Home Sweet Home

I know, I know. This post is about two months overdue, kind of like all of the posts that follow it, but my blogging philosophy is still better late than never, so take it when you can get it.

So...

After driving halfway across this country (Pennsylvania to Minnesota to Oklahoma to Utah) and spending a total of six weeks visiting friends and family from all walks of life, the time finally came to pack up the car one last time, say good-bye to loved ones, and set off for our new home in Rochester, Minnesota. The two-day drive seemed extra long with our three children and six weeks worth of luggage stuffed into our new car, but nevertheless, late in the evening on June 18th we finally pulled into what is now home sweet home. (We'll mail out a change of address someday!) Our real estate agent arrived about an hour before us, unlocked the front door, and left an assortment of welcoming gifts including fresh flowers, some very nice gift cards, and fresh muffins for our first breakfast in our new residence. Needless to say, from the time we walked through the front door, we felt right at home. Actually, Nick and I lingered for a moment looking around the yard, and Madison and Spencer beat us through the front door. Consequently, they were already laughing and running around the big front room by the time Nick and I made it into the house. This further solidified the feelings we had that this was the right place for us to be.

Since our arrival date was a Thursday, and the elders quorum weren't going to be moving our things over from the storage unit until Saturday, we set up camp in the master bedroom with some borrowed air mattresses and bedding. The kids loved our family sleep-over, and even more so they loved the wide open space to run around while mom and dad began the painting. And paint we did. Nick started in the entryway, and worked his way through the living room and kitchen neutralizing the beautiful, but not functional burnt orange color that filled the house. We chose a soft sandy color for the entryway to compliment the country feel of the home, and then stuck with a very pleasant off-white for the rest of the upstairs living room and kitchen. The rest, except of course, for the cranberry accent wall.

Oh, the cranberry accent wall!! We decided that since we had a living room downstairs that would serve as our main living room/play area, that we would go for a more formal living room upstairs. We sold our country-style living room decor from our home in St. Louis before we moved, and invested in a few more modern pieces to adorn this room. Our color scheme of black, off-white (or whipped cream as I call it) and cranberry was also considerably more modern. As a result, I begged Nick to let us go a little crazy and paint one living room wall cranberry. He reluctantly agreed, not knowing beforehand what a painting nightmare it was going to be. And that is no exaggeration. For anyone who has ever used any shade of red paint, you well know that it is incredibly unforgiving, even for the most perfectionist painter. So, in a nutshell, the red wall that we started Saturday morning and were supposed to finish by Saturday afternoon when the elders quorum came, actually got finished almost two weeks later. The single wall required four gallons of paint and primer, and almost sent Nicholas over the edge!! Finally I told him that he could only do one more coat and then he HAD to be done. Fortunately he was sufficiently satisfied with the last coat and agreed to move onto painting EmmaLee's room.

Oh, EmmaLee's room!! Yep, it was another one of those painting disasters. Only this time, it wasn't red paint that was difficult. Actually, it wasn't the painting at all that was such a head-ache. The room was a lovely shade of blue, but of course, had to go pink. Again I begged Nick to be a little bit crazy and requested pink and white candy stripes. I didn't know that taping for stripes would take a full week of evenings when I made the request, but after another two weeks of painting, taping, waiting for paint to dry, and painting again, the second painting masterpiece in our house was finally finished.

Here are a few shots of the completed rooms.





With the completion of EmmaLee's room, and some minor touching up in the master bedroom and upstairs bathroom, the painting in the upstairs was finally complete. What was supposed to take us only a weekend, turned into a month of painting. Therefore, we decided to take a break from painting for a while and paint Madison and Spencer's rooms downstairs at a later date. "Break" at our house is all relative though. You see, part of the reason that we bought this particular home was the fact that all that needed to be done to the house was painting. The house is new enough that the inspection was flawless. The yard landscaping was already complete. Etc, Etc. Nicholas and I, however, just can't seem to let well enough alone. Therefore, after trying for a few days to enforce a "no shoes" in the house and "no food or drink out of the kitchen" rule, we discovered just how much we had under-appreciated having all hardwood floors in our St. Louis home. So, although carpet is nice for the bedrooms, and even the play room, we decided it wasn't nice for our high traffic formal living room--and out it came! The kids loved pulling out the staples and rolling up the padding. It was a typical Hoskins family adventure! And so was replacing the carpet with wood floors--another three-day project that lasted a month. But in our opinion, the best spent month ever. We love the change from carpet to wood!!

Here are some shots of the flooring project from beginning to end.

Before shots of the carpet.







The family pulling out the carpet.







Putting in the wood floors.



The new wood floors.







And so, after painting, putting in new floors, and some intermittent shelf-building in the garage and food storage room, we now can really call this house home sweet home. (And we clearly have made a case for our blogging delays!)