Lesson Learned

There is a distinct difference between owning a home and renting.  I am not talking rent vs. mortgage, but more the "who does the maintenance philosophy".  When you rent, you call, 1-800-I-DIDN'T-BREAK-IT, but when you own, you get to troubleshoot your own mess and there's a good chance, you might not get it on the first try.

First lesson:
Our assumed knowledge that the cluster was going to take care of our front lawn mowing was quickly put in check when I came home one fine Tuesday to find that the entire neighborhood seemed to be conspiring against us to put us in our place as the news kids of the block.  I walked up to the house and stopped, looked left, looked right and everyone seemed to have mowed the grass magically between 9-5pm.  Hmm interesting.  Turns out a lot of them are signed up for people to mow their grass for them, some mow when those guys mow and then there was us, apparently wishing fairies would mow ours.  Time for a Home Depot trip asap.  We bought a push reel mower and remedied that problem pronto.  Neighborhood peer pressure is real and being nosy about people's yards seems completely natural now.  Thankfully most people take care of them around here, but it's a kind of stress I had never known. 

Second lesson:
On the trip to get the lawn mower, we decided we would finally change the door locks.  You never know who has extra keys even with the previous owners living in FL.  So we went ahead and bought a new lock and decided to install it the same night.  This was a mistake.  We started the project at 9pm thinking, a few screws and bada bing bada boom, DONE.  Hahaha...  Our new deadbolt was bigger than the old one, so we had to improvise on how to make that hole bigger as we did not have a chisel.  We put another hole in the door for the fancy handle lock we bought and over an hour later, we put it all together and said, ok, we are done.  Go to close the door, and what do you know?  It doesn't close.  Why?  Because our silly storm door handle butts up to the new curved handle (not knob) we installed.  I about lost it.  It was pushing 10:30 and I was flipping out because we couldn't close our door.  Rob improvised and removed the storm door handle so we could lock out house and go to bed.  However, now we have a problem, do we remove the lock we put in (mind you we had to put an extra hole in the door for it) OR do we put more hole in the storm door to move the latch?  Sigh...  We were lucky enough to be able to swap the lock and the handle on the storm door and it all closes, just barely.  My door wreath is actually provided just a centimeter of a buffer.  Close enough.  So, we will no longer start a project at 9pm and this is because all projects, no matter how seemingly simple they are are neither quick nor easy unless it's 9AM. 

Third lesson:
We got a dehumidifier with the place and plugged it in to get it to start sucking out the many months of dampness that occurred from the last time it was plugged it.  It's been going like a workhorse sucking out loads of water from the air.  It feels much better in the basement, thanks to this machine, so generally we approve of it.  Turns out we didn't put the bucket back totally one time and since we moved it to be near the sump pump (high point of basement), it created a bit of a stream that ran back to it's old resting place near the drain.  DOH!  Thankfully, this didn't happen for days and nothing was damaged despite the basement being loaded with a number of items waiting to go in the finished basement when the new carpet arrived.  Sometimes things were done for a reason, if not always apparently to us.  Sigh.. 

I am sure we will learn our fair share of lessons and it's nothing that you are really understand until you do own a home.  Optimistic thoughts overrun any sense of reality and so you are just going to try and learn the hard way.  Oh well.  We are getting there and trying to have fun while we work.

Stair Lifts

So our house came with a few added bonus items.  Some of which we like, the back deck.  And there were other things we didn't like, such as the stair lifts.  Oh the stairs lifts...  When we first walked into this house, we immediately knew why the photos of the house were taken the way they were.  The completely hid the stair lifts.  After we figured out what in the world they were, it was like oh wow.  There were two of them in the house, one on each stair case.

At the request of our friends, we took a recording of the stair lifts in action. Sorry it's on it's side, Facebook was able to rotate it, but I can't figure out how to do it otherwise.  :P

From Household Projets

No one should be surprised when we say we took them out and yet some still were.  They said, why are you getting rid of these?, you can use them to help you move in or what about for the B&B movie??  Still, they went.  Of course this was easier said than done.  They are made of cast iron and were heavier than heavy.  It took everything Rob and I had to get them off the first set of stairs.  We learned to split the second set while still on the staircase and that seemed to work out much better.  In both cases the stairwells look infinitely better.

These stairwells are also going to be getting new carpet due to the impressions from the heavy beasts and grease that was transferred onto them from the removal of the lifts.  Another step in making the home ours.

First Days

The first few days in our new home seemed a little unreal.  Our realtor wasn't with us showing us around and we had the whole run of the place.  It was a very wonderful feeling to sleep in a place and wake up because you were done sleeping, not because of noise from neighbors or the smell of smoke or whatever annoyances come with renting.

We enjoyed our first meal in the new house of Chipotle and champagne.  You have to have energy food right?  We used our fueled lunch power to bust through an amazing amount of cleaning that needed to be done.  We didn't think it was that dirty of a place, but everything still needed to be at least wiped down some.  So some 5 hours later we were finally done with the first pass on the house.  It was hard work, but we were loving it.

The next morning I spent the day recording the "before" shots of this house, cleaning more, and another trip to Home Depot (of course).  Friday night we started painting the basement walls for our first major overhaul project.  We decided since we were going to replace the carpet down there anyway, we might as well try and paint and not worry about hitting the carpet.  For our first painting project, we were impressed with how it turned out.  Sure there's a couple of goofs, but we plan to fix them.

Here's the before photos:

And here's the in progress:

And the final result with the walls:

We also replaced all the plugs and switches in the basement.  The final step for the basement face lift is new carpet which will be coming Wednesday.  We will show the photos for the after again then.  We are just really happy we had a choice to put something other than beige.  :)

We Are HOMEOWNERS!

We are officially homeowners!  We just purchased our first home and we are thrilled.  To finally have roots, to finally not worry about rental agreements and rent increases and what to do every year.  To do it, we only had to promise to pay back an obscene amount of money and fill out a lot of paperwork that said we understood what that meant.  The first year anniversary is supposed to be paper, so I think it was only fitting we signed about 300 pages to seal the deal. 

We are proud to be homeowners are excited about this new chapter in our lives.  We hope friends and family frequent it to fill it with laughter and love and great memories.

One Year

LOVE
~ By Roy Croft ~

I love you, 
Not only for what you are, 
But for what I am 
When I am with you. 

I love you, 
Not only for what 
You have made of yourself, 
But for what 
You are making of me. 

I love you 
For the part of me 
That you bring out; 
I love you 
For putting your hand 
Into my heaped-up heart 
And passing over 
All the foolish, weak things 
That you can't help 
Dimly seeing there, 
And for drawing out
Into the light 
All the beautiful belongings 
That no one else had looked 
Quite far enough to find. 

I love you because you 
Are helping me to make 
Of the lumber of my life 
Not a tavern 
But a temple; 
Out of the works 
Of my every day 
Not a reproach 
But a song. 

I love you 
Because you have done 
More than any creed 
Could have done 
To make me good, 
And more than any fate
To make me happy. 

You have done it 
Without a touch, 
Without a word, 
Without a sign. 
You have done it 
By being yourself.

Harry Potter

I first heard about Harry Potter in college in a White Elephant gift exchange.  The first book was part of the exchange and was the most passed around item.  I did not end up with the book as my final prize, but I said to myself, "I think I need to go read that".  So after Christmas I went to the book store with my gift card and bought myself a copy.  It was love at first read.

Now some 10 years later I am still eager to get the DVD on the first day out.  Since the release of Year 7, Part 1 did not come around the holidays, I went and bought it and plan to watch it later tonight.  I just love the story and the way it's told.  This is probably the one and only set of books I am really glad they turned into a movie.  They have just done a stellar job with the movies and all the special effects.  Of course, ask me this in another 10 years and I will say it will probably look like the 80s special effects to now, obvious and shoty.  :)  Although I hope not.

I am anxiously awaiting the final movie and the epic battles and just awesomeness.  I can't decide if I will read all the books again or watch all the DVD's again before the last installment.  I typically have re-read the entire series of books through to the one of the movie, watched the movie and then re-read the remaining books.  Who knows maybe I will do both?  I guess it depends on how much free time I really have with the new house and all.  Well, I will need some downtime.  :)

My Lovey Kitty

Recently, when I have been leaving the house at nights for things like yoga or errands I would like to run, Rob has been telling me that Sparky has cried after me when I leave.  I think it's really sweet and kind of pathetic at the same time.  Yes, this is the same huge cat that swipes at people (particularly not a fan of Mike D.) and has a generally meaner disposition around strangers.  I love him to pieces and even though I want to trade him for a hamster when he's walking on my head at 3am, I'll never do it.   He's a cuddle butt and incredibly sweet with me.  I know when I have had a bad day, I can pick him up and squeeze him and he'll let me.  I hope that someday they iron out that cloning thing cause I would make 10 more of him in a heartbeat.  :)

How most nights are spent with Sparky