Paint day

Saturday was the day of much much painting. My goal for the day was to have all three bedrooms painted so that they would have a week to air out before we moved ourselves and the animals into the house.
It was also the day to drop off my chinchilla at my parent's house for the week. She does not like strangers or commotion so it will be easier on her to not be in our apartment when the movers come this weekend. I got her situated and then we headed over to my house to paint.



We started with the master bedroom. The paint we had picked out for the room was a very light grey color to give some color to the room without making it too dark. The room is only 12' by 12' so we definitely don't want to make the room appear smaller.
Dad taped off the room, I grabbed the edger, and mom went at it with the paint roller. The paint went on a little bit bluer than I had originally planned but as it covered more of the room it evened out. When it was finished I was completely in love with our bedroom. It was light and fresh and calming all at once. I love it and couldn't wait to show Scott.




Next up was the chinchilla room which will also double as my sewing room. The color for that room was named Honey Sand. Mom put the first roll on the wall and we both looked at it and thought "um...this one may be changing". It was still a neutral beige color but a slightly different color than the current wall color, so it cast a very weird shadow. Alright, let's finish and see how it looks. Once again, I'm in love. The color is this beautiful warm honey color and brightened up the room immensely. It was a beautiful neutral pallete for a room that will be filled with colorful fabrics and various sewing patterns.



Due to a lack of rollers (and a frustrated father who needed to make a Home Depot run) we decided to give the kitchen a spin. The strange pea..camo green was going away, and a beautiful bright blue was taking its place. We also tried painting the top the same Honey Sand to give above the cabinets a bit of a neutral color, as the dining room was also going to be a dark blue. We will see how that turns out after being in the space for a while.




Last but not least, the nursery/guest room. We went with a blue-green color which I was very happy with. It made the room bright and cheerful without being too Easter egg pastel or over-powering.

A very long Saturday, but a very good one.

Home ownership is exhausting!

Well, it has certainly been one exciting weekend!

We started off the weekend with a bang by buying our first house. Scott could not sleep at all the night before, and I was up with the sun out of pure excitement. We drove to Leesburg and arrived at Monarch Settlement to go sign the paperwork. Rebecca had been our main point of contact and she was absolutely amazing, so it was really good to meet her in person for the first time.
Our Realtors arrived and Chuck handed me our new house key. Well then, let's just skip the paperwork and go paint ;) Ok, we'll do the paperwork. After a ton of signatures, and two tons of initials we were through. I think all in all the closing took about 25 minutes. I guess there's a plus to purchasing a foreclosure home, there is no seller at the table!
Our loan officer Brad also came in about halfway through the process. He has been a huge help through this whole process and a definite sanity saver. Our Realtor, loan officer and closing attorney all worked with each other on a regular basis, so it gave our closing a very relaxed and fun mood, which I loved. It was equal part "signing your life away" and "have fun with your friends."
Really, they have become good friends, as hard as that may be to believe. We have been looking at houses for so long that it will be very strange to go for a month or more without talking to our Realtor, but I'll find a way to manage.

After the closing we went straight back to the house and just reveled in the fact that it was ours! It didn't feel like ours yet, it felt like we were just doing another inspection or another walk through. It was similar to the feeling I had the morning after the wedding. You know you just made a huge change in your life, but it hasn't really sunk in yet.

We then picked up my mom and went to grab paint, and a flag to hang by the front door. We have a house!!

Night before closing

Hurray! Tomorrow is the big day! In less than 15 hours we will be signing our lives away and officially have a house. This weekend is packed too.
Tomorrow morning we close on the house, then have to get the water turned on and purchase the paint we want.
Saturday I'm going to the house with my friend and parents (Scott has to work) to paint. We have to get the three bedrooms painted and possibly part of the living room as there will be furniture put into those rooms that we cannot move at a later date to paint around.
Sunday we are getting a Budget truck to start collecting loose items. We have a couch and a bunch of garage items coming from Scott's sister's house, a dining room table we are purchasing from my boss, and my fish tank equipment.

This will definitely not be a weekend of resting, but that is just fine by me :)

I will try to get pictures up as we go about the painting process.

Spring has sprung

Hurray it is so beautiful outside!
The cherry trees outside of our apartment have hit full blossom, and they are so gorgeous. It also made me a bit sad to have to leave them behind. Well, we will just have to plant a cherry tree at our new house and we will have the beautiful flowers again.
Today I went out to lunch with my husband, sister-in-law, her daughter, and my mother-in-law. We went to a little inn and restaurant, the same place we went for my wedding rehearsal dinner almost a year ago. It is truly a magnificent restaurant and is true to Winchester style. You walk in and are greeted by the kids of the house, probably 12 and 10 who figure out where to seat you, then are led to your seat by the 16ish year old hostess. Only in Winchester. The food there is absolutely divine, and only $30 for appetizers, 4 sides, an entree, and desert.

Then we drove by our new house so that his family could see the outside of it and we walked around the yard. Our backyard has its own flowering tree and the side of the house is lined with Irises that are a few weeks away from blooming. The sun hits the yard perfectly and we all just stood on the deck imagining how it will look once we get the yard to its full glory.

Busy busy spring break

Well, today was the first day of my spring break and it was definitely a busy one. Scott and I started off the day by driving to his soon to be new job to pick up the drug testing form, then drove to the testing lab so he could prove he was drug free (mandatory for employment for management level). His new store seems like it will be a million times better than what he had in the past. The store is large, clean, has a full management team and does a good amount of sales. The other managers also seemed very nice and the customers weren't the same brand of crazy as the ones he and I have dealt with in the past.

Then we high-tailed it to Leesburg to meet with our loan officer, hopefully for the last time before we closing. He was stuck in traffic but his processor helped us with the paperwork. Stan had actually faxed all the necessary papers over to us earlier, so everything was filled out. I'm getting far too efficient at filling out this paperwork and I sincerely hope I don't have to do it again for another 10 years at least.

We also talked about home insurance and I got a quote from USAA. I still think it's incredibly bizarre that we pay twice the amount for the first year (pay the entire year in advance, then pay a monthly fee on top of that) but there's nothing I can do about it so I will try to keep the complaints down.

Then we drove back home and picked up my parents to go see the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit at the National Geographic museum in DC. While it was very cool seeing terra cotta statues and bronze artifacts that were over 2,000 years old, I left the exhibit feeling very underwhelmed. The archaeologist in me understands why they would not want to ship more than 10 statues from China, these are irreplaceable and incredibly fragile after all, but I left the building wanting more. You could not get an appreciation for the magnitude of the find just by looking at a few individual statues, and I felt the pictures were far more impressive.

We came back early and decided to hit the Home Depot with my parents as a way to kill time and wait for traffic to die down a bit. We came out with about 50 paint swatches, ideas for landscaping the yard, and some neat ways to replace the counter top in the kitchen with granite tiles to cut down the cost, but still have a granite counter top. That project won't be happening for quite some time though, we're still working on the packing phase!

Scott also found 2 black cats hiding among the potted trees! We asked a worker how they got there and he laughed and said they lived here to keep the mice down. It reminded me of a book store in my college town where there was always a black and white cat sitting in the window. We would go in there just to play with her.

We did get some colors more or less figured out there. The army green dining room is going to turn into two shades of darker blue. The kitchen will go a lighter and brighter shade of blue, while the adjoining living room and hallway will take on a white with blue tint color. Our bedroom is a steel blue/grey, and my bathroom is looking like a very slight purple tinted white. The nursery/ guest room is a toss up between two very very light shades of green. My sewing room/chinchilla room is currently veering towards a sandy honey color, or possible purple if I can find a purple hue that isn't extremely bright or Easter egg pale. I still haven't figured out what to do with the main entrance way/staircase, so that will be next on the swatch list. I think we are going to do most of the house in shades of white with a smidge of tint to be on the safe side. We'll worry about the downstairs later.

I also had fun watching a family picking out paint for their rec room. There was a father, mother, 8 year old boy and 5 year old girl. Naturally the girl thought the room HAD to be pink or purple, while the boy wanted nothing but blue. I couldn't help laugh as two minutes later Scott came over and said "let's do the house in blue" and I responded "But I don't want everything to be blue, it's a boy color."

Some things never change...

Scott's new job

So today has been an exciting day! On Monday night Scott applied to about 8 jobs closer to our new home. He received emails from 3 saying "we don't have a position that will fully utilize your job skills" aka, overqualified. While that sucks, it's also kind of funny, as Scott never completed college and yet can still be over qualified for a job which is interesting.
Well, he also applied for a position with our old company, a well known pet store chain which will remain nameless. He received a call early yesterday morning that they would like for him to come interview. I spent a while yesterday crunching the budget to figure out how little pay he could take (they are not well known for paying well) before we would be losing money.
He had the interview this morning and was immediately offered a job. The pay is borderline comfortable but I think we will be ok. It will also put him about an hour from home, saving him an hour each way commuting to work. He will also have earlier hours so there will be no coming home at midnight and having to be back at work at 7am, definitely a plus.

Well, we've got the house (still working on an April 16th closing, should know by the end of the week), he's got the new job, and we'll find out in less than 24 hours if the third part of our wish list has happened. Exciting!

March 22nd, inspection day

I will begin this blog post with a word about how odd timing can be. We finally get a house, I have strong reasons to believe that I am finally pregnant, and the school board votes on the school budget tonight. I may not have a job there next year, awesome. But I will worry about that when I need to. At least my school salary can be easily met (if not far exceeded) if I get back into the retail world. I've been spoiled by education though and don't want a new job. We will have to see.

Today was our housing inspection! Scott and I arrived early and walked around the edge of the house. Yep, as good as we remembered. The yard is a bit steeply sloped so it will make gardening a bit more...creative, but I'm still excited. Our Realtor arrives to let us in and we spend 10 minutes just walking around the house again.

I was so pleasantly surprised. I've seen so many houses that they've all been combined into one house, and my mind had put a lot of the less attractive points of the other houses into this one. Both of the bathrooms are a bit bare, but are still very pretty and have good bones. The bedroom is 12' by 12', which is not huge, but has a large walk in closet I completely forgot about. We fired up the gas fireplace and that thing radiates some serious heat! We also learned that because it's gas it will still work in the case of a power outage, so we can huddle around the fireplace but not have to go out for wood.

The inspector found a few things to comment on. The water heater was the original heater for the house, so we may need to replace that in the next 5 years or so. There is a power outlet on the outer wall of the house that is not functioning (apparently an easy 10 minute fix) and our driveway slopes towards the basement so we will have to fix that (again, "eventually').

A much better bill of health than the last house, with it's grade of "replace the roof asap, buy a boiler before moving in, redo deck flooring in the next year, replace entire house wiring before moving in..."

All in all, good day!