Welcome to Hoboken!

Well, it's official. Brian and I are HOMEOWNERS! We closed on our very own 2-bedroom condo in Hoboken, New Jersey this past Monday!

Here we are after we walked out of our attorney's office, keys in hand!

We didn't close until late in the day on Monday, so we spent the night on an air mattress in the dining room after our first dinner in our new home! (Panera Bread soup served on the floor!)

Bright and early Tuesday morning Mom and Dad R. came down from Massachusetts with a van, and Mom and Dad C. came up from Maryland with a truck! We had a bunch of friends come by to help us move, clean and paint throughout the day too!

Marc washing the front windows.

Sharon, Joe and Kelly scrubbed and clorox-ed the kitchen from top to bottom!

Kelly ended up with the horrible tasks of cleaning the MOLD out of the back of the refrigerator, and getting the sticky tar-like dust collection off of the top of the cabinets! She definitely deserves the good friend medal of honor for those ones!

For those of you who don't know the backstory on the condo, it was owned by a bachelor for 8 years until he got married this past May and moved in with his wife. So not only was the apartment un-lived in for 3 months before we got there, I don't think he ever lifted a finger to clean the whole time he lived there! Mom R. has thus dubbed him "pig man".

Here is a shot of Brian vacuuming - this may be the first and last time this ever happens, so we had to get a picture :)

Dad R. spent most of the day fixing things and making sure the washer-dryer was working (yes - that's right - we have our very own miniature laundry room!) while Mom R. was in charge of the painting crew in our bedroom. Mom C. worked on unpacking and washing all of our new dishes and kitchen things, while Dad C. washed the bathrooms, fixed a surprise toilet overflow and worked on all of the odd jobs that came up.

Wednesday was filled with more cleaning, more unpacking, more painting and several runs to home depot! Most important thing on the list - new toilet seats!!! (Pig man had the weird squishy kind!)

After a couple more coats of paint and a few hours to dry, we were able to move our bed from the living room to the bedroom! However, it got a little stuck on the way up at one point...

Fortunately Dad C. and Brian were able to figure it out after running out the back door and around to the front door to get at it from the other side.

Here are some pictures I took before we left on Thursday...

Front Door of our building

Living Room

The antique telephone table from Cleveland fits perfectly by the front door!

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Master Bath

(We have a 1/2 bath too!)

Our upstairs hallway - laundry room straight ahead, linen closet to the left and 1/2 bath to the right.

Our Bedroom

Our bedroom view

Our room again...

And again...

The 2nd bedroom/office/storage unit for now!

We wanted to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who came to help us this week!

Mom and Dad R., Mom and Dad C., Kelly, Joe, Sharona, Marc, Bean, Danielle - you guys ROCK!

We got so much more done than we thought we would and couldn't have done it without you!

It was hard to leave on Thursday, as we headed back to tour. We're in Atlanta for the next week, then Tampa and then we're home for the wedding! 27 days!