Seaplanes Over Seattle

This weekend was crazy! Glenn and I have been very busy preparing for the closing on our house while also preparing for Karlene to come visit us. In between all the prepping we also had to come up with a good Mother's Day gift for her as well. Nothing really sounded good until Glenn suggested we do a seaplane tour over Seattle! When all else fails, go unique!

So on Saturday, after breakfast at The Rusty Pelican, we drove up to Mt. Vernon to see how the tulips were doing. Unfortunately the weather decided to take a turn for the worse and it rained a bunch up there so we didn't really have the opportunity to get out of the car and walk around. Bummer. We stopped off at the outlets on the way back and then had lunch. At about 3:30 we hopped on the trolley up to SLU and made our way over to Kenmore Air. It was exciting for Glenn and I because we didn't share what the activity for the afternoon was going to be. I'm not going to lie... while I was a little nervous that Karlene might not want to do it, I was a little on edge myself!

We snapped a few pictures outside before boarding the tiny little plane! There were two people in the back, Glenn and I in the middle, and Karlene up front acting as co-pilot. The ride itself was incredible. I have never done anything quite like that in my life. I took so many pictures up there, and Glenn got quite a few as well.

I tried uploading the videos of our take off and landing, but that doesn't seem to be working now. I'll try and get them to work later.

You can also check out the album version of the slideshow here:
Seaplane Pictures

In other news, today we signed all the papers for our house! I can't believe it's actually happening. It's been a long and tiring road for us but it finally seems as though it's all going to be worth it. Since all the papers have to be submitted to two places, one in Tacoma and the other in Bellevue, we didn't get our keys today. If we are really really lucky, tomorrow (Wednesday) we can get them, but it looks more like Thursday. Either way, we are so excited and so grateful to be just about finished!

I hope all the mothers had the wonderful day that they deserve. I know I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful mom and a fantastic mother in law. I know not everyone is as lucky as I am :-)

Love to all!

Inspection

Thankfully our inspection went pretty well. We arrived maybe 20 minutes or so after the inspector started in the basement. It was a pretty long inspection at around 4-5 hours. I'm not complaining though, it just means it was thorough.

There weren't any major issues, just typical problems you would expect with a 100+ year old house. Basically there is still some knob and tube wiring that should be updated at some point, some ungrounded outlets, and some minor plumbing issues. The main things with the plumbing are a missing P-Trap in the downstairs shower and the pipes in the basement are mismatched. The one coming from the sewer is galvanized steel (that one is original) and the other is copper. Those two types of metal do not play nice together and over time will rust and cause leaks. The inspector says it is not a big deal right now, but it should be addressed in the future. We should also replace the sump pump because it has been clogged up with paint.

We don't have any moisture issues in the basement (hooray!) and the house seems pretty sound. The inspector said that our kitchen was one of the nicer kitchens that he's inspected so that's always good to hear. Some of the minor issues with the house that are mostly due to age are the floors aren't level, some of the windows have been painted shut, and there are a few cracks in the plaster. Nothing a couple of do-it-yourselfers can't handle. The bathroom fans don't really work very well so we should probably replace those.

Other than that, things look great for the house! We did experience some frustration when we first walked into the kitchen. The really nice stainless steel french door fridge had been replaced with an unattractive black fridge with a cracked handle. Our realtor called to find out where the other one is and apparently it "broke." I don't believe that for one second, but what can you do?

Our appraisal came back at a very favorable 145K, so we'll be getting 15K in instant equity! That is definitely great to hear. Our lender actually said that it is very uncommon now for a house to get appraised that much higher than purchase price. No complaints here!

So now we are wrapping things up to prepare for closing, which has actually been reset by our lender to May 11 as opposed to May 12. She thought it would be best to allow ourselves one extra day in case any unexpected setbacks popped up. Good thinking. That means that exactly 1 week from today, Glenn and I will be the proud owners of lovely home in Tacoma! Yay!

Love to all!!!

Vintage Finds and Another Sneak Peek

Over the weekend we checked out a couple furniture stores that carry all the coolest mid-century modern stuff. I just love the look and feel of that era of furniture. Sleek clean lines paired with functionality just tickles my fancy. There's a really awesome store in Magnolia called The House that we stopped by and they had sooooo much stuff I wanted! There was a Broyhill Brasilia table that I had my eyeball on so I am hoping it's still there by the time we move into the house. It was a really great price and had 2 leaves. Anyway, we found a couple fun things that we purchased. First, we have this cute in/out tray in a great orange color. I just really liked it and I think it will go really well with the color scheme I have in mind for the kitchen. I think it will be a great place to store and sort mail.
The other fun piece we found is a vintage handmade clock. It's missing the clock mechanism so we're going to pick up a new one and I am going to learn how to make a clock! This piece is also going to be painted pink to match my cabinet and the metal rods will be spray painted the awesome chrome color that are on the door pulls.
In between doing laundry and taking Rally to play over at his girlfriend's house, I managed to get a couple coats of black paint on the trim. It's not perfectly even, but I think with a really thin brush I should be able to fix things pretty easily. Things are starting to come together for my cabinet and I'm really excited!

Love to all!

Sunshine Filled Weekend

This weekend was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining brightly and the skies were boasting a beautiful blue with puffy pillows for clouds. On Friday after Glenn got home from work we took Rally out to the deck and took a nice long nap in the sunshine. It felt so good soaking up all those delicious Vitamin D filled rays of sun. It was also nice to get a little color. I've been wondering if I might end up looking like a sparkly vampire if I didn't spend more time in the sun! We spent the rest of the night inside and watched Fast and Furious (the fourth one) to prepare for the awesomeness of Fast Five the next morning.

Saturday morning we drove out to Gig Harbor to watch Fast Five in DBox seats. If you weren't already familiar with DBox, they are basically seats that have a motion code programmed into them to go along with the movie you are watching. If you've ever been on the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, it's like that. They're a TON of fun and really cool. We saw the last F&F in DBox and had such a blast so we knew we would definitely be doing it again. As far as the movie goes, it was AWESOME! I LOVED every action packed second of it. Plus, I am definitely not going to object to a movie with Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and the Rock. It's definitely a movie to kick off summer the right way.

Since we were in Gig Harbor for the movie, we made our way over to our future 'Hood in Tacoma. We drove by our soon-to-be house (fingers still crossed!) and I giggled as we drove by the house down the street with all the crazy decorations. We're starting to get really excited. I've even began a countdown using the snowflake decorations from Christmas that I never took down. Our inspection is tomorrow (Tuesday) and we are really excited to get back in the house. It feels like it's been forever and we're starting to forget what it looks like inside!

I finally got to spray painting my hardware yesterday. We spent the late sunny afternoon out in the sun again. This time Glenn showed me how to spray paint. I was too scared to just attempt it on my own, so I made Glenn show me how to do it. I'm such a wuss!
We started by spraying the door handles and the diamond panel insets with glossy black. I just loved the way the diamonds looked with the black. I knew it would look perfect against the fabric I chose.
As far as the door pulls go, I've been waffling on that one. I thought that I would try and match the 50's hardware that we picked up at Sanford & Sons.
After one coat of the "chrome" spray paint I knew it wasn't going to match but I was really liking the look. It has a soft shine to it, almost like brushed nickel. The pulls look fantastic against the bright pink so I decided to spray the remaining handles later in the week.
Finally I got to pulling the fabric off of the door panels. They were attached with glue.
After a dusty mess I scraped off the remaining fabric with my putty knife. I am getting super excited about the way my piece is turning out. When it is all done it will be 100% Bri, and that's exactly what I want it to be.

With all the time we spent outside waiting for paint to dry and enjoying the sun, we thought that Rally would get to see his girlfriend for sure. He did! They are just so stinkin' cute together. They really do love each other. They don't act the same way around other dogs. Rally and Mika played together for quite a while before Rally started to get tired. It seems like just yesterday he had boundless energy. Meanwhile, Mika was still all sorts of ready to play. She's only 1, so she's always ready for fun. Rally is nearing his 4th birthday this June! I can't believe it. We've had him for a little over 3 years now. He's such a good boy :o)

We ended up getting a little more color yesterday as well, maybe a little more than we intended. Oh well! We're certainly looking forward to this week and are very excited for Tuesday to get here so we can hopefully get the final green light on the house! After that I am going to start packing things and before we know it, we'll be moving!

I hope everyone is doing well! Love to all!