Busy Weekend

This weekend we tackled replacing the cold air return vent that go across the long hallway wall. Here's a picture of the old vents. They were REALLY horrible:

Here's the new vent that Justin built:

 And a close up of the screen we spray painted white and then the molding he used to frame it:

While I had the paint out, we also spruced up this old school desk we had in the basement for Brooke's room:

Family Room Project - Phase 1

This weekend we started the family room remodel project. When I say "we" I mean mostly Justin and my dad. The first phase is replacing the wood paneling on the lower half of the 2 side walls. They made great progress over the weekend.

If you look closely at the before pictures you'll notice the carpet goes up the wall some as a carpet baseboard under the wood baseboard. So when we decided to replace the carpet we realized we either have to recreate that look with the new carpet or get rid of the dated wood paneling.

The "before" pictures were taken on Friday and the "afters" were on Monday morning.

Before:

After:

Before:


After:
We still need a few more layers of compound and then prime and painting. Not sure if we'll put a chair rail back up or not.

Phase 2 will be replacing the carpet when we get back from vacation.

Offer is in

We just got back from meeting with our realtor today. We put an offer in on the Donna Street house. She is going to try and present our offer to the seller in person either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Then the seller has 24 hours to get back to us with a counter-offer. So now we just have to sit tight and wait.


Update: Our offer was $13k less than her asking price. She countered by lowering her price by $5k. So then we countered back, but she said no. $5k less than asking price is the lowest that she's willing to go. So at this point we're at a standstill. It's not looking good :(

The Housing Search - House #8 and #13

We saw 6 more houses this weekend. It was a much better selection that we looked at and it made things extremely difficult! We have it narrowed down to 2 houses. They are both 3 bedroom, 2.5 baths and have a finished basement with room for an office. Here are the pictures of the 2 top contenders: http://picasaweb.google.com