One Less Spare Bedroom

The house is done, well almost done, minus the millions of small jobs everywhere that I feel we will continue to work on as long as we live there :-) We built a house to have 3 spare bedrooms, plenty of room for friends and family to come visit. We love to have visitors :-) It seems we love visitors so much that we decided to have a permanent visitor, an addition to our family. We will have a new arrival, a bundle of joy around April 27th. If you have not already guessed, I will help you along, we are expecting a beautiful baby, April 27th!! I am 15 weeks along and had no idea how much work pregnancy was.

This is the baby at 11 weeks. The one at 6 weeks looks like just a ball or dot so I didn't show it.


Here is a little update on the the pregnancy so far to get everyone up to speed. The first 12 weeks were full of alot of miserable excitement. And by excitement, I mean a trip to the E.R. and several doctor's visits in a matter of a week. Morning sickness has a whole new meaning and it is anything but morning, it is I can't get out of bed and throw up all day long. The days I did feel good, I just thought to myself, no one explains pregnancy the way I feel, which was anything but good. But thankfully that has passed and now I only have mild discomfort and manageable nausea but thankfully rarely throwing up. Right now the baby is the size of an orange. My last doctor's visit, probably due to "morning sickness" I had only gained 1 pound, thankfully!! I feel there is a little visible bump but usually I am the only one that notices it. We have purchased a changing table, because we found a great deal and now on the look out for a crib and rocking chair. We have a white room waiting to find out if our baby will be a boy or a girl to decorate.
We are thankfull there will be some time in between the house getting done and our new arrival to prepare and get ready.
Here is an update on the house. We have been staying in the house since Saturday. I have been unpacking and cleaning and wiping walls, trim, doors, and floors to get rid of the dust but I do believe it will be an ongoing problem for a little while. I am going to take on the task of cleaning the garage to get rid of the dust in there. Matthew is out of town so he can not say too much but he hates when I move his tools around!!
We have some furniture, enough to get by but will slowly buy the rest. On piece at a time. Right now, we are in the market for end tables, coffee table, bar stools, and bedroom furniture. Matthew is going to build my huge closet with shelves and organizers but right now it is an empty room. So thankful for my handyman. I will post pictures of the house soon.

Move In Date.....

The plan is to move in this weekend!!! Yay!! I am not going to post any pictures on this post because I am going to wait to post lots of pictures when we move in.

The countertops are in and the appliances are just waiting for someone to move them into their spot. Matthew thinks me and him can do it by ourselves and I explain to him that WE, as in ME can not move a refridgerator, oven, or dishwasher. It took like 4 guys to move my dad's so I am not sure why he thinks WE can move them alone.

This weekend Matthew's parents were in town. Matthew and his dad worked on tiling the bathtub in our bathroom. His mom and I painted some doors and did the tedious job of putting calk on every nail hole in the base boards and door frames.

Oh I will post one picture, of our idea for the fireplace side in the kitchen. Matthew said he can make this.


The last couple of days of I have been cleaning like crazy!! We burned tons of stuff on Sunday as well. I have also began to realize having trees brings on the project of leaves!! So I have been kind of keeping up with that, by that I mean raked and burned them once and now there is twice as many on the ground. But there is still more to clean. Tonight we are going to pick up mattresses, door knobs, and a million other little small things at Menards. Menards is a huge and I mean huge store that has everything. I am also hoping I can talk Matthew into eating at Chipotle, he does not really like it. I on the other hand love it, I will even take it to go, if I have to.

I have also decided that since fall will be almost done by the time I move in. I am going to put minimal fall decor. Maybe decorate my table for fall and a pumpkin on the porch but will immediately begin decorating for CHRISTMAS!! Christmas decor is out in stores, why not in my house :-) Matthew will be gone the first week of November and I think that will be when I begin my Christmas decorating with Christmas music. Shhh, do not tell him, he will probably not embrace the Christmas spirit yet.

So I will have pictures for you at the beginning of next week.

Doors, trim, and plumbing

The Kings have been very busy with the house! The floors are done, completely done!
Here is a picture in the living room.

The interior doors are up

Now, we are waiting for the plumbers to come back and finish up, so we can have water in our house. We are also waiting for the septic to be installed. It is currently sitting in our front yard. I will have to admit we look a little white trash with all of the random items in our front yard.
I went and bought our appliances last week. They should be delivered sometime this week. Finally, our beautiful and very inexpensive (because I found a wonderful sale) granite countertops are being installed on friday. I was not even considering granite and I found these countertops on sale and they were the same price as laminate. Not only that but this week we were able to return some extra flooring we had bought and got more money back on our countertops. We then found crown molding super cheap and used the cash to buy crown molding and a million other little things that you do no think about. Thank you Jesus for the little blessings along with the big.
My husband has been hard at work on making our island beautiful, he added great trim and hung my corbels. So glad that I have such a talented handyman. I will try and take some pictures of the island.
I am now getting very anxious and want to start moving boxes in and I would, if they didn't come in every day and make everything dirty and dusty. I hope to be moving in this weekend!!!

Down to the Finish Working

The last week and a half have been very busy. Every night after work is spent at the house working on something. But progress has been made aside from a very tired girl!!
I have done most of the painting, well me and my mom. We have painted all of the rooms in the house, I just have some cut in work to be done. Which I am told needs to be done by tomorrow, not sure I will get all of it done but we will see!! I have gotten to the point where, I do not even care if all the paint comes off in the shower because I know there will be more paint on me in a matter of time.
They started laying our tile. We have tile in both bathrooms and in the entry hall. The hallway and the masterbath have been done.
This is the hallway!!

This is the Master bath

We have kitchen cabinets!! Terry and Lisa, our wonderful friends came and helped us or I should say helped Matthew hand the cabinets. We still have to do the trim and we are waiting on countertops (2 weeks) but the cabinets look great!! They are an antique white with a dark glaze around the wood work. Here are some pictures of the cabinets, it was hard to get good pictures because there was so much stuff on them due to the fact we were trying to get everything off the floor for flooring.




Finally, We have light fixtures!!! Matthew and I hung 7 light fixtures last night. When he was ready to start the 8th after midnight, I said "I can not do another one tonight!!" So we quit for the night!! Matthew found it fun to quiz me over the wires and what each one was called.... I told him, I didn't need to know because I had him :-) My uncle is here working away at the electrical. So today, we should have power to our light fixtures and hopefully air conditioning!! Here is one picture of the seven that we hung. This one is in our master bedroom.

Hopefully, they will start the rest of the flooring, tomorrow!! Matthew and I are going to lay the flooring in the spare bedrooms.... Another, skill, I will learn how to do. Then after the flooring will come the trim work and just odds and end of stuff!! It is hard to believe that less than 4 months ago it looked like this

And now we have a house!! God has definately blessed us and guided us along the way to find the right workers and help and materials. We are soo excited!!!

Painting, Oh Painting!!

Monday started painting the ceilings and priming the walls. Yesterday, Matthew and I bought paint for the living room, hallway, master bedroom, and the hall bathroom. Picking colors we agreed on was quite the process. I think dark floors lighter color walls, he thinks hunter green would be good for anything. I think we already have our bedspread so lets pick a color that goes with that, he thinks hunter green would be the best color. After lots of thought and conversations we picked colors. We painting the living room and hallway last night and both agreed we really like the color we chose. Whether we like it because it looks good or like it because we both wanted the color it doesn't matter :-) We like it!! I have pictures but it was really late when I took them and I do not think it really shows what color it is.

Hallway


The siding is almost done and we got a garage door!! In the picture you will have to disregard all the trash and misc stuff in the front of the house!!



The rest of this week, will be spent painting, painting, and painting. They will start the flooring on Tues. We will start tile work as soon as we are done painting. Cabinets come on Thur.
Move in date is getting so close that, I can't really believe it!! We are so thankful for everything that God has provided us. We are now looking for a great interest rate on a mortgage which now is the time to do it.... We have found.

Taking time to get away and still the house gets worked on

After, a crazy summer of non stop madness and barely a few minutes to spend time with each other in a day, we decided to go to Tennessee and visit Matthew's family. It was so great to get away!! Even though we were gone, alot happen back in Rocky Mount. I had no idea the show would go on without the check writers present :-)

The insulation guy has came and gone, finishing the whole house in just 2 days.


The drywall has started and they should be done by Friday!!


The vinyl siding guy is here and should be done this week!!


We are ALMOST done with rock work in the front. You want to work on your relationship skills with your spouse or even as a team building activity then do a tedious project like rock work.


This is the finished deck upstairs. The guy did awesome decorative post for me. The railings are high for our future children to have no chance of falling over the deck :-)


My uncle has pretty much finished the electrical, now we just have to wait for the drywall to be done to put the fixtures up. We are going to look at paint colors, flooring, and tile all this week. It looks like after I have now painted my sister and my mom's house, next week I will finally be painting MY house.

The house is looking more like a house. Everytime I go into the house or even think about it, I think how blessed I am. I am so grateful God provides and has been orchestrating the details of this house!!

Rock and Time

We have now began to do the rock work on the front of the house ourselves. We have to figure out where to put what piece where. When we first started we had to figure out what was the best way and of course Matthew and I had completely different ways of what was the best way. We had to stop and talk out the best way and come in to aggreement. After that everything went great and the time consuming project is coming along. We have a long way to go but have a great start. Here is a picture of our progress.


Matthew and I orginally did not think to put a deck upstairs and the house was already framed. Someone gave us the idea and that was it, I thought it was an amazing idea. We got a really awesome bid on it and decided a deck would be the best idea. Now, the deck is done and we have one upstairs and one down stairs. Here are pictures of the deck.


We bought cabinets and countertops!!! What a relief to have that done!!
My uncle is finishing up the electrical next week!!


Camp is over but we are still extremely busy with retreats and cleaning up from camp. Everything is going well and still extremely busy trying to juggle the house, marriage, and the camp.