Catching up

Back from my last big trip last night - 2 weeks in Asia, and I was so happy to get home.  Traveling is great but I really am a home body.  As I am not inspired to do a whole heck of a lot else today - thought I would update with a few pics of our continued progress on the house.  The exterior of our house was one of our biggest projects this summer and we had Eric come to visit in the spring and put him to work for 3 solid weeks...what a treat to have a Carpenter brother and a very handy hubby!  

Before...a blank canvas, not a lot of privacy and a view of a really ugly rusted shed!

 Progress!  The boys taking a beer break.

Finished product - so pleased with our new yard!  This is furniture that I purchased for Home Outfitters for our spring summer season - it was one of my best sellers.  Fortunately we were able to score a set before they all sold out.  

Yup! Having a Baby!

More excitement here at the Blacklock household!  We are expecting a little boy in February!  Carmon and I are thrilled and are really looking forward to the day that he arrives.  Hmm...let me be more careful with my words, perhaps I am looking forward to a few days after he arrives...if you know what I mean - yikes!  I have been getting requests to post photos of my growing belly - here I am today at 21 weeks.

Will We See The Light?

Bless Carmon, he really is a handy man.  I did my part in picking out a chandelier and Carmon agreed to install it - no problem!  At the time the project really did not seem too difficult, we talked it through...Carmon was confident that it would be easy to create a new outlet for the chandelier, as it now needed to be centered with our dining room table.  He would cut out the ceiling dry wall, run a new outlet from one of the existing, and then patch up the two outlets that were already there, simple enough...

OK, It works!  Now we just have to get it to stay up there...oh and fill in the hole that was carved out of the ceiling...Carmon plastered and sanded over 3 days - each day adding a layer of thick dust throughout the house and on himself!

Hanging the chandelier did involve a fair bit of drama but I will not bore you with the details...let's just say that we are now experts at this and hope to god that we will not have to hang another of these babies in a long time!  

Progress!

...so we've been busy!  Is that a good enough excuse?  As you can see, last blog was March 9th, our move in day.  I have been receiving many jabs from fellow bloggers (you know who you are) - why have we not updated our blog?  Well we have made some progress...allow me up to update you on our early days as homeowners...

White

The thing about white is that not all whites are the same.  Ready to forge ahead with the daunting task of painting every room in the house, we started with the dining room.  Not the best of starts as we painted the entire room in Benjamin Moore Oxford White, which basically is the same color as our crisp (very white) base boards - it was a very blank canvas, a little too blank.  We lived with the color for a few weeks before we both admitted that we really weren't feeling the love...so, we re-taped and re-painted all over again.  We 

settled on a color called Intense White which sounds scary but is a perfect shade of white...not that anybody else would be able to tell!  

Goodbye Tiffany Turquoise!

Let me be the first to admit that I love the color turquoise especially when it comes in the form of a little box with a white satin ribbon!  But, not so sure that this would be the color to stay put on our kitchen walls.  

We removed a funny cabinet that looked out of place between our two kitchen windows as well as the corner shelf above the sink.  With the removal came some patching and then repainting - all worth the effort.  New paint color - Benjamin Moore Snowball.

...Moving Day...

Isn't winter over yet?  That question has been on my mind for awhile now but it really resonated yesterday when we had to move in the middle of a March blizzard!  This was the scene at 78 Twelfth St. - it was worse than it looks.  Did I mention that we moved by ourselves?  It's funny now that it's over but there were a few tense moments yesterday!

Now we are in our new pad and it already feels like home.  It is weird going from a 400 sq. ft. bachelor apartment to a whole house just for the two of us.  We are enjoying all of the things that we have gone without for many years such as a dishwasher, being able to do laundry whenever we want, not having to save up loonies for the washing machine, having a driveway to shovel! ...OK, perhaps I am pushing it there, Carmon has been out there two days in a row...not sure if that would top his list!  We have a big to do list and are waiting for more furniture to arrive - we have been standing over the kitchen sink eating meals - it will be wonderful to have a real dining room table...Carmon wants to start on the bathroom right away - I promise, I will update our progression on a more regular basis - I am sure things will get very interesting as we begin our DIY projects.