New House: 3 Projects We’re Tackling Before Moving In

A huge thanks to Macy’s and ShopStyle for sponsoring today’s post.

Things are starting to happen over at the new house!  If you missed the news, we (finally) bought a house almost two weeks ago and wasted NO time getting started on things we wanted to change before moving in.  Make sure to watch the full home tour on my last post where I walk you through our full future plans.  We’re planning on moving in within the next 3 or so weeks, so today, I’m sharing what we’re planning to tackle before moving in, and teaming up with Macy’s and Google to showcase the Nest line and an easy change they are helping us with!

THREE PROJECTS WE’RE DOING BEFORE MOVING:

Removing the popcorn ceilings.  If you’ve been following along with me on Instagram Stories, you may have seen a sneak peek of this happening and it turned out better than I ever thought it could!  This was #1 on our list before moving in for a few different reasons.  First, it completely dates the place and we want the house looking as new as possible — our house is from the late 80’s, and we want a fresh feeling throughout.  Secondly, it’s one of the messiest projects to tackle ever and is TERRIBLE for air quality, so this was a must-do before we were even close to moving in.  Our contractor had his team scrape and then sand down the ceilings (some rooms required two rounds if they had been previously painted over), and after a thorough cleaning, they will move to priming and painting which should help make everything look even and fresh.  This little project caused a frenzy over on my DMs — I had so many questions coming in from you all who are interested in doing this at your homes as well.  As I mentioned, it’s one of the messiest projects and is probably best done without any furniture, electronics, rugs, etc. so I wouldn’t recommend pursuing this project if you’re already living in the home.  The dust from being sanded not only goes everywhere (and I mean everywhere), but it’s thick and disgusting… you need a mask to walk around while it’s being done.  I’d keep it as far away from your stuff as possible! 

A fresh coat of paint.  Apparently, paint is the best (and easiest) return on your investment, so we’re planning to paint most of the house before moving in, including the trim work.  We’re planning to be at this house for the long-run, and like the project above, it’s easiest to do without any furniture.  Not only that, it’ll also help tone down the personality the house has currently and get it to a very neutral place — a blank slate for us!  I was afraid of leaving the current paint in some of the rooms (even if I “sort of” liked it) because I don’t want the wall colors to dictate the direction of our furniture and overall decor choices.  We’re painting the trim Extra White from Sherwin Williams and are 99.9% sure we’re going with White Dove by Benjamin Moore for the remainder of the rooms (minus the dining room and living room, which are going with a light grey for now).  I’m so excited to see the house transform with this project over the next couple of weeks!

Upgrading to a smart home.  After being a huge fan of the Nest Security Cameras (we have 3 set up in our current house to keep an eye on package deliveries when we’re not home), I was excited at the thought of adding the Nest Learning Thermostats to our new house!  We were able to install one in our house already (in a room that didn’t require any painting) and I LOVE being able to view and control the temperature from the Nest app!  We’re planning to install the other three thermostats when all the painting is done!  The Nest Learning Thermostat is a bit different than the other previous generations — it actually learns your behavior (connected to Wi-Fi) and then after about a week, it starts automatically programming itself!  Say you like to head to bed around 11 o’clock each night and always turn the heat down to 65 degrees — and then head back downstairs the next morning at 7 to make coffee and start breakfast, and always turn it back up to 70 degrees.  It will learn that behavior and start to do it for you — so you can get out of the bed with the house already heating up!  It also knows when you leave the house (it can tell when your phone leaves the area) and can set itself to Eco Temperature to help save energy!  It easily shows Energy History reports and can even show tips and tricks on how to use less energy!  I love getting my Google and Nest products at Macy’s — you may remember my previous post with Macy’s and my favorite Google Home from back in the fall! 

If you’re planning a wedding, or know someone who is, I think this would make an amazing gift!  You can create your wedding registry and easily add any of the Google and Nest products to your wishlist — it’ll be a gift that pays you back over time… and who doesn’t LOVE that?!

There’s still a lot to do before we make the move official, and then we’ll be hanging tight waiting for the kitchen design to be completed before ripping out the lower level floors and demoing the kitchen this spring!  Make sure to follow along with the house renovation over on Instagram for some real-time updates — #GLAMsweethome is going to keep me insanely busy over the next few months and I’m so excited to see it all come together!

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