2011 Resolutions- House Edition

This has been an amazingly eventful year for us. As newlyweds, we have experienced so many great, exciting, and overwhelming new things!

First and foremost, Thomas graduated from Medical School this year. I am so proud of all that he's accomplished- there is no way that I could endure the years of studying, lack of sleep (and money) that he had in order to make it this far! It's a blessing that he was able to go through college and medical school- and an added blessing that it's over!

Then the new obstacle began- residency. Residency is tough- for the interns and their family. Now that Thomas and I have relocated for his job, it's tough to do things together and to meet people in a new city. As I work from home, I find that I spend an extreme amount of time with only the cats for company. I'm not complaining- not even close. People apologize for the fact that I am a doctor's wife- and as a result kind of have to go it alone since he's so busy. No apologies necessary- I knew what I was getting myself into- and I'm glad that I did. Thomas is my life and I would follow him anywhere.

Now we're to the part where we bought our home. What an excruciating experience that was. With all the foreclosures in the area (and everywhere for that matter) it was a buyer's market. Why rent when we could call a place our own for the next four years? There was no way that we could buy in California and we were happy to jump at the chance to buy our first home in Phoenix- where the houses were cheap and plentiful. Happy, that is, until we started the process. I don't want to go into it too much because the experience is something that I would rather forget. It was difficult to say the very least and was a true test of our marriage!

So here we are, in our house for over 6 months. We have already come so far in making this house our home and adding what we need to make it ours. With all the new paint, carpet, countertops, furniture, etc you would think we would almost be done. Not so!

Here is my list of 2011 home resolutions:
1. Finish fixing the pool. I'll post about that whole debacle later to explain further. In short, we need to do some work on it which requires mucho dinero so we'll be saving for a bit to tackle that next year.

2. Paint the bathrooms, laundry room. I've got the paint swatches up.... now I've just got to decide on a color.

3. Re-carpet the living room. Most of that raggedy, stained carpet is covered by either furniture or an area rug so it's fine for now. But when we have kiddies in the house crawling around we'd rather it be on a cleaner surface.

4. Clean the grout or re-grout altogether. Our grout is black.... and it isn't supposed to be. That needs fixin.

5. Get new blinds. All of the blinds in every room are either broken (they won't stay up unless you tie the strings to a weighty object) or they are falling apart (chipped panels, broken strings, etc). I would really love to get new, energy efficient, and easy to open blinds for each room.

6. Finish the garage. It needs a new work bench, some storage, and some outlets added. It's kind of ridiculous that our garage only has one outlet at the moment- and it isn't even close to the work bench.

I'm sure that there are many many more projects that need doing around here and more will come up along the way. But this is just some of the bigger things I'd like to tackle- sooner rather than later- that I'd like to accomplish within the next year.

Wish us luck!!!

Finally- our new couch revealed!

We had gotten our couch at the same time that we got our dining room set- but I have been dragging my feet about posting the pictures. We had been using a futon as a sofa since moving in here until we had enough dinero to dedicate to the purchase of a new sofa.

Here's the before shot of our living room- in all it's futon inhabited glory:
Before we decided on a couch to drop a couple hundred bucks on- I had a heavy list of criteria that needed to be met:

1. Our living room is not massive, so a sectional was not preferred, although a chaise would not be a total veto.
2. It's no secret that we have cats and that cats like to scratch things. I wanted to find us a couch that was not cat-scratch friendly.
3. Absolutely, positively, NO leather!
4. The back cushions have to be attached to the couch. The reason for this? The cats loved lying on top of the back cushions on my last couch which resulted in mushy cushions that needed to be re-stuffed to be more firm. Also, vacuuming the couch to remove cat hair was more difficult with cushions that moved around and got hair all the way around them. (Yes, I notice how much the cats are factoring into our decision- but it's completely necessary!)
5. I did not want a suede or suede-esque couch. I do not enjoy getting up from the couch and seeing my nice big rump imprinted in the fabric of the couch. I have enough anxiety as it is- I don't need to have it on display on our sofa! Ha ha!

Phew. Who knew that a couch would even exist that met all those standards that would be our style, comfortable, and affordable? Well, it does- and we found it! Plus, we bought around a holiday- so there was a deal for 15% off :)

Here's the new addition to our home:

Here it is! We got ourselves one comfy couch- complete with a chaise and FAUX leather! It is made of that suede-like material but with the seams that criss-cross through the cushions there are no imprints of our behinds to be seen :) We are happy campers- and as you can tell from the picture, the cats also approve.

Another person's old dresser is our new buffet :)

There are always a ton of yard sales going on in our neighborhood- even more now than in the summer since the weather is much more tolerable. And while I've never been real big on scavenging through other people discarded things, I have been more and more curious about attempting to score big ticket items to fill our empty walls and rooms. I was on the search for a couch or possibly a dining set. Since we recently purchased those items anyway (and couldn't be happier) I started to cool off on my yard sale drive-bys.

But, this past weekend there was a yard sale going on two blocks south of us. Just out of curiosity I did a drive-by and saw an old dresser. It wasn't that great so I didn't stop or get out. While running errands that day I passed by that street several more times and saw that no one had picked up that dresser. What could it hurt if I just looked at it? If anything, we meet a new neighbor and leave empty handed. So I asked Thomas if he wanted to take a walk. We went down there and surveyed our possible purchase. Upon closer inspection- I liked it- and I wanted it. "I'll make you a good deal," the homeowner said. Thomas was skeptical. I told him that we could use it as a buffet table in our dining room- and use it as a place to stash placemats and tablecloths. Thomas' response, "I dunno." It was the end of the day and the lady wanted to get rid of everything. "If you like it- take it." Sweet! So even if what I wanted to do with it didn't work out- we could put it on the sidewalk to be picked up or donate it and we wouldn't be out a penny. We took it.

Here's what it looked like in all it's (free) glory:
And this is what it looked like after I sanded it down and removed all the old and dated hardware:
And finally, after four days of sanding and staining (and then sanding down some more and staining again) and adding some new door hardware, this is what we ended up with:Isn't it beautiful? Well, I think so. Staining was definitely a learning experience but I am enjoying my "learn as you go" do-it-yourself stuff. The buffets that I was looking at in stores would have set us back at least $300. The price for this? In total, for the stain, the brushes, the sandpaper, the door hardware and the sealer it only cost us a cool $68. Cool, huh? And the red mahogany that I stained it is a perfect match to our newly purchased dining room set.

Dining Room Table

We bought our dining room table a couple of weeks ago- and it is beautiful. It's just one more thing that is making our house more into a home. With every bit of furniture we acquire our house looks more and more like a grown-up house... not one lived in by college students with random pieces and futons for couches.
We bought the table at Ashley furniture and the swivel bar stools from Kohls. We scored the table with an awesome coupon in the mail and the bar stools were on sale :) The padded part is made up of the same material- but they aren't identical so it isn't too matchy matchy.
Now we can finally eat dinner at a table instead of in front of the tv w/ our tv trays. Oh happy day :)