Sold.

We sold our house on Monday.  Well, it’s actually more that Ben and Allison sold our house for us and the closing was on Monday.  Yeah, Ben and Allison are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO nice that when they heard a couple in church were looking to buy a house, they showed them our little house (which is the house THEY WERE LIVING IN), so that we could get it sold EVEN THOUGH that means they’ll have to find another place to live the next year.  Blessings on Ben and Allison.  They made it so easy for us.  We didn’t worry about it standing empty for any time, no realtors, no nothing. 

So anyway, I thought it would be apropos to reminisce a little about the house we spent five years in.  The first house we owned, the house we spent our time in while plugging through graduate school, the house we brought home two babies to—practically three, because Hazel was a week old when we moved in.  Here it is in all its glory in 2004.  (Yes, our car was smashed up.  But we got a great deal from insurance money.  Wonder of wonders.) When we moved in we had to replace both the fridge and oven/stove because they didn’t work, even though they were supposed to have.  Also, we decided to replace the plain sink in the bathroom with a vanity so that we would have a small cupboard space underneath and small countertop.  So, Brett ripped out the sink, and was ready to put in the new vanity, when he discovered the sheetrock was all moldy on the inside.  WHAT?  Apparently there was a small leak that had not been noticed.  So Brett ripped out all the sheetrock in the bathroom and around the corner where the washing machine was and into the kitchen and replaced it.  Which means, he had to take out the toilet.  Which means, we had no toilet.  Which would be kind of fun and adventuresome except I had just had a baby a week before.  Which means it was not so much fun to pee in a bucket in the middle of the night.  But still adventuresome, I guess.  Actually, I credit our coming out of that adventure with our sanity still intact to my mother, who had flown out to help us move and help me with new baby Hazel.  She didn’t have a toilet in her house growing up, so she was fine with peeing in a bucket.  I was so glad she was there while we figured out some of these things with our house—otherwise tempers would have not been in such good check.  :)  These little pictures below are of Brett and Jethro fixing the bathroom at that time.  Can you BELIEVE how little Jethro was??????  That’s how big Talmage is now pretty much!!!!  WOW!!!!!

And finished, with the new vanity.  Later, we replaced the mirror and took off all the wallpaper.

We (well, Brett and our wonderful friend Seth) replaced all the windows.  When we moved in the fireplace looked like this.  But the fake bricks were crumbling off.  So Brett ripped off the mantel and all the brick.          We borrowed a tile saw from our awesome friend Jared and put up better tile.  It was like this for a while, till we decided what to do for a mantel.     In the end, we bought some crown molding and wood from Lowe’s and Brett fashioned this awesome mantel.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a really good picture of it after it was stained, and this was the best I could find on short notice.  But it looked REALLY good.  One of the selling points of the house, I’d say.  Oh, also you can see the new carpet Brett and Seth put down while I was on a trip sometime.  Above (you can see it really well in the first fireplace picture) the yucky cheapo carpet, below the nice pretty carpet.

We painted the outside of the house.

Here’s the new carpet again, and Brett brought the tile in farther in the front room, so that it went in front of the coat closet, so you can actually walk in and not get your wet shoes on the carpet.  Talmage is just learning to bear crawl.  Awww, so cute.

The kitchen had a lot of work too.  It went from this

to white cupboards, and then after an unfortunate leak in the drain incident,

to this (p.s. don’t ever EVER tile your countertop).

There was a bat in our garage once.  I thought that was worth mentioning.  (You guys remember the bat, right?)  I actually painted the front room colors that I ended up loving, and I put up flowers and pictures on the walls.  (That took me about four years to do, so I’m pretty proud.  Of my sister.) We turned this spot into this:

Brett made these shelves for our pantry.  Oh and he also made the garage into a biodiesel lab, and cut holes into the wall so he could heat our house on veggie oil too.  We fixed the holes before we moved out.  (Thanks Ben for painting over the disgusting walls in the garage.)  And then it was home to our dear cousins, and now, it will be home another family.    Bye bye house.  It’s been real.