Dude, I bought a house

Holy crap.

The closing was far worse than I expected, but we finished, and the house is mine! Alan and I spent the weekend buying stuff for the house (paint, lumber, etc.) and starting work on the kitchen and garage. I'm exhausted!

I have a few pictures to show you, of course. Let's start in the kitchen. The kitchen is divided into two sections, an L-shape section on the South and West walls, and a separate run on the North wall.

Here is the North wall before (along with all my crap on the countertop):


and after cabinet removal:


The Southwest corner before:


during:


and after:


The kitchen/hallway floor was horrifying laminate tiles, so they came up too, starting in the hallway:


I was hoping it would be hardwood, like the rest of the 1st floor, so that I could refinish the hallway portion of the floor. And hey, look, there's hardwood under there! Except that it's covered with peel & stick vinyl tiles. Who would do this to an oak floor?!?


Here, you can see why I'm taking up the laminate tiles - they are so, so awful:


Yay, no more tiles!


The second project I worked on is prepping the dining room for painting. I've got all the trim and the niche taped off:


and put Xs on the areas not to be painted - this wall is staying white so I can cover up the ugly spiral staircase. Who puts a staircase in the dining room? The same person who puts peel & stick tiles on a hardwood floor, I guess.


You can see some of the paint we've acquired here:


Things worked out so well with the paint - two friends had leftover paint that they wanted to get rid of (free!) so we scored several gallons that work for us, and the rest was purchased at Menard's, who had paint on sale at 50% off. The paint bill was about 1/3 of what I had budgeted, so that makes up for whatever comes up next.

The last thing I did on Sunday was help Alan with the garage. He had already made a new cover for the oil pit:

This will get a coat of concrete before he puts the epoxy down on the whole floor.

Then we put insulation and wallboard (free OSB he found in the alley - score!) in the areas where the old kitchen cabinets will go:

We can't afford to insulate the whole garage now, but having it done here will keep us from having to move the cabinets when it's time to do the rest of the insulation. We're thinking ahead.

Since Alan is leaving for New York for 12 days on Wednesday, and my sister is coming to visit for Lollapalooza on Thursday, not much else will get done for a while, I'm afraid. We'll be moving some of the basement/storage items over there to make room for boxes in the apartment, and I'm going to spend my vacation week weeding through all the STUFF and having a yard sale. If I can get some (tall person) help, I may do some painting and replace light fixtures while he's gone, but no heavy lifting for me.