We closed on the house this week! The brown house is finally ours (well the bank’s, but you know what I mean). When Monday morning came I could hardly believe that the day had arrived, and then somehow the waiting that took place between Monday at 10:00 a.m. and Wednesday evening (when we actually took possession) felt like the longest three days ever. It might have been the most agonizing wait of this entire process.

We decided that we should have a pizza picnic at the house on Wednesday night, so we took the kids over in the pouring rain and celebrated while sitting on the floor of the great room. The waiting wasn’t 100% over because the movers ended up leaving a few of her items behind and her cleaning lady was still there, but we didn’t care – we were home.

Kristin kept saying again and again “I love this house,” and we’ve talked a lot about how it’s not huge, but it’s just right for us. I think that it’s going to be full of truly useable space, which was really important to me in our house search.

On Thursday our paint was delivered, and this morning I went over after dropping the kids at school so that I could take some “before” pictures. Our flooring arrived this afternoon and the flooring guys are already tearing up the old flooring, which is incredibly exciting. Our painter starts on Monday morning, and we’re desperately hoping to be in before Halloween, but we’ll see how all of these projects unfold.

So here are a whole bunch of “before” pictures (click to expand the gallery). I don’t have a wide angle lens I’m afraid, so apologies for the chopped off corners of rooms. Stay tuned for changes!

Living room from the front door entryway

They took the curtains so I’m excited to pick out something fun for this room

Standing in the kitchen looking out into the great room. Where I’m standing used to be an eat-in kitchen before they added the addition, so it’s kind of a large open space with an extra bank of cabinets to the left (not visible here)

The great room, looking towards the kitchen. Those sliders go out to the patio, and the hot tub currently sitting there is going to the neighbors’ house very soon

There’s the former eat-in kitchen I referenced before. We’ll be able to put stools at the counter on both sides

The other slider (opposite the one that goes to the patio). This one sort of goes into rose bushes so I’d be surprised if we use it much.

The basement! We’d originally planned to leave the pink shag carpeting (since it’s only a play room) but when we got in we changed our minds, so it’s coming out this week.

We also talked about getting rid of the bar, but I think we’re going to leave it for now.

The doorway from the kitchen leads into the front living room

This is Vivi’s room, which will also be getting new flooring (all of the bedrooms will be carpeted). It’s a strange room because there’s a door to the kitchen and a door to the hallway with the other bedrooms. Eventually we could close off that kitchen doorway, but we’ll see.

The master bedroom, which has sort of a pearlized mauve paint right now. Every room is getting new paint.

The bathroom is only getting new paint for now, so that tile will be hanging around for quite awhile

The boys’ room, which has an excessive number of window treatments going on