Yes we did finally move....

After a lot of drama we finally moved just before Halloween. I'm not going to talk about the drama since I'm over it all now but whoa baby I NEVER want to move again!

I've got a lot of catching up to do on this blog so I'll try to get caught up. Here's some photos of our condo after closing but before we moved in.

 

Our foyer area. Entrance to condo is door on left, then coat closet and the door on the right is to the laundry/utility room. So happy to have in unit laundry and no flights of stairs to go up and down. Not thrilled with the ugly black tile but living with it. You walk down to steps into the living room.

 

Laundry/utility room. It's larger than it looks.

 

Living room with large window and sliding glass door to patio. The doorway on the other wall is a second entrance to my daughter's bedroom. That room was originally built as a den with the option of putting in a door to close it off from the living room for a 3rd bedroom.

 Dining room. Was originally going to be my studio space. I'll explain about this later. Doorway goes into the kitchen.

Sink side of kitchen from eat in area. Door to the patio on the right.

 

Stove side of kitchen again from the eat in area. We hated the color of the cabinets. It was a kind of white washed 80's look. Also the handles in the middle of the cabinets is not something we liked either. The one thing the cabinets had going for them was they were solid wood and the kitchen was well designed with a good work flow. Don't you love that old florescent lighting? It's brighter than the sun when you turn those babies on!

 

Looking in from the dining room.

This is the eat in area of the kitchen. It's larger than it looks. The bay window is so nice, one of the best features of the condo.

 

Patio area is covered by our upstairs neighbors balcony so we can hang out here when it's raining.

My daughter letting the dog sniff around.

 

Another view from the patio.

 

Hallway to the bedrooms. My bedroom is at the end of the hall. the door on the left is the first bathroom. 

 That first bathroom is a full bathroom. It's small but has a nice shower with a built in seat which is perfect as my mom gets older. This is her bathroom and is used by guests.

Before you get to my room if you turn right there are 2 doors ways and a linen closet. The doors lead to the other 2 bedrooms. 

 My daughter has the one that butts up to the living room, it was used as a computer room my the previous owners (that's their stuff in this pic) and my mom has the room between hers and mine. The other 2 bedrooms are a good size. Much larger than the bedrooms at the other house. The each have really large closets too, much larger than the closet in the master at the old house. My mom had a walk in at the other house but her closet here actually holds more so she was happy about that. Don't have a pic of her room for some reason.

Here is one side of my bedroom. My daughter is standing in the doorway looking into the hall. I have a pocket door which is nice. I don't have anyone flinging open a door into anything. I have 2 windows on the same wall.

 

This is the other side of my room. The furniture is the previous owners, I just didn't have a photo of this side. This gives you an idea of the size.

I have the on suite bath. It's one of those sink that's open to the bedroom kinds. There is a doorway into this area so the sink isn't actually in the bedroom which I would hate. Right across from the sink area is a walk in closet. In the main part of the bathroom is a toilet and bidet and a soaker tub.

Soaker tub that is also a shower. Normally my mom would have gotten the master bedroom but she can't get in and out of this tub to shower or have a bath because of her knees so I got it. My daughter shares this bathroom with me.

The condo needs some work and updating but at least the bathrooms were already done. We've done a lot of work on the kitchen which I'll show in the next post. Hope you enjoyed seeing it all.

Still Packing...and Designing A New Studio Space

I'm determined with this move to have a nice looking studio, not one that constantly looks like a tornado hit it. My new space will be open to the living room but also visible from the foyer so it's much less private than what I currently have. Now I'm tucked away behind the kitchen and at the end of the living room "L". Plus I just know my mother will have snarky things to say about the state of my studio and I don't need the drama.

 This is my current set up. Kind of a vertical rectangle and I have the second door to the kitchen blocked off. There is another door to the kitchen in the living room.

See, an overcrowded mess.

Unfortunately I have to do all of this on a zero money budget. But luckily I get to shop from the furniture we have in our house already. We have to downsize so much but I can use some of these pieces for my studio so it looks less like a storage room and more like a creative space.

This is the new space. It's basically the same size as my current space but a horizontal rectangle. The only downside is that the ONLY door into the kitchen is thru my space and I have no windows at all. Hoping people walking thru all the time doesn't annoy the crap out of me...we'll see. There is good light coming in thru the big bay window in the kitchen.

Here's a photo of the new space. The chandelier here is beautiful but I'll be taking that down in favor of a ceiling fan. It might go in my bedroom.

Here's the foyer to give a better idea of my little drawing. You step down into the living room and my studio space is on the left side of this pic on the other side of the railing. Not loving the black tile floor but we can live with it for now.

Here are some ideas of what I'd like to do:

My current computer table is a vintage dining table with leaves that pull out from the sides. The top is all scarred from years of wear so I'd love to paint it a bright fun color and use it as my sewing table. Right now my sewing machine doesn't have a home, it moves around from table to table. I have tons of paint in the garage that I hope to use.

I have been desperately wanting a super large worktable for so long. Here are some ideas that I really like.

I have 2 wooden doors that I use for the tops of my worktable now so I'll bolt those together from the underside and place them on top of an old dresser I have and an old table base maybe. Still trying the work the sizes out. I know this will take up a huge amount of room but I have to do it.

Another thing I love is using furniture pieces as supply storage. I'm hoping to do something like these ideas.

Also since our new kitchen is small and I'm the only coffee drinker I might put something like this in the studio.

To free up some room I plan to put my computer in my bedroom. That should  (hopefully) keep me focused on work and I'll spend less time online.

That's all I have to share for now. Back to packing!

I'm Living In Box Hell.

Once we made the decision to move my mother immediately started packing and getting rid of stuff. She was so crazed about getting it done that it spilled over to me and I started packing too. Did I mention we haven't even found a place to live at that point? 

It is good to get rid of things we don't need ahead of time but now I'm living with boxes stacked everywhere. My mom told me the other day that she thinks she started packing way too soon. Yep I already knew that.

My mom found a thrift store that all the proceeds go to a battered women's shelter, so tons of stuff went there. Her church is getting ready to have their annual book sale so every book we don't absolutely love and movies we don't watch all went there. We had maybe 10 bags that went between the 2 of us. We are big readers.

Here's 2 walls in my living room covered in boxes so you can see what I'm dealing with.

 The majority of stuff packed so far is 1/2 my studio, all our movies and books, living room art, and winter bedding. I feel like I'm living with a hoarder cause you have to follow little routes to get around the living room. I spend most of my time in my studio which feels spacious since 1/2 of it is packed away. This is all my stuff, my mom has a bunch of boxes downstairs in her living room.

Oh and did I mention that we will probably not even be moving until September?! I'm beginning to feel like I will lose my mind before this move is over.

Here's What's Been Going On in Sassyland.

O.k. in my previous post I said that a lot of crazy things were going on here well here's the craziest. My mom, daughter and I live together and my brother moved in 2 years ago when he was getting a divorce. He's been looking for a rental house for him, his boys (who he hopes to be able to get custody of), his girlfriend and her 2 kids. They were having a terrible time finding anything so I came up with a brilliant idea...why not rent our house to them? We were planning on moving in 3 years and renting out the house anyway. It's the perfect size for a large family and we'd have tenants we could trust. Plus my brother is willing to do all the painting and ripping up of carpets and installing new extra base cabinets and pantry in the kitchen that has to be done to rent out anyway. Yay!

So off we went looking for a new smaller place of our own. We originally thought about renting a house also but the rents were too high and it would be cheaper to buy. The small houses we looked at needed so much work and didn't have room for a studio for me. Mom and I didn't want to deal with snow removal and yard work anymore either. So then we thought maybe a condo would be the way to go. My daughter is planning on joining the Military this Fall or next Spring so it will just be me and my mom but we do need a third bedroom for my daughter until she leaves and for when she visits, plus I hope my son and his girlfriend and their children will visit us. Did I tell you I'm going to be a Grandma for the first time?! Whoo Hoo!

We saw small condos with scary elevators, smelly larger condos with great views but needed the kitchen gutted and no where for my studio and a cute townhouse condo with super small bedrooms and stairs so steep even my daughter didn't like going down them. We had specific must haves which include first floor living ( my mom has 2 artificial knees and stairs are not her friend, plus she took a nasty fall this Spring and broke both her wrists so gripping is an issue too ), we have to bring the dog and cat ( they are family ), 3 bedrooms/ 2 baths ( one with a shower and the other with a large tub ), a large dining area that I could use for my studio, garage, in-unit laundry, an eat in kitchen and a patio. And then I saw one online I thought might be perfect for us. We went and saw it and put an offer in right away! The price was well under market value ( the housing market here is terrible and it takes forever to sell ). The selling couple want to start a family and the complex is adults only, which is perfect for us, nice and quiet. They are actually trying to buy a house in our current neighborhood.

We had our inspection and discovered that we need new windows in all the bedrooms and the dishwasher is about to die and there is an issue with some of the vents so we are waiting to see about that. It's a much larger condo that we thought about getting but we are downsizing from 2 kitchens, 2 living rooms and 2 dining rooms, plus we don't want to be all over each other since we are used to our own spaces. The bedrooms are the largest we saw and I will have a huge soaker tub in my bathroom. Our move in date will be in September sometime depending on the sellers buying situation.