And we have carpet! Casa Pena is now move-in ready!

One of the first things we knew would need to be done at Casa Pena 2.0 was carpet.  The old green carpet was stained and faded and just plain gross.  I did a lot of research when I picked out our carpet at the last house and decided on a DuPont Stainmaster carpet from Home Depot which we love.  It holds up well, is extremely soft and cushy, and we get a lot of compliments on it.  However, I knew I couldn't go with Home Depot again after the experience we had with their contractors. (We'll just say they did an awful job, knew it, and decided to act like they didn't understand English when I confronted them about it.)  I decided I wanted to use a small company to install the carpet in this house, even if it cost a little more so Tyler and I shopped around a few local spots: Quality Carpet One, The Flooring Center, and Design Expo.  All were very helpful and knowledgeable, had installers on staff instead of contracting the work out, and were slightly more expensive than the carpet we had (which I expected and was OK with).  The problem was we couldn't find anything as plush and soft as the Stainmaster Carpet.
After doing a little more research I found that Home Depot lost the rights to sell Stainmaster carpet  (no surprise after my experience) and the only place to buy what we wanted was at Lowes.  I was skeptical of the big box store, but went in to check it out anyway.  They had the exact carpet and another carpet with a diamond pattern that I wanted for the family room, and were offering free installation, 10% off, and 6 months interest free if we opened a Lowes credit card.  The sales associate that sold me the carpet was very knowledgeable about all the products he was selling and remained in contact with me through the very end.  He may have single handedly changed my opinion of purchasing installed services from a big box store.  He knew this was a rush since we really wanted to get carpet in the house before the movers would be bring in all the furniture.  He even tracked the carpet daily (it had to be shipped from a carpet mill across the country) and called me with updates. 
He also gave me the contact info for the installer, JE Flooring in Gaithersburg, so that I could stay in contact with them and schedule the install as soon as the carpet arrived in their store. 
The family room got the Sanctuary Diamond pattern carpet and the entire upstairs got the Exhilaration pattern which is more of a dot pattern.

We were able to save a little bit of money by having Jeff rip out the old carpet and hauling it to the dump and by having the furniture brought in after the carpet was installed.  Lowes does offer both of these services for a fee.

Family Room Before:

Family Room After:

Here is an upclose shot of the pattern:

 Once Jeff took the carpet off the stairs I loved the look of the bare treads but they were just too slippery for a toddler and his future siblings:

The day of the carpet install I set up camp at the computer station in the kitchen. 

The guys were supposed to arrive between 8-10AM and showed up at 10:30.  I wasn't too happy about that, as I knew this was a big job and would take all day.  I was right, they were there until 8:30PM.  I guess they were late due to an in prompt to fishing trip?

They got to work right away and had the padding laid down rather quickly.  We chose to go with the 8lb Stainmaster padding.  Not only did it increase the warranty on the carpet by 10 years, but it also has a moisture barrier over the padding to keep stains from seaping into the pad and ultimately the sub floor underneath. 

You can see them rolling the carpet out to cut it on big tarps in the driveway.  I was lucky they came out this day.  The day before and the day after it was raining.

Rest of the house after:

Here is an upclose view of the pattern in the carpet upstairs:

12 Days of Christmas: Decorations

This post got lost in the shuffle of the move so here goes, better late than never!

I wanted to title this post "Decorations on a Budget While all your Crafting Supplies are in Storage".  It was a bit too long though.  This has been a very different Christmas than I'm used to since we are in the process of moving/selling/buying houses.  The theme of this season for me seems to be "just go with it".  I seem to mutter that to myself at least once a day.  I need to constantly remind myself that stressing about things wont make anything better. 

That said, I finally decided to pull the little 41/2 foot Christmas tree out of the storage unit only to find the middle of my pre-lit tree is burned out.  Taking my own advice, I just rolled with it.  The tree is up, burned out lights and all.

I decided to leave all the ornaments in storage since they are mostly breakable and Tyler is a very curious 17 month old.  Instead we made salt dough ornaments and I gathered some of his baby toys to put on the tree.  I'm so glad I decided to decorate this way.  He is so very interested in that tree. 

So without further ado here is how we decorated this year:

Working Hard on Casa Pena 2.0

Since our closing date of December 20th we've been working tirelessly on getting the house ready to move in.  My mom stayed with us for almost 2 weeks over Christmas and New Years to help with Tyler so we could spend every day at the house painting, patching, cleaning, and moving.  So far we have painted the laundry room, family room, master bedroom, and completed countless other projects.  We are waiting on carpet to be installed before we can move all of the furniture in. It should be delivered either Wednesday or Thursday of this week (we are hoping).  Right now the place looks like a construction zone with paint, spackle, ladders, etc. every where. 
Once the carpet is in, we will be able to schedule movers to come and we can officially make the move to the new Casa Pena! 
I'm really excited for it and I hope that it won't take Tyler too long to adjust, although, I have a feeling we may have a few sleepless nights until he gets used to his new digs. 

Here are a few pictures of the painting progress:

Laundry Room Before:

 
Laundry Room after:

Office Before:

Office After:

Tyler really seems to love this room.  He thinks it's his truck room:

Master Bedroom Before:

Master Bedroom After:

I'm not quite sure how I want to paint the tray ceiling.  White on the slanted parts and slightly darker on the ceiling or vice-versa?  I consulted google only to find you can do "whatever you want" basically.  Any suggestions/comments are much appreciated!

Family Room Before:

 I feel like some of theses "whole room" pictures don't really depict the kind of patching we had to spend hours doing before we could paint the walls.  Here are a couple of close up images that show the shoe prints, crayon, marker, boogers, dings, dents, and who knows what else.  It took forever to patch these rooms!

Family Room After:

My paint inspector:

Here are the same corners I showed above, minus the dings, etc.