What's John been doing during all this?

Hello Everyone this is our new house!!!!

I am sure some of you are wondering what I have been doing during all this wedding planning, with me being in North Dakota, Kristi being in St. Louis, and the wedding being over in IL. Well, I have been diligently working on our new house.

After several months of us looking, me here in Mandan and Kristi looking via the internet we finally decided on a 2700+ sqft, 4 bedroom, 2 bath, multi-level house with a great yard in Mandan. We plan on doing a little remodeling after the wedding and things have settled down. We closed on the house the week after Thanksgiving and I started moving in that day. Well actually I was lucky enough to unload my uhaul into the garage the day before. Thanks Mom, Dad and Dan for the help unloading.

After getting most of the stuff arranged in the house Kristi and I picked some paint colors at Christmas time and during out meeting in Sioux City. Since we had some of the colors picked out I need to get them put up on the wall. This won't be much trouble for some of the rooms like the living room, hall and current master bedroom. However the sunroom, family room, downstairs bath and kitchen are going to be a bit more of a challenge. Some rooms like the sunroom, family room, and bathroom are practically floor to ceiling wallpaper. Which before I can paint, I have to strip the wallpaper off, then after the paper is off, I have to wash the walls to get the glue off and then rinse them off again in order to get the soap and glue residue off the walls. Then if the wall does not need to be textoned I can paint the walls. What a messy job that can be. So far I have gotten the 2 walls in the front bedroom cleaned.

The other big job I have been working on is down in the unfinished part of the basement. I have been trying to make it a little more energy efficient down there. I have been working on sealing up the cracks in the floor and concrete walls and filling in gaps along the foundation with expandable foam to cut down on the drafts. My current part of that project is putting water sealing paint on the cement walls, both to seal and to really brighten it up down there. Bare cement can be so dreary. If you have never worked with that kind of paint before it really gives the arms a workout putting it on.

Oh and don't any of you out there think that I am not helping Kristi with the wedding plans. Anything I can help her with I do and of course she lets me put my 2 cents in on some of the big stuff. Like tuxes and music, and of course I am also the one that has been tasked with planning the honeymoon.

Well that is all I have time to post for now, I have to get back to the basement.