Final walk through!

Yesterday evening, we did our final walk through of the house, checking for any issues, making sure all appliances etc. were in working order.  It was really great to be back in the house again.  If I'm remembering correctly, it was only the fourth time I'd been inside.  It was a great chance to take some photos and strategize our first weekend of ownership.  We've got a lot of work ahead of us!

The landscaping in the front yard is incredible.  It's already very mature, so much so that it needs a good trim around the steps leading up to the house.  It gives the front a lot of privacy, but makes it difficult getting good pictures in the spring.  In this photo you can see the Japanese dogwood on the left, the red leaves of the Japanese maple that's close to the house in the middle, and the leaves of the magnolia tree on the right.  I've got a lot of learning to do about the plants in our front yard, and I'm sure I'll be posting more about those in the future.
Here's Nick in the unfinished part of our basement.  The sellers are leaving their washer and dryer, which makes one less expense for us as we move in!  I'm so excited for how large the capacity of the washer is.  I realize this makes me lame, but I've been doing laundry in a little apartment washer and dryer for two years now and look forward to fewer loads a week.
Here's the other side of the unfinished part, taken with my back towards the washer and dryer.  They're leaving the workbench, which Nick likes.
This is looking towards the dining area and the side door to the house.  The kitchen is to the left of the side door.  The office and bathroom are just to the left of the stairs.Now looking into the living room.  The front door is just out of the frame where that tile is to the left.  You can also see the beautiful window box that overlooks the front yard.Here's a better shot of the fireplace.  I blogged a few weeks back about this, specifically about retiling it.  It's a gas fireplace that the sellers have never used before.  Fortunately, they're leaving the instruction manual and the remote starter.I have to say I'm probably most excited for our new kitchen.  It's not enormous, but it's considerably larger than the one in our current apartment.  I don't love the tile backsplash and paint job in here, but that's a project that we'll be tackling at a later date when we've saved some money and thought more about what we'd like done in there.  The appliances aren't very new, but I'm not too concerned about that.  You can see the door to the basement open in the center of the frame, and the side door right across it on the left side of the picture.

This is my office!  It's not a huge room, but it will do.  We had been planning on putting all of our books and bookshelves in here, but I'm not sure that's going to work.  I don't want to block the windows, on two walls, and there are closets on the third.  I'm sure we'll figure something out.  One of our first projects for this weekend is in this room: removing that wallpaper border and painting the walls, and repainting those magenta frames.  Yuck.  Also, I really want to pull up this carpet.  We know there's hardwood underneath it, but aren't sure of its condition.  So, we'll be pulling up test corners and hopefully ripping the rest up as well.This is quite possibly one of the ugliest bathrooms I've ever seen.  This is the one I alluded to before, with the baby pink and blue tile.  Fortunately, it's clean and functional, so we'll be weighing our options here as well.  We could make a few cheap upgrades to try to make it look better, but I'm tempted to wait, save our money, and completely remodel it at some point.  Hopefully that's sooner rather than later.

Let's go upstairs, shall we?
A view down the hall from the top of the stairs.  You can see Joanne, our realtor, in the master bedroom.  Immediately at the top of the stairs, to the right out of the frame of this photo, is the guest bedroom.

As you can maybe guess by looking at this photo, we'll also be stripping off the wallpaper border in here and repainting the room.  We don't need a border with lambs, clouds, and trees at this stage in our lives :)  Ideally this carpet will also come up.  It's so thick that it makes opening the closets very difficult.

Here's another view of the upstairs hallway, this time from the master bedroom.  The center door on the right side of the hall is the kitty room.  The other two doors are closets.  The doorway to the left of the picture is the upstairs bathroom.

Here's a view into the kitties' room.  Lucky them, with a small built-in bookshelf!

And here's a view looking towards the hallway with the funny dormer I've blogged about before. We'll see how feasible it is for us to put up shelves in here.  

Here's the upstairs bathroom.  Photos make the tile and countertop look a little greenish, but it's really a dark blue.  Lots of counterspace will be so nice after we've had a little upright sink for so long.

Here's a view of the master bedroom looking towards the front of the house.  The door to the hallway is on the left side of this photo beyond the closet with no door.  It's a bit of a strange space to work with, but we'll figure out how to manage it best.

And here's a view towards the upper deck and the backyard.

Here's our upstairs deck.  It's quite big.  It's the width of the master bedroom and the bathroom.

And finally, a view of the backyard (Hi Nick!) from the upper deck.  I didn't take any pictures of the lower deck that stretches the entire length of the house.  This photo gives you a sense of the size of the backyard, the shed, and where the pool used to be!  At some point we'll replant the grass in the backyard.  The perimeter has one kind and the center has a different type that isn't as resilient, as you can tell from the brown patch in the center.

It's hard to believe that this house is almost ours!  The process has been so long and drawn out since we put our closing date at the end of May.  We absolutely cannot wait.  We'll start moving things over, especially our grill, immediately.  This weekend will be full of painting and other projects to get it ready before we bring in our furniture in two weeks.   I'm sure I'll be posting lots more pictures and projects in the very near future.  We are so thrilled for this landmark in our lives.  We'll never be first-time homebuyers ever again!