Happy October everyone! It's been a little while since I've posted but I've been a very busy bee lately! A couple of months ago, The Original ScrapBox company came out with an amazing looking new piece of furniture called the "DreamCart." It's over double the desk space that I had in my craft room and folded down to be tucked away as an attractive little rolling storage shelf. As you may know, I have the WorkBox 3.0 cabinet, so I am definitely a fan of their products and craftsmanship - but I'm also painfully aware of their prices. When the price of the DreamCart was revealed, I was a bit gutted. The cart starts at $425 for 1-leaf and up to $499 for the 2-leaf cart. Here's a picture of what it looks like:

As you can imagine... all I could think about was this beautiful table and how I could get rid of multiple items in my craft room and remove the leaf that is included with the WorkBox, which I don't like for a few reasons. Instead, I started shopping around to see if I could find something online that was a similar style. After all, it's really just a storage shelf on wheels with a couple of table leaves. I started with Ikea's website thinking I could find a similar item and just hack some wheels onto the bottom so that I didn't lose the rolling functionality. I originally came across the Gateleg table which is very similar, but I wasn't sure about whether or not I could add the wheels to the bottom. The price for the Gateleg was only $199, which is significantly lower than the DreamCart, too. It also comes in a couple of different color options. I continued my search though and added this to my "Maybe List" in the meantime.

My next search was on Amazon because I was laying in bed and can browse the App without having to get up and use my laptop. I looked for quite a few different phrases and didn't really find what I was looking for but eventually stumbled onto a Folding Multipurpose Hobby & Craft Cutting Table by Sew Ready Studios.

This table seemed to check off all of my requirements!

• 2 folding leaves for a ton of extra space (either for just me or me + friends)
• Wheels, so that it can be rolled all over the room and tucked away later
  
• Extra Storage for quick access to commonly used tools or items
  
• AFFORDABLE (as hell) - Only $143.45 w/ free shipping with my Prime membership
• As an extra bonus: Adjustable Height, so I can stand and work if I wanted.
  

I added the Table to my shopping cart and continued to look a bit more before making any firm decisions to buy anything just yet.

I came across another table that almost looked like a knockoff version of what I had added to my cart. That one was about $25-$30 cheaper than the one I had added to my cart, but after going through the reviews, most people said to stay away because it was wobbly as hell and would barely hold the weight of their sewing machines or other items. I was going to provide a link to that one too, but I can't even find it now.

After talking to Chris about my room change ideas and making some space in my craft room to ensure the table would fit where I wanted to store it - the decision was made and I completed check out. I would now have a few days to get the room cleaned up and ready for my new desk!

2-3 days later, my table arrived and was ready to be built! Building it was super easy, I turned a movie on (Mary Queen of Scots) and I had the whole thing built as the end credits started to roll. The quality seems very nice and I look forward to trying it out soon.

Stay tuned for updates on how the craft room currently looks... plus some project photos!

The living room, kitchen, and dining room are all the same large room. The main section of the house is all open floor plan, which we LOVE when it comes to entertaining and having parties. Below are the Before and some Progress pictures of these parts of the house:

As you can see, pretty much everything was BEIGE... why everyone thinks that beige is the best color to go with for anything is beyond me. We did want to keep the rooms neutral and light colored since it's such a large space, we decided on a very light gray, with very very light purple tones. The color is Icy Waterfall by PPG. The wall that creates a hallway next to the kitchen is a cheap panel wall - we weren't a huge fan of this, but Chris compromised and let me choose the color for that. We started with a nice white coat of paint and then added the black striped panels later. For the black, I used PPG's Onyx.

Once the paint was on the walls, it was time to rip out the floors! Since Chris was in flooring previously, he was a bit picky about every single house we looked at. While we originally thought the floors were okay, we decided pretty quickly to replace the flooring because the previous installation was so poor. There were imperfections in the terrazzo underneath which caused the faux-wood planks to have "bubbles" or hollow spots. In addition, every single section of flooring around the doors or closets was cut-in pretty terribly. There were gaps between the flooring and the base boards and would basically serve as a catch-all for dust or dirt. Knowing that we wouldn't have to pay for the labor, we bit the bullet and picked out some flooring that we thought would look good with all of the colors we chose for the walls.

Next I will show you the Bathrooms -- which we didn't really get pictures of before gutting them. Since we knew we'd need to have one toilet available at any given time, things were a little fucky for a while.

Not much to say about the bathrooms, we both picked a theme we'd like for each bathroom - I went with a more botanical theme while his bathroom (which is more accessible to guests) is a bit Creature from the Black Lagoon themed -- we still have some more ideas for both rooms that have not yet been implemented. I believe the color we chose for the Creature bathroom was Freshen Up Lime by PPG.

The house has two full bedrooms plus a 3rd bonus room that I use as my craft room since I didn't need a closet in there. We're using the smaller bedroom as the "Master Bedroom" and the largest room is the Bot-Cave. Here's some pics of these rooms:

For the Bedroom, we picked PPG's Prom Dress Blue which is a very light periwinkle. Since I wanted to decorate the room with my Haunted Mansion art work, we wanted something purple but that wasn't super dark because all the furniture would eventually be black. When Chris found this color, we agreed it would probably look really good in both natural and electric lighting. We were right - no regrets there!

For the larger room that Chris is using to house his toy collection, he picked a chartreuse/limey green looking color called Anime by Behr. The paint's description claimed to contain primer and that it had a "One Coat Guarantee" but we found that even after priming the beige walls with two coats of primer and THREE coats of the Behr paint - that was pretty much bullshit. The paint seemed a bit thinner than the PPG and was slightly more than the PPG per gallon. In the end, he finally got the result he wanted (full coverage, a lot to ask for - I know) and he was happy. He would not recommend the brand though since it gave him so much trouble.

Finally, my Craft Room, I found two colors that I fell in love with instantly. Since I couldn't decide, we bought them both and we painted a couple of spots in my bathroom to figure out which one would go in each room (my bathroom is attached to the craft room in the back of the house). Eventually the mintier one went into the craft room and the bluer toned one went into my bathroom. The Craft Room color is PPG's Teal Zeal and I absolutely love how the color turned out - the room is SO bright, which is really helpful because I ended up putting my WorkBox 3.0 in front of the window and it covers up most of the natural light that was being let into the room. The bathroom color is also from PPG - it's called Sea Breeze Teal.

Below are some pics of the house (mostly) all cleaned up and un-packed. These were actually taken back in March right before our house warming party, so there have been some slight changes since then. I will probably do individual posts for each room in the house - especially the craft room - because there are a bunch of different artists and things that I'd like to highlight!

Also, the Bot-Cave doesn't have any finished pictures because most of his stuff is still in storage bins. He focused all of his energy on getting the rest of the house finished and setup before working on his room. It's slowly coming together now, but it will be a long process to place everything in the display cases and get it put away. Maybe by the time we have our Halloween party this year we will have a bit more progress in there.

I hope this gives you a good idea of the new house! I know this is super long and has a bunch of not-so-great pictures, I'll snap some more soon since we're a lot more settled in now.

Also, one final note, I know that I mentioned PPG quite a bit, we're not sponsored or anything like that - but after going through paint samples and swatches for a while, we ended up liking this brand the best. If you have any paint projects in your own house coming up, I would highly recommend this brand. It's affordable and the actual coverage in the rooms and on the ceiling was top notch! When we eventually tackle the garage renovation, we will definitely be going that route again.

We've been in the house almost a full year now and SOOOO much has changed. I can't wait to post new pictures. A quick TLDR of the last year and why I kind of dropped off the face of this blog was:

1. The house needed a lot of work + we still needed to move out of our rental by 9/30/2018
2. I got a promotion in November 2018... whuttttt?!?
3. New job meant adding some hella changes.
4. Mild depression
5. Overwhelming fear and stress of being a homeowner
6. Life in general

For those of you who are buying a house right now, or will be in the next several months - the VERY FIRM deadline for filing homestead exemption is March 1st. It's important to not forget about this like I did... because even if you file ONE day late... it's still late and they really don't give a shit unless you are basically dying of cancer, which I was not. Oops.

Other things that are important to know when you're coming up on that 1 year anniversary of home-ownership: The people who calculated your taxes/escrow payment/insurance/whatever, were probably VERY fucking wrong. This cost me an extra $2200 in August that I wasn't expecting because they didn't mail a letter - they just casually increased my monthly payment by $284 - I was not comfortable with having to pay a higher amount all year long, so we shelled out the money for the escrow account instead. My advice for that is to randomly throw a couple hundred into your escrow account here and there... because why not? It's not like you won't use that shit later anyways, especially when your Mortgage Insurance, Homeowners Insurance, and Property Taxes are all due around the same time.

I'll throw up some pictures of the house tomorrow!

So, it's almost been a month and I've provided NO updates to my blog about what we've been doing. We've been very overwhelmed with how much work there is before we can actually move into the new house. Originally we just thought it would be painting and cleaning but the more and more we worked through areas of the house, the more we wanted to redo other stuff too. We've settled on these main tasks before moving:

• Cleaning (duh, gross).
• Painting the entire house, including ceilings.
• Replacing the flooring through the entire house.
• Replacing the base boards through the entire house.
• Sob Uncontrollably at the sight of all our money going away.

Luckily for us (mostly our wallets), Monkey (Chris) worked in flooring for like 22 years sooooo we're only having to pay for the new flooring supplies and not extra for the actual installation. We haven't found the flooring we want yet, but we're not done painting, so there's still time. Monkey is hoping to find something this week so we can order it and have it to the house since we're almost done with the paint.

For the paint colors, we chose:

• Icy Waterfall - Living/Kitchen/Dining Rooms (open floor plan)
• Teal Zeal - Craft Room
• Sea Breeze Teal - 2nd Bathroom (located in craft room)
• Prom Dress Blue - Bedroom (Haunted Mansion Themed)
• Freshen Up Lime OR Bali Bamboo - Main Bathroom (Creature themed)

Monkey has not yet selected a paint color for the Bot-Cave either, he's running out of time though, so he's going to have to pick something soon! He's been pretty much painting everything himself because his mom and I suck at cutting in and he was sick of having to go back in and fix our mistakes on the ceiling - oops?! While he's been painting, I've been working to clean out the cabinets, lighting fixtures, ceiling fans, and doors.

I've also ordered new fabric shower curtains for our bathrooms plus some new art for the house, one new piece by Misfit Menagerie for my Craft Room and some canvas prints of the Stretching Room Portraits for our bedroom.

Here's a couple of pics of the freshly painted walls:

Monkey will be finishing the craft room tomorrow, there were a few places that needed touch ups since the walls are so overly textured and the paint didn't quite get into every nook and cranny during the first roll-over. He's already painted the bedroom as well but I keep forgetting to snap a picture of it. The "Prom Dress Blue" is more like a very light blue-ish purple and will look amazing with the new bed frame we're getting after the floors go in. When we moved out of our last house and into our current rental, we had plans of purchasing a new bedroom furniture set and then never did. Three years later, we're still sleeping on the mattresses on the floor - we're in dyer need of an update and now is the time to pony up and get what we want. We can't keep sleeping on the floor forever!

Anyhoo, I will update some more later this week once we have finished painting everything and hopefully have the flooring picked out.

In the meantime, I will share the shower curtains we ordered for the bathrooms:

I received the final numbers today and our "Cash to Close" amount has been locked in and finalized. I'll be writing a big fat check for $10,215.80 in order to get into our new home next Tuesday! We're so excited to start our next adventure together and I think I am even more excited about sharing all of the progress photos with my friends and family. My friend, Becky, and I will be planning some epic thrift store trips in the near future so that I can find some sweet new (to me) pieces of furniture that I can customize for the house.

As you can imagine, I have a lot of ridiculous ideas planned for the house that I have not yet told Chris, he's in for a treat! I think for the most part, he might just give up and let me do what I want... but we'll see how that goes. So far, every time we talk about a paint color, he just says that he wants to paint everything lime green.... every room in the house... LIME GREEN. Needless to say, we're not putting him in charge of the planning, even though I'm sure he's just joking in order to get a rise out of me.

Since I don't have any pictures to show yet, I decided to snag one from the online listing to share with you all. Here is part of the dining room and kitchen:

Shockingly, I don't hate the beige walls, although I think that a light gray might look okay, too. I am just slightly worried that the natural earth tones in the counter tops might clash with a cooler color being everywhere else. Painting the walls white would mean that the cabinets would just be lost in a sea of white, which I'd like to avoid. The Living Room, Kitchen, and Dining Room are all basically just one giant room split into sections, so there aren't too many options for painting the rooms different colors, except for maybe an accent wall on one of the shorter Living Room walls or the back wall of the Dining Room (where there is a door leading into my future craft room). Chris isn't too keen on the beige, but once again, his only suggestion so far has been lime green.

Since we have been playing the waiting game for a while, I've been occupying my spare time with getting lost in PinHoles... on Pinterest, that is. I have a "House!" Board which has a section for each room of the house, plus the outside, plus other random things I wanted to save. I'd like to think that we can update the house on a very tight or non-existent budget, so Pinterest has been really helpful for finding blog posts about how others DIY'd stuff in their own homes. To avoid having to move more things, we haven't purchased any additional furniture yet to replace some of our older crappy stuff (mainly just our sofa set). I did purchase the De La Luna fabric bundle by Tula Pink though because it is the most beautiful set ever and I wasn't about to miss one of her spooky designs! I haven't decided what to make with everything yet, but we will definitely need some throw pillows for every room in the house. If you're not familiar with it, here's a peek:

I personally purchased my bundle from SewShabbyQuilting on Etsy, here's a link:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/628560589

My order arrives tomorrow and I can't wait to lay it out and inspect every inch of the designs to view all the beautiful details hidden within them. I wasn't able to just choose one colorway, so I ended up purchasing the full line - sure, I don't reallllllllllllly have the space to store any more fabric, but I needed it... for science!

Speaking of storage, my GoFundMe Campaign is off to a really great start and I am floored that anyone donated anything at all - I've collected $140 so far! For those of you who have donated and/or shared, thank you SOOOO much! It may take me a while to gather all the funds for the WorkBox, but...

If you would like to contribute to the campaign, click here! I am also working on some rewards for certain donation amounts, starting at only $15. I will be updating the campaign as soon as I am able to finalize a plan that I can truly commit to during the moving and shuffling of everything.

That's all I have to share for now, if you would like to follow me on Pinterest or just check out my Boards, you can do so here: https://www.pinterest.com/chelpanda

~Chel

After some hemming and hawing, I've decided to create a GoFundMe Campaign to see if I can get a little help to purchase a WorkBox 3.0, made by The Original ScrapBox company!

Have you seen one of these before?!?! It's freaking bananas, it holds SOOOOO many supplies for crafting! I am pretty confident that literally everything I own will fit in this and that there would be some room to spare.

The room that I have claimed in the new house isn't as large as my current craft room. I started planning things out in my head, and with everything that I have now, it just doesn't really have a great flow or fit well.

Since we're having to shell out so much money to just get into the new house, there isn't anything left for new furniture, especially for a "non-common-area" piece. I've seen a lot of my friends start campaigns to help with various things, so I figured I would give it a try and see if anyone wanted to help. My friends and family have been nothing but supportive to my art, so maybe they'd continue to help support me by donating some money towards my craft storage dreams!

If you'd like to donate, please click here.

What the GoFundMe Campaign covers:
I am only asking for $2,195. This covers the cost of the cabinet itself, plus the $500ish dollar shipping/crate fee. I specifically want the "White Raised Panel" version of the cabinet, without any of the other add-ons. GoFundMe also take 2.9% of the amount of money I raise + an additional 30 cents per transaction - which I did NOT take into consideration when setting my goal amount.

If you'd like to learn more about the WorkBox 3.0, you can do so here: https://www.theoriginalscrapbox.com/products/workbox-3-0

That's all I really have to say for now, I do plan to update the campaign a little later today with some rewards or gifts for those who are donating - I just need to figure out all the details of that first.

If you're able to donate, I appreciate it SO much and will be forever grateful! If you could also just share the campaign, that helps too.

Thanks!
~Chel

Hi everyone! My name is Chelsea, though I go by Chel for short. I am currently 31 years old and am about to purchase my very first home in my home town, St. Petersburg, Florida. I am SO excited to finally do this, mostly because it means that I can paint whatever color I want annnnnd because we will finally be adopting a dog!

Who is this "we" I speak of? I have a boyfriend! His name is Christian, however, I call him Monkey - you can, too. We've been together for almost 10 years now, so I guess we like eachother enough to take this next step in our relationship.

Anyhoo, we close on the house in 11 days, as we approach July 31st I can't help but get the song "Closing Time" by Semisonic stuck in my head, pretty much non-stop. It's not the worst song ever, so I shouldn't complain too much. I had the idea to start blogging because I feel like there were so many things that I was unprepared for, even just when we were shopping for the right house to purchase. Luckily, I have some really great friends and a great Realtor who was recommended to me - I feel like he really "gets us" and he wasn't afraid to tell it like it is, especially when I was getting all crazy and in my head with everything.

After putting in THREE other offers to houses, we finally snagged the fourth one. We probably looked at about 20 houses total. It seems like it's a hot time to buy right now, so we were outbid on the other 3 houses we put an offer in on.

I was actually pretty hesitant to even look at the house we picked in the first place. While it met the 3 Bedroom + 2 Bathroom criteria, it was only 1,088 square feet, which was a bit smaller than we had wanted. Since we both have some pretty space-consuming hobbies, we wanted to make sure that we'd have enough space for our current items, plus a little to grow. From the pictures, the inside of the house looked nice though and the kitchen had recently been updated with all new cabinets and appliances. Since we had literally just "lost" the 3rd house the night before, we decided that it can't hurt to go look at it anyways, just in case... the inside of the house did look pretty nice after all.

We walked into the house and were instantly shocked at how huge it was! The Living, Kitchen, and Dining Areas are all open floor plan so it's the perfect house for entertaining - which I loooooove to do, mainly for holidays and game nights. Every house we had visited so far, Monkey was pretty critical of the floors, so I expected that to be the case here, instead, he loved them! He found a few flaws, however, it wasn't anything that he couldn't fix himself (he has about 22yrs of flooring experience). We continued to walk through the house with smiles on our faces. The rooms were all a good size and we couldn't really find anything that we didn't like about the house. After walking through the house a few times, checking out the backyard, and whispering back and forth to each other, we decided to put an offer in right away!

On our way home, we couldn't help but be excited about the house, we started talking about all the things we could do to enhance the house and really make it a home for us. We heard back from our Realtor, Jason, the following day. He starts to say that the seller received multiple offers on the house, at this point, my heart sank AGAIN... This again, we're losing yet another house... Jason continued to go on though and said that we were the FIRST offer on the house though, and the seller's Realtor preferred to work with the first offer because they obviously believe in the golden rule of "first come, first served" - YES! We might be getting a home!! Everything was finally going our way, we signed all the paper work that night and started getting our ducks in a row.

Once everything was signed, we setup the inspections, first Home Inspection, then Termite. We also had to make a deposit into the Escrow Account.

• Escrow Deposit: $2,000
• Home Inspection: $325
• Termite Inspection: $95

The home inspection passed with flying colors, the inspector was actually shocked at how well it went, given that the house was a bit older.

The Termite inspection was clean-ish. They found some signs that at some point, there was some termites and there was a small amount of damage to the soffit. He found some wings and dead termites, but apparently this is pretty normal for Florida.

We received all the documentation the following day from each Inspector and then we were able to write up our "List of Demands" for the seller. Most of the stuff was little, though we definitely wanted the house tented - this would have been the largest/most expensive request. She agreed to our terms and then we had to schedule the Appraisal in order to see if they required any additional repairs.

• Home Appraisal: $550

This is where things started to go a little South for us. The appraisal came in at a lower amount than what we had offered. We knew that our offer was a bit higher, however, we did that in order to have the seller agree to pay the closing costs. At this point, we had to lower our offer, which meant that the seller was no longer willing to pay closing costs... however, we would be paying less for the house - so like, win/lose? In addition to the lack of closing costs, she backed out of the repairs we asked for.

List of requested repairs:

• ​Trim Trees that were hanging on the roof.
• Add boot to vent pipe on roof & caulk.
• Reverse hot/cold water on bathroom and kitchen sinks because they were setup wrong.
• Replace small section of screen in soffit where there was a hole.
• Replace section of soffit that had some mild water damage.
• Replace back door frame where there was some mild water damage from not properly painting/sealing the door.
• Termite Fumigation, just to be safe.

Okay, so now I am freaking out, crying, yelling, and about to give up altogether because the "cash to close" amount literally just doubled and she was no longer willing to do ANY of the repairs. This seemed like a dealbreaker for us, but we were able to negotiate a little more and ended up getting her to agree to still do the termite fumigation for us. So, we were once again going to buy this house! After all, if we stayed in our rental for another year, the rent would go up for the 3rd time and we already felt as though we were paying more for rent than what the house is worth.

After borrowing some money from my 401k, we finally had the rest of the money we needed to move forward. So that's where we are now! I keep going back and forth between being a nervous wreck and being super excited, but I've been on the upswing for about a week now, so I hope to keep this mood going, at least until after we close in 11 days.

Thanks for stopping by, I look forward to sharing our adventures with you!
~Chel