Our New House

Something about moving last week, being sick with the flu for two days afterward, unpacking boxes, taking Abram to the ER again with another fever-induced seizure (except we had no idea he was sick or had a fever when it happened), going to Chicago to see our good friends, the Scotts, welcome home their son from C---- (AMAZING!), waking up every day this week with swollen, wrinkled skin around my eyes AND still having not yet closed on our house has put a damper on the blogging. The delayed transition of not closing (and therefore not being able to paint or do the other number of projects we had planned) has made me feel like I am about to lose my mind! We are hoping to close Monday.

Since I can't do much to my house, I have been finishing up Abram's life book (like a baby book but with all the added stuff of adoption). I made it on picaboo.com. I finished proof-reading it tonight and clicked "buy this book." It was going to take about an hour to upload - partially because I don't have a great internet connection, but also because it is very long . . . so long I'm not going to tell you how many pages!

What else do I have to do while his book uploads but post pictures of our new house (before we moved in)? Here goes the tour:

The exterior colors of the house are not appealing to me . . . at all. We'll take care of that down the road (I have a feeling painting brick may be involved).
The view as you walk in the front door. Bathroom and bedrooms are down the hall. Kitchen is around the corner to the right.View from the opposite end of the front room (the build-in shelves have to go).
The kitchen.

One of the best things about this house is that the former owners "flipped" it (after they inherited it from a deceased parent) and so it has a brand new kitchen, brand new bathroom, new fixtures, all new carpet and paint (although I will be repainting almost everything). I seriously feel like I won the lottery with all of that! I don't love the color of the cabinets and I'm thinking about doing something to them - perhaps staining them darker or black. I need to see what they look like after I paint the kitchen a medium grey/brown color.

The bathroom. Not the best picture (from our room). The former owner remodeled two small bathrooms (a mini-master bath and a regular bathroom) into one larger bathroom . . . this works wonderfully for our growing family!Brand new tub/shower.Our room. It is very small, but works great. It has a brand-new ceiling fan and a door into the bathroom. I love that it has two windows.
Girls room. It is actually the biggest bedroom. I love that it, too, has two windows.
Boys room. It is tiny, but works great!
Here is what makes this house so great: there is an added family room on the backside of the house (with tons of windows and a sky-light!). This is going to be the play room and home school/office area.There is an entrance to this room from the garage. For some reason, I think the former owners took a set of old cabinets from the kitchen and made it into a wet bar for the family room. We plan to take it out and make that space a 'lockerish' space (lots of hooks, places for shoes, etc.).

A reverse view of the room. There is also an entrance into the kitchen to the right of the door to the garage.

Because I am an organizational freak, the storage room off of this room might be one of my favorite parts of the house. I plan to keep all of my office/home school/craft/gift/etc. stuff in this room.

It turns out this room must have previously been used as a dark room. The label on the sink says something about "photostat." I'm planning to sell the sink on Craigslist. Want to buy it?

The downstairs. Valuable to us now for the kids to play basketball, ride scooters and run around in the winter and on rainy days (we are thankful the former owners gutted it). Valuable in the future to make a large family room and two more bedrooms (you can see one on the far side).The laundry room runs parallel to the family room space (you can see the 2nd bedroom framed in at the far end).The roughed-in bathroom downstairs, BUT with a brand-new toilet!

This house is such an amazing gift to us. I love living here already! In my frustration about not being able to close yet, I am stepping back to just be thankful to have such a wonderful house for our growing family. It is so perfect for us. I love the way it is laid out. I am so grateful for the dishwasher. I love that Abram can ride his little cars around in the garage. I love that there is so much light coming in the house everywhere - even in the bathroom. From the big things to the little things, this house is so great for us.

Although we still have a lot to do to make this house ours, just being here AND just being at O'Hare to see Owen Scott come home have my heart ready for our kids to come home!