A Super Productive Weekend!

Wow, I am quite proud of how much McGee and I were able to get done this weekend. We were busy! One big thing that we didn't actually do ourselves, but it still a huge thing off our list, is that we had our new oven/stove delivered!! The oven that was here was not working correctly at all (it would LITERALLY take over 90 minutes to preheat the oven... We tried like 4 times), so we ordered a new one and had it delivered on Saturday! We couldn't go with a gas stove (there's no gas to this house whatsoever, and it was going to be such a crazy ridiculous/expensive process to have a gas line run to the house), so we got an electric stove, and it works so great! Electric stoves have really come a long way.

Isn't it pretty?? :)  It works so great. 

We also changed out one of the thermostats (we have 3-zone heating, so we have 3 thermostats... and one of them was quite old and wasn't working properly... ), we installed a flag on the front of our house, and the biggest project of all: we made some huge progress on the hardwood floors in my soon-to-be office. On Saturday (after the stove installation) we purchased a few new cleaning products that we'd heard could work wonders on the adhesive that was stuck to our hardwoods, and we scrubbed for a long time, but it was becoming clear that we were fighting a losing battle. And we calculated that we've each probably spent about 12 hours scrubbing those dang floors. So, we decided it was time to sand the floors down, and refinish them (we'd been trying to avoid that). Saturday at 5pm we went to Home Depot and rented a sander, and this morning we got a start on sanding them. We went through SO many sandpaper inserts because they kept getting coated in the tar-like black adhesive that was stuck everywhere, But, I'm happy to say that we now have some well-sanded floors that are FINALLY not gross sticky messes. They're just waiting for some stain and few coats of polyurethane. I think this week sometime we might try the stain (we got a few samples from Home Depot, so we're going to try to find a close match to the original color so it matches the other rooms and the hallway).

Here's a picture from this morning, before the sanding... So you can see what it looked like after TWELVE hours of me and McGee scrubbing it with various cleaners and adhesive removers. There was still soooo much sticky texture everywhere.

This was a particularly bad area... We got the adhesive up (with some MAJOR scrubbing), but that's what the floor looked like underneath. It was SO stained... 

Here's McGee just starting to sand! 

Here's about halfway done... You can still see some of the sticky black areas, after many sanding trips. 

And here they are after! And I'm happy to say that they are NOT sticky anymore!! There still small bits of black staining that went deep into the wood, but most of it is awesome looking. We're excited to see what it looks like after we apply stain and polyurethane! 

And here's the flag in the front of our house! McGee is super happy that we finally got this up. 

I hope you all had a great weekend! I'm SO excited for The Walking Dead Season Finale tonight!! AHHHH!!! 

Gross Projects, and an Easy Project!

This past weekend was very project-filled! We worked for many hours on the gross floors in our 3rd bedroom (the one that will eventually be my office), and I'm sad to say that we're still far from done. I don't know what we're going to do with those floors... At one point, we started thinking that we're going to have to just admit defeat and re-carpet them. We still might end up going that way, but we're not admitting defeat quite yet... We're going to work on them again this coming weekend. The adhesive and foam on them is SO sticky. We have to wear disposable booties on our shoes, and we have to wear knee pads too, and they're both just completely coated in green adhesive nastyness. We fully hand-scrubbed the floors with hot soapy water, we attempted some hardwood floor cleaner too (no progress with that...), and we also pulled out all of the staples (which was actually the "easy" part...), and here's what the floors look like now:

Yeah... they're still terrible! Everything you see there is adhesive. It's so sticky. 

Another gross project from this weekend was a very thorough and deep cleaning of the freezer that came with this house. McGee and I have both attempted to clean that freezer a few times since we moved in, and it was GROSS... Like, there were big dead bugs in there, and there was tons of super sticky stuff everywhere that we couldn't scrub off. So, it was time for me to call my mom. And she gave me some great tips for cleaning a freezer! And I'm happy to say that the freezer is now SPOTLESS, and no longer gross at all! It's now somewhere I feel comfortable storing food.

And an EASY project was that we put together a patio table!!  Even though we have a ton of stuff we need to buy for the inside of our house, we decided we really wanted to buy a patio table so that once it warms up (soon?? please??) we can enjoy our screened-in back patio.  And we found an all-weather table that was on a super good sale, so we bought it and put it together over the weekend! It seems great quality and is super heavy, so even crazy winds won't be able to budge it! We also bought some matching chairs, but they haven't arrived yet.

It's kind of hard to see it because of the reflection in the glass top... And yes, that is like a green astro-turf-ish carpet. The previous homeowners REALLY loved green if you can't tell!

Oh and we also had our final walk-through at our rental house, so I think we're done there! Fingers crossed that we get our full deposit back!!

Spring?

So... I'm pretty sure that today was the first day of Spring, but Winter is definitely not done with us here in PA! We got about 5 inches of snow today, and our high was about 30 degrees. So... I'm not feeling very Spring-y. BUT, the snow did actually look really pretty in our neighborhood with all of the trees, and when McGee got home we decided to attempt to have Guinness off-leash in our yard since there wasn't anybody out-and-about, and there were no cars anywhere either. So, I was incredibly nervous, because we've never had him off-leash in an unfenced area (because he's nutso... ). But, great news: It went SO well!!  Guinness was so well-behaved, and we had an awesome time playing fetch with him in the yard. Here's some pictures of our first day of Spring!

Here's Guinness waiting patiently for McGee to throw a ball!

Guinness looking so cute and tiny with all of the HUGE trees! 

Here's McGee looking super happy!!  Yay Friday!!

Guinness is standing on our elevated area where we'll have our BBQ and a few chairs

Here's the front of our house! And you can see the snow accumulation on my car. 

And here you can see our awesome new porch light! I heard from a few of you that my last post was a little confusing, and you'd thought that the gold/brass porch light was the new one! But nope!!  That was the old one. Sorry about the confusion there. 

This is Guinness and McGee hanging out in our screened back porch area! It's like a sunroom kinda. 

Here's some more of the huge trees in our backyard! It's very forest-y. I'm excited to see what it all looks like once there are leaves! 

I hope you're all way warmer than we are on this first day of Spring! We're having fun though - Just definitely enjoying our heater while watching some movies. 

Projects Galore!

Well, we officially moved in! We moved in less than week ago, and we're SO exhausted! There are lots of projects (big and small) to do in the new house, and we also still have to fully clean the rental house so that we can try to get our deposit back. Fingers crossed on that! We spent a lot of time there yesterday and this morning, so I think we're almost done. I think we're hoping to do our walk-through with him next weekend so we can officially be done with that place.

Our first BIG project at the new house was the the two days before we moved in: We had to pull up the carpets and get the original hardwoods underneath in good shape to put our furniture, etc. on them. Well, the carpet in the first room (my office) was a disaster, because all of the carpet padding was stuck to the hardwoods!! It was a sticky foamy mess. We then went to the Master Bedroom, and that carpet and padding came up MUCH easier, so all we had left in that room was to pull up all of the staples in the floor, and polish them up a bit. So the next day we came armed with cleaning products to work on my office floor, but first we decided to work on the Master... and it's a good thing! Pulling up those staples took FOR-EV-ER. We spent hours on our knees and sitting on the filthy hardwoods just trying to pry up staples and then rip them out without damaging the hardwoods. We now feel very emotionally attached to those hardwoods!!  It was so many hours of work. And the Master Bedroom took so long, that we didn't get the chance to work on my office, so now that's still a project we have to do... For now, all of my office furniture is in the guest room... and we decided to keep that crazy green carpet in the guest room for now, because we're too afraid to see the carpet padding situation in that room... Plus, that carpet is in good shape (it's just ugly), so it'll be ok for a few months until we have time to work on it.

Here's the gross mess in my office!!  It turns out this WILL come up though with a lot of scrubbing with hot soapy water... followed by some hardwood cleaner. It's just going to take a long time.

Here's a broader picture of the room, so you can just see how much sticky stuff we'll have to work on... And this stuff is GROSS - It gets stuck to your pants and shoes like crazy. 

As a contrast, here's a picture of what the Master Bedroom looked like right after ripping up the carpet and padding!!  Those spots down the middle are just where some staples are. We did have to pry up about 250 staples though... 

 And I wanted to show you this picture of the Master Bedroom too, because you get a little glimpse of the amazing (sarcasm) wallpaper in the Master Bathroom!!  That'll be a project for another time...

Another small project we just did today was replace the porch light! Neither one of us liked the one that was there, and it was in very rough shape... And then during one of our MANY trips to Home Depot we decided to stroll by the lighting area and we both fell in love with the same porch light!!  There was a HUGE wall of porch lights, and I saw the one I liked right away but I didn't want to sway McGee's choice so I just said, "Do you see any you like?" and he liked the one that I liked! It was meant to be. So McGee installed that today, and it's looking beautiful!!  OH and speaking of Home Depot, we've been there a million times!!  And we've discovered that Lowe's seems to be a bit more pricey than Home Depot.. We've found much better deals at the Home Depot. Has anyone else thought that? 

Here's the original! And the gold paint was chipping off too. 

Here's McGee in action! 

Here's the front view! 

Here's the side view! 

Here it is with the light off... I like it so much better than the old one! 

And we also set up our gnomes :-)  It's officially home! You notice that my Chargers one is the best one? Yeah... That's right ;-) 

Home Sweet Home

Well, it's official: We closed on the house!!  We just aren't living there quite yet... That'll happen next week. And I'll take pictures when we do move in, because the pictures I've posted so far were just from the house listing, so they don't show what it looks like right now (no leaves on the trees, and lots of snow everywhere).

We are so beyond excited, and can't wait to start living there!!  We love it already :)  

Winter is still here...

Well, Winter is definitely not done with us here. We've had a pretty good amount of snow recently, and yesterday we got about 4 inches of snow which was then followed by some icy rain... So today we spent about an hour shoveling our sidewalk and driveway, and it was some very heavy wet snow! So, right now we're both feeling very sore and regretting our decision to go to the gym yesterday morning. I took some fun video footage of Guinness catching frisbees in the snow yesterday, and you can see how heavy the snowfall was while we were playing (http://youtu.be/5CK59qEuCZI and http://youtu.be/ihBF6Vkdq_g. He's loooooves catching frisbees and he's so darn good at it!

He always happily prances back to us after catching a frisbee... 

Crazy jumping to catch the frisbee!! 

He's so excited!! 

Oh and we also put a handkerchief on Guinness a few days ago as kind of a joke, but it turns out that he really likes wearing it! He kinda freaks out when we take it off of him, and he'll sit in front of us expectantly until we put it back on him. He's such a goof... He acts the same way with his collar, so we think maybe he just thinks of the handkerchief as a really big collar. I don't think we'll have him wear it for too much longer, but right now it's kinda funny and he really looks handsome in it!

And oh my gosh his ears look HUGE in this picture! He looks like a bat...

We spent our evening last night re-watching some Game of Thrones episodes and we watched some movies (we definitely had to hibernate... it was soooo gross outside). And we also had a nice warm fire going!! It was quite a great night. 

Here's our nice fire (and Jon Snow is on the tv)

And our boy had quite a great evening too... He's not shy at all, if you can't tell. He does this when he wants a belly rub. 

Oh Guinness and his belly rubs... 

Tonight we're just watching the Oscars!!  We're quite excited (well, probably mostly me... but McGee is a very good sport about it :)  ). Today we also went and checked on the house we're in the process of buying (we close next Monday!! AHHHHH!!!!), and it's looking good! We had to check on some of the work that was done on it after the home inspection, and all the work looked great. So... it's getting real!!  It's so close now. Fingers crossed that everything goes well over the next 8 days!!  

Valentine's Day

Our Valentine's Day was a lot of fun! We got a pretty early start and went into the city to look at some wedding rings for McGee, but we struck out there. All of the places we saw online were supposed to open at 9am or 10am, but they lied... I think they just decided not to open that day... Maybe because it was too cold? It was FREEZING, so I can't say I blame them. We were so darn cold when we were walking around. But, all was not lost because we'd planned a bowling trip to this cool bowling alley in the city. So, we went there and bowled a few games, and it was our first time bowling together!! We had so much fun. And McGee won the first game (by a lot...) and I won the 2nd game (by not as much...), so we're going to have to play again soon for a tiebreaker! :)

Here's McGee bowling!!  The bowling alley had a very cool vibe. And they brought food and drinks to you a your lane! We each had a beer and we split some pretzel bites. 

They had a Valentine's Day theme to all of their screens! 

We had a very specific time that we had to make sure we had left the bowling alley by, because we had prospective buyers coming by to see our rental house. So, we had to make sure we were home to let them in and that we had Guinness crated. We thought it was kinda rude for them to come by on Valentine's Day, so we decided to make them feel as awkward as possible by lighting a bunch of candles and we found an awkward romantic movie (Titanic) on TV that we had playing while they showed up. I'm not sure if our strategy worked or if they just hated the house, but they were only here for about 1 minute.

After they left, we decided to take Guinness out to the yard to play with him. It was SOOOO dangerous in our yard! We were sliding around like crazy. We had a bit of snow, but that was on top of solid ice. Our backyard has just been a HUGE block of ice for a week or two (so we haven't been playing out there at all), but then we finally got some snow so we thought that might make it a bit better... but nope. All it did was hide the danger a bit. So, we played out there for a little while, and luckily none of us got hurt! I took a video of our playing back there, which just includes a lot of laughing and sliding around, but unfortunately it's too large to upload to this site... I guess I should've kept it shorter!  I did upload it to YouTube though (it's my first time doing that!), so you should be able to find it here: http://youtu.be/Oe3xRdNuY44

McGee and Guinness! It was still snowing at this point... 

I tried to get a good picture of the solid block of ice below the snow... 

McGee looking exhausted... And Guinness is sliding around in the background. 

Our poor pup was really sliding around like crazy. He had trouble keeping all 4 of his legs under control.

Last night we got a lot of snow though (at least 5 inches I'd say), so today we could really play in the yard without sliding all over.

He's burying his tennis ball... 

You can kinda tell how deep the snow is! 

We always joke that he's our Scarface puppy whenever he has snow all over his face. 

I hope you're all much warmer than we've been here!!