As you can imagine, our lives have been non-stop for the last couple of weeks, and because of this, I have not been able to blog on the progress of our home. So let's play catch up over the last seventeen days.
Travis and I had scheduled a walk through the day before we left to go on the Vineski Family Vacation. We were hoping that we would be able to catch many flaws, but in fact, we walked into a war zone. We had at least twenty workers at our house all day, and everything was in such disarray that it made it impossible to do a true walk through. We were able to point out some major items that needed to be fixed, and then we left with high hopes that everything would be perfect when we arrived back from vacation.
The relaxing week at the beach is exactly what we needed after a stressful summer, and Stone Harbor was better than I remembered. With 85 degree temperature with a breeze, it was a nice break from the humid 100 degree plus weather we have had all summer in Tennessee. We still had to make phone calls every day to ensure that everything was ready to go with out move in the day that we arrived home, and thankfully Alissa was able to go by the house everyday to ensure that everything was being completed as promised.
We flew home on Friday, the 20th, and had an hour before the movers were scheduled to arrive. At first it seemed that everything had come together, but upon further inspection, we realized that many items needed to be fixed, and we started to worry that we were moving in a little prematurely. We continued on and started blue taping everything and the more rooms that we went in, the more blue tape was taken off the role, and I really started to be discouraged. Luckily our contractor came over before the movers arrived and assured that he would fix everything and he settled our nerves a little bit. Our movers ended up being three hours late, and then we had workers come afterwards to install of the bath accessories, paper holder, towel bar, etc., it was a long day. Thankfully my mother arrived the next morning followed by Chace, Amanda, Alissa, and then Jim and Martha brought over dinner, so we were able to make a lot of progress with unpacking the mountain of boxes that were in our garage. My mother also made several trips to Home Depot, Walmart, and Bed Bath and Beyond over the weekend to pick us up odds and ends that we needed. By the time they left on Monday, we had 95% of the boxes unpacked, however our house still felt like it was not put together.
As I had mentioned, we may have moved in a little earlier and really should have waited another week for all of the finishing touches to be completed. Instead we have had to live through all of the workers being in our house while we have been living in it, and because of this we have to be at home to let them and so we have had to take additional time off of work that we have not expected to do. I feel like there is something wrong in each room that needs to be fixed, but really we have only had a few major problems that we have had to deal with. In the kitchen, the double ovens arrived damaged, so we had to have them taken out of the cabinets, and order a new oven. We also noticed that our kitchen lighting is too dark, so we are in the middle of collecting lighting bids to add lighting under all of the cabinets. Hopefully they will be installed in the next couple of weeks, but when they are installed I will have to take everything out of the cabinets so that they are able to drill into them. We also noticed that we had some rotted hardwood, so last weekend we had workers in our house all day to fix them. They had to cut a three foot hole in our floors in order to replace the rotted wood and then had to come back over the next couple of days to sand and stain the new hardwood. The last large issue that we had not anticipated is that we have to our our heating and air unit replaced. We were hoping to hold off for a couple of years, but after we moved in our house we find it to be is miserably hot and some rooms have a lack of air flow. After consulting a heating and cooling company, we found out that our fifteen year old unit is leaking freon at a high rate and it is best to have it replaced. Other small house keeping items that we have had to deal with after we have moved in has included adding additional light switches, installing a water recirculation pump to the addition so that it can receive hot water timely, replacing some cabinets that were installed damaged, adding cable outlets that were overlooked, and having to have the garage door repaired because it would not close.
As many things that have gone wrong, there are so many things about our house that makes me incredibly happy that makes all of the other stresses that we are going through worth it in order to live here. Although we have been homeowners before, owning a home on land makes me feel grown up and established. There are so many quirks about owning an older home that I love. We have a scary Home Alone basement that is massive with stone walls. We kept that original knobs in the house that we have to lock the doors by using an old skeleton key. There is an old telephone shelf outside our bedroom door which is perfect for setting my cell phone on and a glass of wine. I feel like that our house is a great mix of old and new, and I really tried to keep the look of an older home but with an updated feel.
Putting our house together is a major work in progress and I will continue to keep everyone updated as we complete projects.
Vineski Family Vacation- Stone Harbor
New Powder Room, still looking for mirror. This had originally been part of the laundry room.
Guest Bath in the Addition
Guest Bedroom in the Addition
Office
We converted the fireplace to gas, we have not purchased the logs yet but will before it gets cold.
I love our subway tile back splash!
Master Bathroom, we do have mirror's hung now.
Master Bath, they are coming to install a shelf and door to the bottom cabinet this week.
Master Bedroom, there are crystals on the chandelier now.
Book shelves in hallway, this use to be the entrance to a bedroom.
Love the color of our hardwood, we chose Dark Walnut.
Kid's Bath
Kid's Bath
Bedroom in the original home, they really did a great job refinishing the floors.
I had to go to Vegas this week, so Alissa tagged along with me. We discover our new favorite drink in Craft Steakhouse, the delicious Champagne Cocktail. I am planning on making these at home later in the week but it is just one part Elderflower Liqueur with two part's Champagne, they used a Brut. So Yummy!
