House

Ryan and I closed on our house on Monday, and we've been over every evening since working on it. Ryan has taken on the huge job of sanding, priming and painting the kitchen cabinets, and I've been cleaning along with help from my mom and my sisters.

We are lucky to have such a large amount of cabinet space, but lots of cabinet space means way more work for Ryan. It'll be worth it in the long run! We both knew that once we moved in the cabinet painting project would just keep getting pushed off, since it comes close to making the kitchen unusable. Who wants to mess with that when you live somewhere? So Ryan is doing this before we even move in.

The kitchen is huge, and the cabinets and appliances are in the great U-shape. The fridge is pushed way out from the wall for cleaning right now.








This is the living room. The big opening on the right is the kitchen. I love the open staircase.

We are super lucky that my family is so close and so helpful! Mom, Alli and Mary have been over every night this week. Mary took a toothbrush to the woodwork last night...needless to say, their help is making this gargantuan project seem much more managable.

This was post-floor cleaning.


Mary cleaned dog hair and dust out of the vents. Sidenote: Mary qualified for state in Cross Country, so she'll be running in Jeff City this weekend!

The ceilings are 10 feet high, and the woodwork around the windows is original. This is the living room again.

More living room.

This is wildly unique for an old house: main floor laundry! And it's right off the kitchen and the master br, so it couldn't be more convenient.

This is the upstairs landing. We're thinking sewing machine spot or reading nook, not sure yet.

Here's one of the upstairs brs (the master is on the main level). We'll set this up as a guest room..maybe that will induce some of our St. Louis friends to come down for a visit!

I love the transom above the front door.

Our first night in the house, all I did was clean out the fridge with bleach spray. I worked on it for over 3 hours and didn't even get to the freezer. I have never in my life seen a dirtier fridge.

It's sparkling clean now. We have 2 pears (courtesy of Grandma, thank you Grandma!, 1 Coors Light courtesy of my mom, 2 bottles of Michelob Ultra and 1 bottle of champage. The freezer has freeze pops to bribe people to help us.

(That's a sorority rush shirt, I was a ZTA but I went alum when I transferred in the middle of college.)

Here's the other upstairs br.

This is the main floor guest bathroom, nice and clean.

Last night we realized that the popcorn ceiling comes right off and reveals a lightly textured ceiling that looks WAY better than the popcorn. So tonight I scrape popcorn ceilings. I'm hoping it won't completely ruin all the cleaning I've done, but we'll see....

We are hoping to move in in a couple weeks, but we'll see. If we keep on discovering big messy projects it's going to be longer! We also have to decide on paint colors tonight. Any ideas?

How long did it take you to move in to your house after you closed on it?