Backseat Conversations

Today while we were out doing errands, I heard Ali ask Alex what his favorite sense is. Sight, touch, taste, hearing or smell she said. Which one would he do without? She is such a smart little girl. She just turned 6 and these are the conversations she likes to have.

Oh and the verdict was we all thought sight was the one we couldn't go without. Hearing was a close second.

Decision Time

So we did close on our old house last Wednesday. What a relief! The money is in the bank so now it is time to make decisions on what we are putting into our new home. This past weekend we focused on flooring. We hit all of the local stores and decided to head into Memphis late Saturday to check Lumber Ligquidators out as well. So far our favorite has been 99 cent laminate at a local seconds store. Hilarious! However we really want to go the hardwood route. Since we are doing this ourselves, I've been on the mission to find the click type. We'll have to go with engineered but we are okay with that as long as it looks nice. I really want to find something for under $3 a square foot. I found a few options online so now I am just waiting for the samples to come in.

We came back from Memphis to find a leak in our hot water closet. Thinking it was the water heater we called into our home warranty place for service. I got in there today and noticed it was worse. Pulled the carpet up and the pad was SOAKED and that it wasn't the water heater. Oh great I thought as it seemed to be coming from the tub on the other wall. Well the service guys came and guess where it was coming from??? The freaking toliet on the other side of the tub had loose bolts and it was leaking out of it. They tightened the bolts and collected their $60. Laughing to myself was seriously my only option. We seem to play the What Will Go Wrong in this House Today? game alot around here.

Almost to the Finish Line

We close on our old house tomorrow! Finally! The relief my hubby and I feel is immense. I can wait to go out and pick new floors out. We are getting a nice chunk of equity back that we plan to spend on improvements for the new house. Our first plan was to split it in half and put half towards repairs and the other half towards the mortgage. Unfortunately the market is overflowing with houses up for sale so we sold for about $12,000 below our appraised amount. In the end though we just wanted it sold and to not have to deal with it anymore.

This weekend I plan to tile the kitchen backplash and my hubby is hopefully going to work on the pool. Did I mention we have a concrete pool here? We are excited to not have to deal with pool liners however is needs to be painted. Since the house was a foreclosure it sat for about a year so it is full of leaves,frogs and a few dead squirrels. Yuck! So we have drained it and next up is a good cleaning. From what my hubby said then we have to acid wash it and then paint. I thought of saving it for a next summer project but the kids miss their pool. No way we can afford to fill it with water twice so we will deal with it now.

Well I'm off to the bank, grocery and post office. I promised the kids one last swim at the old house so we will stop there last.

Hello.. I'm still breathing!

But barely... Wow I can't believe the last time I posted was December. This whole new house and selling the old house has been a doozy! It took us 4 1/2 months to close on our new house.. Seriously by the time we were done we has lost all of the excitement! But we did finally close Feb 25th.. The old house finally sold and we should close on it next week. The couple who bought it seem really nice and have two sweet kids. We are happy that our first "house baby" is going to people who will appreciate it.

We are working on finishing moving everything out. We moved over here full time around the middle of April but only brought the main things since so much renovating needed to be done.

The new house work is going good. I'm about half finished with the painting. That has been some serious fun as some of the rooms have two layers of wallpaper with a coat of paint on the top layer.. Seriously who does that! Lazy people I tell ya! I have the kids rooms done and they look great. I'll share pics of those soon. We are living on top of nasty carpet but as soon as I get the check from the old house I am getting wood floors asap!

So I'm living in a bit of chaos right now but I'm happy! Oh and I've lost 8 lbs since I started all this work. Nice side benefit!

New Bathroom Pics

Yesterday we had a realtor open house so I finally got around to getting updated pictures of our bathroom. It never stops amazing me what a coat of paint will do for a room. The color ended up being darker than I planned. I originally bought this color for our master bedroom but thought it was too dark so I lightened it with white. I thought I had enough left to do the bathroom but ran out so I had to use the last gallon of the full color. I think it turned out well though.

I used the peel and stick vinyl tiles on the floor. That was so super easy. I probably would have used ceramic tile if we were staying here but since we are selling I needed something fast,easy and cheap. These were like $17 a box and I used two boxes.

The wall around the tub got new mosaic tile. Again so easy I hated I didn't do it 8 years ago when we moved in. The only problem I ran into with this was the corners were off some. I filled it in with some grout and it is unnoticeable unless you are sitting in the tub looking at it.

You can't see it but the wall cabinet got a coat of Dove White. It made it really pop!

Bathroom Re-do

I have been crazy busy this week redoing our master bath. We've really worked hard these past few months updating and the poor master bath looked like it was forgotten. She got new floors, new color and a tile backsplash around the tub. I wish I could afford to replace the light but the one up is okay so I'm leaving it. Somehow in the process I managed so get a chemical burn on my left eye as well as raw spots so I'm stumbling around in my glasses for the next week. I hate wearing glasses! They make me feel drunk. So tomorrow I should have it finished for after pics.
Here is the before:

Things are changing...

and it isn't just the leaves on the trees. Wow things have really changed here since my last post. Shortly after my last post about our appraisal we decided to start seriously house hunting. The appraisal made us realize that nothing else we could do to the house would improve the value. We live in a wonderful neighborhood but most of the houses are all in the same price range. Extra square footage is the only thing that increases value and not by a whole lot.

The third house we looked at met all of our needs so we made a offer! I seriously can't believe it all happened so fast. We have our current house up for sale and close on the new one December 15th.

We are going to so miss our current house. We brought both of our kids home as new babies to this house and it holds so many memories. Both kids are excited about moving so that is a plus. The new house is a foreclosure so it needs a good bit of updating which I'm excited about. DH has promised me a nice updated kitchen as well once our current house is sold.

I'm currently not working. Crazy I know but the stress of keeping the house perfect for showings was starting to really freak us out so I decided to leave my part time job. It was a risk and I'm not a big risk taker but DH reminded me nothing in life worth anything is without risk.