Look! We have a home!

As many of you know, Gretchen and I have been looking for a home since moving back to Michigan. After four months, and lots of frustration, here it is, our new home. We closed on Monday afternoon, and have slowly started to get a few things done before the big move Saturday. We are repainting Augie's room and the bathroom, but leaving the rest for now because the seller did a good job of repainting the whole house. Augie's Great Aunt Beth is painting him a picture on his bedroom wall, so he has his very first puppy (more on that in a later post). Besides painting, I've started working on my first home projects: hanging some pulls on the kitchen cabinets, coat hooks in the closet, and a few other odds and ends.

The home has a lot of pluses. Some of the features that drew us to it were the refinished hardwood floors in the living and dining room (off camera left) and the built-in shelves in both rooms.

The kitchen was also remodeled with new cabinets, stove, dishwasher, fridge, oven hood, counter top, tile floor and sink. So, really, it's a brand new kitchen. All of the windows in the home are new, too, except for the picture window in the living room. I'm told those are expensive to replace. Considering the relatively small size of the home, and that most potential buyers were probably going to be first-time home buyers, the sellers were smart to replace all the windows (something FHA loans require to be in good shape for some reason).

Some of the things that I liked about the house, were the fenced in backyard for Augie to play in and the one-car garage (off camera right) for me to hide a mini fridge of beer. I'm not sure I like this fence around the cement patio, but I haven't decided yet if it's coming out. At least I have a nice spot to put my new grill. I don't like the bushes in the front of the house either, but those probably won't come out until spring. So many outdoor projects, so little time.

All right, that's enough about the house for now. We all know you visit the blog to see cute pictures of Augie. So here's Augie, mowing Grandma and Grandpa Steinke's lawn. It's getting a little shaggy because I haven't had time to get out and mow it in a few weeks, but really the only thing growing this time of year is the weeds.

For his hard work, he was rewarded with some Cheese Nips.