Settling in, the new house - the downstairs!

So it's been quiet on here, but only because we decided to start staying full time at the house and we didn't have any internet there (until RIGHT NOW), so I've been limping along with my slow international data plan on my phone and no real way to post efficiently...

So I haven't forgotten to update, it's just been really hard to do it.  Hopefully now that we have internet again this will just be a faded memory soon...

So here are pictures of the downstairs of the house -- all of these photos were taken BEFORE our storage container arrived.  I'll take all new pictures with our stuff in them soon :)

The kitchen!  Much smaller but a good use of storage space with all the drawers.  We asked if we could put shelves on the upper walls, but our landlord didn't want us to do that because there are water and electrical utilities behind some of the walls.  So, I'll figure out some type of shelving that sits atop the counters if we need extra space when the time comes.

The dining room.  We now have a patio table here (thank you for awesome neighbors) 

Here is a view looking into the living room from the kitchen.

And the same view from the dining room.  That is a wood burning stove that works.  

The wall of windows has two operating windows and the door also swings open.

And looking back towards the dining area.

The doorway leading off the living room opens into this area and then to the front door.

There is a small half bath just off the mudroom area.

The stairs are CREAKY.  We are trying to utilize our ninja skills to find the steps that squeak the least amount so we don't wake up the kids when we go up or down the stairs.  Thankfully, Ben has listened to our pleas for him to stay downstairs.  They are kind of slippery and steep.

This is the area right when you walk in the front door.

A view up the stairs.

Another entry way -- this one from the carport/garage to the house.  To the left is the laundry room.  I guess I didn't take a photo of that...oh well.

The fourth bedroom or playroom as we are calling it.  All the toys went into this room, and this is where you will get to sleep if you come visit us!  :)

The boys have been great about making do with what we have.  Here they've turned their car seats into chairs.  :)

So there you have it, our 'new' house.  It is perfect for what we need it to do for the next two years.  And while I was a bit afraid that none of our stuff would fit in here, everything magically did!  I'll take some after photos soon and post those as well.  

Until then...farvel!

Moving to Denmark -- what to do with your house?

One of the first questions I usually get from people when I tell them that we are moving to Denmark is 'What are you going to do with your house?"  I guess that's a valid question -- people are curious and wondering what they would do in the situation...

When we moved into this house in 2011, we moved in with the intentions that this was going to be our 'forever home', or at least our 'forever home for the next 10-15 years or so'.  We had no intentions of moving again quickly.  We had been in our last house 10 years when we sold it, and we wanted to be in this house until the boys had fledged from their nest.  So, 'What are you going to do with your house?' was actually a very valid and very emotional question for us.  We didn't KNOW what to do with our house!

We threw around the idea of renting it... thinking maybe we could even make some extra money off this scenario.  But, everyone we talked to about this advised us 'DO NOT RENT YOUR HOUSE YOU WILL REGRET IT.'  Even so, with warnings from  multiple people, we explored the possibility.  We were pretty particular about who we would rent it to -- we were hoping to rent it to an employee who was coming over to the US from Denmark for a 3-year period.  But, when that didn't pan out we quickly moved on to Plan B.  SELL BABY, SELL!

We found out we were going to be offered a contract in the beginning of May.  In the last month we have managed to finish our outdoor landscaping, remodel the master bathroom, touch up paint and fix some walls that needed refinishing, clean and purge the house of a lot of stuff -- and have our very FIRST SHOWING (without even being technically on the market even)!

Take a look at our progress/photos below.  And, if you know anyone looking to buy a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 2.75 car garage in Brookfield, Wisconsin -- feel free to comment below or email at Almesburyhouse at gmail dot com!  :)

Project 366: Week 41

281|366 - Oct 7, 2012 -- max and his dad ran the Lakefront Marathon

282|366 - Oct 8, 2102 -- door installed!

286|366 - Oct 12, 2012 - isn't this what cupholders are for?

287|366 - Oct 13, 2012 -- max at swimming lessons

Project 366: Week 40

275|366 - Oct 1, 2012 -- little Max trying on his tux for the wedding



276|366 - Oct 2, 2012 -- our new door arrived!



279|366 - Oct 5, 2012 girls' sleepover before the wedding...

Project 366: Week 35

239 | 366 - Aug 26, 2012 -- almost a year in the house and I finally got up the photo wall!

 

240 | 366 - Aug 27, 2012 -- prepping tomatoes and other veggies to make some freezer tomato sauce

 

241 | 366 - Aug 28, 2012 -- Max's first day of 4K at his new school, St. Dominic's!

   

242 | 366 - Aug 29, 2012 -- Sam tries climbing with daddy at the climbing gym.

   

242 | 366 - Aug 29, 2012 - look how high my little guy made it on his own!!

   

 243 | 366 - Aug 30, 2012 - you turn your back for one minute and they grow up so fast!

 

244 | 366 - Aug 31, 2012 --someone stripped down and decided it was time to run through the sprinkler!

 

245 | 366 - Sept 1, 2012 - a swing set we get to recycle in our own yard!

Basement Clean Up

I know some of you have been asking to see photos of the new shelves the hubby built in the basement, so I tried to document some of the clean-up that happened down there.... Looking back at the photos, I hope you can even tell the difference! It's hard for me to see it, but maybe that's just because I've been looking at it for so long.

Anyways, the goal eventually is to finish off the basement, but for now it is serving as a storage area for all the runoff stuff that we don't want in our living space as well as a workout area (we keep the treadmill down here).  There is a LOT of empty usable space down here, so someday I imagine this will become the 'man-cave'.  LOL.

So, realistically, it really has only been 6 months since we moved into our new house, but the basement just became a dumping ground for anything we didn't know where to put or something we just didn't want to deal with. 

And before long, this is what it was starting to look like:

Pretty, eh?  Not so much.  (and I have to note that this is picture is in an in-between stage of clean up...originally, the entire wall behind the pile of boxes was covered with those black metal shelves...which was FINE, but we had run out of room on them, and it was hard to fit some of the Rubbermaid bins that I prefer to store things in on them...)

So, when the hubby offered to build some custom shelves in the basement...ones that my bins would actually FIT onto, I stammered something about how awesome he was and and shrieked "YES!"

My manly man spent ONE Saturday and hammered out those shelves.  I mean, seriously, he went down there, measured the wall, measured the bins, went to the store and started in on his plan.  He even let the mini me help him a little bit.  By the end of that day, my shelves were finished!

And so, out of appreciation of all his hard work, I knew my job was just beginning -- the job to sort through all of our stuff and put it on the new shelves.  Procrastinate, no more!

And so, I went from the above picture, to THIS:

The boxes around the perimeter of the room have since been removed (they were filled with trash and donation materials)...

Here's another BEFORE view of the room -- this is what you see right when you come down the steps and turn into the room:

And that now looks like THIS:

I left a few of the black metal shelves along this wall to act as my mailing and wrapping station --  it's really nice to have all of those supplies in one place!

Here's another BEFORE view of that same area, just looking back towards the steps:

And the AFTER.  I am going to use this shelf as my pantry overstock.  Eventually, when we re-run the electric in the basement, the chest freezer will go to the left of this shelf.

And the rest of those black shelves I had mentioned before?  Well, they got re-located to this back area that is solely for storage.  They fit nicely against this wall, I think, and now they are out of plain view.

And the shelves my wonderful hubby built me?  Look at them!  Aren't they awesome?  I loved them so much I convinced him to build more in the garage!  And he did it!  :)

He's so awesome, and I am so incredibly lucky!  :)