Recent Discoveries

This whole "home owner" thing has brought me to a whole new world of learning and fun, if you can call it fun...haha. Sure I think we all know a little about maintaining a home, either from watching our parents or grandparents or just being a TV addict and watching too much HGTV! We knew going into this deal it would be hard, and all of our free time would be consumed by the project.

Well here's what we've done so far:
1) Tore out the rotted shed
2) Painted the living room and most of the trim
3) Tore out everything in the basement (except the furnace) that was water damaged
4) Ripped up flooring in the "internet lounge" and mudroom
5) Tore out 4ft of drywall in the "internet lounge", downstairs bathroom and mudroom
6) Cleaned downstairs windows
7) Mowed yard (see below for why this was a "job")
8) Installed hot water heater
9) Repaired plumbing only to find more issues each time something was fixed
10) Converted to energy star light fixtures/CFB (compact florescent bulbs)
11) Installed new mailbox

The list of things yet to be done is awfully long, so I won't bore you.....but here is what I have learned:

• Push mowing a 1/2 acre lot, seems easy right?!?! NO, its a horrible amount of work....especially when said mower is not self-propelled
• When tearing down a shed, make sure to check for skunks living below, thankfully no one was sprayed by the skunk
• Make sure you load the paint roller properly to avoid doing 3 coats of paint when two could have done it
• Fixing one pipe usually means others will start leaking
• Toilets are not as complicated as they seem

I'm sure that I could go on, but I'm sure that it would only bore everyone who even reads this....I'll keep you all updated as things move forward. Now we just have to wait on the $8,000 tax credit to arrive and we can get some major things done....like have a working toilet and a non-molding counter top!

I've been so bad about blogging....

To be honest its been a good two weeks since I've read any of the blogs I follow or even left someone a comment, so tonight will be a catch up night! I'm sorry to all those bloggers who I normally comment and read weekly. Things have been crazy busy lately and I've just been so tired at night that I don't even get on here!

Here is a cool photo of a rainbow I saw on Tuesday to start things off. I was driving out to the house and saw this and I just had to slow down and take a picture! Its been at least 4 years since I last saw a rainbow!

Everything with the house is coming along, its going slow, but its getting there. We have about 90% of the plumbing issues fixed and have started on some of the cosmetic stuff. I painted the living room, we tore out more drywall and priced out a new fridge (we got a used stove, washer and dryer), counter tops for the kitchen, bathroom stuff and some lighting. I was honestly suprised at how low cost an EnergyStar kitchen light was at Lowes! We are going to hit some garage sales this weekend to look for a kitchen table and maybe an entertainment center and a few other odds and ends we need.

Things with my dad are about the same. He is at a job hunt conference kinda thing today and tomorrow during the day. He's had one interview and went to a semi-crummy job fair yesterday. Its weird with him being around the house, but kinda nice too because a few things went haywire around here over the weekend that he had time to fix. We are hopeful that he will have another job here soon!

Well, I guess that's it for me! I'll catch up on my reading and what not after a short nap....4-5 hours of sleep a night is totally not enough.....

Life changes

As of Friday, my dad is unemployed. Legally, I'm not allowed to say much about it bc of this confidentiality thing he had to sign on his last day. It really hasn't sunk in with me yet....I guess maybe it will next week when he's not gone by the time I wake up and when our freezer is no longer full of his products. I'm just so hopeful that he will find work soon, this is probably the scariest time our family has been through besides when we moved down here from Michigan. I just pray they can keep their home and vehicles. Its going to be really hard and its probably a good thing that I am moving out soon.

The house is coming along nicely. Yesterday I started painting the living room, but didn't get too far. Andrew and his brother tore down the rotted shed in the backyard and disrupted a skunks home, and thankfully no one got sprayed, lol. His dad worked on the plumbing but there are still some issues, but we can now get water from a spicket down in the basement near the well pump. Today, if it doesn't rain Andrew is going to finish the drainage ditch and I'm going to finish painting. Then I can move along to the kitchen or upstairs hallway, or get the floors cleaned really good.

Other than that, not much is going on. Just working, fixing the house and trying to be here for my parents.

More house stuff (to bore you) lol

Now that progress is finally starting to be made on the house I find myself thinking about every little thing that I want to do! These are some photos I found online.

Kitchen - I hate the cabinets, this is more my style.

Bedroom, obviously ours is not that big, but I love those colors! I'd like to get a nice bed frame at some point too.


My office - I get the little upstairs room to do whatever I want with!!! I'd love a desk like this with a nice organization center.



Bathroom - Well one of them. I know its kinda like the bedroom, but that might be cool for the one upstairs.



We picked out the paint for the living room tonight, its going to be Homestead Sage, its a pretty color, not too dark and it will look nice with the furniture. I'm going to just keep the trim white and make a window seat for the bay window. I've got some swatches to see what will look good in the kitchen, but I have a good deal of hole filling to do in there before I can paint, and it has to be primed, and of course the ceiling needs done too! Andrew thinks by my birthday the house will be done. I'm thinking more mid-June....anyone wanna place bets?!?!

A weekend of hard work.....

We gutted a good deal of the house this weekend, man I'm still feeling horribly sore. I know this might sound "lazy" but I don't normally do work like that, bending, lifting and busting apart floors with a screwdriver and hammer....but anyways, here is what we did! (Sorry for those who are bored with this house stuff already!)


I never took a picture of the "before" of the basement bc I couldn't get the lights working down there, but here it is after. The other owners had tried to finish it, but as you know it flooded and all that had to be torn out. There is still some water down there but the dehumidifier is drying the place out. It honestly looks a lot better now.

This will eventually be the office area or as Andrew calls it the "internet lounge." It had a wood floor that was all messed up from being flooded so I tore that all up since I couldn't help to much in the basement (it was making me sneeze a lot even with a respirator on). It only took about an hour to get it all up and out of there. I'm not sure what we'll do with the floor since this is a converted garage, we might do ceramic tiles or just paint it with that glossy garage floor paint and get a large area rug, but we'll see!

This week I'm going to try to finish stripping the kitchen wallpaper and maybe rent a Rug Doctor and do the upstairs carpets. Andrew is going to get the plumbing fixed and fix the run off for the gutters out in the yard, then the gutters that are messed up and finally we can start cleaning the bathrooms and get and estimate on the furnace and hot water heater.

Whew!

Introducing......THE HOUSE!!!!!

Obviously, this is the front of the house. Where the window is on the bottom left is the room in the worst shape (besides the basement) due to the water damage. But the windows and roof thankfully are new!

This was of course a major selling point for Andrew the mechanic. Enough room for his project volvo, tools, motorcycle and boat!

This is the living room which is when you first walk in the front door, I love that window!

My most hated room is the kitchen, it looks like an apartment and has this very country apple wallpaper, which I started to tear off last night....and 2 layers later, the photo below is what I found. Really shows the age of the house!

Owls and cattails??? Uhhh okay 1970, you were an ugly time! Oh and beneath this is neon yellow paint!

The deck, it needs a good cleaning and some stain, but nothing we can't fix!

The baywindow after I cleaned it up last night. I want to make a cushion for it once we get paint colors picked out and maybe make a nice window treatment. My skills from Joanns will for sure come in handy at the new place.

I wanted to wait till I had my camera with me (these were taken from my new cell phone which actually takes really good photos), to get more pics of the bad parts of the house. We'll be working on it most of the weekend, except Sunday since that's Easter!

My appologies

I've been a little absent on here lately but here is a recap of what has been going on:

1) The house: The closing is scheduled for this coming Tuesday at 10am. The basement has been dry now, which is good because we've had a good deal of rain here! By Easter Weekend (which I cannot believe is here already) we should be starting to work on the place!!

2) The family: My grandparents came back from Florida last weekend in good spirits. My grandma and I are going to start working on the family tree this summer. She met up with a cousin from her dad's side of the family while they were wintering in FL and she had some good information about our relatives. I'm pretty much stoked to start working on part of my genealogy. I also now discovered I am part Pennsylvania Dutch too! No wonder I love Der Dutchman!

My dad's last day of work is April 17th, which is fast approaching. He has a job interview a on the 20th and I'm hoping something good will come of that!

3) And in other news: Things are pretty much the same, nothing too exciting to report!

I'll get some pictures of the house so you all can see the "before" and the "after." I am hopeful that we can have a cookout there the weekend of my birthday, so the last weekend of May I'm thinking it will be livable by then, not beautiful and exactly how we want it, but painted, cleaned and free of grosky dry wall!

All for now!