Before moving into our home sweet home there are few things we need to take care of: replace the roof, get an electrician to work on the entire electrical system and fix the bathroom.

We’ll hire someone to do those things.

In the meantime we’re gonna use some elbow grease to take down old curtains, peel off all the wallpaper, sand the walls, clean up the basement, replace locks on doors, remove all the carpet, etc.

I decided to take care of the wallpaper first. I watched few videos and it seemed quite an easy task…it always does. In reality it was not.

They say that you’re supposed to remove one layer of paper first, and then the other layer with a wet sponge, so 2 layers in total. Well, our wallpaper had 3 and it was not really paper, but more similar to vinyl silver paper. I had no clue. Only the kitchen had one crusty layer super easy to remove.

So I did more research, and found out that some people use a steamer, which is also what Nate told me to use.

I thought I gave it a try with the iron first, and it worked. Then we decided to get a proper steamer to accelerate the whole process.

Scritchity Scratchity, Steamity Steamity, and voila’ no more wallpaper! Also thank you to our friend Katyana who came to help!

While I was dealing with soggy sticky paper, Nate was taking care of the tree out front that had to be cut, and then he replaced the locks on doors.

During all this intense labor, we met some of our neighbors who came to say hi: Jane and her husband Manuel from Spain and Moka the dog, Francis, Virginia, Nancy and Rosie the dog. Everybody seems very nice, so nice that one day Francis brought us a whole tray of brownies as a welcome!

When we bought the house I immediately told Nate: “I wonder if the neighbors will bring us a pie.”

Growing up in Italy I used to watch American movies where, whenever someone moved to a place the neighbors would welcome them with a pie. For us was brownies, but still I was over the moon, I couldn’t believe it!

We’re lucky to have found a home where we can experience these kind of things, because from what I heard it doesn’t happen everywhere.

I can’t wait to move in officially.

Ciao for now!