FINALLY!

It seemed this day would never arrive, but here we are! We close on our new house this afternoon, and I can't wait to start tearing carpet out. The gas and water were finally turned on yesterday (water was still off when the inspectors arrived!) and we completed our inspections of the furnace and other appliances. To our absolute shock - everything worked! We truly expected to have a house full of non-functional systems. Our front hall in the apartment has our calendar covered with appointments and tasks and it just keeps getting more full, but now comes the fun part - we get to start making this house our home.

My tasks for today are finalizing my appliance selections, scheduling the cleaners, plumber, electrician, and HVAC contractors, and I need to go grocery shopping - the dog has no food. I've been working on the appliances for a while, and thought I had it all figured out when I discovered that the fridge I want is not energy star compliant! That just can't be! So now we either spend an extra 1k on a fridge in the same product line, or we risk having the finishes be different and get the original pick, which was a KitchenAid fridge. Oy! Of course, I have a spreadsheet going for this as well. What a complete geek.

My mom and her boyfriend are here to help watch Peanut while we get some work done this weekend. They are having a great time with our little muffin - everything she does is the cutest ever - but who's biased? :)

the end to one obsession

After what seems like a zillion kitchen plans, we made a discovery yesterday that seems to have brought the IKEA Planner madness to an end. At Sears, we found a beautiful Jenn Air freestanding range that has a gas cook top and electric ovens below! Eureka! In addition, the burner controls are on the top right, so little hands can't reach them, and the larger lower over can cook by convection as well as conventionally. The top oven is the perfect size for everyday cooking. This find has eliminated my obsessive quizzing of everyone - "Range or wall oven and cook top?" and has made the kitchen planning much easier since we have found the goddess of all cooking appliances!