Complete and Utter Chaos

We have officially spent the first night in our new house.  And by that I mean we threw our mattress down on the floor in the middle of our room and called it good.

We had been slowly moving things to the new house over the course of a few weeks; totes, boxes, smaller items, but the big furniture items had been left behind until we could borrow a truck.  A good friend here in town said we could use his truck and trailer for free one night and all of a sudden moving got thrown into warp speed; free is my favorite price!

Joe rounded up a handful of his football players to do the manual labor part of it.  Let me tell you what...that was THE BEST thing ever.  I will never move any other way again.  Joe and I never lifted a finger!  Well, I did...to tell them where to put the couch :) It was a win-win for everyone...we got our furniture moved and the boys got out of weight room that day.

I also may or may not have lost an undergarment under the bed that one of them found when they took the bedroom furniture out...so double win for that freshman.

After the boys left I was pretty excited because I was certain we only had a few odds and ends left at the house...HAH, right.  I have come to the realization that we are awful packers.  Like Super Bowl XLVIII-Denver Broncos awful.  We got back to the house and there was stuff evverrrryyywheeerrre!

We spent the next 3 days moving the rest of the odds and ends.  It started out not so bad.  I carefully packed things into boxes according to where they would need to go in the house making sure to mark each box accordingly.  That lasted a whole 3 hours and then my inner 2 year old came out and all I wanted to do was throw myself on the floor and kick and scream and cry and have my mommy do it all for me.  The kicking and crying may have actually happened to some extent but having my mom come pack it all did not so I did the next best thing...started "packing" things in garbage bags.  I use the term 'packing' loosely here, "A pair of shoes, a coffee mug, and a hair brush? Yup, throw it in".

Eventually everything made it over to our house and we walked out of our little rental for the last time. *sniff sniff*  Even though that little place needs some serious TLC, it was still the place we started our married life in, so it holds a special place in my heart.  I'm also the girl that is was convinced stuffed animals have feelings so I have this odd connection with inanimate objects...weird, I'm well aware.  Joe is the complete opposite and drove away without looking back.

So now we're completely into our new place and everything is exactly how I imagined it in my head and is all put away and everything has it's own spot and it's all so organized and......NOT!

This is our life right now, complete and utter chaos.  We did finally get the couch turned right-side-up and the recliners put into position so that is calming me down a bit.

 We feel as though we've taken 5 steps back from the pretty house with the new floors to a war zone that a tornado ripped through.

I've been working on getting the cabinets painted so we can put the kitchen together.  That will get rid of practically a 1/3 of our boxes.  Those should be done by the end of the week.  We will also be ordering carpet for the upstairs *fingers crossed* this week so then we can finally start moving things upstairs.  We didn't want to move anything up there besides our mattress to simply move it all back down a couple weeks later so the carpet could be installed.  Work smarter not harder.

Our front porch currently looks like a furniture graveyard and our garage looks like an episode of 'Hoarders' so we are BEYOND ready to get this house put together.

We did take a break from the madness last night to watch a movie and eat something besides pizza.  Joe said he wanted a night to 'do nothing but lay on the couch', so we did.  We have realized that if we need a break, we've got to take it or we're going to get burned out REAL quick.

So while we are feeling stuck in the verse "When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad", we are looking forward to enjoying our favorite things in our someday beautiful home.

Until next time,
NoDak Newlyweds

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!