Month: July 2015

The adventure begins…

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The staircase has a beautiful stained glass window and horrible paint, from maybe 1981.  The stairwell feels dirty and dark.  OK.  The paint has probably been here for thirty years.  It is DIRTY!  We decided to take this on as our first project.  Matt is an excellent painter so we knew we could tackle this on our own.  (unlike the plumbing which is still a work in progress)  Off we went to the big box store.  Normally I would just pick a color and buy the paint.  This is a big space.  We decided to start with samples and make sure we liked the color before jumping in with both feet.  The windows are a soft pink, yellow and green.  We wanted to pick up something light from the window as our color.  I knew it would not be pink!  The first thought was white that had a green tint to it.  We tried several and none looked right.  We moved to whites with a yellow tint and after several more trips to the big box we finally found our color.  We are all shocked at how much brighter the stairwell feels.

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Amazing that a little paint can so drastically change the look of a space.

First Projects

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mallory before

Youngest Daughter’s before picture. She got first room choice since she will live here longest. She picked the smallest room because she loved the stained glass.

The kids all wanted to have their rooms painted before we moved in.  Oldest son painted his room grey.  It is a vast improvement over the yellow that was there.  Younger son is out of the house in an apartment off campus for now so we didn’t have to do anything in what will be his room yet.  Oldest daughter chose a pretty minty green.  Her walls are in rough shape due to water damage so we just painted inside her decorative wall moldings for now.  It feels clean and looks nice.  Youngest daughter went with Tiffany blue and silver trim.  She is really happy with her choice.

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After! We think the paint makes the room look so much bigger. This blue feels like a teenage girl color. The hunter green felt like a gentleman’s study color.

Moving. Never Again.

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Six months passed since we fell in love with this crazy house.  We closed on our house and had two weeks to get out of our very nice suburban home.  Our “new” house had been vacant for some time.  The heat didn’t work (thank goodness it was May!)  The house was filthy from top to bottom.  Of 36 plumbing fixtures, three were in working condition.  We had the plumbers in the house more often than us before move in day but when move in day came, we had two working toilets, cold water to the kitchen sink, one bathroom sink and two showers.  But no hot water.  I seriously questioned our sanity.

Moving a family of six is never easy.  Moving into a mansion was unbelievably difficult.  We spent the better part of the weekend getting things here and managed to get the beds together and the kitchen unpacked.  The rest has been a slow process.

I told the kids the next time my husband and I move we will pack a suitcase and walk out the front door.  The house and everything in it will be left for them to deal with.  I am not moving again.  We better love it here.

It all started with a newspaper article.

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In September I read this article: http://www.toledoblade.com/Real-Estate/2014/09/28/For-sale-Mansion-with-a-past.html and handed the paper to my husband and said “Look I found our new house!”  He said “We are NOT moving!”  I told him I was kidding but the house was really cool and he should just read the article.  Several days went by and he asked me if I wanted to go see the house.  I said no.  A few days later he asked again and my reply was the same.  The next week he emailed me and said he had an appointment the following day at 3:00 to see the house.  We went to see the house and so began our midlife crisis…

There are days when I think I should have just let him buy a Corvette.