Guess What?

We painted something else!

I know its shocking news.

We have this adorable built in linen closet in our hallway. We are not quite sure why but the previous owners never painted it white like the rest of the doors in the house.

So we got to painting.

First with a brush. But I quickly realized that was not going to work because it was all streaking. Not pretty. So then we used a roller. Much better!

Here are the before and after shots:

Ugly weird brown color. Not pretty.

Nice bright white color... Yes!

Memorial Day with the Cody's

This weekend was the first holiday we spent in our new home. It was a perfect opportunity to break it in and see how this little home would hold up! We invited the whole Cody family, Heather, Preston, Annabelle, Declan, Everett and even Mr. chewie to the party. They came out from Houston early Saturday morning and stayed through Monday afternoon. The whole visit was a blur! The kits played in our yard (that needed to be mowed os so badly, more on that later) and we went out for burgers. The first night Declan got a big surprise from Uncle Parker, Good Guy sheets for his bed! He will use them when he comes to stay at hour house. He liked them so much he wanted to go to bed right away. It was so cute. This was the only picture I could get of him in the bed.

The next picture is of Miss. B hanging out in out room in her sleeping bag. She was loving having sleep overs with us. And she was such a good girl. She would crawl up in to our bed in the morning and tell us about her dreams. It was so special.

The last pictures were from Memorial Day. We started the morning watch Good Guy shows on our sofas in our PJ's and then Uncle Parker took the kiddos outside to play.

We then broke in our brand new grill thanks to the Cody's who gave it to us as house warming gift. Parker has never looked happier with a cold beer in his hand while flipping burgers in his own backyard. It was a perfect holiday weekend and we can not thank the Cody family enough for making the trip out here.

X Factor in Austin

Amidst all the crazy moving stuff Parker and I got an email from our friend Janet inviting us to see a taping of the X Factor in Austin... For free! Well since we are bleeding money into so many house projects, a fun free night out with friends sounded like a great idea! After work last Thursday we walked over to the Frank Erwin Center and waited in the hot Texas sun for about an hour. But it was so worth it in the end because we ended up with great seats to watch the show! Best of all we got to see Simon and Brintey in person! I said to Parker it was like watching TV but just live. It was really ingesting to see the whole production in person. How many times does Brintey need her hair fluffed? Let's just say a lot. But she is Britney Spears! Here are some shots of the night. birtney is in a bright orange dress:

After the five hour taping we headed home. We both agreed it was a needed break from all the house projects we have been doing!

Another Wall Fnished

Here are the pictures of the wall that I had destroyed after I finished fixing and painting. I have to say I am becoming quite the spakler!

We still have not hung anything up in this space but we are thinking we might put our key rack up there. So far we can't think of anywhere else it would go. So what do you think? Did I miss my calling as a contractor?

The Red Wall of Pain

As I have mentioned, the red wall in our living roo that made the room even darker than it really is had to go! Parker and I have finally gotten rid of it and we think it came out really good!

To give you some more details, Parker and I wanted to paint the whole living room and the hallway a light airy grey that I had found on another blog I read. It was called Moonshine by Benjamin Moore. I saw it on Young House Love and I loved it. I thought it was the perfect color. But it was going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to paint the whole room. But I really felt it would make the room look bigger.

Well after we closed on the house we realized that painting the whole living room and hallway in addition to the bedrooms was a lot to take on. So we started to try and think outside the Moonshine Box. Well didn't we luck out when we went into the garage and saw a FIVE GALLON paint bucket of the grey that was already on the rest of the living room walls and hallway. So after about a five minute deliberation between Parker and I we just decided to give it a try. After all it was FREE!

Parker and his mom got started on taping and getting the wall prepped for priming. After the first coat of the best primer we could find, we knew we might be in trouble. The red just bled right through. So we decided to let it dry and go for a second coat. After a second coat of the Killz the wall looked better but we could definatly still see streeking. So we started on the Grey color thinking we had plenty of that so if we had to do layers of it we could. Here is a picture of the wall with the white primer still showing and the first coat of the grey.

Check out our new ladder we bought! It extends and everything!

After two coats of Killz Primer and 3 more coats of the grey paint here is the final result. This is after we moved in so you can see our new carpet and the beginnings of how we are setting up the room. What do you think!?

We plan on mounting the TV on the wall and buying a new media cabinet. To save some money though we are just using our old Target coffee table for the stand for now.

We think it came out great! We still think you can see some unevenness in the color on the wall if you look VERY close. But eh maybe one day we will pay to have the whole space painted and it will look perfect. For now, we think we did pretty good. On to the next project!

Woops that was not supposed to happen!

While Parker was hard at work on the "red wall of death" I was hard at work on destroying the house. The previous owners have a love of wall anchors. As you might know these anchors are hard to take back out of the wall. They were either driven right into the studs, or giant and broke off if you tried to pull them out of the wall.

I decided to start small with a little shelf we think they used for keys and such. I figured eh can't be that bad. Oh how wrong I was. This is a wide angle of the area I am talking about:

Here is the wall just after I took out the first anchor. Does not look that bad from here right?

Wrong! It was so bad!

Here is the aftermath on the floor. It did not look good.

This is what was in the wall! Can you believe this was in the wall to hold up that tiny shelf? I mean come on!

So after I ripped out the on anchor I remembers something that Parker's mom said we could do, which is push in the anchor into the wall and spackle over it. So for the second anchor I did just that. I think it worked pretty well. The paint is still drying there so I am going to post updated pictures later to show you how it came out.

After Parker and I picked up our keys to our new home we were greeted in the kitchen with a wonderful bottle of bubbles and a fabulous orchid. Our REALTOR Molly was such a  huge help in this process and we could have never done it without her help.

Yumm! We had this and a pizza in the backyard as Harry played as our first meal in our new house!

We still don't have pictures of the whole house just yet so I am sorry for the odd and ends shots. But I think these pictures will help you all get a better idea of the house and what we are working with! We have already begun making big changes in the house so I thought I would give you a little sneak preview.

Here is the kitchen. It is going to be a big project we tackle later. We plan to rip out that door, and the counter tops and lay new flooring and knock out a wall. We are saving our pennies so we can do it right!

Parker and Cheryl got started on the giant red wall in the living room. As you can see the room does not have a lot of light in it, so we wanted to lighten it up as much as we could.

Here are the floors in the living room and hallway and office. Again very dark color, so we are trying to use lots of light colors to lighting up the house.

This is a shot from the kitchen looking down the hall towards the bedrooms. Again super dark. The plan is to change out the front door with one that has a window in it and also add a ceiling fan so that we can get some overhead lighting in the house. 

This is the office. Under the paint drapes there is some more of the dark wood floors. As you can see Cosette (Cheryl's dog) was going to help us paint. She actually was a very good girl and played all weekend with Harry in his backyard!

We wanted to lighten this room up and get rid of the bright blue. We tested out several colors as you can see. I bet you you can't pic out which one we picked!

Parker and I wanted to pick a light color that would show off his awesome movie posters in the office in a "super classy" way. We ended up going with a great color. I will do a post with the finished look later. We hope you all like it because we love it!

Cheryl and Cosette were a huge help once we got painting.

I patched up holes in the walls from giant anchors on the walls from shelves. I am becoming a master at this.

Parker, Cheryl and I were very busy that first weekend in the house. We have already painted three rooms and a whole lot of trim! My hand is in a claw shape still. We can't wait to start showing you more of what we have been up to! 

Welcome

Parker and I have decided to start this blog to help give you all updates on what we are doing while we are fixing up our first home. We will focus on house projects, updates big and small, and what we are up to in general. We are learning as we go so we are bound to have lots of funny and maybe not so funny mistakes made, but we can't be more excited to finally have a place of our own.

I took this picture of our key the day we signed the paperwork for the house!

Check in as often as you would like and hopefully we can keep you up to date and in the action!