I don't have any pictures to post today, but I feel like I should at least write an update... We went to Columbus for Thanksgiving, it was nice to have a long weekend away from working on the house (and eat way too much delicious food!) Before we left we were able to get 4 coats of poly on the floors in the kitchen. But... Trevi, as usual, decided to get in trouble and waited until we had put the last coat on, and then walked across the floor. We got up early on Wednesday morning to sand out the paw prints and re-coat before we left for the weekend. Unfortunately the squares that we had to patch are now cloudy looking compared to the rest of the floor. I'm not really sure why those areas dried cloudy, the rest of the floor looks fine. Anyone have any ideas? It was water based poly and we followed the directions on the can. The paw prints were on the very top surface so we didn't have to sand very much at all, no more than what we had sanded between coats.

The past 2 night we've been slowly putting the kitchen back together. Last night we finally moved the range back into the kitchen, and then... wait for it... cooked our very first meal on our kitchen!! We made spaghetti, nothing special, but it tasted sooo good. We also baked a few cookies, they were also delicious :-) I love those already prepared break-and-bake cookies.

Yesterday we decided that we want to try to host a small christmas party for some of our friends on Dec. 13th. We have a lot of little things that I'd like to get done before the party - hang a new light fixture (or 2), put up some new blinds, maybe paint the entryway/hallway downstairs, finish up some details in the kitchen... We're also going to go get our tree tonight and I'll make sure to post some pictures of the tree once we have it all decorated. I loooooooove christmas so I've very excited to have a house to decorate!

I think I've made you all wait long enough. Even though we're still not completely done with the kitchen, we made really good progress over the weekend and I am too excited about it to not share some pictures. Here is where we were on Friday:

On Friday night we started staining the floor as soon as we got home from work. We put down one coat of stain on the floor, went to a late dinner, and came back and put the second coat on. It was a late night, but completely worth it because we needed to let the floor dry overnight so we could paint on Saturday.

We watched the OSU game on Saturday (well, I watched, Mike gave up/got angry and started priming the kitchen in the third quarter). Here's the kitchen with the floor stained and the walls primed:
We were able to get 2 coats of paint on the walls on Saturday too. Then, this morning, we got up and put the first coat of poly on the floors. We ran some errands, came back, and put the second coat of poly on. We should be able to put the last 2 coats on tomorrow night, and then let the poly completely cure while we take a break for Thanksgiving. Here's what the kitchen looks like right now:
I love how the floors turned out, and I am also really liking the wall color. We're planning on bringing some more color in with some of our kitchen accessories, so I went with a nice medium gray for the walls. It looks much better in person, it looks like of washed out in the pictures. I even like the red door now! And for you super observant people, we painted the window but haven't gone back to scrape the paint off the glass yet. And the bottom of the dishwasher has primer on it, woops... but since we're more than likely getting a new dishwasher soon, we're just leaving it alone for now. The dishwasher was the one appliance we didn't really look at when we bought the house or during inspection, and of course, it's broken.

Along with writing this blog, I also really enjoy reading other blogs, esp. those about home renovation. I love to see what other people are doing to their homes, get ideas, and be inspired. Plus it helps me stay motivated to keep working on our house! A few weeks ago I commented on one of my favorite blogs, 86'n it, because they had some super cool house numbers. A couple of emails were exchanged, and look what was waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home from work on Friday!
I am so excited! Thanks again Nikki! I can't wait to hang them up outside!

And, to make the weekend even better, look what we got in the mail on Saturday:

When we first moved Lowes had sent us an ad for their new homeowner reward program. Basically for the first 3 months of buying a home, for every $500 you spend at Lowes, you get a $50 gift card. Our promotion period ended at the end of October, and we've patiently been waiting for our gift cards. They came just in time, we still needed to get the rest of the handles for the cabinets and some other things to finish up the kitchen. It's also a little scary to think about how much $$ we actually spent at Lowes in the first 3 months of home ownership though...

In honor of the game tomorrow against Michigan (booo...) I made buckeyes last night! I've made buckeyes for the OSU/Michigan game for the last few years and I refused to give that up this year just because the kitchen isn't quite done. Luckily all you really need is the microwave and some basic kitchen supplies.I'll confess though, that picture is not of the buckeyes that I made. I forgot to take a picture, plus, my buckeyes did not look that perfect. I took some into work, no one here knows what a buckeye is so I felt the need to educate them. Even Mike took some into his work, even though he likes the other (wrong) team, he still loves to eat buckeyes.

Progress is being made on the kitchen. On Wednesday night we put 2 coats of poly on the floor where the fridge sits. Yesterday morning I put a third coat down before work. Last night we painted behind the fridge and started to work on the window, the frame needs some attention. So tonight we should be able to put the fridge in place and then continue to work on the rest of the floor.

But tomorrow, we're taking time off to watch the game :-)

Yesterday was our 4 month anniversary of home ownership!!! It's crazy to think that we've been living in and working on the house for 4 months. Sometimes I feel like we've been here for forever, and other times I feel like we've just started. To celebrate the occasion we did something I've been waiting to do for over 4 months...
We unpacked our first few boxes!!!!! YAY!!!

I'm kind of embarrassed, but we have lived here for 4 months and until yesterday, had yet to unpack a box. That combined with the fact that we started packing about 2 months before we even moved has left me really missing some of my stuff! If you remember, we closed on our house, worked at it for a week, moved, worked on it while living in it for a week, and then went on vacation. So, at the time, we just packed a couple of giant suitcases with clothes, toiletries, sheets and blankets. The plan was to just live out of the suitcases for a few weeks until we could unpack, but those few weeks turned into months.... and here we are today. Now, we've opened up a random box or two to get out something we need. A few months ago I took all of the boxes and organized them into piles so at least it's been fairly easy to find things. I thought that might help us to start actually unpacking them too. Guess not. But last night, we unpacked probably 7 or 8 entire boxes of kitchen stuff. It was a big moment. It actually felt kind of weird to be putting our stuff into drawers and cabinets... (newly painted drawers and cabinets!)

We quickly realized that in this kitchen we have more upper cabinets than we did at our apartment, but not very much base cabinet space. This is our only base cabinet. I think we're going to have to reorganize and put some of this stuff into upper cabinets. Tonight we're going to continue to unpack kitchen boxes and work on the floor. Hopefully we'll be able to finish up with the kitchen boxes, I have another little project planned for tomorrow night where I'll need kitchen supplies...