Shiplap for Days

One of the things we noticed about the house on Olive before we bought it was that when the sheetrock was put up, they did not remove the trim then and place it on top of the sheetrock. Rather, they just butted the sheetrock up to the trim. So, you don't see the full, pretty baseboards and door and window trim like you should.

Being the detail guy he is, David immediately highlighted this as something we'd have to fix. We considered pulling all the sheetrock down (there are places where it's patched and doesn't look the greatest) but decided that was too big of a project, and honestly probably wasteful. So we are working on Plan B for that project.

One of our other projects is the stair landing. When you step on it, it gives quite a bit. We checked in the closet under the stairs, and turns out the brace for the landing wasn't really supported or supporting the landing. While we were checking out under the stairs, we noticed the walls in the closet were shiplap.

Not the best picture, but our first glimpse of what's hiding behind the sheetrock.

We hadn't opened any walls yet, but this was a great indication of what we'd find behind the walls. So, like any over-eager couple that just bought a 100-year old house would do, we picked a wall and started tearing down sheetrock!

We had talked about adding a built-in next to the fireplace in the living room, and decided that a shiplap wall behind that would be perfect. Not wasting any time, we started tearing sheetrock down.

What we found behind the sheetrock was kind of fun. We found layers upon layers of wallpaper, then behind the thickest piece of paper was gauze, and behind that was some felt. Pull down the felt and...we have shiplap. Lots and lots of shiplap.

Layers and layers of wallpaper.

Check out that border! And...our first view of the wood underneath the sheetrock.

Felt-covered shiplap. Some elbow grease is much needed here right now!

So what are our plans for the shiplap? We aren't sure yet. It has a bazillion nails/tacks in it from where the gauze was hung. We have to figure out how to either get those out, or pry out the gauze that's stuck in each of them. Once we do that and get the rest of the felt off, we will prime and paint to see how it looks. Eat your heart out, Joanna Gaines! We have shiplap for days! ;)

P.S. David hates the word "shiplap." So I'm trying to use it as much as I can in this post. Shiplap. Shiplap. Shiplap!!!

No Tricks, All Treats

So...the mums aren't the same size. But I got a great deal at a local garden center - $40 for the two huge mums and four pumpkins!

Halloween on Olive is a completely different monster (ha!) than we've ever experienced before. Before we bought this house, the former owners told us there were around 600 or so trick-or-treaters on this street. As we met our neighbors after we moved in, the number kept getting higher...they suggested we'd have 600-800 trick-or-treaters. Our minds were blown. Surely there was no way we'd actually have that many...

Sweet Tinker Bell loved Halloween on Olive!

The day before Halloween I grabbed about 1000 pieces of candy "just in case." We had our family over, fixed chili and hot dogs and cheese dip and desserts...all the things you *must* have for a successful Halloween night! I ran Sagan round to our family who lives a town over, then got home around 4. By 5, the trick-or-treaters started coming. And coming. And coming.

The forecast was for rain and over all an icky evening. I thought that surely we wouldn't have many. 749 trick-or-treaters later, I was proven wrong. Despite the intermittent sprinkles (and sometimes outright downpours), they kept coming! Luckily my brother-in-law had a giant umbrella so we huddled under that. We could only give one piece of candy per kiddo because of how many kids we had!

We had a blast. The kids were adorable. There were such neat costumes. Katniss, a mail man (who handed us a piece of mail thanking us and wishing us a Happy Halloween - cutest idea ever!), a Wizard of Oz family, all kinds of princesses, zombies, and more made the trek up our sidewalk.

Sagan (dressed as Tinker Bell) absolutely LOVED handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. She was slow...she'd pick up one piece, hold it over their bags for a second, then finally drop it in. Big Cousin Emma (dressed as Elsa) also enjoyed handing out candy!

Our neighbors had some amazing decorations at their houses. We had only been in our house about a week and a half so the extent of my decor was mums and pumpkins; next year we have to bring our A game!

Moving: We Survived

Take a close peek and you can see color-coded boxes sitting on our {new!} front porch!

Our move was a whirlwind. We survived, but I'd rather not do it again anytime soon.

Two weeks prior to the big day, Sagan had pneumonia and croup and ended up in the hospital overnight to get IV antibiotics and steroids. The following week, we went to Gulf Shores. While I certainly don’t want to complain about vacation, it was difficult to be away from home on our last week before our move. We came back on Saturday afternoon, then moved the following Tuesday. So yup, a whirlwind.

My parents were still in Gulf Shores, but David’s parents were able to help us quite a bit the day of the move and for several days after. Movers showed up at 8:30 the morning of October 20^th. David had to go to work for a meeting, so my in-laws and I got some last-minute things packed while the guys packed their truck. David and I went to Mayfield at 11 to close on selling our house. We had to be back in Murray at 1 to close on buying our new house. We made it in plenty of time, signed the papers, and became homeowners of our olive on Olive!

My biggest lessons so far from this move:

1. Color code your boxes. I used a different color duct tape for the boxes that were to go to a specific room. Pink for Sagan's room, orange for the kitchen, yellow for dining, blue for our bedroom, etc. This helped our movers (see number 2) know exactly where to put what. 
   
   I staged our boxes in our Washington house in our dining room. I stuck a piece of duct tape on the right corner of both sides of the box so that from any direction, you could see what color duct tape was on the box.
   
   
2. Hire movers. We have accumulated a lot of stuff. I purged quite a bit as I was packing at first, but once Sagan got sick and the time I had to pack got shortened, I started throwing things in boxes. It was so nice to wake up the morning of the move, have three guys and a truck show up, and watch them artfully pack all of our boxes and furniture like a giant game of Tetris in their truck. (What was even nicer was watching them unload all of our stuff in our new two-story home. Taking the washer and dryer up the stairs? Not something David and I wanted to tackle!) 
3. Create a map of your new house to show your movers where the different color boxes go. I did this and also indicated which furniture went where. My mother- and father-in-law were here to help with the move, so I armed her with the map of colors and furniture, and she directed our movers on which room to put what items. It was soooo much easier than I expected! 
4. A little random, but try Mrs. Meyers cleaners! Seriously! They smell sooooo good. I prefer the honeysuckle scent. I love the all-purpose cleaner for cabinets, countertops, and other hard surfaces. The clean day powder (in lemon verbena) is AMAZING on tile floors. I got down on my hands and knees with that and a brush, and the results were amazing. Usually I'm not a fan of heavily scented things, but I love love love Mrs. Meyers! 
5. Don't move in the middle of the week. Moving on a Tuesday was hard. We only had one day off work, and it was hard to go back to work the next day knowing how much stuff we still needed to do. Some people might prefer that, but for me it was hard to deal with. I guess the plus side to it was that by the time the weekend got here, we had a pretty good priority list of things to do. 
6. Use a bank you trust. We had great luck with our loan officer last time, and I’d gotten to know her more through Leadership Murray, so it was a no-brainer for us to get our new mortgage through her. The sweet folks that bought our Washington Drive home used a national mortgage company and didn’t have quite as good of luck. The lack of stress around securing our mortgage and prepping for our loan was awesome. I highly recommend it. ;) 
7. Choose your realtor wisely. I've heard so many realtor horror stories; so much drama on how long it's taken to sell your house or how your realtor wasn't helpful at all. We loved ours! Tracy answered my countless questions, she showed our house over and over and over and over again, and I very much value her opinion (which I requested quite often). 

I've been really impressed at how smoothly this move has gone (which is saying a lot as impatient and demanding as I am). Here’s hoping the rest of our work on our new house will be as easy!

Hello, New House

Sagan saying "Hello, New House" to our new home!

Well, we did it. We found an old house, fell in love with it, and bought it.

Over the past few months, we started feeling the itch to move. I am a creature of habit. Major change scares me. I can't help it! So when we started talking about listing the house and started looking around at older houses - completely different from where we were living - it freaked me out a little bit.

We toyed with the idea of moving to Paducah. We even met with a realtor there and toured some homes. But nothing felt right.

One afternoon, we were coming home from Nashville when I saw a post on Facebook about a house for sale closer to downtown Murray. We drove by it and didn't like the location among businesses, then turned down Olive Street. And slammed on the brakes when we saw a For Sale by Owner sign in the yard of an older home. The house was pretty. It had potential. I took a quick pic of the sign and we headed on home.

I got up the nerve to call the number on the sign that afternoon, and we scheduled a showing for the next day. On the drive over to the house, David and I talked about how we probably shouldn't buy a house right now, and we agreed that we hoped we hated the house once we saw the inside, feeling the same way about it as we did about the houses in Paducah. We decided that if that was the case, we were going to halt our house hunt.

And here we are, a few months later, owners of the olive house on Olive. We loved the house. The original wood floors, the updated kitchen, the staircase, the tall ceilings, the fireplaces...it just felt right.

We have big plans for this house. We have a lot to get used to with this house. We're going to have to exercise some patience (should be fairly difficult for both of us). But it is exciting. Hello, Olive Street!

Bye-Bye, House

Once we decided that we might want to put our house on the market, David started picking on me by having Sagan say, "Bye-bye, house," anytime we were leaving the house. So, it seems only fitting that our first blog post be titled as such.

A little over a week ago, we spent the night in our house on Washington Drive for the last time. That home will forever have a place in our hearts. When David and I got married, he was living in a tee-tiny one-bedroom apartment. Everybody said there was no way he and I would live in it for longer than a couple of months. We showed them, and a year and a half later, we moved into a 1700-square foot house on Washington Drive. We didn't want to settle. We wanted something nice. So we saved our money while living in a sometimes excruciatingly small apartment with a rent of $335 per month. I remember the first time I saw the house on a real estate website. I told David it was the one. And, knowing better than to argue with me once my mind was made, he agreed.

That house has seen us through many seasons of our life. It was with us through the grief of infertility and the pure joy of bringing our baby girl home; some of life's best moments and some of its worst.

It was also a labor of love. We laid wood floor, hung cabinets, fixed the deck, built a swing set, hung board and batten, added a backsplash, changed light fixtures, painted, decorated, and more. We poured a lot into that house. And it gave a lot back.

Now, it's time to say bye-bye, house.

Sagan waving "Bye-bye house!" on our last morning at Washington Drive.