House Tour

Current House:

First House:

Our Current House:

When we walked through this house we LOVED everything about it. The layout. The fact that it has an attached garage (no more walking slipping on ice to bring the groceries in). The location. And most importantly, the potential!

One thing we learned from our old house was to take pictures as soon as we moved in, or even before. We didn't do that with our first house and seeing the before and after wasn't AS dramatic since our house was a completely clean slate. Without further ado here is the newest addition to our lives:

Exterior (Before):

Front Entry (Before):

Kitchen (Before): 

Office/Bedroom #1 (Before):

Dining Room (Before):

Living Room (Before):

Bathroom-Full Bath (Before):

Bathroom-Half Bath (Before):

Bedroom #2 (Before):

Bedroom #3 (Before):

Bedroom #4 (Before):

Hallway (Before):

Basement (Before):

Basement-Finished Area (Before):

Basement-Laundry Area (Before):

Basement-Work Bench Area (Before):

Basement-Creepy Crawl Space Area (Before):

Now the hubs and I are going through the 8,153 (or so it seems) boxes and trying to see how our furniture will work in this house, which is exciting and a struggle at the same time!!

Moving Made Easy...

We could have moved how we did when we moved into our house. One small U-Haul, a trailer and our SUV... That way would have taken us 75 years to get it done, plus we don't have any place to store our stuff since we can't move into our new house till we close on May 12th. The reason we moved out all of our stuff the last weekend in April was because it was the only weekend the hubs and I had off together before we closed.

We tossed around different ideas of how were were going to move our vast amounts of stuff that we've accumulated over the past 4-ish years. A bigger U-Haul. More trailers. Rummage sale. Leaving it all there. Renting a storage unit. Breaking everything into millions of pieces with a baseball bat. Burning down the house. ALL of those crossed our minds. Then we had the eureka moment when we decided to bite the bullet and rent a POD...well actually two PODS.

All I'm saying is that getting one was the BEST decision I've ever made when it comes to moving and I will NEVER use anything else! They deliver the POD. You can leave it however long you need and then you can schedule to have it picked up. You don't even have to be there when they are delivered or picked up, which is AMAZING for this busy lady! You can either tackle all of it online, or you can call them up and they will help with the arrangements. I'd say call, because at least for me, the website was a little confusing for this first-timer. Initially I thought that one POD would be more than enough for our house. Holy crap was I wrong and I'm happy that the hubs and I listened to my mom and got a second one because by the time we were all done packing, BOTH were completely packed like a can of sardines and we had our SUV, my car, a trailer, the back of a truck and a U-Haul cargo van FILLED! So, we probably could have used three, but at 9:30 PM the night we were moving everything was a little late to get one there and we were getting impatient and cold! For being the end of April, it definitely felt like February and it's getting ridiculous.



















One of our friends said our house is a combo of American Pickers and Hoarders, minus the dirty diapers and hundreds of Gatorade bottles everywhere...we actually had more space to walk. Needless to say, I'm having a stinkin' rummage sale this summer because it is a little ridiculous how one married couple, with no kids can have SO much stuff. But to my defense, it's all old, antique, family heirlooms or things with sentimental value attached to them...

So... maybe I have a problem. It could be worse!!

Well after a full day of packing, another full day of cleaning, packing and throwing stuff out our house was most definitely looking a lot more empty. And PODS came to pick up the PODS on Monday, which was GREAT!

Two things I highly advise, that I didn't think of till the day they were delivered:

1. Check with your city, village or town on whether you need a permit. I did, and although it was free, I still had to file it with our city hall.

2. You will probably need a flashing barricade. I had one for each end of our PODS (2 in total) which I got from this company. If you are in the Milwaukee area, they are located right in Oak Creek. Their prices are SUPER reasonable. I rented two flashing barricades, for four days and it was $15.00. Not too bad since I thought it was going to be a lot more!

Now we wait to have them delivered after our closing and start the unpacking process..... Wish us luck!!




***We were not paid by PODS to write this post. I just found how easy and convenient it was and wanted to share that awesomeness with my readers***

Cardinal Homes Blew Us Away!

Remember when the hubs and I, mostly the hubs, took on the project of trying to install the fan on our porch, which turned out to be an epic fail?

If not here is what we started with:



and.....


This is what we ended with:



Then Cardinal Homes LLC blew us away when they offered to help us out and we ended up with this:


The light in our porch was on the same switch as our front light, which drove me nuts for the past 3 1/2 years when I would want to turn on the outside light, practically the entire neighborhood would be lit up from both lights being on!  I always dreamed of having a fan/light on our porch, something to turn on when its so hot out and to keep a cool breeze on those warm sticky days!

 We had a ton of ideas to try to install this fan:



source

Some included rerunning electrical to make each light on a different switch, but we weren't sure how to hold the box to the ceiling since it was just loosely hanging out.



Most of them took way too much time and money and we decided to deal with just having the light on in the porch until we could figure it out.  Right after that fail of a project I was diagnosed with breast cancer and then this project, along with 80,000 other ones went way far on the back burner.

Well before my double mastectomy surgery, my sister surprised me.  A co-worker of hers reads my blog and read about this epic fail of a project and forwarded it to her brother who is the General Manager at Cardinal Homes LLC, located in New Berlin, WI, to see if there was anything that he would be able to do to help out the hubs and I.

We were at my moms and her boyfriends house for a cookout and this is when my sister surprised me, on video, while telling me the news. (Sorry about the blurry-ish video and the language towards the end, but frankly I was so excited that it just came out!)

I was shocked, taken back, in awe, surprised and thought that I had to be pinched!

So a few days later I was put in contact with David the electrician, who came out to take a look at the "situation".  He figured it out that he would re-run the wiring and have one for the outside light, and one for the porch light/fan.  To make David's job easier, Chad and I had decided to help him out and pre-cut the hole in our dining room wall that borders with the porch so the wires could be ran through and down to the switch.  

We thought..."oh easy peasy" and our biggest concern was getting plaster on the floor.  Boy were we wrong. 

The hubs cut a square whole in the wall, and once the lathe came off, almost immediately we were being showered with vermiculite.  We knew that our walls had it, but didn't realize that we were going to have three garbage bags and a floor covered in the crap.  We had dealt with it before in our downstairs bathroom gut job and our kitchen project, but this one caught us off guard.

We got it all cleaned up and David came over the next morning.

David explained to Chad and I that he would be using a Saf-T-Brace, and insert it and extend it out until it reached the framing on each side and "dug" its way in for support.

David then re-ran the wiring because frankly the wiring going to the light in the porch was probably just as old as the house....

and after a few hours of David working his magic we now have this:

Words cannot even begin to express the amount of gratitude that we have for both Davids at Cardinal Homes!!  With their generous offer we were able to check off one stresser that has been bothering both of us for a while now and both Chad and I don't have to worry about our house having any weird electrical issues.

Speaking of how amazing Cardinal Homes is, when David was over I showed him our panel in our basement to see if there was anything they could do to help us out with it.

When the hubs and I were working on our kitchen renovation, like all the other rooms in the house, the electrical was old and completely out of date so we had it updated with some assistance of the father-in-law!  While all the wiring in the kitchen was done we managed to get it "working" in the basement, but it wasn't complete as you can tell.

While the porch light/fan situation stressed me out before David came over and helped us out, every time I would go in the basement to do laundry the unfinished electrical panel stressed me out 1,000 times more. Mine and the hubs' schedule is so jacked up that we never had a chance to have the remainder of the electrical hooked up into the panel, so it stayed like that for approximately a year, give or take.

David and Cardinal Homes came to our rescue yet again and put our minds at ease and now our panel is hooked up and closed up and I am no longer dreading going into the basement.

It is absolutely amazing how although the hubs and I are going through the most stressful situation we have ever encountered in our lives, that its the little things that make us feel so completely blessed.  

Cardinal Homes is fully bonded, insured and licensed.  Not only do they work on electrical, but they also offer free consultations on siding, doors, windows, gutters, soffit and trim, decks, additions/sun rooms, roofing and attic insulation.  They offer 12 month-no interest payments (subject to credit approval).  

My experience with them was amazing and they are punctual, on time and reliable and I would recommend them to anyone who is interested in having any work done on their home!

Cardinal Homes is involved with NARI (National Association of the Remodeling Industry), they rank an A- with the BBB and are also on Angie's List.

Their contact information is:

Cardinal Homes LLC

17500 W Liberty Lane

New Berlin, WI 53146

262-782-3828