First Post

We'll take it!

Yay, my first post! This has been a crazy five months. Longer than that really but 5 months of fix'n up the house. In February we found out where we would be living for the next 4 years. My husband, Dan, had been applying for emergency medicine residency programs. You know on Scrubs that crazy time in a doctor's life when they work all the time and don't really get much of a paycheck. I know, I know, what a perfect time to buy a fixer upper. Well that is what we did. We bought a lovely pile of work and we love it. With the internet and iPhone apps we were able to only go out with our realtor one time, it was actually the very first house we looked at. With 3 little boys and Dan busy with graduating from med school I am SO grateful that I didn't have to walk through 50 houses. If you are buying a house or if you're a real estate nerd (like me) you should check out Trulia and Zillow. They have great apps too.


Why this house? The location is perfect! Close to work, preschool and school. It is a beautiful street with great neighbors. The layout is exactly what we wanted. The bedrooms are all on the same floor. On the third floor there is a guest room with a bathroom. There is a nice big basement for the boys to play in. Oh, and four toilets! We have only ever had 1, um yeah. A mudroom was on my list of "must haves". With snow, mud or slush for half the year I NEEDED a place for all of our weather armor. When it comes down to it, it just felt right. When we looked past the pink carpet, the palm tree wallpaper, the nasty faux brick linoleum the bones were perfect!

When we first got the keys to our home we had 1 month until we had to move out of our other place. Luckily they are only about a mile apart because for that month we worked on the house all the time! The first big project was the kitchen cabinets. Then painting as much as we could before we tore out about 1600 ft. of carpet so that our wood floors could be refinished. We have learned a lot. We have a lot more to learn and do. In this blog I will post our projects and progress. We are NOT professional. We are just a young family trying to make our home cozy, comfortable and functional for us. We have used the internet to do research before we start our projects. My advice to you is to read and visualize your projects as much as possible so that you can feel comfortable with anything that might come up. Don't cut corners! Take off hardware before you paint! Try not to get discouraged.  Have fun with your fellow DIYer (if you have one). Projects don't usually go as planned and always take longer than you think they will. This can be a source of contention if you let it. It can also allow for some great bonding time with your helper and your house.

I have 5 months of blogging to catch up on so I will be back blogging for a little while. If there is a specific project you would like to know more about comment or email me paisleyem@gmail.com and I will try to work on that post sooner or answer any questions via email. I will be continually updating the pictures on the rooms so check back and see the progress! Check out the tabs on top for room progress and before/current pics.