Master Bedroom and Patio

I decided no one would read the posts if I scheduled them to post over the weekend so here is my Monday morning post! When y'all actually read this, I will be two days from leaving for England, where I should have internet in the hotels everywhere we stay! I am pretty excited about that trip because not only will we actually get to visit London this time, we are also making a trip to Stonehenge AND driving up to York by way of Sherwood Forest. I'm praying my husband will not want to dress up like Robin Hood and stay in a tree! Anyways, today I'll show you the progress in the master bedroom and out on the patio. I know I have posted these pictures before but here is a short recap of what the bedroom looked like pre-wallpaper stripping and painting.Gross huh? Here are some shots during the hellacious job of wall paper stripping. I think that all prisoners should be forced to strip wall paper as punishment while they are serving time. I can't think of anything worse!

Paint up...And finally with some stuff in it! Keep in mind, it is going to take our new bed 6-8 weeks to get here! We are currently sleeping on our new box spring and mattress on the floor!! Nice huh? At least we are moved into our room. We slept in the guest bedroom for the first week! We are still using the guest bathroom for now until we get the new shower up in our bathroom but we are getting closer every day!Aren't my new sheets awesome!? I LOVE them! Thanks Laura! I don't have all our new bedding on the bed yet (obviously) but it was still a little warm in Germany so we only need the sheets and light quilt. Once we get our bed I will be able to put the comforter and bed skirt on the bed. Don't y'all love my husband's nightstand? Unbeknownst to me, apparently my husband cannot sleep with a nightstand. I don't want to buy new nightstands until our new bed arrives so that we know how much space we are actually working with. Don't you like the moving box that he set up to act as his nightstand?? So innovative!! I hope that it holds up until the bed gets here!

The last set of pictures for the day are of our back patio and new patio furniture. I don't have any pictures of what the patio looked like before it was redone but it didn't have stones laid and the retaining wall wasn't painted. It looks a million times better now.We have outside lighting on the patio and we have already enjoyed many meals outside! We have a great new grill and have cooked out about every single meal since we moved in. Might as well while it isn't 30 degrees below zero!!

Many more things to share tomorrow such as our hideous struggle in getting internet, some more house pictures, and tales from my birthday! It has definitely been a busy few weeks! Talk soon!!

House Progress

Who would like to have this as a view out of their den window while they enjoy watching TV?? Sometimes I have to pinch myself to find out if I am about to wake up from a really LONG dream. Did I really get married and move across the world in the past six months? Sometimes it seems unbelievable even to me. So, lots of people have been asking me to take a picture of the outside of the house for them to see. Do not ask me why this has been such a hard task for me to fulfill! But I promise to try and little bit harder this weekend! Since the house is 3 full stories tall, I need to walk across the street and down the block a bit to get a shot of all it, and I just haven't gotten around to it yet! I did take this picture from the den window though. Isn't the view of the vineyard stunning!? The view from the guest bedroom (directly above the den so you can see over the trees) is even better for those that want to visit and see for themselves! I also took this picture out the same window.....This is the sign for the bakery that is downstairs from us. I have been down there briefly to meet someone but I haven't bought anything. It appears I need to because it is hopping every morning! See the gates in the background? Those lead to a little Wiengut or Wiengarten that is right across the street. You can have dinner and enjoy the local wine there. Onto house progress. Today I think I will show y'all the den and the laundry room. Here is what the den looked like BEFORE we moved in and BEFORE George moved out.Aren't those dolls creepy!?!? Here is the mass chaos that it was when the movers dumped all our furniture in it. I really wish I had painted it FIRST!And here is what it looks like now. I have painted it and arranged all the furniture. Deaner still has to run the cables the right way ect but it is pretty much done. The best addition to the room was the ceiling fan! It might have been a debacle to put it up but it was well worth it!I am pretty happy with the way that it turned out. It is so awkward trying to take a picture of the room as a whole. I hope that my pictures give y'all an idea! I think that it is cozy and that we will be spending A LOT of time in there!

So, onto the laundry room. This room perhaps has had the largest facelift in the whole house. It was definitely the most hideous room in the house when we moved in but George kept good to his word and he partially renovated it for us. Here is what it looked like before. Try not to gag.Demolition begins.....Do not ask me why George hammered out those ugly ass tiles on one of the walls and not the other! I almost died when I saw that they were still there. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. Once George put in the new ceiling and new walls, I painted them all white. I decided that I couldn't stand the tile either and that I was going to take my chances painting them white.I was so happy that they looked so much better with paint on them that I decided to undertake a project that took me almost a week! However, I love the way that it turned out! I got high gloss lime green and white paint and painted the tiles checkered!!And Taaaaaa-DaaaaaaI even made this table skirt to hide the washer and dryer! I was thrilled with the way that it turned out but I would think twice about doing it again. It was VERY tedious and took a lot of patience! I love that I even got the rug to match. Of course, Deaner still has to hang all my light fixtures. It still feels a little ghetto folding laundry by the light of a hanging light bulb straight from the ceiling! Also, we have another refridgerator being delivered to act as our beer fridge! It will go to the left of the folding table. Still needs a bit of work but it is a DEFINITE improvement.

On a funny note before I wrap this up, George came to check out my progress one day while I was working. He came in and looked around and said "Oh wow! Before, I had no idea why Deaner would marry you!! But now I know it is because you do all the work around here"!!!!!! HA HA HA HA. How insulting!! I imagine that there was a bit lost in translation because George would never say anything mean to me but it did almost make me laugh out loud since it sounded VERY CLOSE to an insult!! :) More tomorrow!!

I'm Baaaaaaaack

But don't get too excited! I am only coming to y'all from the Marriott in Brussels. God bless them for having internet! Even if it does cost 19.95 EUROS a day!! It is going to be the best 19.95 that I have spent in a long time! I have been DYING at home without internet and not being able to update my blog! And I am certain that everyone has been missing my blog equally as much! :) So, I have mass amounts to tell everyone and I am going to have to back up quite a bit to August 13th, which was the day that our stuff arrived at our new house.

Imagine the little noise that TIVO makes when you rewind!! Since the movers were supposed to be at our house at 8am Deaner dropped me off in Hattenheim on his way to work so that I wouldn't have to worry about leaving to pick him up when the work day was over. Around 9:30am when the movers still hadn't shown up, I started to get a bit nervous and called the moving company. Imagine my surprise when the lady there told me that we had been assigned the delivery time window of 10:00am-12:00pm. Thanks for letting us know ahead of time!! I had NOTHING to do and I had to rotate between sitting on the hard marble floor and on top of the new TV table. It was lovely. When the movers did get there at noon I attempted to speak to them in English. They were having none of that. My German next door neighbor came out to translate for me only to find out that they didn't speak GERMAN either!! WTF? They spoke HUNGARIAN! Basically for the next two hours I stood at the top of the stairs and either pointed for them to put boxes down in the den/dining area OR I held up fingers 1-4 to indicate what bedroom (I put signs on the doors!) to drop the boxes in. I was pretty surprised that it only took a few hours to get all the stuff into the house. By 2:30 or 3:00 I was left alone to begin unpacking the boxes. And what a surprise I was in for!

I have to say upfront that I am fairly impressed because nothing was severly damaged. There does however appear to be a few things "missing". I'll have to get to that later. I was super excited to see all my stuff but I was rather surprised at the methods that the packers in Atlanta used. Here are a few things that I was surprised to see come out of boxes in Germany.I am so glad that the movers packed ALL our Atlanta PHONE BOOKS!! Folks, there at least 7 of them. So, I'll be able to reach anyone I need to in Atlanta! (just teasing, I did throw them away)! Second surprise.....A PILE OF OUR MAIL!! I'm so glad that there weren't any important bills in there since we never would have seen it!! I mean, REALLY?? And all this stuff was wrapped up as if it were highly breakable. Next up....
Food. Sick. And yes, those pasta boxes ARE OPEN. I threw away an entire bag of food. Just wish I had done it Stateside! I don't even want to know the temperatures that tuna fish saw while in a crate on a boat. As if I would ever eat tuna fish in the first place! I also pulled out a load of....DIRTY DISHES. Clearly these had been plucked straight out of the dishwasher, which was NOT clean. From one dishwasher into the next! And one of my personal favorites....the flyers for selling our condo! Now I might have an idea as to why it took us a bit longer to sell! All the advertisement was packed up and sent with us to Germany. I was cracking up for hours unpacking this stuff. We also got a lot of "needless" wrapping. Here are a few examples.The first picture is of a cork screw and the second is of a small metal disk that fits on the bottom of a candle. Yes, they are each wrapped separately in all that paper. I'm not a big environmental freak or anything but that is a lot of paper for completely unnecessary things! I was very excited to see all my kitchen wedding gifts again and I think I had the most fun getting to organize the kitchen.Finally I got the kitchen looking like this...The picture and the clock from the last picture are now hung and looking great. It was such a relief to have our kitchen organized because God knows were ready to start cooking for ourselves again immediately.

It has been REALLY nice living in our new house. I have tons of pictures to post and show y'all all the other progress I have made. I swear, I have been a working MACHINE. I get up in the morning when Deaner leaves for work and I am still working when he comes home in the afternoons. But, it has really paid off. I'm going to go ahead and post this and then I will start working on several other posts to schedule to post. We are having a REALLY rough time with our internet and since I don't see it working for another week or so, I might as well work ahead while we are here in Brussels!! Also, we leave on Wednesday for England for 10 days and I will have a lot more internet time once we get there. I have tons of updates, funny stories and birthday tales (yesterday was my birthday but I have also deemed today my birthday as well! It is a really great trick and everyone should try it!) Stay tuned!

Help!!!

I had a commentor either yesterday or today who said she might work for TMobile!?! SBux, I tried to contact you on your blog but I can't sign into an account from my iPhone and I couldn't leave an anonymous comment! I am desperate! If you could email me at sarahgleaton@hotmail.com with any help I'd be forever grateful!!! Supposedly we have everything here that we need!! Thank you!!!

Ugh

So, I would just like to know how we are supposed to install our own router when all the directions are in German!! This is madness! Supposedly we have all the tools we need to actually have the Internet, but we have no way of figuring it out. After an hour and a half of Deaner being "really close" to getting it set up, I had to call off the efforts because it was almost 8:30pm and we needed dinner! We have emailed our neighbor (who works for tmobile) and hopefully he will arrive on our doorstep any minute now to lead us to the light! I have so many pictures to share!!

Internet

Just waiting on TMobile.....I hear rumors of Sunday but something tells me not!

Coming Soon!!

Our new modem/wireless router came in the mail today!! This would be incredible news except that shortly afterwards I found out that the guy installing it is "on holiday" until Sunday! Looks like it will be this weekend before I can really post pictures again! George did tell me today that he might know someone that can install the router before then if I remind him tomorrow! We will see! I get my new car tomorrow!! Hope I don't lose all my readers by the time my Internet is fixed!

We Are Alive!

It is really hard to post when you only have an iPhone! I know I am lucky to have that but still....not sure when we will finally be connected!! Everything here is going well and y'all are not going to believe how much I have gotten done. I have been a machine!! I'll have to hold off on posting pictures for now though!

Friday night we went to the wine festival with Steph and Jon. Needless to say it was a ton of fun. So much fun, in fact, that Deaner didn't even notice that a BAT flew into our room at the hotel and was circling above our bed at the speed of light. He was way too engrossed in watching Big Brother! I was screaming with covers over my head before he noticed!! At least he got it our! But not before it pooped on my pillow!! The whole thing cracks me up now!

Also, we found another car to buy!! We got the loan today and hopefully we can pick it up in the next few days!! It is a Jeep Liberty and I'll post pictures when we get it! It'll be so nice to have another car again! Right now I'm trapped at the house unpacking boxes!

Lots to come as soon as I have better access! Keep your fingers crossed that it won't be too long!!

Tomorrow is the big day!!

I am pretty much spent after today. I think I painted about 10,000 square feet of wall. The results are amazing. The new paint is wonderful. St. Stephanie of Wall Painting was back to help today and it makes the work go so much faster. Deaner and I had a slight hitch tonight with a chandelier but finally got home at 9:45pm. The movers will be here bright and early. I am so ready for this to be over. I have pictures but I just don't have the energy to post them right now! It might be a few days before I post again because I'm sure we will be busy. We don't actually move into the house until Saturday night but I know we will be working hard to get it ready (minus Friday night because that is the WINE FESTIVAL!!!). :) Wish me luck! I'm gonna need it!

House Progress

Sometimes when I think about our new house I am overcome with excitement and joy. This is the first house that Deaner and I have owned as a married couple and I get excited at the possibilities and potential of our new place. Other times, I simply want to cry when I think about the house. I feel like I have been working FOREVER (all of two days) and I am not only exhausted, but the amount of work left to do seems insurmountable. It hurts my hand to grip anything thanks to holding a paint brush for 9 hours straight today and it hurts to raise my arm in the air due to having to extend my arm above my head to do much of the painting that I did today. It was certainly a productive day but the house is such a disaster that it is hard to appreciate how much I got done. I got up the entire second coat of paint in the bedroom and I am liking the color better. I also got half of a 25ft wall painted. How you might ask? Standing on top of a ladder on top of scaffolding. That is another story for another day though. I forgot to take a picture of that unfortunately. I'll do it tomorrow since I feel certain I will be back up there working away!

First of all, I finally took some pictures of the finished kitchen. It is still a disaster "clean" wise but hopefully I can work on that tomorrow. Not owning a vacuum is becoming an issue.I know it is hard to tell the color in these pictures but I was fairly happy with how it turned out. I'd like to emphasize again the lack of choice around here. How do y'all like the light fixtures? The ones over the cabinets were there and I hate them and they will be replaced. Just not at this second. Too much other stuff to worry about for now! Here is a picture of the kitchen storage unit thingie we got. See any issues with it?Someone please tell me how my husband managed to put the handles on like that!?! And there was no point in getting mad about it because there was NOTHING that could be done. Since the doors on this thing aren't really wood it would leave a big ole hole if I made him change it. I am still in disbelief that he did it. I knew there was an issue when I heard loud cussing coming from the kitchen followed by hysterical laughter from Deaner and Jon. Oh well, I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff, right? I did get a little annoyed however when he tried to reason with me that it actually looked BETTER this way. I'm not mad, but I am not STUPID! :) Next up is the bedroom. It took over a day and a half to strip this stubborn ass hideous wallpaper! Here is the process........that is St. Steph in the picture!That was an experience I never want to relive. Unfortunately I have just noticed that one of the guest bedrooms and the downstairs half bath are also wallpapered. I'm not pleased about this discovery and I am doing my best not to think about it right now. Here is what the newly painted bedroom looks like. Keep in mind this is only after one coat and no trim paint. I finished that all today and will take another picture tomorrow.Next up. The laundry room. The biggest disaster in the whole house. Apparently George hammered out all the ugly awful wall tiling but left it on the floor. I heard rumors that the contractor is supposed to come this week and that it will only take a few days to completely renovate, but I'm not feeling optimistic. I'm think that there is a solid chance I will have to put off the washer/dryer/fridge from being delivered on Monday. What do y'all think???Anyways! Those are all my picture updates for now! Tomorrow I will take a picture of the finished bedroom. Y'all will have to excuse the little bits of scrap blue wallpaper that are all over the floor still. I would go buy a vacuum cleaner tomorrow but I have to be at the house for our new mattress to be delivered. Want to know what the delivery window is? 9:00am to 8:00pm. WHAT THE HELL? That isn't a WINDOW that is more like a BLACK HOLE of time! Assuming that it comes before I need to pick up Deaner from work, we are going to pick out a chandelier and get it hung up while the scaffolding is still up. Please god let the mattress come before 8:00pm or there is a good chance I will lose my freaking mind. I'm off to rest my weary hands!!!