We left MI on July 6 and arrived in NC on July 8. We had to spend a few days in a motel until the closing happened and the previous owners moved out. We moved in on July 12. Here are two photos. The first was taken just before we left to head to NC. We are standing on our front porch of our MI home. We will miss that porch. The second photo is us standing on our front stoop here in NC. We will be unable to put a porch on this house but we have plans for a little front bricked in sitting area. That will probably be a project for next year. For now, we will be working on the interior.
We were here only a few days when our son Brian came from OH to help us get started on the first project. Originally I had planed to use the downstairs sun room for my art studio but, after moving in, we decided to use it for our office and put my studio in the upstairs loft area. This first photo is what the room looked like on moving day.
After Brian came the first thing we did was to empty it out and take down the shelves over the windows. Here is the empty room. Brian is painting the ceiling.
Here is what the finished room looks like. I'll post a picture with our office set up in a later blog post.
Another thing we did was to change out a light fixture that is over the dining area table. The one the previous owners had was not our style. The first photo is the one that was here and the second photo is the replacement.
It will be awhile before I have any new art work to post. This photo shows the loft area where my studio will be. Right now it is filled with boxes and stuff. It will be many weeks before I get it to where I can use it to paint. For now, the only painting going on here is on the walls. The whole place needs new paint including ceilings and trim. The sun room (or should I say office) is completely done. We are just doing the walls in the other rooms and will go back and do ceilings and trim at another time. Here is my future art studio.
Our bedroom and master bath are now usable. We will do the wall painting after we finish the great room. They need done but can wait till we run out of projects in the rest of the house. We did install glass doors on the shower. Here are photos of both rooms.
I hung some of my art in these rooms because it will be a while before we get around to painting the walls. It makes it feel more homey with art on the walls.
This blog is a way for me to keep track of all our remodel projects along with all the art I produce. As I look back on old posts it brings back memories. First of our Tucson years and how my career as an artist progressed. Next came the three years we spent in MI and the fun we had with all the renovations we did to our house there. I had the wonderful art studio and enjoyed the time I spent there creating new art. Now we are in NC and starting all over again. Even though we have only been here a few weeks, it is starting to feel like home. We love the area and especially our neighborhood. We have met many of our neighbors and everyone is very friendly. I'm looking forward to the time when my studio is set up and I can start painting again.
We have fallen into a routine of getting up early and taking a walk every morning. We work on the house during the day with trips out to Home Depot or the grocery store and other necessary places that go along with moving to a new state. We also try to take a walk every evening. We are living a very active life style.
I'll end this post with a photo I took of a butterfly on a bush outside the window of our dining area. I think of it as a symbol of the beginning of our new life in our new home in NC.
As we get older we reflect on our past life and the areas we lived in starting with our many years in Ohio then our retirement to Tucson, AZ. We left AZ after 20 years to move to MI for family reasons. Our 3 years there were good years but we had a hard time with the winter weather so we knew it was time to move some place warmer. We chose NC because all our family members are still in this time zone and all are less than a 700 mile drive away. We enjoyed each place that we lived and had many friends we had to leave behind. We try to keep in touch with most of them and hope to see them in the future as they visit us or we visit them. We will make new friends here. Life is every changing.
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