To Island or Not to Island?

Our contractors brought in the island today and we've discovered that it's too big for the space.

We have several options: (1) we could cut it down and make it smaller OR (2) we could add cabinets to the right of our pantry and a small countertop.

Option 1 would provide more space than the current size but it's still less walking space than Option 2. It's the least expensive way to go.

Option 2 would eliminate the island entirely and would provide a lot more open space for entertaining but then it would eliminate the island entirely. That's just so hard for me to give up because I loved the idea of an island. But if it's not enhancing the space, I can see why getting rid of it would be a good option. Another positive is that the new cabinet addition would have glass upper cabinets and we could put our wine glasses on display which would look really nice and would really complete the kitchen.

So, we've asked our contractor to provide an estimate for each option and we'll make the decision from there. We're leaning towards number 2 because it opens up the space more so we'll see!

Knobs and Handles

The search for knobs and handles brought us to three different stores - Lowe's, Home Depot, and Ace Hardware.

We immediately fell in love with these twisted knobs but later decided that they weren't very practical and that going with ones that are more basic is the better way to go.

Our contractor suggested that we get handles for the drawers and knobs for the doors. He said that although more people are starting to use knobs on both doors and drawers, he thinks having both knobs and handles are better.

So we started at Home Depot and were disappointed at their selection. At first glance you would think they have all the styles in the world but many of the knobs and handles don't match and/or they're ridiculously expensive. $5 might seem cheap at first but when you have upwards of 50 doors and drawers, it adds up. 

Our next stop was Lowe's, which had a better selection. We selected a few possibilities but didn't like how they looked when we brought them home and held them up to the cabinets. 

We ended up at Ace Hardware which had the biggest selection that ranged in styles and price. We discovered that you get the best deal when you get the bulk sets so we ended up choosing the bulk set of knobs (we needed 35) and the matching handles. Below are the ones we chose:

They are simple yet have a little bit of flare to them. 

Covering Up

None of the windows in our house are currently covered up with blinds or window treatments so we're on the hunt for the best priced ones. Who knew there were so many different choices!

We're leaning towards faux-wood blinds because they're well priced and look nice. 

These will work for the majority of the windows in our house because they have that inset where you can hang them BUT the front windows in the formal living room and our bedroom are older and don't have that inset. We're trying to decide if we want to just attach the blinds above the windows and have them hang down or just have curtains/drapes OR both. Thoughts?? 

I kind of think attaching the blinds above the windows would look silly because I've never seen it done before but who knows. 

We don't want the rooms to get too dark so if we just did curtains we might do a double rod and have a lighter white curtain hanging on the inside and then a thicker colored drape that we can close at night.

Eventually, we're planning on replacing the front windows because they are older. In the meantime though, we still want our house to look good.

I'll post pictures later of what the windows looks like so you can see what we're dealing with. 

The search for a finish line

The house is well on its way to being finished. Hopefully everything will be done in a few more weeks (knock on wood). Brand new wood that is, the flooring guys will be starting tomorrow and will be working through the weekend to get the floor fixed and sanded smooth like a babies bottom.

We tried to pick out some knobs and handles today but we were unsuccessful. Who knew there were so many options to choose from.

Since no one wants to come garden we have put that on the back burner for a little while (but mostly because its all wet outside and I don't feel like getting muddy ha).

On the Road Again

So we're on our way down to Orange County for Christmas!! This is our 6th Christmas together as a couple, 3rd celebrated with our families together, and 1st as husband and wife! It's so wonderful to have both families together celebrating.

Before starting on our road trip down to Southern California, we popped by our house to see the progress of the cabinets. It's hard to describe the feeling we had when walking into our kitchen but I can say we instantly had huge smiles. Seeing how it's been transformed into our dream home in just a few weeks is indescribable. Everything is coming together beautifully; it's truly a dream come true!

Below is a picture of the kitchen cabinets being put in by our hardworking cabinet men. They are speedy workers!

If we don't make another post before Christmas, Merry Christmas!!!

Another one bites the dust

Another day has gone by and the house is looking great. The kitchen has been walled up and the living room is full of cabinets... That's how it's supposed to be right? Oh wait the cabinets go in the kitchen she says. The cabinet guys are going to start tomorrow at 5 am... Just kidding, probably more like 7-8am. We don't want to piss off the neighbors, but in all seriousness that's when they wanted to start. The hunt for bedroom furniture has been concluded today. We found some reasonably priced furniture, it doesn't hurt that it's easy on the eyes if you catch my drift ;). We are going to order it tomorrow. Then we will only have small things to complete woot woot. Sign-ups for next months gardening are now available, just leave your name and availability at the bottom in the comments. I know we will have plenty of volunteers...right? Anybody?

Great End to the Week

Today was a GREAT day at the Teuben home!!

We stopped by to see our cabinets that were delivered yesterday and we're in love!!! Oh my, they look so amazing and are exactly what we wanted. We can't wait to see them put in! They will probably start doing that Wednesday or Thursday of next week so we're itching to see the final results.

We should have taken pictures of the closet but completely forgot to. It's all painted and ready for doors to be put on and it looks magical. SO much more space for clothing and storage!

Slowly Moving Along

Not much has happened with the house over the past few days. Something always seems to come up that slows down the project even more so we're dealing with those hiccups at the moment.

I think the cabinets are being delivered today since today will be one of the only dry days for a while. We don't anticipate that they'll get put in for another week or so though.

The termite people are coming over next week to spray so it will be nice to check that box off before we move in! woo hoo!

We also bought our light fixtures for the bedrooms, office, and for above the kitchen table. We absolutely love them and can't wait to see them all set up in the house!

What's up next for the house? We're still searching for a bed set and kitchen table and once that's done, we'll feel a lot better about the furniture shopping. Those are really the only remaining pieces of furniture that we'd like to have lined up and ready to go when we move in.

First Furniture!

Yesterday, we bought our first pieces of furniture! We drove around on Saturday looking at different furniture stores and seeing what prices were and stumbled upon this store in Dublin that has great prices. After sleeping on it, we came back yesterday to look at the furniture one more time and bought a couch, love seat, coffee table, and side table for the entertainment room. They are special ordered so they won't come for a few weeks but we are so excited!! We both forgot to take pictures of the furniture so it will just have to be a surprise when it gets here.

It's looking like we won't be moving in until the first or second week of January. Because of the slight delay from the termite discovery, the construction had to wait for that to be inspected but we should be back on track starting today. We don't want to rush on moving in anyway since it will have lots of scents from having the floor refinished and the house sprayed for termites.

Remodel continued

The remodel continues on. The closet has been drywalled and the kitchen has a set of shiny new wires. Unfortunately termites were found in the kitchen but they were small colony and are going to be terminated. Our appliances have been delivered and are waiting to be installed. Can't wait for my fancy new fridge (ummm beer). The piles of leaves that were taking up residence in our front yard have packed their bags and moved. Hopefully the cabinets will be in by the end of next week ( fingers crossed and hoping for the best).

Remodel Day 1: Demo

So the fun has begun at Gardella Drive. We left the keys here last night in hopes that the remodel fairies would visit. THEY DID! The once outdated mint green kitchen has been torn out (still some green residue on the walls though). The closet in the master bedroom also has a 'small hole' in it, we decided to knock that all out so we ( cough cough Emily cough) would have more closet space. It will be converted into a slightly larger master closet and slightly smaller guest one. But now looking at it I'm wanting to turn it into a master suite ;). Wishful thinking. I have loose measured the rooms so we can start picking out furniture this week and see what will fit. So all in all every thing is starting out great at the new abode. We will keep the posts coming throughout the process. Eventually we will put up some photographs too.

Keys & Demolition

We got the keys last night!!!!! Ahh it was sooo exciting, we just can't wait to actually move in.

We met up with our realtor Lloyd who gave us the keys and did one last walkthrough. He's going to have the seller's realtor get someone to blow off all the leaves on our front yard (you can see some in the bottom of the photo). We have a gimongous tree in the front yard that has shed about 2-3 inches of leaves. Pretty tree but lots of cleanup. :) So that's nice of him.

Today the demolition starts on the kitchen!!! We made a copy of the keys last night for our contractor so I think he's in there right now ripping things apart. Woo hoo!

LOAN FUNDED!!!!!

Just got the call from our Realtor - our loan has been funded and it will be recorded this afternoon. We're picking up the keys tonight!!!! AHHH soooooooooo excited!!!

Time to celebrate!

Not Homeowners Yet

We didn't close today. We'll just have to continue to be patient. Ugh.

Signed the Loan Docs!

We signed our loan documents tonight!!

CJ is in North Carolina so he had a Notary Public come to his hotel at 8PM to sign everything and I had come to my parent's house at 6PM to sign all the documents. It took at least a half hour to go over everything.

I wanted to document this momentous occasion so I asked CJ to take a picture of him signing since we couldn't do it together. This is the photo he sent me, he's such a goof. I obviously wanted to see a picture of more than just his hand!

Annndddd here's me signing!

As far as next steps, we might have to wait for the lender to receive the hard copies of CJ's signatures (which is a bit ridiculous, what year is it? 1800?) and then it will be funded. We could either close on Friday or Monday. With their track history, it will be Monday but we'll see, maybe they'll be speedy!

Washer & Dryer Delivered

Our washer and dryer were delivered today!! We ended up getting the blue ones. We liked that color too so we're happy with them.

We can't wait to have a house to unpack them and start using them!!

Still No News

The house still hasn't closed. They keep asking for more info so we'll see. It's amazing that its already been 2 1/2 weeks since the house was approved and it still hasn't closed.

Our washer and dryer are being delivered tomorrow! ... To my parents house because we still don't officially have the house.

...Still Waiting

The house hasn't closed yet. The bank keeps moving out the closing date so we'll see when it happens.

In the meantime, we're choosing cabinet stains and granite. Below are some of our choices.

Can't wait to see everything come together!!

Black Friday

I'm not a big fan of Black Friday... the crowds overwhelm me. But yesterday, we purchased our first ever washer and dryer for the house!! The discount was hard to ignore. :)

They are white and beautiful. Below is a photo of the dryer, I couldn't find a photo of it in white online.

HOUSE UPDATE: Still no update on the house, they asked for more info yesterday so I'm assuming that means they're still going through the paperwork.

Wedding Photos!!!

We finally received our photos and they are amazing! It's hard to choose favorites but we will definitely want to print and frame some of their for our home. Below is the link so you can look through all of them:

http://shawnee78.zenfolio.com/emilywedding

I love this one of us right after our ceremony!

And this one during our First Look:

And this one during the ceremony:

We just love all of them!!! We'll continue to post more of our favorites. :)

Sneak Peak of Wedding Photos

We got to see our first wedding photo from Shawnee today!!! We are madly in love with the photo!

She said the rest should be ready by tomorrow. WE CAN'T WAIT!!!!

HOUSE UPDATE: There is no update for today. The bank just asked us for more information so we're taking that as a sign that it's not closing just yet. Still more processing for them to do.

Still Waiting...

No news on the house yet. We checked with our mortgage broker yesterday and he said the paperwork is still with the underwriter. We'll keep you posted.

In other news, we decided not to buy the bed that we love so much. Turns out that the one with baskets is sold out so we would need to find baskets that fit in the holes. Also, the bed doesn't come with the headboard so it's not as well priced as we thought it was. :( We're super bummed but we're still looking so I'm sure we'll find another winner!

Closing Date??

We still don't know the closing date for the house yet. It all depends on how long the loan docs will take to get prepared/processed. According to our mortgage broker, it might be as early as tomorrow or Wednesday. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, we're researching furniture for the house and have found a few promising additions. :)

Granite & Furniture

We went to the Granite Expo today to choose granite. There are sooo many choices and it's really hard to know what it will actually look like with the cabinets in the kitchen. I guess we'll have to cross our fingers that it will look good!

After that, we stopped by a few furniture stores to get ideas for the house. We fell in love with the bedframe below. We love how it has storage under the bed!

We are suuuper excited to start decorating the house!!!!

Kitchen Remodel Plans

So, we met with our kitchen cabinet guy and contractor Wednesday night and reviewed the sketches for the new kitchen. We CAN'T WAIT to get started. Here's how the kitchen looks right now:

The layout closes off the kitchen so we're going to extend the countertop on the left wall, put in a center island, and relocate all the appliances. We're still trying to figure out what wall color and countertop color we want but we're thinking it will end up looking similar to this (obviously on a smaller scale and with stainless steel appliances):

Below are the sketches for the kitchen... SOOOO EXCITED!!!

We Bought a House!

It's about to be official!! We are soon-to-be homeowners! It was a loooong wait so let me tell you all about our experience.

We started looking for houses in April/May of this year and quickly learned what all the news was about regarding the housing market. It is nearly impossible to find a house! First of all, there weren't many houses on the market (about 1/2 what's normal for the area). Second of all, when we finally found a house in our price range that we liked, it would get approximately 10 offers. Unfortunately, we were always in the disadvantage because we are first-time homebuyers and weren't able to put as much money down as our competitors. We spent every weekend from May - September looking at houses.

The first place we put an offer on was a condo in San Ramon. It was a flip so everything in the house was fairly new. We were super excited about the house and immediately put an offer on the house. Unfortunately, the realtor wasn't very on top of receiving the offers and closing the "pool". It got up to 12 offers and we eventually found out that we lost the race.

The second place we put an offer on was a house in Dublin. This one was maintained so well and was soo adorable. I toured the house when CJ was on a business trip but knew he would fall in love with it if he saw it. The owner was getting relocated so the fate of the house was in the hands of the relocation company. We put on offer on the house but were beat out by someone who had $200,000 in cash to pay up front. Who has that kind of money laying around??!? We were really bummed when we didn't get that house.

You know what they say, the third times a charm! And that's what ended up happening for us. We got the real estate notification that this house came on the market in late August but decided not to take a look at it. To this day, we can't remember why that was. Luckily though, my parents found the house on Trulia and suggested we take a look at it. Lloyd (our realtor) called us around the same time and told us he had a house that he thought we should take a look at. We decided to go for it and take a look. We toured the house and thought it was pretty nice. It's about 1400 square feet, so a bit bigger than other houses we toured and it was much more fit for entertaining. The kitchen is old and outdated but that's fixable. So we thought, why not! Let's just make a offer and see where it goes. After a few days, we found out that our offer was accepted!! This house was an estate sale so the process was going to go differently than a traditional sale.

So, we got the appraisal done, bug inspection, and started to wait for the probate court approval. And we waited....and waited.... until finally finding out that the court date was October 1. We were counting down the days and it finally came! The seller traveled up from Southern CA for the court date, got to the court in Berkeley, and was told that the judge had been reassigned. Because of that, they lost their court date (doesn't make much sense) and had to reschedule. The soonest date they could pencil them in was November 14. So we went back to the waiting game...

Meanwhile, we had our mind on other minor things. You know, a wedding. No big deal. ;)

After coming back from the honeymoon, getting back into the swing of work, and waiting very patiently, the court date was finally here! We took the morning off from work to drive over to Berkeley as the seller requested that we come this time. We arrived a 1/2 hour early and were anxious to find out if the offer was approved. Our realtor Lloyd, the seller's realtor Kevin, and the sellers finally arrived. They were three adorable ladies - the homeowner's mother and two sisters. The homeowner passed away in May of this year so they were helping execute his will. They were so sweet and we're so glad we got to meet them. After waiting an hour, the judge called our case. She reviewed the documents, asked a few questions, and APPROVED THE OFFER!!! Woo hoo!!

So now we just need the loan docs to be prepared and it will close! We're planning on ripping out the kitchen and completely redoing it with custom cabinets and brand new appliances. Making the cabinets should take three weeks, remodeling the kitchen and refinishing the floors should take another three weeks, and then we can move in! After all the remodeling is done, it will be absolutely perfect for us! We can't wait to buy furniture and to decorate the house as our own.