Moving day is finally here!

Wednesday May 18, 2016

Hip hip hooray! It is MOVING DAY!! At least for our belongings :)

The movers came to my parents' house for 2 pieces of furniture, then onto our storage unit and then to our forever home.

Thank goodness for the help of my sister, parents and Chris - I threw my back out on Tuesday, so was totally and completely useless Wednesday. My Dad continually reminded me to "just point" or "the only thing you should be working is your finger" to point where boxes should go :) 

Double thankful that my Mom has had issues with her back in the past and had prescription muscle relaxers I could use before bed for a few nights. Not that I'm advocating using someone else's prescription meds, but if it is your moving week & you throw out your back for the first time ever; you may want to consider it.

Here are some of the highlights (and comical low lights) of the day:

There is only 1 mug appropriate for moving day while you
are in quite a bit of physical pain. This is the one.

Just another day at storage.....caution tape & safety cones
are not typically signs that your move is going smoothly.....

Moving is stressful, right? At least it is for me. Things like
this......the driveway just adjacent to our unit being torn up for
new electrical service......do not help my stress levels.

Despite the chaos at storage, the movers (with help from Dad, Marg & a tiny bit from me)
emptied our storage unit in a hurry!

Fast forward - this is  the last layer of boxes
and furniture in our moving truck! Busy busy busy!

Yes, my superhero sister wore my niece on her back while
moving boxes out of the truck. Unreal. 

Now to the mass chaos inside the house!

At least we had Hennie to keep us smiling :)

Lunch break! Note the boxes in the background :/

Hennie had been working hard - she was hungry!

  

Technically the day after moving - but H was very
helpful as we unpacked!! 

Well, we did it. With epic amounts of help from our family and friends! Our stuff made it in!

Breathing new life into an old dresser

If you have never tried chalk or chalked paint, I highly encourage it! It is NOT chalkboard paint; it is regular paint that can be slathered onto any surface with little or no preparation! This dresser is destined for use in our bedroom closet (it came out of my parents' old basement; but by the time Chris & I snagged it, it was my brother & sister in law's basement!) so the chalk paint look was perfect.
It is matte finish, it is NOT perfect - I didn't feel like doing a 2nd coat!
It is quite forgiving and can mask blemishes on the surface you plan to paint.
Give it a whirl - you won't regret it! I bought this can at Home Depot.

Before Paint (but after power sanding)

Before paint

After paint

Drawers before paint

Drawers after paint

Old drawer pulls

New drawer pulls - basket weave design

Final product! We use it inside our closet under our short hanging clothes.

I would love to hear about any painting projects you are tackling! Tell me about them in the comments!

Paint colors; Inside & Outside

So so so so many choices!
From left to right:
1st floor man cave
1st floor main area (none of these worked)
2nd floor office
Exterior

Exterior options

Chris painting (from left to right) exterior options
number 1-7

We took our favorite exterior options (#2 &
#3) and painted them around the house!
In the sun & shade, plus on the old &
new siding!
We chose #3 - shown on the right here!

Some of our first efforts on the 1st floor color.
We wanted a light gray....darker than the white trim but
lighter than our cabinets. Harder to find than you'd
imagine! This includes living room, dining room,
 hall bathroom, kitchen, family room and our master bedroom!
I struggled mightily with this choice!

2nd floor color options - we wanted an off white that would
show off the trim but not be too bold. This paint is for
the foyer, front stairwell, upstairs hallway, guest rooms &
the hall bathroom. Bottom row center is the winner!

Gray, gray, gray.
I painted lots of color options on this wall
in the kitchen! We wanted to be as sure as possible we were
making the right choice! We went with the color on the lower
left (its repeated on both sides of the door).

We are rocking the man cave like it is
a transplant from our condo! It will be painted
brown & have virtually the same furniture :)

The winning man cave color is on the right.
The one on the left looks too much like a dirty diaper :(

Chris showing off the office window with the color
options. The darkest one won here :) Its in the center

I DIYed the basement laundry area wall....because it is in
the basement & it doesn't matter! The middle color won!

I wanted to go bold & fun. One might think this is too
dark of a color for a basement; I went high gloss to
bounce the light around the room. Our basement has some
above grade windows which give it some natural light,
which helps!

In case you care to buy any of these colors, we used all Benjamin Moore paints. Here is a list of what we bought & where we're using it:

Exterior: Deep Royal

1st Floor + Master Bedroom: Whitestone at 50% strength

2nd Floor + Foyer/Stairwell: China White

Man Cave: Whitall Brown

Office: Van Deusen Blue

Laundry Area: Old Navy

A new driveway & LOTS of machines

 When we embarked on the planning phase of this project with our architect, Tom, we had a few requests about the exterior of the house: lose the side porch on the west side of the house, build a new one on the east side (where the driveway is), keep the driveway for off street parking but shorten it to make way for a hefty (aka hardworking) side porch.

Just too tempting not too. My father-in-law
wondered if I have a new career path!

Too tempting not to....Chris driving the Bobcat on
Sunday

Welllllllllllll, the City of Evanston Zoning Department had other ideas. As it turns out, a driveway (in Evanston) must terminate a parking pad. The parking pad can be no more than 30 feet from the rear lot line. In our case, this puts our parking pad smack in the middle of our backyard! We didn't realize it, but we had a parking pad already - it was hiding under an awful lot of gardening paraphernalia and had a layer of weeds growing on it.

May, 2015: in the background of this photo you can see the area
that is our "parking pad" it was covered by a lot. I was
in no way exaggerating!

So, the good news? After the Zoning Department rejected our building permit application because our plans were in violation of the above referenced zoning code, Tom did a quick redraw. The new (& thankfully approved) drawings show our driveway being rerouted around our slightly narrower porch. Chris & I have been calling it the "S curve".

The bad news? Since this was a change made after we signed our contract, none of it is included in the price we planned on paying! Wah wah. 

It was fun to watch all the machines work on our property though! Check out the photos to see the progress they made starting Saturday April 16 and wrapping up by Wednesday April 20! Any toddler in your life would've loved these work days! The neighborhood kids sure did! We had the bobcat, mini bulldozer, dump truck, pumper truck (to pump concrete from the mixing truck into our crawl space which was also getting finished), cement mixing truck, along with an equipment truck & 3 pick up trucks. Our street is small. Our yard is small. We were overrun with giant vehicles!! Honestly though? It was really entertaining.

Bobcat delivery on Saturday

The old driveway before the demolition
got started

The old driveway with the planning of the
new driveway. You might be struck by
how similar the old
and new look :)

Here is a video of the mini bulldozer 

working with the bobcat to pull up the old driveway piece by piece!

Lots & lots of heavy equipment in the backyard!

I didn't think things in the backyard could get any worse.........and then a 4.5 foot high dirt pile rose up in the
middle of all the chaos. That was decidedly worse!

Old driveway is gone - bobcat is
grading out the space to make way for the new

Chris is admiring the concrete forms that are
part way put up. The forms require an
inspection by the City of Evanston. I
guess it is easier to adjust the forms than
the concrete once its poured!

Finished forms

Dad checking out the fancy new driveway...
or is he wondering why it looks nearly
identical to the old driveway?!?

We are for sure the classiest house on the block. The crime scene caution tape is
really sealing the deal!
But- here it is! The final product!

Of course we did :) Though not in the driveway, we
put our initials in the sidewalk that was patched on the
other side of the house. Because concrete is forever......
or 100 years or so!

The Kitchen is IN!

I am so incredibly excited that our kitchen was installed last week! 

In 4 work days our trim carpenters, Pat & Eric, unpacked almost all of these boxes:

Kitchen cabinets in boxes

There were an awful lot of giant boxes!

And installed almost all of the cabinets! 

Cheers to the new kitchen!

Yippee! It looks just wonderful, even with the
cardboard countertops!

They built our island, 

It is hard to see the island; but it is hiding on the lower left of the photo
behind the garbage can & bag of joint compound (because of course
some of our brand spanking new drywall got torn out by the trim carpenters
in order to fully install our cabinets......#worthit #Ithink)

installed our barnwood beams in the ceiling, 

Our barnwood ready to be installed

1st beam is partway done

1st beam done, 2nd one waiting to be wrapped

and even gave us temporary cardboard countertops - which are very fancy and perfect for holding snacks and drinks :)

National Beer Day celebrations

Major Friday night snack attack waiting for Chris
to come home from work.

Delicious takeout for our first dinner party!

I spend so much of my time in the kitchen; I could not be happier about how ours is coming together! 9 more days until our countertops are delivered and installed; at that point it will feel really REALLY real! 

Update April 19, 2016:
We have our counters! They were delivered & installed today & they look wonderful!

Here comes the island!

Loving the way they look!

I've been having way too much fun with panoramic photos lately!

The island is almost done!

The very next day, the trimmers
installed our final (& largest) cabinet!

Now I just need to move in and start cooking!!