Our relocation is complete

I can't say that our move is complete, because it really is not; however, we have successful moved all of our belongings from our rental house to our home.

That process was no small task - and there were times when I wondered if we might not succeed, but we did. Everything is moved here and we have established our bachelor style living quarters in the back house.

Back house? Yes, it's the official White family term for the apartment or extra room attached to the garage. It is not an apartment, or garage room, or a bonus room - it is the back house. Well, we have a back house now, just like Bryan's parents and brother.

The original scope of our home improvement plans has been substantially increased. This is no longer a small undertaking. Currently, Bryan's brother, Ken, is working to retexture all of the walls in the living, dining, master and spare bedrooms. Yes, fresh mud on all of the walls. There are more projects to tackle in our future and the home will certainly become more than we had imagined as possible.

This is the first night that I have had access to internet in several days, so I apologize for the blogging hiatus. I will do my best to take pictures tomorrow to post so you can the progress that has been made.

This is a picture of Cat. I don't think I have posted any pictures of her previously on my blog. Bryan had a cat when I met him, her name is Cat. So, now we have a cat. She is certainly not the most social of creatures. In fact, if you were at our house for the wedding you probably didn't even know that we had a cat (except for all of the hair that is everywhere, no matter what we do!) She does not like new people and is excellent at hiding anywhere.

Cat is not happy that we moved. In fact, she is quite pissy with us. She hid for the first few days that we were here, and even managed to run away. She came back after a 24 hour disappearance and became very clingy and wanted to hide even more. This is a picture of her after her return. She managed to climb on our bed and wiggle her way under the blankets so she could hide even better.

Today is a good day. In fact, as I sit here on the bed she is sitting at my feet purring. Perhaps she will forgive me for moving. This is probably more likely to happen once we move into our house and she learns that there are cat doors so she will be able to come and go as she pleases.

Tomorrow, more pictures of the house, and perhaps even a few of the calmer Cat.

Pictures are on the way

Our wedding pictures attracted the involvement of random tourists.

And now, our wedding pictures will soon be eligible for online viewing very soon. If you would like to create an account to see these pictures follow this link:
http://www.pictage.com/712199

Day 4: The renovation slowly continues

Today's changes at the house are a little less visible than some. We have many projects on the punch list and a great deal of which we would (in an ideal world) like to have completed before we relocate this weekend.
Look familiar? Perhaps not - last night this was a giant hole in the floor where a furnace had once been. Ken was busy fixing our floor this evening.

I finished painting the hallway (still have the trim to do) and painted closets in the master bedroom.

Bryan worked very hard to make our hardwood floors look amazing. This is the floor in the spare bedroom. It's amazing what a buffer can do.

The tile guy began work today. This is the hardibacker board that goes down underneath our ceramic tile.

The bottom layer in this pic is a sample of our floor tile. The top rectangle is a sample of the countertops we ordered today. They will be ready in several weeks for installation.

Buying a house certainly makes for late nights and much exhaustion!

Day 3

Today was another whirlwind day of work at the house. We are both beat, and ready for sleep but I thought I'd post a few things.
This is the floor furnace that was in the living room area. An unused eyesore, it had to be removed.

Underneath all that old stinky carpet we have some fairly impressive hardwood floors. But first, Bryan had to remove staples and tack strip.

Steve and Bryan managed to remove the floor furnace and no one was seriously hurt.

A view of the floors from the southeast corner of the room. Bryan has removed most of the staples from the floor when this picture was taken.

A picture of the den with it's hardwood floors. Bryan will work on removing the staples and tack strip tomorrow.

As for me, today was filled with more painting. I painted the ceiling in the hallway, spare bedroom and master bedroom. I also worked on removing the wallpaper from the east wall in the master bedroom and began to paint the walls in the hallway. I had to stop painting when I ran out of the hallway paint color - more fun for tomorrow I suppose.

Ken worked on the north wall in the master bedroom. Yes, there is a wall again, that's a good thing!

Perhaps tomorrow I'll have more energy for a more extensive blog posting.

Home Ownership: Day 2

Today, Bryan and I continued our adventure into home ownership. We both had busy days as we both had other gigs (aka jobs) to complete before we could work on our home projects.

I spent the morning and afternoon working an instrument petting zoo for the symphony at the Discovery Center. Bryan spent the day running errands and gathering additional materials for the current house projects. Tonight he had a gig running sound for a music video shoot.

After we finished our paying gigs, we were able to focus on the list of projects at our house.

Tonight I was able to paint the ceilings in the living room, dining room, kitchen and utility nook as most of the hallways. Bryan was a rockstar and helped me a lot with this project. Here he is even cleaning up after me. Thanks, hun!



While I was busy painting the ceilings Bryan and his brother completed the demolition of the north wall in the master bedroom. Once the wall was down to the studs, Bryan and Ken added insulation to the wall and installed new sheetrock.

North Wall of the Master Bedroom
Tomorrow there will be a door in this portion of the wall.

All of this progress comes with great mess.

I took this picture to prove that I accomplished something this evening. However painting the ceilings is not the most visible improvement to a home (at least in a picture).

On tap for tomorrow - more painting, more drywall, removal of carpet and tack strips and possibly beginning the sanding of our hardwood floors!

Home Sweet Home

It's official! We are homeowners. Late this afternoon we signed the papers and became owners of our very first home. We arrived at the home late today find this handy map of the keys from the sellers.


The sellers also left a copy of the original title for the property for our safe keeping. Those familiar with Amarillo will be curios to see that the original title was signed by Julian Bivins. (The home is in the Bivins neighborhood, so that makes sense). There are also a set of architectural drawings for the home. They are currently at a blueprint shop being copied.

Our original plan was to take care of a few relatively simple projects this weekend before we move in next week. (You can start to chuckle now if you know anything about home ownership.) Our goal was to paint the master bedroom, hallway, and living room this weekend. With this in mind we took some before pictures of the master bedroom.

The West Wall of the Master Bedroom

The East Wall of the Master Bedroom
Note the presence of the fabulous wallpaper *sarcasm*

The South Wall of the Master Bedroom

Before our trip to Lowe's we decided to try and remove the wallpaper on the East Wall to determine how difficult it would be to remove. The top layer peeled relatively easily (we removed all of the top layer in less than five minutes, heck - it was almost fun!) so we were able to plot the further supplies we would need to remove the wallpaper paste.

The East Wall with the top layer of wallpaper removed

Bryan is very proud of our rapid handiwork. This weekend will be stress free.

After our trip to Lowe's and a few more errands, we returned to our project in the master bedroom. It took quite some time to remove the outlet covers, old phone jack covers, antenna jack covers, the stash box, the curtain hardware and all the doorknobs. We decided that we were on such a roll that we should remove the wall heating unit while we were redoing the walls - so that we would be done with the master bedroom renovation.

Our decision to do things right, or not do them at all may come back to haunt us.

During this demo project we learned that when the heating unit was installed the previous owners installed a second layer of thin sheet rock, rather than fixing the wall the right way the first time. This explained why part of the trim was more covered in half of the room than the other. In our quest to do it right, we decided to fix the situation by removing the extra sheetrock and replacing the sheetrock so that it would all be one level.

During this demo project, we also learned that the exterior wall has ZERO insulation. That's right, ZERO. I know we are in Texas, but really? No insulation? That's a bit odd for me.

North Wall during demolition.

North wall during demolition
This is the wall that had the wall heater - Bryan will cap the gas line tomorrow. The box cutout was apparently a plumbing access at some point in the homes history, but no longer grants access to plumbing, so it will also be removed during this project and made to look like a regular wall.

At least the demo had the added benefit of allowing Bryan to release some of the tension that has built up in these past few days as we jumped through the final rings of fire to purchase our home.

There will be more adventures from our home on Bowie, this is the first of what I'm sure will be many home improvement blog postings. If you have suggestions, or want to help with our project - please - feel free!

Bryan and I look forward to many years of home ownership, and all that it entails. The projects may be many, but it is our house.

My part time job

Recently, I acquired a part-time job. This part-time job demands hours each day without any predicted schedule.

However, unlike any other part-time job I have ever held, this job costs me money rather than earns me money.

No one ever tells that you that buying a home becomes a part-time job. The visits to the bank, to the realtor, to Lowe's, to the bank, to the realtor and on and on and on.

Thankfully our house hunting process has been relatively short compared to the process some must endure.

Still hoping everything goes well and we can close on August 21.

Movin' on up?

The inspection has gone well. The appraisal is complete - and meets the levels the bank requested. I think we are well on our way to home ownership! That means we should hope to close on August 21 - which means I have much packing to do. Perhaps I should start today...oy!

What could possibly be our neighborhood

Bryan found this website while searching for information for what could possibly be our neighborhood. (If all goes well with the purchase of the property that we would like to be our home).

We were intrigued to learn that Julian Boulevard was once an airstrip. Who knew? (Well, someone did - just not us!)

For more about the neighborhood, click here.