Homeownership!

So we've officially gone a little insane now that we've realized that we can do pretty much anything we want to our house because WE OWN IT! Both of us are so use to either living in a parent's house or a rental, that it took a while to come to realization that we can make improvements without worrying about ticking off the current landlord. Now that we have come to that realization, the home improvement projects seem to be coming out of our ears.

After we finished tearing out the living room carpet and revealing the warm hardwood floors, we realized that the paint in the living room had a decidedly PINK tint to it. Now I have never been a girly girl and, needless to say, neither has Nathan. So while I was in the Portland area this last weekend, Nathan told me to go ahead and go to Home Depot to pick out some paint for the living room and the guest bedroom. I picked out a green tinted white, called Jade White. It's going to go very well with our living room curtains and I'm so excited about how the guest room is going to look!

The plan for the guest room is to paint all the walls the Jade White color and all the moulding/trim a flat white. There's a closet that sits out about 2' x 3' from the wall in one corner...we're planning on painting the main walls of that closet the Jade White, then the moulding and the doors the flat white. We also plan on panting the room door white. Yay! Along with painting the room, I also have my family heirloom dresser that needs repainted. Right now it is white with light blue accents, but the paint has been scuffed and such, so it needs to be repainted white and then paint the accents Jade White. So those are our painting projects.

Meanwhile, Nathan has gradually been working on the electrical problems that the house has. Which are by no means few and far between. He has been moving throughout the house replacing the old, outdated light switches and outlets. Now our switches are those nifty white switches that you rock rather than flick, which is a much more updated look. He also replaced the very old light fixture in the bathroom, which had begun to make suspicious clicking noises. When he took the old fixture out, he discovered that the lightbulbs were 1oo w bulbs, while the fixture was rated for 60 w bulbs...as a result, he found all the wires were melted together. Yikes! He also found several outlets/light switches that were not grounded. So it's a very good thing that he has started working on these things so that our house won't burn down. Now he's looking at doing the same stuff in the basement, which is actually slightly terrifying. Marla had many amazing qualities, but the ability to do quality electrical work was definitely not one of them, and she refinished the basement herself...which means that she did all the electrical work down there. (Gulp!) So that should be interesting.

Other than that, we'll probably repaint our bedroom and our stand-out closet eventually, and we'd really love to replace ALL of the flooring in the dining room, kitchen, hall way, guest room, our bedroom, bathroom, and basement. We also want to do some more work in the bathroom...repaint (probably a tan color), replace the laminate in on the bathroom counter, put a shower/bath unit in, and replace the sink/faucet. Oh, and eventually we'll do a full-scale kitchen remodel, but that won't be for a long while. The list goes on and on, but after doing what we've done so far, we feel really good about our ability to gradually get it all done.

Beyond home improvements, last weekend I jumped in my car after my graveyard shift and drove my butt to the Portland area for Dani's 25th birthday. She reserved the local wine shop, Cork & Barrel, where the owner shut down the shop just for us from 7 pm until 10 pm, popped several bottles of wine, arranged for snacks to be brought over from the cafe across the hall, and just let us enjoy ourselves. The wine shop had an upstairs balcony where Scott (the owner) had put a couple of tables with chairs and a couch. That's where we spent most of our time. It was a TON of fun and it was great to see a lot of people that I haven't seen since graduating from college. I finally crashed at around midnight, after being awake non-stop for about 30 hours. Needless to say, I slept almost all day on Saturday before I went to Home Depot and then went to Starbucks at Orenco Station to visit Sam, who was my maid of honor in Nathan and my wedding. It was great to catch up with her, since I hadn't seen her at all since our wedding. On Sunday, I met my grandparent's in Gresham for brunch then drove home, where Nathan and I made dinner and ate in bed while watching Armageddon until I just couldn't stay awake anymore.

While I was gone, Nathan kept going on the home projects until his grandparents from Arizona arrived to spend the night before continuing on their journey back to Arizona. They went out to dinner on Saturday night and enjoyed the chance to spend time together. I'm bummed that I wasn't here to see them as well, but I had committed to going to Dani's party about 2 months ago. But I'm glad Nathan had a chance to spend time with his grandparents, who he also hadn't seen since our wedding...seems like we can say that about a lot of our family and friends!

Ok, well, I think it's time to go get started on some of those home projects that I can actually do! Woohoo for painting!