our anniversary! exactly one year ago today we closed on our house. as soon as the closing was done, we drove straight to our new home, went upstairs and laid on the floor of our new bedroom, just ecstatic. buying this home was the best decision we have made together. just fun fact about us : tomorrow will officially be the longest we have ever lived in one place! we have only ever done one year leases and never renewed a lease... but we have finally found our HOME. it hasn't all been easy. far from it, actually. but moving in we knew there would be things to change. sometimes i feel like we still have years of work left, but i never thought we would have done so much in the first year. here's a bit about what we have done in the first year on irving street.
painted our bedroom. this was the first thing we did when we moved in. i knew the rest of the house would mostly be empty but after moving around for so long it was really important to us that we have our own space in our bedroom as soon as possible. we still don't have a much hung on the walls, but everything else we were able to get done in just about one weekend.
painted the guest room. the guest room is awesome in my book. it has my favorite couch in it (the first couch i ever bought that was in my first apartment!) but philip hates the couch more then, well, anything i think. it's this awesome vintage flowered design, so i kind of did the guest room around that. the walls are pale blue, set off by a seafoam green trim around the windows and doors. i also did all the trim myself, and it was my first time doing trim. very difficult. i also painted the inside of the walk-in closet seafoam green, and the result is a very calm room. white linen curtains, my old hardcover books next to my silver metal frame bed with white sheets. it's lovely and probably the only room in the house that is totally done.
totally re-did the sun room. this room was beyond help. we found multiple spider nests in this room. most of them were in the accordion blinds we immediately ripped out. first off, there were two back doors heading outside from this one room. so philip actually BUILT A WALL (!!!) over one of the door frames (btw - the door was hollow with spiders living inside). the whole thing is so seamless you would never know it was there. we also had a strange cabinet near the new wall across from the door to the basement that we didn't have anything we could do with it. so the cabinet came out, and washer-dryer hookups went in! we had the appliances way before the hookups, so they took up space in the kitchen for a while. but even before they were installed, we laid tile in the sunroom. then had the washer and dryer installed. once the hard work was completed, we painted the room from a dark evergreen to a pale grey. really this is like four projects in one but we'll count it as one.
partial landscaping. the backyard is far from finished, but i will admit that this is one project i never dreamed we would have started our first year. but last 4th of july weekend, all our family came over and we took dumpsters full of weeds out of the yard. also we dug up a dead tree, which was pretty nuts. and that allowed us to actually have sod laid in the yard. and i am excited to say the sod is coming up greener than ever this spring, with random tulips growing throughout the yard! the weeds are coming back in places, but we just need a good weekend with the sunshine out back to get it done. the front yard also has made great strides, with mom and i digging up cactus plants and weird bushes that gave me a rash. i planted two lilac bushes right in the front last fall and one is already starting to bloom! again, it's not finished, but it looks really lovely so far.
painted the 2nd guest room. this room is kind of an empty disaster now, but philip painted it last spring. this room started out as a library, with a pull-out couch, our two huge maps of where we have traveled, and all of our bookshelves. it was a place for us to lounge, read and philip was even allowed to have his cigars in there. for his room he chose a darker forrest green. of course now we have moved the library room to the room off of the living room that was the office, and the office is no more (because we never used it. ever.). so my desk is sitting in the 2nd guest room/old library but we haven't really figured out what to do with the whole room yet. to be determined!
re-did the downstairs bathroom. this bathroom is right off of the kitchen and very small. but despite it's size and downstairs location, it's a good and handy guest bath. the tile is a gorgeous ocean-blue, and the white subway tile on the floor is interlocked with small blue diamonds of the same color as the shower tile. and -- wait for it -- there is a mirror above the shower! of course! what a great place for a shower-mirror, in the small bathroom off of your kitchen. this room was painted olive green (why not?). so i chose a blueish white for the walls and matched the trim (and door!) color to the blue tile. we got rid of the bulky cabinet above the sink and bought a bronze metal one that fits much better. we also ditched the wooden framed mirror above the sink and bought mirror tiles, also much better fitting. philip installed a glass shelf above the sink for some additional space and it worked out perfectly. the only thing we still need in this room is a new toilet.
re-did the whole upstairs shower. the rest of the bathroom will also be re-done in time, but the new bath tub and shower is monumental. i won't bother writing all of the details since they are on the border of being blogged to death. but we are done! i haven't posted any new pics yet because we are still shower-curtain-shopping and i simply can't use it yet until i know it is totally finished.
got our fireplace working. our fireplace is lovely but the giant insert inside of it was not. after researching lots of options we decided we really wanted a wood-burning fireplace. we had to have the size shrunk a bit with fire brick, but it is a working, wood-burning fireplace and we love it. there is red italian tile around the fireplace but it's not in production anymore, so to tile over the new fireplace area we need to get new tile for the entire space. that is still pending but will probably be an off-white subway tile.
this is new and you guys don't know about it yet! we had a painting party today (invited anyone who would come to help us paint and we paid them in pizza and beer) and painted the living room and dining room. but we didn't just pick out a new color -- we painted the ceiling of the entire space, which really needed it. there were yellow streaks all over the place from whoever tried to paint it before. we also painted all of the trim, which is also huge because that bleeds in to the kitchen and the entry way, which both also need to be painted. the space looks incredible though and i will blog about our party and upload pics tomorrow. you know what's next thought... the artery!
here's a few shots of the front yard, after we had our landscaper replace the crazy weeds on the left side with grass. i planted about six different species on the left of the walkway up to the house. to be honest at this moment i don't remember if they were annuals (or is it perennials?) or not, but i think i might have to re-plant this spring. the big bush in the middle of the left side grass is a daisy bush which was there when we moved in. i love it; daisies make me happy. we also loved the roses at the front of the house back to life and enjoyed the most fragrant white roses all throughout the summer and into the fall. i'm certain it's my pop pop helping my garden with his soul. 
there's also a shot of philip mowing the lawn for the first time. notice how lovely green it is -- a little bit of fertilizer goes a long way! the lawnmower is a generous hand-me-down from our awesome neighbors i mentioned before, e & b. they had a spare and probably noticed how insanely long our grass was while philip took his time researching lawnmowers on homedepot.com... 