Thanksgiving Eve...

Setting the table, making deviled eggs and looking forward to having the family over tomorrow.

Movember

Movember 11: 15 min stairs, 15 min walking
Movember 12: 30 minute walk with Hawkeye
Movember 13: 2 hours washing windows at new house...up and down the ladder.
Movember 14: 15 minutes doing crunches, plank, pushups, squats...30 minutes walking with Hawkeye

Unpacking..

 On Saturday, friends and family helped me move the furniture over, so it's starting to look like home. I'm using all the same curtains and rods from the rental. Yesterday my mom and dad hung some lamps and curtains, and we started hanging artwork. I even spent my first night there last night. I still have lots of things to get out of the old house, especially out of my basement there. Yuck. But it will get done. One thing at a time.

I like to buy artwork from artists I meet along the way. This quilt over the fireplace is by JoanE Lipinski, a Pontiac, IL artist. I saw it in Wallworks (local gallery) long ago, and Joe gave it to me for my birthday. The colors have faded a bit, but it's still one of my favorite pieces.

Movember 7,8,9,10...and progress on the bungalow

My workout the entire week has been at the house. Sanding and sealing woodwork, washing windows, moving day with all the hauling of boxes, moving furniture, loading and unloading trucks. I drop into bed exhausted each night.

I love it when I get to do a job where you really see a big difference like washing windows, or a couple of days ago, sealing woodwork. I'm using a wipe-on polyurethane. I gave it a light sanding with very fine paper first. The woodwork looked so dried out, and the poly makes such a difference!

 Here I've done the top of the buffet and the top two drawers.

The mantle is done except the bottom board only had poly wiped on half way across.

Movember 4, 5, 6...Moving!

So I was not going to count moving as exercise, but I've been painting and cleaning and packing for the last few days. Since I'm sore and exhausted (good signs of lots of activity), I'm going to count it as my exercise for the last 3 days.

Here are some pics of what is going on at the bungalow the last few days.

 Wright's came and installed the kitchen floor. I'd love to have done tile, but it doesn't fit in my budget right now. This is a high quality vinyl from Wright's in Pontiac. It's the same line (but a different pattern) that I had put in the back entry at the old house. Here you can see the old floor, under the new floor. It's perimeter glued. I also had them run the vinyl down the stairs to the basement.

 Here it is with the backsplash. The color is actually more like it is in the first photo.

Ron Ingram is painting 3 of the rooms. He and his helper stripped all the wallpaper off today, and painted the ceilings yesterday.

 Here is the dining room without all the wall paper.

 And my little studio minus the paper that covered its walls.

In the living room, Ron started painting the khaki color on the walls. This color is matched as closely as possible to the walls of my little rental house, because I enjoyed the color so much.

We also got the bedroom painted, and moved the furniture into my bedroom and the guest room. We scrubbed the kitchen floor when we realized that it was staying under the new floor, and moved the old appliances out. I had lots of help from family and friends on these projects, which helped sooo much! Today I painted inside the linen closet and the bedroom closet and lined most of the kitchen cabinets with shelf paper.

Cozy Bungalow

I bought a house! It's in my old neighborhood and I love that...I already know lots of the neighbors! Here are some pics we took the day I got the keys:

 I'm going to love this. It's a nice big south facing front porch...and it's shaded by trees...ahhhh.

The dining room has a pretty buffet with little mirrors across the back. The living room has a fireplace! All the windows on this side of the house are original, and I'm glad because they have lots of character. The windows in the other side of the house have been replaced and they are mostly in the bedrooms.

This is the other end of the living room. The little room through the French doors will be my art studio. The stairs lead to finished attic space.

The fireplace. I'm thinking built in book cases on either side of it. I've seen that in lots of craftsman style houses, and I could use the book storage space.

Here is the kitchen. The sliding door leads to a nice deck.

More of the kitchen. Wright's is coming to replace the kitchen floor soon, with something that matches the back splash better than blue plaid.

Not a big kitchen, but I think I can make it work.

Living Room

Living room looking towards the front door.

I'm excited to work on this. It's just right for me: not to big, and not too small. Most of the work are things I can do like painting and gardening, because the former owner kept the house in good shape. Hawkeye and I are looking forward to having fires in the evening...we have both missed that in our rental house.