Work and Play at the House

We've spent quite a bit of time at the house the past few weeks cleaning and painting. Finally we're starting to see it all pay off. It smells like fresh paint and new carpet instead of wet dog and cigarette smoke.

Here's the living room with new carpet and new curtains (and a lot of space for the boys to run around). We don't have much furniture to put up here yet, so for a while it's going to be the room where we play soccer and have dance parties.


Casey took this sweet photo of Chris and Darby.


Casey thinks the fireplace is a great place to play cars (not when it's on). It's gas-powered, so we can just flip a switch and have a nice fire. Casey's very cautious around anything we tell him is hot, so really we just have to worry about Darby getting too close.


We put Darby to work cleaning the kitchen. I'll probably re-sweep that floor later.


All that sweeping was hard work, I guess. Time for a break. (Hey, you can see the old carpet in this photo--heavily-stained grayish berber. Yuck.)



The boys enjoy a snack.


Back at the apartment, we're making sure to pack all the important stuff, boys and cats included.

Before and After Photos

Master bedroom before

In progress

We got this little bit of paint on the wall, and I totally freaked out, "Oh, no, what did we do?!"

AfterWe're happy with how it turned out. Chris picked orange because he wanted a warm color, and it definitely warms up the place. We are picturing it with very neutral bedding, maybe some black-and-white photography on the walls.

Boys bedroom before ... definitely not a fan of the previous owner's Badgers theme.

And, after. The color is called Sea Fog. I was looking for a blue that wouldn't be too babyish as they got older.

Monday we'll get our furniture moved in and start calling this place home!

Think "horror movie"

How bad is the dust in the new house?  See this post's title.

It's actually not nearly that bad overall, but you know what people don't touch ever again after installation? Ceiling fans. I did my best to clean a couple of them this weekend, and every first sweep of an arm would produce an impressive cloud of dust. I learned quickly to shield my eyes and to push the debris away from myself. But it left a pretty good pile of dust bunnies under the ladder.

Casey had been playing on his own but finally wandered into the room to see what I was up to. Immediately he drew up short at the sight of the dust piles.

"Daddy, what's this? What's this, Daddy?" (I hear that constantly -- always the repeated question, asked symmetrically.)

I told him they were dust piles and that they fell off the ceiling, etc. He studied them carefully while I scrubbed down a door.

"Yucky!" he announced.

"Yucky, you're right," I said.

"Daddy, I think this one's moving a little bit."

EEP.

Pictures of the Actual House

Chris mentioned that some people might like to see photos of our house, not just the neighbors' houses. So ... without further ado, some images from the MLS listing:

Upstairs living room

Kitchen

Dining room ... I have big plans to paint that dark blue wall immediately

Downstairs family room

Enjoying the View

Our new house is in a bit of a valley with huge, wooded hills surrounding us. Maybe it's because I grew up in flat, flat Indiana, but I am wowed by it.

View from the front porch:



View from the rear deck: