Our New House

As of yesterday afternoon, our offer has been accepted:



It's the one with the all-emerald-green carpet. Before we buy any furniture, the first thing we're going to do is rip out the carpet in the living room and put in some nice laminate. Still debating what to do with the stairs though. I thought maybe a more tasteful color of carpet would be best because it's not slippery and because I have no clue how to install anything else on stairs. Suggestions are welcome.

There are two stories above ground and one below. The top floor has all the bedrooms and two full bathrooms, plus the second family room that could be easily converted into a bedroom. The main floor has the kitchen, living room, and garage. The bottom floor has the utility room, the family room, and another half-bath.

I thought that after we move in, I'd take the kids to the store and let them each buy one decorative object for their new room. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that at least one of them picks out a throw pillow, although I wouldn't speculate on whether it'd be Princess or Sonshine.

We are already making a mental list of the things we'll want to do as soon as we close. The very first thing is to run a gas line across the utility room from the water heater to the dryer, because about a year and a half ago we traded in our expensive-to-run electric dryer for this really efficient gas dryer. I've been told this is cheap (maybe $100, since the gas line exists already and there's no sheetrock on the walls in that room) and possibly even something we could do ourselves. Then we'll do living room flooring and then buy a bit of furniture, because we have only one couch. It'll go in the living room until we start installing the laminate, at which point it'll go down to the family room with the TV. Until then the kids will have to make do with beanbag chairs (like THAT'S going to be a hardship for them... they've been begging for beanbags...) In the spring (possibly late spring), we'll do the fence around the backyard so the kids can play in the yard. There is fence on two sides, but because the back fence belongs to the back neighbor and the side fence to the side neighbor, they don't meet in the corner, so we'll have to fix that somehow, possibly with one of these or some sort of landscaping feature. But it's a small lot so the fence won't cost too much. We want to get vinyl fence because it's low-maintenance.