Moving

Jill

I've noticed that a lot of blogs go through the cliche where weeks pass by without a single post, followed by some sort of sorry explanation to account for the laziness. Well, this blog is no exception, but I promise I have a great reason!

Through an incredible stroke of luck, Keith and I have landed an extraordinary deal on renting a house (through his boss) and should hopefully be moved-in by December 1st. The place has the potential to be really great, but the condition it was in when we first saw it was a little scary. Gross carpets that were pretty much coming up on their own lined most of the house, not to mention a couple of mystery rooms with some random wood-blocks nailed to the walls (maybe they partially ripped out some built-ins?), mixed in with the general feeling that the place could really use a good scrubbing. 

The room I am most excited about, however, is the kitchen. Unlike any of the other apartments I've lived in, this kitchen is actually its own room. It has tons of cabinets (even though they're filled with curling nasty contact paper) and a double sink, which is another "first" for me. When I saw the kitchen for the first time, I was really excited, and then a little nauseous from its current color scheme. The previous owners must have REALLY liked pink, since the walls, floors, cabinets, and even ceiling were all painted a really gross fleshy pink color. I've never been much of a pink person, but I'm sure even pink's biggest fan would've gotten a little dizzy in that room.

We have been given permission to do absolutely anything we want to the house, but since it still doesn't belong to us, we're trying to avoid investing too much money in this project. We've made a ton of progress so far, especially on the wood floors that we found underneath the carpet, two layers of old linoleum, and old newspapers. Having an actual floor in the house has made so much of a difference.

So that's my lame excuse. Every ounce of spare time has been spent fixing up this house, but I really hope we have something to show for it. I'll post some "in progress" pictures below, and hopefully I'll have some "after" pictures to post in a few months.

My kitchen-to-be

Extreme two-tone pink attack

Your eyes do not deceive you. Faux-brick linoleum partially covered with laminate make up the kitchen counters

My favorite! Wood-burning stove

Weird Carpet-esque linoleum upstairs found under actual carpet and another layer of linoleum

Under the linoleum... '20s newspapers and wood floor. $3.98 frocks!

Blurry carpet-ripping action shot! He actually caught the lamp before it fell

Under the carpet. Who would cover this up?