And that's exactly what I'll be doing in about 36 hours.

Well, actually, I'll be watching men from the moving company haul all of our stuff that's been sitting in storage for the last month into our just about move-in ready house!

We've been busy little bees for the last few weeks, which is why I've been a really bad blogger as of late and have not shared many progress pictures with you. My plan tomorrow is to take a TON (yes 2000 pounds worth) of photos to share all of the progress that has been made as of late with you, my hopefully still loyal readers.

It's been pretty exciting at the soon to be casa de Brandstaetter. We've been doing really fun projects like installing toilets, shower heads and bathroom hardware.

My husband became a miter saw/base moulding expert this past weekend while installing all of the base and toe kick moulding in the family room.

Our carpets and windowsills are squeaky clean as are our family room, sun room and kitchen floors. Our pantry is wiped down, our icky downstairs half bath is clean and all of the tools that have been living in random rooms in our house have been compiled and are ready for their trek back to my parent's and brother's houses now that all of our stuff will be here on Friday!

Stella's dog run has been hung between a post on the front porch and a huge pine tree in the front lawn. Hopefully they can both hold up in the event that she sees a deer or some other "new friend" in the near future. I can envision our front porch coming down and Stella running through the subdivision dragging a post behind her. She's been known to drag things from her collar in the past...

Yes, that is a heat register cover hanging from Stella's collar. She is very special. Very, very special.

So, anyway, movers will be coming around 8:00 on Friday morning and we could not be more excited! We are so excited, in fact, that we will be throwing bags of drywall we ripped down in our basement into a dumpster tomorrow night in preparation for Friday's move. We'll just call it a little warm-up exercise for the unpacking we'll be doing all weekend.

Be jealous. Or, if you don't want to be jealous, you can always come over and sling some lawn bags full of drywall into a dumpster. I would never want you guys to feel left out from all the fun having. So come one, come all. Or just one? Anyone?

I wish I had gas. Natural Gas, to be exact. And no, not the kind of "natural" gas you get when you eat a lot of beans.

I'm talking about the kind that WE Energies needs to come out and install in our house so that I can start making pancakes and bacon on this bad boy...

(I really need to work on my photography skills apparently. Nice bucket, vacuum hose and blue tape, eh?)

And then, after I'm done making pancakes on our beautiful new gas range, I can wash my syrupy dishes using this...

And put any leftover pancakes (not that there will be any) into this...

(We have the fridge, but the picture I took of that is even more awful than the range. Picture big, bright glare shining back at you)

So, as you can see this past weekend we officially became the proud owners of our new appliances. And installed our new faucet. Which I ordered from Amazon at a much better price than the big orange store had to offer.

We also got the upstairs hallway painted by Joe's Professional Painting Services, LLC (AKA, my dad. Thanks, dad!).

And put in new light fixtures in the laundry room, back hallway and upstairs hallway. Well "I" didn't put them in. That would be the handy work of my awesome husband.

And cleaned out our disgusting basement, of which we have zero before and during pictures.

For a full visual, picture this on the walls:

And no, it is not wood. It is 1970s fake wood embossed paneling. With mold crawling up behind sections of it because of past water issues. Ick.

And then we had a pile that looked similar to this on our floor for about a week:

Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating slightly, but it was pretty bad. That coupled with the mouse poop from the mice that were clearly living in our basement ceiling. Disgusting.

Have I mentioned yet how grateful I am for our friends Tom & Zach who came to help Erik demo the basement? Well, I am. Extremely grateful. Because of them I did not have mouse poop fall into my face.

But I did get to help clean it up.

And now our basement looks like this:

I know its not glamorous or anything but it is in much better shape than when we first got into the house. And it no longer smells like must, mold and mouse poop.

Plus, the demo has allowed much easier access for a plumber to come run the gas into the necessary areas of the house in (fingers crossed) a few weeks. Making it even more feasible for us to actually move into the house that we are putting all of this love and sweat into.

And then we can regain ownership of our dog who, I'm convinced, now believes that my parents are her new mom & dad. Partly because we are at work all day and at the house on the weekends. And partly because she's just a brat. She's lucky she's so cute.

Anyone else have any exciting stories like cleaning up a mouse poop filled basement from their weekend? Or a dog that no longer loves them? Or a strong desire to have gas?

Remember this?

And how me, my cousin and 2 pry bars made it into this...

Well zero progress has been made on what will become our future built-in bookcase, but I was browsing the interwebs for some inspiration and think I found some.

If only Stella was small enough to snuggle in a cute little opening like that. But alas, she's not. She's a moose. An 85 pound moose that sleeps. And snores. And farts while she's sleeping. And snoring.

But I digress. We were talking about bookcases. Glorious built-in bookcases.

Like this.

And this.

 Or maybe this.

And what I believe is my personal favorite:

I don't know what it is about that last one, but it sure tickles my fancy.

What do you think? Anyone else have any inspirational bookcase ideas they can send my way?

If you remember, our hall bath floor used to look like this:

It only took a little geometry, a circular saw and a lot of patience to get a new subfloor cut properly.

And then my dad to screw it into place while Erik was in Wyoming traveling for work.

I followed up with some stick on tiles from Menards. Note to anyone buying stick on tiles at 9:30 PM... Always check all of the boxes. Otherwise you may get to make another trip back to Menards to return the groutable tiles when what you really wanted were the rounded corners. Lesson learned.

Luckily, the floor now looks like this, thanks to said tiles, a straight edge, a blue pen and a razor blade:

And today, I got the painting done. And the nasty bathtub washed. So all that's left are about 15 more things in order to make this a functional bathroom. 1 of the 15 is a toilet. Minor detail, right?

And yes, I laid the tile myself.

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In other news, my dad painted pretty much the entire downstairs this past week. Some fun before and afters of the progress that has been made are included below.

Family Room

Foyer

Dining Room

Progress. Hard to tell. But it's light yellow. And we still need a place for those cabinets...

Living Room

Isn't she pretty? I think I want to buy her and put her in our kitchen. But I'm not going to pay as much as the big orange store is asking for her. I'm thinking ebay or efaucets is the better way to go. Anyone have any good tips on where to buy a good faucet at a reasonable price?

Here is our current, leaking, impossible to turn off because the handle is broken faucet.

And yes, that is a toothbrush. No it has not been used for brushing teeth. It may have been used for cleaning cabinet hardware. But I really don't remember.

As you can see we are limited to mounting it in only one hole. And yes, that sounds very dirty. I am such a 12 year old sometimes.