick up.
3:15 pm   - Delivery order is complete!
3:45 pm   - Back at home, time to recuperate and start Sunday afternoon homework.

The light at the end of the tunnel: Ikea is having it's bi-annual kitchen sale.  Since we bought three or more appliances, we got 20% off of our order.  So we saved a hunk of cash.  I guess that's worth a backache =).

Holes in the Wall

So the walls in both kitchens have been opened up!  It doesn't look like much yet, but it was really exciting for me when I went over there this afternoon.

Main Kitchen

Apartment Kitchen

Exterior Paint Color...

...is up! The color is "Franklin Lakes" from Benjamin Moore's Classic collection. We're really happy with the color we chose. Hope you like it too!