In the closets

We’re chugging along at the house building shelves, setting things up, and trying to turn this house into our home. I know house-life will be a long and infinite process for us, but we’re gradually getting unpacked and settled.

Between work, people coming to visit, and trying to take a breather after the renovation and closing process we're moving slow but that's just fine. Slow feels good right now.

We love living in the Petty Home thus far. Besides our awesome neighborhood and neighbors, another great benefit of our new place is the cost of living. It feels amazing to have something left over at the end of the month after years of spending beaucoup bucks in Boston for a tiny apartment. This being said, we’re still managing to rack up some nice big bills with all of our Home Depot runs, but we hope these will slow down soon. I'm sure there will be a never ending list of projects to come but for now it's fun playing house like real grownups.

Projects for the future include—gutters for the front of the house, more drainage, a shed for the back yard, LOTS of landscaping, gardening, a kitchen peg board pot rack, window shades or curtains, art, and collecting a nice assortment of eclectic furniture sure to make any young urban hipster turn their head.

Here’s a few photos of things that have been happening. It’s mostly just unpacking and setting up at this point but some projects are getting done as well...

Here’s the ubiquitous farmers’ market shot. Being so close to the downtown farmers’ market has been awesome. Open on Saturdays and Wednesdays during the warmer months, we’ve been taking full advantage. A short walk or even shorter bike ride away, I almost feel like I'm missing out on something if I don’t get over to the market on Saturdays.

We got the pantry all set up including hooking up the speakers that run throughout the house and in the back yard. This is AWESOME! It’s great to be able to crank out the jamz or NPR while working on the house.

The speakers in the back yard are under the eaves in the widest part of the yard. Because they point straight down, you can hear them really well out back but it’s not so blaring that the neighbors get an ear-full.

Speakers in the living room. There are some more in the hall that provide sound for the bedrooms. There are certainly more high tech options available than what we went with. Wireless systems blah blah blah...while we had the house down to the studs, it was super easy to have the wire run and it’s about a grand cheaper to have wired speakers vs. wireless. I highly recommend this for anyone who's renovating and looking to put music in their house.

Nellie’s mom was in town this weekend. It was great to see her and she’s a great motivator for getting stuff done. With her help, we were able to finish our huge shelving project in the jack-and-jill closet. Here you can see the Bellows ladies painting the shelves in our Mars-like back yard.

I know it doesn’t look that impressive here but these super beefy shelves give us tons of storage space. When your closets have 10.5 foot ceilings you might as well use that space, right? These guys are so strong I feel like I could take a nap on them and I'm a fat guy.