Saying Goodbye to our Corner Blue House.

Today is the day we say goodbye to our blue house.

James and I the day we moved in Jan 2004

While we don't actually lose possession until Monday, today is the day that the moving truck pulls up and empties the house of all the belongings that has made it ours for over 13 years.  Including us.  

I find myself feeling emotional over the thought of leaving it forever.  I find myself even more emotional at the fact that I will still drive by it all the time and potentially will see the new owners living in it. I'm OK moving out, I just don't like the idea of someone else moving in!

You see, while I am so happy to finally be done renos and to be actually moving into the house we bought almost 3 months ago, I liked that we still had our current house.  It is home.  I struggle with the idea of starting all over at the new house.  

I have so many memories in this blue corner house and I am scared that it will take months or even years before we build those memories up again.  I remember moving in with James after exactly 3 years of dating and our first fight being over me double dipping in the peanut butter jar.  Want to hear a secret, I still do, so maybe don't eat PB at my house.  Ha! 

I got ready for our wedding at this house.  We brought both our babies home to this house.  We've hosted countless Bbqs and play dates.  It is the only home my kids have ever known.  

This house has been great to us and I'm so sad to leave while at the same time being so excited to move into the new one. James says I can't keep both.  

The new owners are a young couple with 2 kids that look to be about 1 and 3.  I Facebook stalked them.  Admit it, you would to.  It makes me so happy to know that a family similar to ours is moving in and I know they will love it as much as we have.  

I have every intention of leaving the new owners a bottle of a wine and a note that tells them how I hope the house treats them as good as it has treated us.  I hope they take care of it.  I won't actually write the last part but I will be thinking it... ha!

Today is a big day in our house.  A day of change.  A happy day.  A sad day.  A day that I will remember for the rest of my life.

I'll leave you with a few pictures that we have of our possession day in 2004.  Look at the pink carpet and all the wallpaper... not to mention the roll of toilet paper on the ledge!  #classy

Look how young James looks!  This is the wallpaper (yes, more!) in our bedroom.

Candace happened to be in town the day we took possession and was staying with me, so she joined us for the walk through.

Wow, look at the peach walls...  What you can't see is the green and burgundy wall paper under the chair rail.  Now you can understand why the wall paper in the powder room of the new house had to come down!  Yuck!  But for the record, from what I could tell, it came down way easier than the old stuff in this house.  The painter had piles of it in very large rectangles that seemed to just peel off the walls.  #noregrets

Stay tuned for how the move went... post to come next week when I welcome you to our new home.  

Looking Back: Our First Home

After almost 10 years of blogging I don't think I've ever shared photos of our current home before we renovated.  When we were shopping for our first house we were working on a budget.  We had a tiny budget and no direction.  We looked in varying areas of the city and only found out home when we finally decided to increase the budget slightly which opened up some new areas we hadn't yet considered.

This particular house, James went to with his parents.  If I recall correctly, one of my friends was in town and we were spending the day at the mall so James took his parents to look at house.  Comment if that person was you!  We had been looking for almost 6 months so how was I to know that was the day we would find our first home???

We made an appointment to go back the next day and see it again.  I remember having to wait for another family to come out before we got to go in. What we saw that day is nothing like the house we currently live in today.  Over the course of 2 years we made it our own.  Let's take a look at what we did see the day we saw our first home for the first time.

Pink Carpet and wallpaper galore.  You can't tell from this photo how pink the carpet is.  Like, dusty rose kind of pink.

Also notice in the picture above the floral window coverings over both of the windows.  They match the wallpaper border.   Wow.

Three types of wallpaper on one wall.   This room is our main floor half bath.  It has wallpaper, border, different wallpaper.  This room is not big and it was covered top to bottom in wallpaper.  Double wow.

More wallpaper.  This room was orange sponge paint on the top with an ugly dark striped wallpaper on the bottom.  I can't even tell you the sweat and tears  that went into me removing all the wallpaper on my own.  I took a week off work and still didn't' get it all down.  I will never, I repeat NEVER, put up wallpaper again.  EVER.

Here is a sneak peak into our new house, the main floor half bath.

Look at all that wallpaper!  That will be coming down before we even move in!  I promise!

Boy explosion.  This is Cooper's current room which is now yellow.  There was funny blue paint on the bottom, border and more wallpaper.  The room could be spotless and it still looked messy because the walls were so so busy.  Before kids, this was my exercise room and also the closet I used for my all my clothes since James overtook the closet before I moved in.

Girl Explosion.  This room was where I got ready as I am sure you can tell from the photo.  It is opposite to the boy room, wallpaper, border, and paint on top.  There are no words....

Over the course of 2 years we took down all the wallpaper, every single last piece, we painted the whole house, we replaced all the flooring, we developed the basement.  We made it our home.

From the pictures, I'm sure you can see how we had a lot to look past to know that this was our home.  We looked past the colors, the wallpaper, the window valences, we just knew.  Thirteen years later and this is still a great house. I argued to stay and do a major reno given we love our community and the layout of our home is great.  James quickly vetoed that.  Can't add a three car garage....  The next best solution was to search for a house in our community with a 3 car garage and more space.  We had simply outgrown the house.  After 2 years of looking and a month of negotiations, we signed the papers on our new home.   As scary as it is, I am just as sure as I was when we moved into our current home that it is our home.  The one difference, this time we are renovating before we move in!

I am so excited to show you our new home when we move!

New Paint!

We've been in our house for almost 10 years.  We ripped down oodles of wall paper when we moved in and painted within the year.  Which means it has been well over 8 years and 2 kids since the house was painted.

With the kids being at home during the day, getting the house painted was proving to be problematic.  So.... we arranged to have the main level painted while we were on vacation last week.

In the end we decided to add a little color from our overall neutral color scheme.  I was going for the look where it is grey in some lights and brown in others.

Here is the before and after of our living/dining area.  I LOVE how it turned out.

We are a family of blue lovers, me included.  So we spiced one entire wall with a dark blue/grey.  I love how it turned out.

This is our entrance.   I took the before pictures after he had patched, hence all the white spots.  I am happy with the after, however I had hoped for it to be a little more grey.  It still has quite a brown undertone, which I like, but I just hoped that it would be a little more of a drastic difference.  You can see the difference in the picture but not so much with out the before.  

When I asked Grady what he thought of the new color he told me it looked the same as before.  Ha!

The wall in the kitchen is a continuation of the wall in dining area.  I am so glad we took a risk on that wall especially since the rest wasn't as drastic.

I can't decide what I think of the family room.  The bottom is the same color as the big wall in the above picture.  Where the blue in the dining room looks darker and grey, the blue in this room looks very blue.

I also noticed that the colors in this room change the most.  They look grey one moment and blue and brown the next.  I think it will grow on me but I think it would look better if the top was more grey than blue.

Overall I am really happy with the change.  James thinks it has really brightened the place up.  Considering I was a little nervous with the color selection, in the end it all worked out.  It was also nice to have something to look forward to when we got home.  No one likes to come home from vacation but having the paint to look forward to made it just a little bit easier!

Our House - 2004

We bought our house in the fall of 2003, mere weeks after I have signed a new 6 month lease. James moved into our house the beginning of January 2004 and I followed suit in May.  Looking back at the pictures now I am not sure how we looked past the bad decorating and bought the house for the layout.  Looking at these pictures 8 years later I can not believe that this is what the house looked like when we moved in! I also can't believe how clean it is!

Living room/Dining room

The above room is our living room/dining room.  It had wallpaper, a wallpaper border, and 'salmon' colored walls.  And don't forget about the pink carpet.  Nothing in the this room remains except the dining room table that once belonged to James' Nana.

I couldn't resist posting this picture  that shows the work in progress.  I opted to remove all the wallpaper myself and and have it professionally painted.  It was the hardest job ever.  I will never put wallpaper up.  EVER.  Some of the wall brought me to tears as the paper would come off in once inch squares.  It was awful.

We started removing the wall paper immediately and had the main floor painted in late spring.

Main floor Bathroom

This is the main bathroom.  It was by far the worst room in the house. All 4 walls were covered in these 3 wall papers.  Yes, 3.  There was the beautiful flowers at the bottom, a pretty floral border and topped off with some other flowery paper that matched.  I hope you sensed the sarcasm.  I hated this room.  Again, all of this room has been replace including the door itself and all hardware.

Family Room

The family room picture nearly made me gasp.  Look at that wallpaper! U.G.L.Y. It was topped off with some orange sponge painting that doesn't even match. Gone, gone, gone.

Cooper's Room

Now we move upstairs to Cooper's room, formerly known as the blue room, my exercise room.  See elliptical to the right of the photo with my clothes hanging on it.  I don't even know where to start on this one.  The room isn't actually messy but there is so much going on with the walls that it gives the illusion of being messy. Maybe busy is the right word.

I remember taking a week off to take the wall paper upstairs the summer of 2004.  I distinctly remember being on a ladder in the entrance of Cooper's room and calling James crying because it was taking so long.  The job was that awful.  Back in the day, 8:30 was a very early time to be up on your day off!

Grady's room

Moving on to Grady's room, formerly known as the pink, the guest room.  Who wouldn't want to stay in this room that looks like a pink bomb went off?

Our room

And lastly, here is our room.  If I remember right that white and blue wall was the worst wall of all of them.  It literally came off in 1 inch squares and the entire wall was covered in it.  

Did I say i will never put wallpaper up in my house?  In case I didn't, I WILL NEVER OUT WALL PAPER UP.  NEVER.  NEVER.  NEVER.

I didn't realize how much we have done in the house in the past 8 years until I looked at these pictures.  We have replace all the carpet, painted all the walls, replace some doors, replace some hardware, replaced most blinds on main level, replaced the light fixtures on first levels, and developed the basement to say a few. 

I think it is safe to say that we have made the home our own.  I wonder if the previous home owners would even recognize it now.....

Before and After

This is our family room before we got new carpet.



This is our family room after new carpet.

This is our family room after Grady. (Grady is playing in the corner by the lamp. You can only see the top of his head.

Need I say more?

PS - Notice James is sitting in 'his spot' in 2 of the 3 pictures? I bet he wasn't home when I took the other :)