All Moved In...Finally!

It was June 2012 when we put our house on the market, turning our lives a bit upside down.  The following 12 months included selling our house, moving into a rental house and finding a place to store the other half of our belongings that didn't fit into the rental, followed by a month of homelessness (thank goodness for family!) and finally moving into our new home at the end of June.  It was a long process, but now that we are in, we are so happy with our decision to build and really love the layout.  There's a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up and unfortunately for us, the building market is really picking up making it hard to get the workers to come back to finish.  But hopefully things will be completed soon.

Backing up a bit, early this past spring when our builder said we'd be able to move in "at the end of April, worst case scenario the end of May", I put in our notice to our landlords that we'd be moving out of the rental May 31st.  The end of May came and the house was still not ready, so we were scrambling to come up with Plan B.  Fortunately we have family nearby that came to our rescue.  We moved into Shane's parents' house for what we thought would be two weeks and moved all our belongings into the basement and garage of the house.  Four weeks later, we were finally given the green light to move in.

We've spent the past 1 1/2 months cleaning, unpacking, settling in, and waiting for our internet to finally be connected.  For some reason, there wasn't a connection on our side of the street for phone, cable or internet so we had to wait for them to run the cables underneath the road.  We spent 41 days without internet - I'm not sure how we survived!  But we are up and running now.

We are all loving our new place.  It's so nice to have a place to call home once again.  The months of tweaking the layout really paid off.  It turned out just how we had hoped.  While we still have to finish the landscaping and unpacking, we are just happy to finally be home...

The front of the house

The entry bench

The great room

The dining room

The dining room buffet (still waiting on the fridge panel)

The family room entertainment center (someday we'll have a TV to hang there)

The family room

The breakfast nook (still need the chairs and the cushions for the bench)

The kitchen (still need a fridge panel and the glass for the uppers)

The mudroom lockers

The office

The main floor shower room vanity

 
The boys have adjusted amazing well.  Owen loves his new room and has been sleeping all by himself, a huge feat for my little boy who hasn't slept by himself for over two years!!  He even makes his bed nearly every morning.  He takes great pride in keeping his room exactly how he wants it.

Owen's bedroom

Cole has also been doing a great job at bedtime.  He had been sleeping in his crib up until recently.  I didn't want to transition him to a big boy bed while we were in temporary housing or while I was dealing with Owen's night time issues.  But with Owen now sleeping on his own, the time seemed right for Cole to make the switch to the big boy bed.  It took a week or so of persuading and a pair of bed side rails, but he finally agreed to give it a try and he did great!  He loves his freedom being able to get into and out of bed as he pleases.  The bad news: He'll walk around his room for a least an hour every night turning on and off the lights and playing with anything he comes across.  The good news: He doesn't leave his room!  He'll open the door and look around (sometimes throwing out the door toys and other things that he no longer wants in his room), but then he closes the door and goes back into his room.

Cole's bedroom

In the boys' bathroom, I had wanted to have two faucets, but on a 5 1/2 foot vanity, two sinks would have eaten up the majority of the counter space.  So instead I picked out a wide trough sink that could accommodate two faucets.  The sink is a bit narrow from front to back and with two messy little boys using it, I was a bit nervous.  But so far so good.  Owen's even picked out which faucet is his.

The master suite is on the opposite side of the house from the kids' rooms.  It's great in the morning so that Shane doesn't wake the boys.  But the best part is definitely the his and hers closets.

The master bedroom

The master bathroom

The master bathroom

Baby Slominski #3's room is almost ready.  The crib will be moved from Cole's room to the baby's room any day now.  And the baby even has his/her own bathroom.

The nursery

The baby's bathroom vanity

One of my favorite rooms is the laundry room.  I've never actually had a laundry room.  The washer and dryer have either been in the furnace room, the mudroom, or a closet.  I am definitely feeling spoiled with all the counter space!

The laundry room

The other room we've been so happy to have is the upstairs playroom.  We were originally going to have a two story great room, but decided instead to put a playroom above the great room.  It was one of the best decisions we made.  The room is already jam packed full of toys and we still have over half of the boys' toys in their great-grandparents basement.  It may be time to purge some toys!

The playroom

The landscaping has taken off this past week.  The grading and retaining walls are almost complete.  Then come the paver sidewalks, sprinklers and finally grass!!  At this rate, Shane will have gone a whole year without mowing the lawn!

The side yard retaining wall

The back yard retaining wall and steps