Hello? Anyone out there?

So, it's been a while. But we've been busy with projects and finally have some things to show you.

First up, the guest room. It was a pretty bland place when we moved in, but with a little paint, and a few weekends of work, it's looking much better.

BEFORE

AFTER

Another early project was the bathroom. It will need to be completely updated in the near future (cracked tiles, the door doesn't open all the way because it hits the sink), but we made it more cheerful in the meantime.

BEFORE

AFTER

Our big project, as most of you know, was the kitchen. That's going to need a post of its own....stay tuned.

Bye Bye Beige

Project number one: Bring some warmth to the dirty beige living room. It is the largest room, but the one where we figured we'd spend the most time, so it was an easy first choice.

Andy and I were planning on tackling the project one Sunday in November...boy would have we been unhappy if that was how it actually played out. Fortunately, we had my dad's side of the family over for brunch that Saturday, and my uncle generously offered to come back on Sunday to help us out. My dad joined in the fun as well, so we had four painters (two that are very experienced) instead of just two beginners.

First up, choosing the paint color. We purchased a few samples and found a clear winner once we got them up on the wall. Not too yellow, not too purple....just a perfect chocolate-y brown.



My Uncle Dick, giving the windows a fresh coat of white.



Andy and I were in charge of priming the wood trim and cutting in along the baseboard. No rollers for us this time around, which was probably a good idea considering how fantastic the paint job looks!






Teamwork!

Closing

So, we're a little behind with our posts. Moving on to closing day...

We closed on a sunny day in late October, and everything went smoothly, except for one little parking ticket, which was a small price to pay to the real estate gods. After signing lots of papers and handing over a big fat check, the keys were ours!

Not wasting any time, we went back to my parents' house to meet the movers. They had everything packed up, and we headed off to our new home. This is what we found when we arrived...

Come on in!



What a difference it made to have the seller's stuff out of there...most of it any way. Now we can start to think about making it our own!

The living room (with a lovely dusty drape-y window treatment kindly left behind)



From the other direction...



Our guest bedroom (soon to be blue)



My office (soon to be pink)



Master bedroom (most likely will be gray)



First project, coming right up!

Love at First Sight

...or how 10 months of living with your parents can make a 50's ranch look glamorous. (Just kidding, Mom and Dad ;)

After almost a year of actively searching for a place of our own, we happened upon an unassuming ranch on a quiet street in a quaint town 30 minutes north of Boston. I'm not quite sure why this one made the list of places to visit...it was outdated, lacked the charm of many other homes we had seen and only had one bathroom. But as we did our walk-through, the more rooms checked out, the more potential we could see.

Here's a glimpse at what convinced us that we had found our home...

The Kitchen: Pretty good size room, ancient cabinets, a bright window to the back yard, and a whole lot of peachy-colored tile (and countertop).

A different view...you had me at portable dishwasher.





Sorry for the bad shot. This is a terrible picture of the living room. If you look back at the picture I posted of the outside, you will see the bay window. This belongs to the living room, and is on the wall to the right of the fireplace. The built-in bookcases are lovely, and a working fireplace was a definite selling point.





A fully-functional, fully-50's bathroom. Which is actually kind of fun!







Two of the three bedrooms. Good-sized rooms with decent closet space. Not a lot more to say...





The dining room/4th bedroom. It doesn't really function perfectly as either (one door goes to the master bedroom and the other leads to the front entryway), but it's nice to have the choice.





Bad chairs...go sit in the corner until your time-out is over.





The finished basement, also known as man-town, was a huge selling point. The previous owner had a French drain system installed, which means we will never have water in the basement...yay!





Um, what?! This is the backyard, which is a good size for the area, and is entirely fenced-in. The most recent owner, however, didn't seem to spend much time out there. The UFO landing site? Oh that's just some sand that used to be under an above-ground pool...which was removed 5 years ago!!

That concludes our tour of our humble abode...thankfully, it won't look like this for long. We are hoping to turn these sadly neglected "befores" into charming, personalized "afters" in the very near future.

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog...and our new home!

We know everyone is curious to see pictures and read updates about our recent purchase, so we thought this would be a good way to share. We hope you enjoy following our progress and we look forward to having many house guests in the months (years!) to come.