a farewell to our house

the night we sold our house i made a little

video because i wanted one more look at it 

before it wasn't mine anymore.

plus it was perfectly picked up after the showing and
you have to take advantage of that.

i love it.
the house we brought reid home to and the 

house brette started school in.

plus a million memories in between.

i'm going to miss it.

meanwhile, we have been super busy over here 

packing and moving everything out. 

we got the majority of it done last weekend.

a couple of friends (cale and paco) 

came over on saturday to help with the heaving lifting and

then my parents came up sunday to help with all the things

that were going to warrensburg.

i always feel organized and ready, until its the day of and then

i'm like "seriously, where did all this shit come from?"

it's crazy how much crap accumulates. 

i purged a lot of stuff in january, but i think i need to be a

little more crazy and go through everything again.

we really have TOO MUCH STUFF.

unfortunately, we're not quite done.

we still have some things left in the basement and in the shed.

i'm thankful the house is empty, but i know this saturday will

be another full day of moving. blah.

we are set up in warrensburg though so that helps.

thank god my parent's still have a big enough house

to fit us all in. 

brette is in my old room, reid is in brian's old room,

my old playroom is their playroom and ronnie and i

made ourselves a little apartment down in the basement. 

it works perfectly.

i'm just ready to get started on the new house and

get moved in.

it's going to be a busy spring.

an introduction to our new home

so i have these horrible cell phone pics

i took the very first time we walked the house we bought.

please be prepared to be underwhelmed.

the house was built in 2004.

it is a ranch with three bedrooms on

the main level and two other bedrooms in the walkout basement. 

it reminds me a lot of ronnie and i's first house

without the formal dining room. (which i do miss the extra space)

i love the eat-in kitchen, the first one we've had with enough room 

for an actual kitchen table.

i also love how big the basement is.

i think eventually the girls will choose to have

their bedrooms downstairs because they are

much larger, plus they'll love the media/rec room. 

the basement bathroom is in desperate need of

a complete remodel but that will have to wait for

future renovations, along with new siding and some curb appeal.

for right now (and before we move in) these are the things we will be doing:
1- build a mudroom.  i legit cannot walk in from the garage and be in the living room.  it just doesn't work for me. the girls have coats and backpacks. ronnie has work boots. i have purses and my work bag. i just need a place to unload these things without it looking crazy and unorganized. i know without a mudroom, these things will end up getting piled on the couch and then i will slowly go crazy. we decided since the shop is technically an extra 3 car garage it wouldn't bother us at all to change the attached 2-car garage into a 1.5 car garage.  we are taking a corner out of the garage to add on a mudroom with a bench and lots of hooks and an extra utility closet. it's a lot like what we have now, but bigger. i will still be able to pull my yukon in and have enough room in the other half space for kid's bikes and toys.
2 - open up the kitchen. i love an open floor plan. plus, i think with kids, it's kind of a necessity. i want to see what they're doing while i make our meals. right now the kitchen and the living room run parallel to each other, but they are completely blocked off from each other with a long wall. we are opening it up SIXTEEN feet. i'm so excited. i will be able to stand in my kitchen and see all the way to my front door. the house is smaller and this will help maximize the space.
3 - new wood floors. the house actually has new wood floors in it, but the kitchen is tiled. since we're opening it up to each other, i want them to both be wood - - but also - - i am being super picky. the floors in it right now aren't my favorite, so instead of just adding wood to the kitchen, we're ripping everything up and starting over. i know. i feel bad about ruining good floors, but i also really don't like the color. thank god, ronnie agrees with me or else i would probably had a big battle on my hands because the floors are one of the most expensive things we're doing.
4 - new deck. the deck is old and rotted and very unsafe. i would never let me kids on it. we were out there the other day and i walked around the house instead of going back up on the deck. it's a mandatory project and i huge chunk of our budget. i literally did not know how much lumber costs, but it is freaking ridiculous.
**i also really want to extend the deck further across the back of the house so we can add a door from the master bedroom. how amazing would that be? BUT with the cost of lumber i'm still trying to figure that one out. cale come up with a suggestion the other day, but i think ronnie is totally against my brilliant plan so i might get shut down. fingers crossed i can finagle this into our plans.
5 - basement stair opening. the stairs to the basement feel small and crowded and a lot like you're going down into a dungeon. i obvioulsy hate them.  there's not much i can do to widen them because the kitchen is on the other side, but once the stairs get lower than the kitchen we are going to blow out the wall so it opens into the basement and hopefully make the stairs feel more inviting.
6 - new master shower and closet. the master has a walk in closet but i still think we need more storage. we have decided to rip the soaker tub out, move the shower there and add a second closet where the shower is now. this was actually ronnie's idea and i'm totally on board. more closets? yes please. besides, i hate baths.
7 - new bedroom carpet. for obvious reasons. sharing someone's old carpet is like using someone else's underwear. it's just gross and we need a fresh start.
8 - new bathroom toilets, countertops and tile floors. the bathrooms look a little grungy and dated. we're going to update the girl's bath and our master bath but we're saving the basement bath for another day.  the layout of the basement bath needs reworked and is a much bigger project. put it on the "one day" list.
9 - tray ceiling update. ronnie hates the tray ceilings, but i actually love them. i think they look a bit dated right now, but i think with a little paneling and new light fixtures, i can convince ronnie that its a cool feature.
10 - new doors. not new doors everywhere, but we ordered a new front door and a new back door. the front door looks 90's which is weird since the house is newer than that, but we both wanted something different. then, the back door. i am IN LOVE with my huge back door in our current house. i suggested we added one to our kitchen to open things up and give the house a little more natural light.  ronnie thought it might be too big, but once we measured the space, it will totally fit and i'm super excited to keep this feature in our new house.
11 - removed popcorn ceiling. i hate popcorn. it has to go. i wish i could say we were also rocking the basement drop-down ceiling, but that will have to wait for another time. for now, i will have to live with the basement ceiling as is.
and last, but not least,
12 - paint. i love white trim, so that's a definite.  we went back and forth between doing gray kitchen cabinets, but in the end, i think i'll like white the most. and then all the walls will get a fresh coat of greige. (the girls are requesting pink and purple rooms - my nightmare - so we'll see what i can come up with as a compromise.)

sounds like a lot, but i think it 

will make all the difference in the world.

ronnie and i are both antsy to get started and

we have our fingers crossed for a 6 week turnaround. 

wish us luck!

**this house does not lady living in it and i can't wait to give it a woman's touch. lol. less deer heads and more shiplap. and aren't those basement bedrooms scary? that wallpaper!**

we're moving.

so i realize i haven't written in 

A LONG TIME.

the longest i've ever gone without blogging.

BUT it's because we've made some major

life decisions over here and i wanted to get 

everything in place before i shared it with 

the whole world.

we sold our house and are moving back

to our hometown of warrensburg. 

ahhhhhhhhhhhh

ronnie and i have been talking about this 

for a long time - going back and forth and really

not able to make up our mind.

we literally made a pro's and con's list.

we ran numbers.

we talked to friends and family. 

we said yes.

then no.

then yes... then no.

about 100 more times.

every ronnie was on board, i'd talk him out of it.

and then i'd think it was a good idea and he wouldn't want to.

we could not get on the same page.

at one point ronnie came home and said,

that's it, we're not moving and i don't want to talk about it again.

and then we decided to move.

besides being closer to my parents and friends, the

two main factors that made up our mind was:

1 - getting brette in a smaller school district and wanting

to do it before she starts kindergarten.

2 - financially, it puts us ahead.

back in december we found out about a house

that was coming on the market that was a friend of a friend of ours.

he let us walk it on new years eve.

i wasn't sold on it but i definitely saw potential.

i was worried it was too small.

it's definitely less of a house than we have now. 

but it has 5 acres and a shop - - ronnie's dream. 

we sat on it for awhile, walked another house and then this house again.

in the end, we decided to buy the house because ronnie

liked the location and i liked the price. 

it's not what i would call a fixer-upper, because it's not that

old and it has a lot of nice finishes, the problem is:

it's not my style. 

wah wah. 

after working on our first house and our current house,

we said we WOULD NEVER buy another house that needed work,

but here we are picking out flooring... paint... tile.

the list goes on.

i'll post pictures soon so you can see the "before" and

i'll go more into what are plans are, but i personally love

a good house project, i just hope ronnie can make it through

another renovation. 

(everyone start praying for ronnie)

i put our house on the market, for sale by owner, and we 

sold it almost immediately and got more than asking.

say whaaaa!  love it. 

but can i just say, i am s u p e r  sad to leave this house.

there will be ways our new house will never compare to this one. 

i. love. my. house.

but i need to get over it.

we asked for a longer closing date (60 day) so we could have

more time to pack and to get through more of the school year.

the girls will continue to go to Presentation through may

so they'll have to commute with me to lee's summit 

for two months. i'm not looking forward to an hour drive

with two kids everyday, but i can do anything for only 2 months. 

then they'll go to a summer program in warrensburg and 

brette will start kindergarten in the fall.

exciting times. 

we take possession of our new house the first week in april and

we will move in with my parents for 6 to 8 weeks while the work is being done.

we've hired our #1 guy, cale, to do a lot of the work, plus a sheet rock guy,

a flooring guy and a painter. 

i'm hoping really hoping they surprise me and get it done in 6 weeks.

we shall see.

i promise to write more soon.