Heat Waves and Home Ownership

Welcome to our Blog!  You're just as new to our page as we are to 'BlogLand'...we hope it's not as scary for you as it is for us.

We are newlyweds who live in small town North Dakota.  We just bought our first house (!!yay!!highfive!!yikes!!welcome-to-adulthood!!) and will be using this blog to mainly document our journey of restoring and fixing it up.  We know this will be a rollercoaster of an adventure and we hope you will join us as we learn the ins and outs of fixing up our house!

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The Date: Friday, December 27th, 2013
The Place: Lisbon, ND
The Time: 8:15 AM
The Occasion: House Closing

The day had finally, Finally, FINALLY, come when we were to close on our house.  The time seemed to sneak up on us and at the same time pass about as fast molasses in January.  It was no small feat getting to this date; lengthy purchase agreements, addendums, inspections, closing dating extensions, appraisals, addendums, projects, another addendum, several mini heart attacks, almost missing our closing date, and just in case we didn't have enough reasons to street...a few more addendums.

Joe's alarm went off at 8:15 that Friday morning so we could leave my parents house in Fargo (yes, you read it right, like the movie, but I assure you we are not all middle-of-nowhere hillbillies who stuff people in wood chippers and say "Ya, sure, ya betchya" at the end of every sentence...just the occasional "Oh ya!" and "Oofda") in time to get home in time for the 11AM closing.  About half way home Joe's phone rang.  It was our lender informing us that things were going to be delayed that day and basically to keep our fingers crossed that we could still close in time.  If you have every bought a house you know the problems/paperwork that can arise from not closing on time.  We had been saying all along to not 'go all in' until we had signed our name 158 159 times and the keys were in our hands....this phone call solidified that.  After a few more phone calls  we had a new time with the attorney to sign our names, hand over a hefty check, and get the keys in our grubby little hands.

We shook hands, took the keys, and went over to take our first steps into our first house.  We felt like kids at Christmas..."Look at this!" "Did you see this?" "This is sooo awesome" which started to morph into "Careful not to bump that" "Don't set that there" "Turn all the lights off" "Turn the heat down, we're paying for this now".  We're hoping to get the hang of it sooner rather than later

The next day and a half consisted of packing and moving, moving and packing.  Joe, God bless him, hates to pack but doesn't mind moving and I HATE moving but don't mind packing...match made in Heaven.  The weather in North Dakota in December was AMAZING the first day...high 30's.  To those of you outside of North Dakota, this is considered a heat wave at this time of year.  While you are all putting on your second winter jacket, stoking the fireplace, and calling off school, we are all driving around with our windows down, barbequing, and shoveling the driveway in our shorts.  We thought we had it made until Saturday rolled around and it plummeted to -40 wind chill...in North Dakota not only can those two temperatures be in the same paragraph but they can occur within a 24 hour period....welcome to the Frozen Tundra, folks.

Joe loaded as many boxes as would fit into our oversized, heated, attached garage that day; reason being that we are restoring all the original hardwood maple floors in the house so we can't move anything in until they are sealed and finished **fingers crossed that will only be another week cuz I will not be too pleasant after living out of a box and suitcase for longer than that ;)**

Below you will find the 'before' pictures of our house.  These will serve as the starting point for when we show people our house a year from now (fingers crossed it's not more like 6 years) and can proudly say "Look how far we've come!". (Furniture and anything else in the house was left by previous owners)

Backyard:

Headed downstairs:

Left Door= Storage

Right Door= Bathroom 

Dining Room

Kitchen

Living Room

Front porch

Front Porch, door on far left leads to house

Front Door, stairs leading upstairs

 1st on left=guest room 2nd on left=master 1st on right=upstairs bathroom 2nd on right = office Guest Room

Office

Master Bedroom

Upstairs Bathroom

There you have it! The first public tour of our house...soon to be HOME!  We have already done some small things that have made big differences...be sure to stop back soon to see the changes!