Home Sweet Home

Well, here it is! We finally got our DSL hooked up at home so I can now post pics of our place. For those of you who don't know the story, this house was definately an answered prayer in my book. The week Mike flew up here to find us housing was frustrating. The first house we thought we might rent fell through (probably a good thing now in hindsight) and apartments wanted $1400-$1500 in rent for a 6 month lease. So halfway through the housing hunt, things weren't looking good. Then a family in the church contacted Mike and said they might have a place that would work for us. It was a cozy home located in Gurnee (the exact area where we want to plant), close to Gurnee Mills mall (yeah for me!), 3 bedroom/1 and half bath (bigger than any old apartment), a one car garage (great for storage) and a big backyard for Sarai to play. And they were asking a much more reasonable amount for rent compared to apartment options. So I was very excited when Mike called and told me about this possiblilty. The catch was the previous renters had pretty much trashed the place and our landlord, Jeff Robinson, was redoing just about everything inside. Nice for us because we would get all new stuff but Jeff now only had a week and half to get a majority of it done rather than the month he had anticipated. And boy did he work his tail off! I added some of the before pics at the end of this post just so you could see the amazing transformation. He put new floor in the entire house minus the laundry room (he wants to eventually do that). He gutted the kitchen and put in new cabinets and countertops. Love it! So much fun to cook in a brand new kitchen. And he gutted the bathrooms. He still has a few things he wants to do but the house has come a long way. We have already met several of our neighbors and they are all great. And we have a wonderful neighborhood park only blocks from our house. So needless to say, you can understand why I believe God wanted us to be in this house. Enjoy the pics!

Oh and you can literally run circles in the house! You come into the living room, walk into the kitchen/dining room, through the laundry room, into the Master's halfbath, into the Master bedroom, out to the hall, past the two other bedrooms and full bath, and back into the living room! Crazy huh! And I actually like it :-) And please excuse the mess of boxes. We are still moving in.

The back bedroom is currently our storage/office space. We need to get the garage cleaned up so we can move this stuff out there. This is literally as far as you can walk into the room! The chair to the left of the pic is at the desk and we can get to it.


This is the full bath. It is tiny so I couldn't get an angle on the tub. It is to the right of the pic behind the door.

Looking back down the hallway from the living room. Oh, and I didn't get any pics of Sarai's room. She was napping when I put this post together.

And here are the BEFORE pictures!

And just for fun I thought you might like to see what the house looked like with snow! The week Mike was here, it snowed! Go figure.