Springtime!

It's finally warming up down here -- hit 80 degrees today! -- and we are gearing up for all sorts of summer trips and excitement.

A few weeks ago we traveled to Ohio with Adam's family to visit his dad's side of the family. It was his grandmother's 90th birthday, and we celebrated at a cute Italian restaurant. It was lots of fun and just starting to get warm outside, so all in all, a good time :)

Last weekend, Adam and I hosted Easter dinner at our house -- the first holiday we've ever hosted. I was a little worried, but everything went really well. Both sets of parents and our three brothers came over for ham, cheesy potatoes, rolls, green beans... mmmm. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures.

Our next trip will be next weekend (April 16) when we head up to Ann Arbor to visit Becky and Sam!! We haven't had a chance to hang out with them much recently since we're so far apart now, so it will be super fun to see them.

April 16 is also the start of an energy credit program sponsored by the state of Illinois. They are giving 15% off Energy Star appliances, so we are going to go ahead and get a new refrigerator and dishwasher for our kitchen. I'm SO excited for them! We bought a new stove when we moved in, but the house still has its original fridge/dishwasher (circa 1991....).

Unfortunately, because of the program, we can't officially buy them until the 16th, which means it'll still be a little while before they are installed. But we've got them all picked out! :)

Finally, Adam's Aunt Vicky and cousin Stephanie came down to visit ISU last weekend (Stephanie is a high school junior, so she's starting her college search). They stayed with us for a night, and were tormented by the cats. I swear, Jack and Marble are getting more wild/ridiculous. But are still extremely entertaining!

Spring Fever

So sorry for the lack of updates. No. 1, we've been busy, and No. 2... we're slacking off on the home projects and other fun things to write about. But, don't worry! With warm weather rapidly approaching (it hit 65 degrees today!!), I'm sure we'll have plenty more projects, especially outdoors, which we haven't even started/considered at this point.

For our most recent adventure, we traveled to Boston a few weeks ago to visit our friends Brent and Andrew. Neither of us had been to Boston before, so we got the full tour: Boston Commons, Beacon Hill, Harvard, the Freedom Trail, riding the subway, visiting historic gravesites, eating clam chowder.... just awesome! Here we are in the Boston Commons:

The guys also took us to the Samuel Adams brewery, where we got to taste several different beers:


And Brent and Andrew let us crash in their living room, so that was especially fun :) We'll be back in late May for their wedding, and are looking forward to their big day!

In other Julian news, we're getting soooo close to having all the painting done in our main living space. One more wall, and we're done! We're planning on finishing it up this weekend. After that, we have many, many projects to be done... we'll just be waiting for our tax refunds to show up before starting.

Installing our first door

We had a several week long break from home improvement projects over the holidays. We spent Christmas up in Roscoe with our parents, and traveled to Michigan's Upper Peninsula over New Years weekend to go skiing with a group of friends, which was fabulous.

We jumped back into the swing of things this weekend with a bigger-than-usual project: replacing our bathroom door. Let me explain why:


This is our cat Jack. He is soaking wet. Because he just took a shower with me.

Our bathroom door has never closed correctly, and the cats recently discovered that they can get in while it's closed. They LOVE water, so this is a bad idea. Also, the doors are really old and ugly, so I was ready to upgrade. Here's the old door, taken off of its hinges:


Adam and I took the old door, trim, and frame off first. We bought a pre-hung door, so we had to take the opening down to the studs. Here's Adam in action with the reciprocating saw:


Then we did lots of shimming, including help from my dad, who stopped by after my parents had dropped my brother off at U of I. After my parents left, we finished putting in the doorknob, and ta-da!


A finished door! (Well, mostly--it still needs trim, but that part's easy.) We're planning to replace all the doors in the house, which will really brighten up our dark hallway.

No more orange!

This week, we finally got rid of the last of the orange by painting over the final wall in our family room. It was so much easier than painting in the kitchen, because there were no cabinets or appliances to have to paint around.

Here is the before picture of the room, again from the realty listing (with the former owners' furnishings, etc.):


Here is our repainted wall (we left the green wall as-is; it's not a bad color, when it isn't paired with orange...):


And another view, including the Christmas tree:


And, of course, Marble is in both pictures. They are both constantly either running around like crazy or lazing around on the coffee table:

Kitchen updates

After what feels like forever, we've finally finished painting the kitchen!! We even had some help from Lynn one weekend. Here's Adam, hard at work and wearing Lynn's sunglasses in place of safety goggles:

Note the brown and orange walls, which are now gone. Ten points if you know where this T-shirt is from... ten more if you also own one, and also only wear it while painting, to bed, somewhere you won't be seen in public, etc.:


As you can see, we went with a red and tan color scheme for a more updated look. Here is a picture (from the realty listing, before we bought it) with the original paint and appliances:

And here is our newly painted kitchen with new stove:


It's still in need of a few things (like a new countertop and a range hood to match the new oven), but it's sooo much better!

Starting Small

We're just getting started on all of the house projects we need to do. (And no, everything is not put away yet... But, it does look much better!)

We decided to start small and hopefully learn from our first project. We wanted to redo a small closet off the kitchen, which the former owners had used for storing old paint cans. They helpfully left us the paint cans, as well (three cans of orange paint, anyone?). I really wanted to use the closet as a pantry, but since it was so gross, I knew we'd have to start over completely. The original closet shelves basically were some pieces of wood nailed into the wall with particle board placed on top:

The walls were also very beat up, stained, and just overall disgusting. So, we tore out the shelves, patched all the holes, gave it two coats of paints, and put all new shelving up:

New! Clean! Suitable for food! ;)

Up next is painting every other wall in the house...

House!!

Sorry for the lack of posts. We've been busy moving!!

It's so awesome to finally be out of an apartment and into our own place. Of course, it's already come with some challenges (fixing the sump pump, replacing the doorbell, mowing, etc.), but it's soooo great to be here. And it's shaved off quite a bit of my commute, so I'm happy!

When other people I know have bought houses recently, I've gotten frustrated that they didn't put up pictures right away on facebook, blogs, etc. Now I know why. Our house is a MESS. Everything we own--which never has been in one place before--suddenly is. We are finally making headway on unpacking, but it has taken longer than I expected. So, no pictures for now; photos of the house when it was up for sale are below, and it still looks the same... we've only had it for two weeks! But, as we get the chance to update things (for example, painting the kitchen a color other than orange...) I will post "before" and "after" photos.

Two exciting changes we've made: a new washer and dryer, and a new stove! The house didn't come with a washer and dryer, so we knew we'd have to buy those right away. And the stove it had when we moved in was a crappy, 20-year-old no-name deal whose burners didn't light by themselves anymore. The previous owners conveniently left us a lighter on top of it just for this purpose. Thanks. We had the new (stainless steel!) one installed the day after we moved in. We're planning on rounding out the new appliances with a refrigerator and dishwasher, once our tax credit money shows up :)

So, for now, more kitty pictures:

Being cute and cuddly, unlike normal (they are quite wild!).

Marble, laying on Adam.

Jack, destroying his toys.