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Turns out, I'm Sara-the-tool-girl Kehoe!

This weekend has been full of Achievement Unlocked level adulting. We officially have possession of the house and have spent the last two days working away at getting it ready to move in. Turns out, I’m a do-it-yourself type of person. This weekend I learned, on the fly, how to:

1) Patch holes in drywall
2) Change the locks and handles on a door
3) Paint an entire house interior
4) Re-grout a shower

We are still in progress on the painting, but danged if I didn’t just waltz into Home Depot ready to get shit done.

The satisfaction of looking at something and saying “I did that” really fueled me all weekend. Getting your hands dirty and fixing up your own house is very rewarding. Sure, I could have called a locksmith to rekey the house for $75…. Or for $83 I could not only rekey the doors but change out those horrible doorknobs no appointment needed! (Time was a bit of a factor the previous owners left the final key “under the trash can” and we never found it.)

Turns out, if you give me a screwdriver I will mess around with stuff until I can get it to work. I installed new door handles and deadbolts on the front and back doors. I felt pretty awesome sitting on the floor surrounding by neat piles of old deadbolt and new deadbolt with an electric screwdriver in my hand.

When I looked at the holes in the wall, I hit up Homedepot.com, watched a couple videos and fixed them myself. We were not expecting an 8x14in hole in the wall when we moved it, but there it was in the middle of the living room wall. Turns out the previous owners, when they mounted their TV, had cut several holes in the wall so they could run the cables without having to look at them. Honestly, from an aesthetic prospective what they did made sense. It just sucked to walk into your first-ever-I-own-this-shit living room and see holes in your drywall. But never fear, because I took care of that! A few adhesive patches, some putty, and a fresh coat of paint and you wouldn’t notice it.

Those terrible colors in every room in the house? (Almost) handled. The previous owners liked a liberal splash of color and ever room in the house was at least two different colors. Another trip to Home Depot and a liberal coat of high quality paint and the kitchen, living room, entry hall, hallway and guest bathroom are a nice new simple color. A good friend, a professional site manager for a contacting company, gave us some great advice:

You can buy two gallons of the cheaper stuff or one gallon of the good stuff. Guess which way saves you time and money?

When we were at the store we took our time to look at our options and not go solely on price. (Get me in a grocery store and I will compare prices down to the price-per-unit level and go with the cheaper option 97% of the time.) We went with the brand that swore it could cover any color in one coat and, while some rooms required a coat and a half, are very glad we decided to pay a bit more for our paint.

Re-grouting a shower? Cakewalk. If you can ice a cake, you can grout a shower.

Today my parents came to see the house for the first time. They really liked it and helped us brainstorm ideas for fixing the place up. As my dad put it, the house “has great bones” and we can really make it our own.

Friday we are having our refrigerator delivered so we will have cold drinks for our friends when they come over for a Paint Party Saturday morning.

“Nothing says grown-up like begging your friends to help you paint your new house! We supply the food and drinks, you provide the manual labor? Sound like a deal? Drop in when you can, leave when you have better things to do on a Saturday.

See what our place looks like before our amazing friends help us make it look awesome! (Proper house warming party will come in the future.)

The more the merrier, so bring along some other sucker (I mean, helpful person who is also super good looking) to lend a hand and you get +100 friendship points!”

Up next: a trip to Ikea for some shelving and set up a date with the movers.

Next DIY project: finish painting and clean the carpets.

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