PICTURES!!!!

About time right? I know sorry for the delay but here's a couple pictures. Also, if you click on the slideshow on the left you can see all of them.....

Goodbye apartment

Well, we spent about 4 hours at our apartment for the last time yesterday. No one had been there since moving day and it kinda showed. There was a little smell from being closed up for a week. Anyway, we got everything cleaned, washed, vacuumed, painted, etc and turned in our keys to the apartment. It'd exciting and sad at the same time. Exciting because we have a house now and that's great, that's something that we've been wanting since the day we got married, but at the same time it's sad because that was our first home, we had been there for more than a year and a half and we had a ton of awesome memories there with each other and with friends and family. But I guess everything in life changes at one time or another and this is just part of that revolving cycle of change.

We bought a new faucet for the kitchen yesterday. I know, boring right? But the one that was on there was clogged somewhere making the flow of the water barely a trickle so this is an amazing change especially since we are our own dishwasher now, at least until we redo the kitchen, or get a renter :-)

On Saturday, we spent most of the afternoon finishing unpacking our bedroom and hanging the rest of the pictures on the walls. Then we went to church and helped with their food drive. We were supposed to be the adult supervision over the youth group kids who were taking the food and packing it into the U-Haul truck. As it turned out there were way more adults than there were kids.

Well, that's about all I can come up with for now to talk about. I'm sure I'll have more later. Oh, I am still working on getting pictures up both here and Facebook. Katie's brother Leif took a ton of the before pictures on his camera, then went to New Mexico for three weeks. Good news is he's coming back tomorrow and his car is at our house so he has to come to our house. I'm hoping to get all those pictures while he's around and then I'll see what I can do about posting them.

-Phil

We're There

Well, it finally happened, we moved into the house on Saturday. It was really great, we had about 20 friends and family there helping us. It took two trips with the U-Haul truck from the apartment but we got it all and since there were so many people we got everything into the house in about 4 hours. At one point we had a line of people from the truck all the way into the living room passing boxes down the line, it was a great way to speed things up.

After everything got into the house we had some amazing sloppy joes that Katie's mom made for everyone. Then a few people started to leave which was fine but quite a few of our friends stayed around for the rest of the day/evening. We spend the next few hours setting everything up and organizing.

It's hard to believe that we only moved in two days ago if you were to look at our place. Katie's dad and our friend Charlie spent quite a while putting up some bookshelves on the walls in the office. Most of the pictures have been hung up on the walls. I spent about an hour setting up the TV, DVD Player, and stereo system in the living room. Katie's mom spent a ton of time putting things away in the kitchen. Jen and some of her friends from school put all the books on the shelves in the office. It's just amazing how well we are unpacked considering the amount of time that we've been there.

We are working on getting some pictures on here for all to see and enjoy.

Phil and Katie

MOVING DAY!!!

The day after tomorrow, Saturday March 21st, is moving day. We're starting at our apartment in St. Anthony at 9am. My parents generously offered to pay for a U-Haul truck so hopefully we'll only have to take one trip from the apartment to the house.

Katie and I counted an estimate of the number of people we're expecting and it's close to 20 so far. That means that it'll be quite a party. Katie's mom is making sloppy joe's for everyone and anyone who stops by.

We'd love to have anyone who wants to come and help move things or just stop by and see the house. We've been waiting for this day for three weeks. Three weeks, wow, it's hard to believe that it's only been three weeks since we closed on the house. We have had so many people helping out that the change from what it was to what it is today is unbelievable.

So if you're bored on Saturday and looking for something to do or some really cool people to hang out with, come on over. If you don't know how to get there give us a call and we'll tell you but it's real easy. Take Hwy 36 to Lexington, go south on Lexington for 3/4 of a mile and turn left on Roselawn (it's the third stoplight after you get on Lexington), go about 1/2 a mile and we're on the right hand side of the road, corner of Roselawn and Algen. I'm sure it'll be pretty easy to find, just look for the massive amount of cars and a U-Haul truck.

Hope to see you there!! :-)

It's been a while since I've written and things have changed a bit since then. By the time I'm done this evening with working on the house it'll be ready to move in and believe me we're anxious.

I spent yesterday redoing the door out of the garage. It was very crooked and the only thing that held it closed was a padlock which was very inconvenient. Obviously if the door is padlocked you can only use it from one side when locked. Therefore, I put a door handle on the door which took some time being as how the door is probably about 50 years old and I don't think it ever had a door handle on it.

Once that was done I contacted the garage door company to get a new wall button. I spent about 20 minutes on hold and was able to get what I needed after talking to someone for about 2 minutes.

I then spent some time measuring all of the closets and figuring out what I needed for shelving and clothes racks. I'm going to head to Home Depot after I'm done with work today and pick that up and hopefully get the shelves up tonight or tomorrow morning.

Once the shelves are up I can't think of anything else to do before moving in. We ordered a moving truck today (thanks Mom and Bob). We're very excited to get to move in about a week from now.

Well, that's about all I have for now, more later.

Phil

Almost Ready!!

We're so close we can almost taste it. Last night Katie and her mom and brother spent hours cleaning all of the woodwork in the house to get rid of the tobacco and smoke residue from the previous occupant. After the woodwork was cleaned we spent about an hour putting up curtains on all of the windows (except for one of the kitchen ones because I apparently can't count and didn't get enough). This afternoon when I get off work I'm excited to head over there and replace all of the old, grimy, now paint covered outlets and switches with new ones. After that there's two more light fixtures to replace and it's ready to move in. Katie also spent a ton of time last night replacing all of the heating vent and return covers with the ones that were there before but have since been repainted so they look new again. Everything is so exciting!!

I am still amazed every day by the amount of help that people have given, everyone wants to help. Emily has been there every night helping us paint. Alex and Drew have helped out on several occasions and have stopped by just to see what's happening even more times. Charlie was a huge help with installing the garage door openers and taking the kitchen cabinets out. It's just so amazing.

I'm hoping to get some pictures from Katie or Leif soon so that everyone can see what's going on and understand how much has changed since we closed a little over a week ago. It's hard to believe that all this work has happened in just 11 days. It's been transformed from very dirty and hard to look at to very pretty and very livable.

As always if anyone wants to stop by feel free, we're there a lot.

Thanks again to everyone who helped so much making this transformation happen so smoothly and quickly.

-Phil

Day 2

It's been 4 days since we closed on our new house and things are starting to get finished. Yesterday my friend Charlie and I were able to finally finish installing the garage door openers. We started installing them on Saturday, didn't expect it to take this long. Turns out that installing garage door openers, while not extremely difficult, is pretty entailed and takes some time. Then once we finally had them all secured in place we had to wire the opener buttons and the safety sensors on the doors which took some time. Even after all of that there is still one of the buttons that doesn't work so I'll have to get a new wall button to replace the existing one.

We also spent a long time painting yesterday. Katie's brother, Leif, was at the house all day while we were at work and painted the entire kitchen, two coats of a very deep red, it looks great. (Thanks Leif!) We also got a one coat of paint in the dining room, bathroom and office. Tonight we're going to do second coats in the bedroom and office, and the bathroom and dining room if needed. Things are starting to come together. Don't worry there will be pictures of all of this.

We got the kitchen operational yesterday after Leif finished painting it. The stove and refrigerator are plugged back in and are working, which is great. That means that we can cook the frozen pizzas that Emily bought for us and we don't have to use the three-season porch as a refrigerator/freezer anymore.

I am still amazed at how many people want to help us. Katie's sister, Emily, has been over every day since we closed helping us clean and paint, so have my good friends Alex and Charlie. Katie and I both are amazed every day when we think of all that God has given to us and what a wonderful place we are at in life right now. It's been great to have everyone over helping, while it's a lot of work it's still a lot of fun.

Well, that's all for now. I think I'm going to enjoy this whole blogging thing.

-Phil

Day 1

Good morning to all. This is our first post on our site. We decided that rather than sending out updates about our lives to everyone all the time this would be much faster, easier and environmentally friendly :-)

So if you haven't heard yet, Katie and I purchased a house this past weekend (Feb 27th to be exact). The purpose of this site is to keep everyone updated with our progress and our renovations of the house as we go. It's a 1.5 story rambler in Roseville, MN. Pictures to follow.

We will do our best to update our site frequently with pictures and updates. Let us know what you think.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped this past weekend tearing out the kitchen and painting EVERYTHING, we have the best friends and family!!

Love,
Phil and Katie