The Wedding March

We now have a photographer! This is the second biggest chuck of the budget after food of course so we are glad to have this selection completed. We are looking forward to working with John Birchard in Mendocino, not only is his work fantastic but he had the right personality for us. Another bonus is that his son will be home for the summer and able to assist with our wedding ( he is a professional photographer in Hawaii). And the best for last, we managed to negotiate a $1,000 savings! We are beyond excited and this gives a lots of confidence going into the new house to negotiate with vendors. Here is John's website if you want to check out his work.

www.birchardphoto.com

Our First Day!

So it is Monday May 8th and we are officially Home Owners. We got the keys at 10:30AM and it is time to get to work.














Before......














During......














After... Why would you want to cover these hardwood floors. They are in really good condition except for a 2x4 foot section that had the planks replaced. There is also an area that was not varnished for some reason. But otherwise it was in great shape, even better than the bedrooms hardwood floors. We are excited to see what can be done with them when we meet with the Floor guy tomorrow.












Here are a couple of pics of us hard at work taking out those staples and tack boards.


































It has been a long day moving things in, throwing things away, pulling up the carpet and staples, and still letting the thought of owning a new home sink in. By the end we both had blisters, scratches and a couple bruises, but ended the still with smiles and a nice soak in our new Spa.

It has been a good day with many more to come.

Summary of House

So below are pictures of our house. It is a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath 1800 square feet on a third acre lot. It is in a nice neighborhood within walking distance of the movie theater and Trader Joe's. It is in a nice neighborhood that only gets residential traffic so we don't have to worry too much about traffic or noise. We are really excited about the house and close escrow May 7th, just around the corner. We are working on all the paperwork and tests, so far nothing major has been reported, but the home inspection is next Wednesday so if there is anything wrong it will come up in that report.

Let us know what you think of the house.

Josh & Jennifer

Main Bedrooms

This is the Master Bedroom (hardwood floors), all we have to do is paint it.
The Master Bath, it is only a half bath but atleast it is something. We are probably going to replace the tile during a weekend project once we settle in.
This is the second bedroom it is a little smaller than the master (definitly going to be repainted).
The main full bath, they remodeled this one a couple years ago when they did the Kitchen. We are going to paint it and possibly replace the flower tiles. We want to make it larger but that will have to wait for a couple of years.

Kitchen

They remodeled the Kitchen about 2 years ago, they did a really good job and installed custom cabinets.
All of the appliances come with the house, we'll be keeping the appliances in there for now, then replace them down the road with Stainless Steel appliances when we can.

Living Rooms (Living, Dining, Office and Wash Room)

It's got a fire place, gonna have to start chopping fire wood.
We are gonna convert this area into an office area. It used to be a bedroom so we are going to convert the closets into shelves and that empty space into a desk area. We are also going to most likely take down that half wall to open up the area.
This is a nice size dining area, we are going to take out the light fixture and replace it with a fan (fans are a must in Chico).
Your basic Wash Room area, it has some nice storage closets to store our things.

Apartment Area

This is a nice spacious room on one side of the house. It has a living area, Bedroom, Bathroom and a small kitchen. This is a nice area that also has doors to the carport and backyard, might be a nice place to rent out.
The kitchen is really small but has everything you need. Not sure how we are going to update this area, but for now it is functional.

Not sure why these drapes are up, but they are definitly coming down.

Back & Side Yard

We are going to take this metal fence down to open up back yard to the side yard. We are also going to replant some of the plants and add grass to the dirt area.


We will be putting a garden in next to the fence. We also might take down the Gazebo structure, not really providing any shade and is in an odd place.
The back yard is nice, not too much to do here. It will be nice for when we have BBQ's.

View From The Street

It has a large driveway so parking won't be a worry anymore.
There are a lot of trees on the lot, not big ones, but large enough to help provide some shade during the summer.
We only have 2 neighbors with having a coner lot, luckily not a lot of the yard in the front so we have a lot of our yard with in the fences.
There is no garage, but we can park one car under the carport and the rest can go in the driveway.

Dutchess & Bailey

Welcome

Welcome to our Blog.

This is under construction, we will be working on this over the next week. Please come back and check in from time to time.

Josh & Jennifer