Our Kitchen Is In!!

Where do I start?  I am SO excited about my kitchen!  But boy was I nervous about how the final look would turn out.  Unless you go to pick out your kitchen cabinets with a picture and say, "That's what I want." then you really don't know what the final look will be until they are put up in your home.  And actually, as of yet I still don't know what the final look will be because we still don't have our kitchen counter tops  or any hardware and finishing touches done yet.  But I could hardly contain my excitement when the kitchen cabinets were delivered to our house and the anticipation was killing me while we waited for the priority list to get to them.  I am so happy with the look!  I wanted a simple cabinet with just enough edging to show the dark stain on the off white cabinets and I love the look of the island being a warm caramel color.  The finishing touches, whenever we get around to them, will help tie it all together but I am loving how it's coming together!

my first sneak peak, the island kitchen sink cabinet had to be taken out of the box to be brought inside, pretty pretty!

first look at my main wall cabinets... perfect!

2nd cabinet we opened, my spice rack drawer , was damaged... bummer!

damaged in multiple places, we're waiting for a replacement

installing them, and yes we know it's easier to install the upper cabinets first but we wanted to get the floor in so we opted to start with the base cabinets

the island was a bear to figure out and install, it took multiple days to get it finished

But it looks great!  My best mistake was the microwave spot (on the far left) we decided not to put a microwave there and we''ll purchase doors for the cabinet and put my larger kitchen items in there like the bread machine and juicer!

It's coming together!

the backing was put on the island

first upper cabinet being installed, a little awkward with the base cabinets in but still manageable

yeah, that cabinet was not easy to install

eek!  So exciting!

ohh la la!

doors going on

There she be!  It looks great!  There will be a decorative arch above the stove and fridge eventually.

definitely need a ladder for those top cabinets

there will eventually be a decorative arch between the fridge and the top cabinet

that will be my handy dandy step stool for this kitchen, shorties like me need all the help we can get

now we can put things away!  yay!

first boxes being opened from storage after 7 months, not too many dishes were broken.

figuring out where to put everything and how I want the kitchen organized.  notice the temporary plywood counter tops, they work well!

and there's a sneak peak at our floor!

One of the BEST things...

One of the absolute best things about being in the house is that we are finally all back together!!  I can hardly begin to explain how wonderful it is.  Even though the work continues for Nathan we can see him, help him and be with him.  It may slow the work down a little but that's not a problem for anyone around here.  We especially love that we have the weekends together again.  For the six months that we lived in the camper Nathan worked 6 days a week, Saturdays were just another work day that we didn't really see him but that's not the case anymore.  Even though work continues on Saturdays around the house we feel like we have our weekends back to spend it as a family!

the kids helping Nate move our siding into the garage

such willing helpers and they love it!

my sweet Janessa girl is growing up

thanks Papa and Grandma for the cute hat and boots!!

Janessa and Daddy time!

what an awesome dad!

Certificates & A Hole In The Wall

In case you were wondering about the certificates for electrical and final inspection and whether or not we ever got them since we moved into our home prior to their inspections, I am happy to announce that we did receive both!  The electrical inspector really didn't seem to care that we were already living here but when the final inspector came he was a little 'surprised'.  By the skin of our teeth, or really an answer to prayer and favor from the Lord, he passed us after making his point known that everything wasn't done (obviously!).  All that aside we are just thankful to be done with inspections and feeling like someone is looking over our shoulder!

And if you happened to catch that we had a working sink and toilet but not a working bath/shower, it was because we needed to wait for the final inspection to tear back into our wall.  That's right, not everything can be done perfectly the first time around for first time homebuilders (bahaha!)!  We need a few good stories to tell after this is all over, like needing to re-crimp the plumbing for the bathroom shower after we noticed a nice puddle in the basement after we initially used the shower.  Thankfully the plumbing inspector didn't catch that but it was still a bummer for Nathan to have to cut out sheetrock.  And of all rooms it was in the boys room that is going to have horizontal stripes painted on it, let me just say I am so glad that I didn't finish taping the room off and end up painting it, that would have been a job trying to match already painted stripes!  Anyways, we now have a nice hole in the wall that will need to be patched and a story to tell but most importantly after 2 weeks of living in our house we now have a working shower which is the most important thing!

notice the tape for the stripes (sorry Emily, all our hard work has to be redone!)

Railing & A Door

First things first, because we decided to move into the house on such short notice everything wasn't quite ready for our family, especially with having little ones running around.  I understand completely why they require the railing to be up, that sure makes your heart skip a beat when the kids are running around with no railing to stop them if they get too close to the edge so that turned to our top priority to get that finished as soon as we could after we moved in!  I must say that I really like my railing!  I'm so glad we spent a little extra for the wrought iron, it's beautiful.  The wood posts will eventually be stained, yeah I know I left myself quite a job not doing it ahead of time but time did not permit for that to be done before we installed them.

Zeke helping Nate get the railing put up

they were so excited to be here with their Dad while he was working, finally all together!!

there's the railing, minus one by the wall that wasn't sent to us

Another important item that needed to be installed... the bathroom door.  Yes, we went a few days without it and that's fine when it's just our family but when we have visitors, friends (sorry Emily!) or people coming to do work on the house the situation can get a bit awkward, so the one and only door as of yet is our bathroom door, the other doorways have stylish second hand sheets hanging on them!

the door opens out into the hallway, the bathroom was a bit small and it really wouldn't work to have the door open in to the bathroom so we're just learning to shut it after we come out and thankfully you can still walk by the door even if it's open.

Janessa Found Her Voice

During all the craziness of moving, Janessa our little 4 1/2 month old, found her voice.  She's all girl, she decided to start cooing at the craft fair!!  She must have been oohing and awing at all the cute crafts, haha! 

Here are some videos of her sweet voice.

Our Home

The move into our home was not what we had envisioned, we did not receive the 'certificate of occupancy' that we had been waiting for, and honestly it ended up being a last minute decision and one whirlwind day of moving into a very unfinished home.  But the house was warm and that was far better than being cold.  And cold we were getting in the camper!  The space heaters weren't keeping up, it was below freezing every night which meant the water needed to be turned off and the hose drained which meant no water in the camper which made for awkward living conditions for our family come morning time until it warmed up enough to attach everything again and as a mom I was constantly concerned for my little one's wondering if they were staying warm enough at night, it got to the point of needing to have Janessa sleep with us in bed so that she would stay warm enough.

So for the safety of our family we made the decision to move into our house.  It is our house after all and we did our part of what the inspectors had asked of us, they just weren't doing their jobs of getting out to our house (at least they weren't doing it fast enough for us). 

So we moved into a house that had one working toilet and one working sink and one non-working bathtub.  The floors were a nice splintering OSB (plywood) that continually oozed of dust, dust and more dust so I promptly went to the secondhand store to buy whatever sheets they had on hand to lay down as a covering for our floor.  It helped... a little. 

We found a couple fold up tables and my score of 4 dining room chairs for 40 bucks that I had recently purchased second hand (we sold our table and chairs right before we moved and had purchased a new table but had yet to purchase chairs for it) and set them up, one to eat at and one for a counter in the kitchen for food and kitchen items.  We found the kids' mattresses and moved ours from the camper over to the house and put them on the ground in our rooms and found the pack-n-play for Janessa and moved over some of the essentials from the camper and wha-la our 'property' was now home!

Oh yes, I can't forget to mention that other than our fridge and stove that were hooked up, I had asked Nathan to please hook up our washer and dryer which he did and laundry was going non stop once we moved in.  Can I just say how excited I was to be able to do laundry at my convenience and whenever needed.  Now please don't get me wrong, I was extremely grateful to be able to do laundry at the Paulson's home instead of having to haul all our laundry to the laundry mat and pay tons of money to wash our clothes, but with 5 in our household and only doing it once a week was a bit crazy!

Here are some pictures of us trying to make construction zone central 'home'. 

the day we moved in we found some blocks from the basement and set them out on one of my thrift store sheets and had the kids play with them while we tried to move everything in and make the house kid friendly and a little more homey.

sheets layed out in the kids room

all our kitchen cabinet boxes are in the background and items from the camper that we brought over are in the bags

washer and dryer still worked great... good thing too because we were in desperate need of some clean clothes!

our kitchen set-up

dining room table and water jug, we still were heading back and forth from the Paulson's for drinking water

trying to take it all in, a little overwhelming for everyone

the kids' temporary sleeping situation

Janessa's ready for the bumbo!!

so apparently we were a little over zealous about filling up our fridge, but let me tell you we were excited about all the room we had in our fridge after living out of a camper fridge for 6 months!

more room for fresh fruit!!

crazy hat hair!!