The first two weeks

Well, we've been living in our new house for a little over two weeks now and the one word that can sum up that experience best is: adventure.

There have been a lot of suprises so far that, for the most part, have not been good...but we're cruising along in our 60s home. It seems the phrase that we hear the most from people concerning various aspects of our house is: "That probably should have been fixed/changed/updated/redone/addressed a long time ago."

For example:

- The electrical box needs upgrading

- There were no appliances

- The cabinets are kind of nasty/worn out

- There's old rat poison in the kitchen cabinets

- The water softener (essential in this area apparently) needs to be replaced

- The plumbing under our master bathroom sink crumbled when Ryan tried to tighten it, prompting an immediate replacement and also prompting my father-in-law to declare that lots of problems in the house will have "cancer"...aka... multiple, major issues instead of just one surface one.

The reason for all of these things I think is that the house has been vacant for six years when the elderly woman who lived here moved to a nursing home. And before that, she didn't really update anything. (She did get a new roof, hot water heater, A/C and furnace in the late 90s/early 2000s, though, which is great).

We have purchased appliances and so they are sort of free-floating in the kitchen for now until we get to cabinets/counter tops to surround them with. The shag carpet in the living room is going to have to stay until we have time/money to pull it up and buff up the wood floors underneath. I can't repaint the rooms until Ryan does some drywall replacement on bad patches.

Speaking of Ryan: thank goodness I have a husband with the knowledge and skill to fix/repair basically anything that's wrong with the house. He can remodel anything and we will save a lot of money not having to pay a contractor to do it. Unfortunately, our water softener (model circa 1962) can't be fixed. They don't make parts for the Culligan Mark 2 anymore.

Thanks to an idea from Dan at The Coloradoan, I am going to attempt to make a time-lapse video of our updates to the kitchen (major project #1). Right now I am just taking a photo from the exact same spot as we do new things to it and I will put them all together eventually. Tips on an easy way to turn a bunch of photos into a time-lapse video?

For now, here are some photos of our humble abode:

This is our master bedroom, painted the same nasty mint green color as most of the house. WHY did someone make that color choice?!

This is the main hallway, bedrooms and guest bathroom all off of it. The master bath is through our bedroom, which is the last door on the left. Again, the mint green color. It looks more teal on here than it does in real life.

The living room. I LOVE the ceiling and think it's really interesting. The carpet contains the colors white, black, brown and green. Oh yeah. There is a wood-burning fireplace hiding off to the left in that brick area...which I would love to paint the same cream color I'm planning for the walls.

Kitchen side one, showing the lovely wallpaper and cabinets which are functional, but slightly icky/old. That dishwasher doesn't work, by the way. It has since been ripped out.

Kitchen side two: REALLY a great view of the wallpaper here - it has gold in it, in case you can't tell. Luckily, it came off in its full sheets when I pulled from the top down. We found a date written underneath it that said "9-4-70." I assume that's the day they put it up. Awesome.

We also found this wallpaper behind one of the appliances...it looks like they got the rest off before they put up the flowery stuff. This reminds me of both the Jetsons and the opening credits of 'Catch Me if You Can.'

Here's a shot of the kitchen once the appliances were dropped in (fridge is out of frame to the left, temporarily) and some of the wallpaper has been peeled down. The yellow stuff on the walls is glue from the wallpaper, which has to be washed off.

I am just reminding myself over and over that we bought the house for so little money that it's worth spending time and money to make it awesome. I mean, look at the size of that kitchen! Tons of potential. It just needs some TLC. And, now that we have appliances, we can stop living off of hot dogs from the grill and can store more than what fit in the mini fridge we borrowed from the Stockdales. It's the little things.

- The Servolds