Sunday, August 31, 2008

Yard work

Today we spent sometime getting the yard in order. While Kyle mowed I went around and pulled weeds from the sidewalk and gathered up some dead leaves that were in various corners and in flower beds and added all that to my compost. I also turned and watered my compost, so I hope it's cookin'! I could use the soil already!! I need to put it in this pot that keeps tipping over and driving me nuts!

We also got some more concrete busted up. We got the two last posts out! It opens up that space. We have a little bit more we want to do before we lay down sod and call it a season. We'll probably finish up the rest next spring or sometime...

The lady that took that last bunch came again today at 4:00 and we helped her load up quite a bit. All of it isn't gone, so I posted another ad on craigslist. Hopefully someone will want it :0) we figure if they don't want it now, next spring someone will be looking for a project. I don't think we'll actually haul it away ourselves until we are finished with it all. We both don't mind if it sits there a while, it won't really matter because in about 3 months it will be a snow pile anyway, lol.

Our goal is to get sod laid next weekend, we have about 30-an hour left of busting then just need to get the ground ready. Luckily it's all level :0)
100_7079

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Getting some relaxing in

This morning we went to the state fair. That was fun, and also tiring, we both came home and took a nap. Then I got the office a little organized, we got a shelf up in the closet to use as storage (we used to have this in a storage locker at the apartment). It's a little narrow, but there's room to the left to hang some hanging shelves we have, ya know those canvas shelves that you can hang... anyway.
craft closet

Yesterday we got the box springs, that won't fit upstairs, out to the garage so the guest room is walkable. It just holds the boxes that will go on the bookshelf and the board shelves we took out of the office closet. But it is pretty much all ready for my mom to come visit!! I can't wait, less than two weeks.
guest room

Yesterday we also got some more of the concrete busted up. We plan to do a little more tomorrow, a lady is coming at 4:00 to pick up the broken pieces, so we want to make sure there's all that she needs :0)
100_7072

I think I had mentioned that I got a home composter..??.. anyway I've been working on getting that filled. Today at the fair in the eco-building there was some info on composting and I was also able to talk to someone. I'm painting a little plastic container to keep our food scraps in to put in the composter so we're not always running outside to put them in and we can just wait till the bucket gets full and dump that in. Whenever Kyle mowes, probably tomorrow, I'm going to go around and get all the dead leaves in the yard to add to it.
composter

But as for tonight we just plan to take it easy and grill out. We started a movie last night but both ended up falling asleep, so maybe we can get through it tonight!!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Our couch came!

Last night we got our couch delivered!! We are super happy to have something to rest on and now we can even lay on the couch together... well all fit! One the other couch (loveseat) it was really a squeeze to get Kyle, me and Harpo all on the couch, lol. We don't have the TV pushed back to the wall because the cable guy is coming tomorrow, so once he comes we'll push it back and it won't sit as close to the couch.
living room couch

I also wanted to share the picture of the garage, it was so nice being able to park both cars in there that first night on Saturday.
garge

And here is a picture of the dining room, we are going to get the bookcases hooked to the wall, once we do that we'll put all the stuff back in them. Also is the picture of the rug runners we got from Ikea.
dining room
dining room runners


That's about all that is new with us. I got a composter last night, found on craigslist. I'm excited to get to start using it, although it will probably have to wait til next spring as it might not get hot enough now that the weather is getting cooler. We've just been going through our clothes trying to figure out what we want and what we don't really need. Oh and we've been watching the democratic convention! The Republican convention is here in St. Paul, they are already talking about roads being shut down and Kyle said during the convention anyone going into his building has to have an escort (ie: delivery people, etc). Even though it's in St. Paul (not Minneapolis), from what I hear, it's going to be crazy everywhere. Too bad we don't really CARE about the republican side....

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Unpacking

Today was a long day at work for me (10 hours)... it was so nice waking up in our house this morning. Harpo stayed out of his crate all day and supposedly did really well... nothing was found chewed up so that's good. I wonder what he does all day... probably sleeps.

Last night (late) I got the chair and filing cabinet put together that we got at Ikea, tonight we put together my dresser. Here's a picture of the messy office, but you can see our new filing cabinet and new desk. My sewing desk is to the left of the picture. I actually just had an email from someone interested in my old filing cabinet posted on craigslist... I love craigslist!
office

office4

Here is a picture of my new dresser and the rest of the bedroom upstairs. The black drawers are going to be done soon once we get the clothes all situation where they need to go:
dresser

bed

So for what we did today:
  • During my shower I realized that our shower head might have moved one too many place (missouri, georgia, mn apt and now here) because a small leak has formed on the side of the shower head... we'll deal with that later, lol
  • Put up a toilet paper rack in the bathroom, I wanted it on the left side... but it turns out that the laundry shoot poses a problem for the screws to get all the way in... this was found out AFTER I had one side in the wall already, so now there are four lovely holes in the wall because I had to move the toilet paper rack to the right side hooked onto the vanity... URG... maybe we can put a magazine rack there to cover up the holes or something :0)
  • Kyle got the basement somewhat organized... still a work in progress
  • I straightened up the office a little also a work in progress, but got a huge stack of papers filed...
  • We fixed the light switches upstairs with the help of my dad via phone and emailed pictures, now we can control the light above the stairs from the bottom of the stairs instead of having to climb all the way up them and into the bedroom to turn on the light over the stairs, WOO HOO!
  • Kyle fixed dinner on the GRILL! The first time we've grilled out since we living in GEORGIA! (ha ha we live ON Georgia now)
  • Oh yeah and we got the cable going in the living room.... we just have a long cord running from the office to the living room TV until the cable guy comes again on Thursday... it'll do, we watched about 10 minutes of the democratic convention while eating dinner, then off to house stuff.

I might start writing less since we have a lot of the major house stuff done. Tomorrow night I plan to stop by the apartment and pick up the few items that are still there, Wednesday we're gonna try and get the apartment all cleaned and rid ourselves of those keys. This weekend we plan to go to the State Fair, it's a really big deal here and the talk of the summer. Everything is fried (yuk) and on a stick (hmmm....) but I will def. be getting the cheese curds... mmmmm they are SOOOO good here!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

We're HERE!!

Last night we stayed our FIRST night in our new home! I woke up at 3:00 or so FREEZING! It's amazing how a room can get cooler as the temp drops outside, unlike in our apartment when it was firey hot ALL night long!

Let me recap yesterday since I wasn't able to last night. We woke up and had a relaxing morning, boxed up all the little odds and ends that were still around the apartment. Then we went and got the truck at 3:30, Kyle's two friends: Tomar and Jeff came over and helped us load up the Truck and Kyle's Jeep, we brought that to the house and Jeff had to leave and go to work, but my friend Jill was able to come help us. It was awesome having help, it really made the moving not go so bad. We would have been two very tired people if Kyle and I had to do it all ourselves. We were able to get the trouble pieces in: couch downstairs, bed frame upstairs.... the only problem was the queen box spring that was suppose to go upstairs! We needed about 2 more inches, although that was just to get started we would probably need a little more room, it got stuck hitting the stairs and the top of the door frame. We are still working on what we are going to do about that. For now the mattress is just on the bed frame which is working out fine for now. Then last night we got a few things put here and there, got the bookcases where we think we want them, and the drawers back into the coffee table and chest of drawers upstairs.

Today we woke up and I headed to church to teach Sunday school, made a trip to home depot then we came home and did a lot of little things until the cable guy came home, lets see here is all the little things we got done (kyle did a lot of it while I was at church):
  • put our shower head up
  • knife rack up
  • put the face plates back on the outlets and light switches that we had taken off to paint
  • changed out two light switches; they were a little old and wobbily and I just didn't feel comfortable with them in there
  • put the last piece on the bottom of the dishwasher
  • got our bedside lamps up
  • did a little paint touch ups in the living room, a little more is needed
  • moved the office around so the sewing desk and computer desk are where we want them now... the rest of the room is full of boxes scattered everywhere
  • put the smoke detector back on the wall where we painted
  • cleaned the paint out of the tub (from washing our brushes in there)
  • moved the grill to the backyard
  • unloaded MY jeep that we loaded after we took the truck back last night, it had the weight bench in it and just a couple last minute boxes

I think that's about it for all the little stuff today: then the cable guy showed up. He got the cable somewhat hooked up today, it turned out the house is completely wired from where the people had the dish hooked up to, and the actually cable came into a different corner of the house... so we have cable in the guest bedroom (which has NO TV) and he also wired up the office so at least we have Internet! There wasn't enough time today for him to get the living room hooked up so we have to call back and schedule someone to come do that since he didn't know before he got there that all this other stuff needed to be done.

After he left we went to Ikea to get some things, I got an office chair since ours had broke at the apartment a few weeks back. We also got some cheapo rug runners to protect the hardwoods for now... we'll get nicer ones later on when we have $$ for them. We also got a new filing cabinet because we are out growing ours... so if anyone needs one we will be listing our old one on craigslist soon :0) I actually sold a little bookshelf yesterday, and I have my old desk listed, but no hits yet... and for the big ticket item I got a new dresser!!! Kyle and I were sharing his (the one he made) and it was getting too crowded, so in order for us to not have our clothes spread all over the house in various closets we decided for me to get my own dresser for my clothes that way kyle can keep all his in his dresser and that will be that... I can't wait to put it together. We couldn't really find anything to match his bedroom suite so we decided to get something that would at least look good in the upstairs room, it matches the trim :0)

Well it's late and I have a full, busy day at work tomorrow so I better get the coffee set up to start tomorrow and head to bed.

I'll post more pictures soon, our couch is coming Tuesday!!! WOO HOO we are so ready for the couch so we can relax and have a life back!

Friday, August 22, 2008

This one might be a long one....

Today was rather interesting.... First off I had a super busy day at work and didn't get out of there til 12:30 (suppose to leave at 12:00) I told the carpet cleaning people that I should be home after 12:30 or 1:00 and more closer to 1:00 so I set up a PM appointment. When I got to my car at 12:30 I had a message that the carpet cleaners were already at the house waiting... well I work about 20 minutes from the house. So I went straight there, but by the time I got there the carpet cleaning 'dad' (father and son) was acting all pissy. They took a total of 20 minutes to clean the living room and stairs, they were moving super fast, but it does look a lot better. [The reason I chose that particular carpet cleaning company was because their name is 'Daisy Carpet Cleaning' hee hee]

After they were finished I came home because we had the other jeep all loaded and I needed to get Harpo and switch jeeps. On the way home I called Budget to re-confirm our truck rental for tomorrow morning. When I made that call I found out they had NO trucks, not even different sizes or none at surrounding locations either, this was just GREAT! So he recommended calling Penske right down the road. I called them and they had a 16' truck for $150! There was no way I was going to pay $150 for a truck when the other one I had lined up was $20.... so I kept looking. Now we had tried U-Haul twice before and the first time when I was calling around for prices the guy at the St. Louis Park location was VERY rude to me so I sent an email to corp. office telling them because of him I won't be using them. Then Kyle had tried earlier this week and the guy yelled at him "we don't have any trucks use the website!" and hung up.... So I was pretty unhappy with U-Haul but was desperate. So I got online and filled out a reservation thing. Since it was last minute I wanted to talk to someone so after circles and circles and being put on hold and calling a few other U-Haul locations and getting the busy signal I finally got a call from a gal at U-Haul down the road a bit from our apartment. They had a 10' (the one we wanted) for tomorrow but not until 5:00 pm and the only other one is a 14' available at 3:30... so we went with that one. So that's done! Hopefully, I guess we'll see tomorrow.

After that I loaded up the freezer and fridge food and Harpo and headed to the house. I cleaned out the fridge/freezer top to bottom. Once Kyle got home we finished painting the upstairs and hallway (the color here is Cup of Cocoa)... besides a few little touch ups in the living room, we have put the painting gear AWAY!!!! (for a while at least) Here are pictures of the living room, which is the room I had the carpets cleaned today as well, we just need to get trim for the bottom. Like I mentioned this wall color is Mountain Sage.
living room painted


Here's the hallway, you can see the laundry shoot :0)
hallway painted2

And the stairs to the upstairs bedroom and the bedroom shots:
stairs

upstairs painted5

upstairs painted4

We also unloaded the jeep and got things put away. We got the kitchen all organized (somewhat, it will probably change a bit) Things taken out to the garage and the downstairs straightened up a bit all ready for the big move in tomorrow.

We are SOOO ready to be living in the house and not having to travel back and forth. I'll get more pictures as we get settled... I probably won't be blogging tomorrow night since we will have the computer packed up and the cable guy isn't coming until Sunday afternoon. Although I'll try and see if I can get free internet until Sunday (that is if I'm not sleeping as soon as we get unpacking, who knows what time that will be)

Oh and incase any of you that read my blog (ummm does anyone read this thing?) were wanting to see the other pictures of the house from before we closed, here is the webshots link: http://community.webshots.com/album/564130380PejwJE?vhost=community As you can tell from looking at those we have done a lot of work already. I hope that link works.

I know my mom reads my blog, but not really sure if anyone else does ;0) If you do, you must have a lot of time on your hands, lol.

OH YEAH I wanted to share a funny story that happened a week or so ago... So one afternoon while I was working away on various tasks in the house, before Kyle got home from work I noticed this nail in the wall, I thought "well that's weird there a nail, oh there's two, just hanging out in the wall, these don't need to be here" Then I noticed a third all together so I started to pry them out, which was VERY hard they were really in there, I got one nail out, so I'm working at the next as Kyle gets home and comes over to see what I'm doing. I say, "gosh these darn nails are being so stubborn I can't get them out" and right at that time I look up and see a whole line of them as Kyle says, "yeah cuz they're the drywall nails" LOL I replied "good thing you got home when you did!" So it ended up just being a sh!tty job of drywalling done by someone before. Anyway it was just too funny and I laugh in my head everytime I think of it, I really thought they were just nails there for no reason... lol and it was good he got home because I probably would have taken them all out before realizing what they were for.

Alright I think this is long enough and I've covered it all, I am off to BED!! One last night in the apartment, woo hoo!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Light at the end of the paint can

We got the upstairs bedroom and the hallway finished with it's first coat. We have the last/second coat to do tomorrow and we are FINISHED painting... for the time being anyway. We took another full load to the house and loaded the other jeep so we can take it tomorrow... all we pretty much have left at the apartment is the furniture. It's weird how the house has all our 'stuff' but the apartment has all our furniture. The only thing that is NOT at the house is the bathroom stuff. We took over all the kitchen stuff today (everything but the fridge and freezer food). We have some friends helping us out on Saturday when we move. I also got a desk today off craigslist and posted the desk I have, hopefully I can sell that before next Friday so I don't have to haul it anywhere.

We are pooped! It's late and we are so ready to be living in the house. Harpo is feeling a little neglected since we've been so busy, but he sure does love sticking his head out the window on the way home, lol. He is SOO funny!

Tomorrow the carpet cleaners are coming and the living room will be ready to move into!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

We have use of the kitchen sink!

A few big things happened today:

  1. We got a plumber out and he fixed the drain, it now drains properly instead of taking a whole day!
  2. The water softner is up and running (at no cost to us!)
  3. The living room is painted!

I also got the upstairs and hallway all primed, so hopefully we can stay on schedule and get the first coat of paint on tomorrow. I also got some kitchen stuff transfered from the apartment and put away in our new kitchen! We got the tape pulled off of the windows, ceiling and doors in the living room... which I thought was going to be fun (unveiling the clean lines, that is) but it was rather difficult. A few spots the paint came up... all the way to the original paneling... so a few touchups are needed in there, but it's not that bad. You probably wouldn't be able to tell unless we pointed it out, but now that we've seen it, we will always notice the spots.

We are almost to the point of living there. I'm so excited to not have to drive to bed each night!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Starting to get settled

Tonight we took over a large load of just 'stuff'... things that were kinda around the house not really having a packing place before. Once we got that over there we started to organize a little and unpack some of the boxes. Getting downstairs things downstairs, garage things to the garage and put in place and then the rooms separate to what will eventually be put away in that room. Got the trash set out since Wednesday morning is trash day, set the recycles out and a few bags of weeds and twigs we pulled up the first weekend. We even got some kitchen stuff put away. It felt nice to get things in order, hopefully that will help the weekend move to be less chaotic.

So our plan for the rest of the week is as follows (lets see how good we do):
Wednesday: water softner guy coming (part came today was on our door step when we got there), plumber coming to fix the drain, getting 2nd/final coat on the living room walls, which will complete that room, maybe getting the upstairs finished primed (half is done already)
Thursday: get first coat of paint on bedroom (not hallway part of upstairs just where the furniture is going to go)
Friday: carpet cleaners are coming to clean living room carpet and stairs, get second/final coat of paint on bedroom
Saturday: MOVE IN!!!
Sunday: do something.... maybe unpack here and there and kind of take it easy but more like getting the house livable and the cable guy is coming this day too!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Paint, Prime, Tape...

I got to the house today and got the ceiling tiles all down since we had popped them all up to paint the rails. It looks SOO much better you can tell if you look at the picture below of when we had puttied and then this picture showing the first coat of paint and the ceiling all white.
living room first coat
living room first coat of paint

Like I mentioned before the water softner guy is coming back this Wednesday and we are suppose to have it completely cleaned out (again, which we did before we put salt in it to try and get it to work). Well the bypass valve was leaking so even though we had the knob turned so we could have water to the rest of the house it would still fill up the water softener. But I fixed that today, just took apart the valve and straightened out the washer that was twisted, so that's one thing fixed, the part it suppose to be delivered soon so the guy can fix it Wednesday.

Then I finished taping the ceiling in the living room and got some tape on the upstairs so we can get that primed. Right before Kyle got home I started painting the living room, once he was home we finished that together. Our living room wall color is a greenish color called: Mountain Sage.

Then we went to grab a bite to eat, and on the way home I got rear-ended! But really no big deal. There is this hitch that is rusted into the back of my car and I had always wished I could get it out... good thing it was there tonight because it prevented the car from touching my bumper but scratched the heck out of the other guys bumper, there was a big hole in it. He was a sweet little gay guy who said "Well it's not going to cost over $1000 so no use claiming it". It was also his fault so if we called the cops he would just get a ticket. Since there wasn't a scratch on mine we just left it at that.

After we got home we primed half the upstairs and then finished taping the rest. It was so hot up there that the primer was drying super fast, if we went over it a minute after I first put it on it would start to peel. So we had to prime it at warp speeds, then by the end we were both dripping in sweat. We will def. need to remember to pick up that A/C at my mom's house!! for next summer.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

For some reason our interent is down and last night I could not get on... so I will just have to give you yesterday's update from work.

Sunday we were very exhausted and took more of a resting day. We did go over to the house and get the ceiling rails finished so now we can start on the walls today. We also put up a hanging rack in the basement, that way I have somewhere to hang out clean clothes that need to dry. That's about all we did, I got a load of wash done as well.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Prime Time

We took the dining table over to the house today as well as some clothes... we're slowing getting moved.


We got the living room all primed and the ceiling rails with two coats of paint. The ceiling rails of the drop down ceiling were brown and we are painting them white.
living rm primed

Tomorrow we will be ready for the first coat of paint in the living room. We were hoping to do the living room and upstairs bedroom, but it looks like it will be easier with one room at a time. We had to leave the house by 4:30 today to get ready, Kyle is taking me somewhere for my birthday and the reservation is as 6:30... :0) I don't know where it's at yet!

I'm covered with paint so I'd better hop in the shower. Oh Harpo felt that he had to help out with painting so of course he was present in the room the whole time and even got a little paint on his back, lol. He seems to relax more at the house, I think the new ness has worn off for him, but I can tell he still loves it because he gets SUPER excited when we are leaving the apartment and headed to the house.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Shopping trip

Today we took a load to the house and then hit up Home Depot for one (kinda final) trip. We had made a list of all the things we were wanting for the next while. We got PAINT!! WOO HOO I'm so excited to get it painted so we can get moved in! We got stuff to fix a screen on the back door, the rest are in alright shape I was able to push them back into the frame and they stayed.

We got some stronger stuff for the darn drain... which we are going to just go ahead and call the professionals because we're tired of dealing with it. It seems to be getting better but at a VERY slow rate and we can't run the dishwasher until the drain is flushing properly.

Tomorrow we plan to prime the living room, hallway, and upstairs bedroom and then paint on Sunday and last coat on Monday.. that's the plan anyway.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Better Day

Today was much better, I guess I just needed some rest.

When we got home (apt) we loaded up Kyle's jeep, went over to the thrift store to pick up a few blinds for the windows, came home had dinner THEN headed to the house. Even though I still felt rushed from the moment I got home from work, it was a little better because I had help loading and driving to the house.

Tonight we:
  • Unloaded the jeep
  • Sanded the living room wall which is ready to prime now
    Kyle sanding
  • Put up blinds one in the front window of the guest bedroom, whenever we would go to the bathroom anyone walking down the sidewalk or street could see straight in to us at the toilet, LOL. We also put one on one of the windows upstairs on the south wall. (we got these blinds in unopened boxes at the thrift store.... so we'll eventually get more for the rest of the house, those were the main windows we wanted, the others aren't really a rush.
  • Kyle also worked on getting the rest of the salt out of the softener
  • Then we made our ritual stop at Sebastian Joe's (ice cream!)

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Stages of moving into a new (forclosed) house....

So I am moving from the excitement phase into the tiredexhausetleavemethefnckaloneeverythingisp!ssingmeoff stage :0) isn't life grand!?!?

Today I realized:
  • I am tired of going to the house everyDAY and working ALONE!
  • I am tired of being at the house until 10 or 11 THEN coming home taking a shower and trying to wind down
  • I am tired of waking up everymorning at 6:30ish to load up a vehicle for ME to drive after my half day at work
  • I am tired of being the one that has to do everything
  • Oh did I mention I'm tired
Okay onto what I have accomplished today...
  • I put the 2nd coat of putty on the living room walls (all it needs is sanding then prime/paint)
  • Rushed to the house to be there when the guy was suppose to come to fix the water softner (anywhere from 1-5... which I could have been working and making money)... he got there and was there for probably a total of 5 minutes. But he did bring good news, the softener is under warranty and the new part is getting shipped to us and they'll be back NEXT wednesday (between 1 and 5) to install it and get it all working (under warranty)
  • Got our weights and work out crap unloaded into the basement.
  • checked/fixed the screens all over the house, and took out the ones that we'll need to fix
  • fixed dinner (oh wait that really isn't on the list of house fixing, but it took up time)
  • Moved our camping stuff to it's new designated spot
  • Kyle got measurements so we know how much paint to get (well all but the upstairs bedroom)
I think that is all for today. Oh during the rain and hail we had about 3:00 I made sure the windows shut and got a few to shut that we couldn't get before.
The kitchen sink is still draining slowing, PIMA!
Night!!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Concrete Update

We haven't really done anything with this since the first Saturday and Sunday we got the house. But I thought I would update because I've had a few people ask about it.
broken concrete

concrete

concrete slab

The picture of the pile of busted concrete was actually taken today (after the lady came and took all the big pieces). I'm gonna post the picture on craigslist, hopefully I'll get some more takers :0)
Good Night!

Getting the walls ready!

Today was another full day at the house... and now I can barely keep my eyes open. But I will try and get it all down before I forget.

This morning I fixed the drain under the kitchen sink.... WOO HOO NO MORE LEAKS! But the drain still does drain slow every once in a while. It's getting better so I don't think we need to call anyone just yet, it just might need to get all that mineral buildup out. The kitchen sink is the only drain, draining slow.

I also mowed (well what was there, we don't really have much grass so you really can't even tell I went over it with the mower) Then I set the sprinkerler out before noon and again after 6pm (we are only suppose to water our lawn in those times and since our house is an odd number we can only do it on odd days).

I got the rest of the carpet up that was in the hallway, so the hardwoods are showing in the front room, which is what will be our dining room and the hallway. (I added pictures to my old blog).

I took down all the wall paper in the upstairs bedroom and shampooed the carpet again, Kyle wiped down the walls so it's pretty much ready for paint.
Upstairs wall paper:
upstairs bedroom stairs

Upstairs no wall paper:
upstairs wallpaper removal 2

I also worked some more on getting the wallpaper out of the kitchen. There are at LEAST three layers! YOu can see in this pictures there's the top coat which is a fruit border, then under that there is some roosters, and under that is a red thick wallpaper layer and then the yellow sponge painted wallpaper!
multi wallpaper layers2

As Kyle says "by the time we get all this wallpaper off we will have added a few square feet to our house!"
kitchen wallpaper
kitchen wallpaper removal


I also finished putting the living room and when Kyle got home from work he sanded everything. So it's ready for it's second/final coat of putty and then we'll prime and paint! Things are starting to come together.

Oh yeah we also moved some shelves around in the basement and started unpacking a little. We have just been unloading into the two bedrooms on the main floor and they are starting to get full so I thought it probably a good time to start putting things 'away'.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Let's just throw out the Kitchen Sink!!!

Today I got to the house about 4:00, did some straightening up, cleaned the hardwood floors with some 'special' hardwood cleaner.... supposedly there are wax hardwoods and no-wax hardwoods, luckily ours are no-was otherwise we would be down on our hands and knees applying new wax!

Still working on the kitchen sink, the clog is still there, but now everything is leaking from the sink strainer to the main pipe in the wall..... SOOO monday I'm just going to gut the drain pipes haul them to Home Depot and get all new ones instead of trying to find a few new pieces to mix with the old... THEN all that should be left with the kitchen sink will be the darn clog (which is mineral build up from the hard water we have)

We finished fiddily with the water softner, I printed off a manual, we are having someone come out next Wednesday to take a look at it.

I got a load of laundry done... FOR FREE! WOO HOOO no more paying for laundry!

When Kyle got home we putted the living room, next comes sanding then one more coat of putty then I believe we'll be ready to PAINT!

I also worked a little on getting the multi layer wallpaper up, but I'll probably work on that on Monday (my day off)... I actually somewhat enjoy doing the wall paper, putty on the other hand, NO WAY!

We're taking the weekend off, heading to Milwake tomorrow for a Dave concert then a Brewer's baseball game on Sunday. Harpo is getting boarded at the vet for the VERY FIRST TIME! I pray he does alright, he's going to be so sad, but it's just for one night; my friend Sheryl is picking him up Sunday night by 6:00 so that he will be home when we get home around 10:00.

Feeling like home

Today when I got to the house it actually had the feeling like it was home. Maybe it was that things are getting cleaned and we're getting more things moved over there.

I gave Harpo his first haircut at our NEW house, on the back deck. It was so nice not to be cramped in the bathroom and the hair was much easier to clean up outside! I also gave Kyle a haircut when he got home from work :0)

Tonight we didn't really do A LOT, just a few little things here and there;
  • we worked on the water softner, got it up and running bought some salt for it on our Home Depot trip
  • cleaned a little more in the basement, wiped down the shelves
  • measured the back yard for sod placement, hoping to get it down before the end of September over whatever concrete ground we get busted up by then
  • Started to tackle the clog at the sink drain, got the hand auger out and it looks like we're going to have to call the professionals for this one :0/

Yeah, that's about it, kind of a quite night but we still worked a lot. Next week our goal is to focus on walls! We gotta putty, sand, prime and WOO HOO PAINT! We hope to get the living room painted before we move in and if we're really motivated the upstairs bedroom and hallway as well.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 Caught up

Whew I made it, it's getting late but I wanted to get caught up so I can blog as I go now....

Today I worked a half day so was able to go to the house in the afternoon and Kyle took the bus there after work again. We had the locksmith guys come today and rekey all the locks. Usually with foreclosure houses, the keys are made to one that is all the same to make it easier on the listing agent. But now we have our own private key :0)

I fixed the valve under the sink installing a double valve so that is FINISHED! Only to find out that the dishwasher was leaking a TINY bit AND the kitchen drain is clogged. It can handle a little water but not a lot at one time (another trip to Home Depot will be in the future)

OH yeah, btw: I did go to home depot this morning to get the double valve and a large trashcan for the basement.

I also cleaned the basement, and a lady who got a hold of me on craigslist came over and picked up bunch of the broken up concrete!!

When Kyle got there we pulled up the carpet from the front room to reveal the hardwoods! WOO HOO!
Before with carpet:
dining room carpet

After:
living room hardwoods

We were going to salvage some of that carpet and use under our weights in the basement... but that carpet was SO nasty, the carpet pad was even wet from year old pee, it was so gross! Thankfully we are still living at the apartment and just loaded most of it up and threw it in the dumpster here. We left the carpet in the front yard for tomorrow nights trip, really I just hope it gets stolen by then so we don't have to deal with it, lol.

Kyle fixed the drip under the dishwasher so that is good to go, all that is wrong now is the drainage problem in the kitchen sink, after taking that apart we realize we will need to get one of those hand auger thingys! We've already tried the draino or whatever it's called.

We also sanded some of the wall that we puttied before, looks like we're going to have to do two coats of putty on that panel before we'll be able to paint. We also tore a lot of the wallpaper down in the kitchen. Turns out there were 3+ layers on those walls!!! 2-3 layers of wall paper and a few layers of paint... gesh these people were crazy that lived there before us.

Alright I think that is it, I'm caught up and exhausted so I should get to bed.

Monday, August 4, 2008

This day I had off work so I took Kyle to the bus stop so we wouldn't have to worry bout his car and he just took the bus from work to the new house!

I spent this day CLEANING! I cleaned the carpet in the front room - which was so nasty. Oh Sat/Sun we met our neighbor, this nice little old lady. She was telling us that the people who lived there before had two pitbulls and they would poop all over the cement contraption they had in back and they wouldn't clean it up for weeks. There was also tons of pee spots in the front rooms carpet (good thing we plan to tear this up!) Anyway so I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned! Wiped all the walls down with bleach water, mopped, the whole 9 yards!

Kyle got there after work and we got word that the house was OURS! The bank approved everything on the HUD! SOOOO this meant it was time to install the dishwasher! We opened up the box and dug out the directions, only to find out that there was a list of items we needed to complete this job... it would have been nice to know this when we got the darn thing. SO we read through the whole directions and figured out all that we needed and off to Home Depot we went! This trip was spend getting tons of plumber stuff, another wrench, an elbow thingy, something to get the ground on the electricity part, etc.

We got home to find that two of the things we needed were the WRONG SIZE! ARG, but we were starving so we fixed dinner really quick, inhaled it and rushed back to Home Depot! returned what we needed to return, talked to some more people got the info we needed, started out the door, realize we forgot something turned back and got it (if you're not counting that's THREE trips in the total time of a few hours!) They are really starting to know us there. But Home Depot is so great because we just stand around looking for a worker spot them and then ask them all our questions and they walk us through everything! We could almost start charging for our plumbing service now :0)

We went home and somewhat got the dishwasher set up, we had to cut a pipe to install a new valve and line... the remainder ended up being too small, it was very late so we decided to just leave it at that!!

Tuesday we took the day off from house work......zzzzzzzzz..............

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Sunday we were moving rather slow... we were very tired. We didn't get over to the house until after noon. And of course we had to make our Home Depot stop first and return the valves we got the day before which were the wrong size. This day we got new valves, a wrench, a furnace filter (the one they had was FILTHY!), and a bucket... so the list is getting shorter... :0) oh just wait.

Sunday we didn't really do much


  • Puttied some of the living room panel (getting it ready to paint)

  • installed new valves under the kitchen sink

  • installed kitchen faucet
    kitchen faucet

  • busted up a little more concrete

  • got a garage door opener set to the garage door and fixed Kyle's built in one in his car to open it as well.

My friend Jill (from our apartment complex) and her little dog, Jackson stopped by to say hello and take a swing at busting concrete... so that was a grand 'ol time. Jill says that she is going to come over after a hard days work to take some aggression out on our patio LOL! We said she is welcome ANY time!! Also Sunday night I posted an add on craigslist saying we had free broken up concrete if anyone was interested, if not we are just going to recycle it at the recycling center (which takes it for free!!).....FYI I had two emails about the concrete and a lady came today to get some, that is just too funny to me!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

~*~WARNING:~*~ this could be boring to most of you, so you don't really have to read the whole thing :0)

We woke up and took a load to the house, we had to return some things at Home Depot so we left Harpo at home for the am shift. Saturday Home Depot trip was spent returning the sink drain (wrong size) and the lens for the basement light which was a centimeter too small. BUT in turn we got lost of other stuff we found out we needed.... batteries, valves for under the kitchen sink, hose & sprinkler, mop, trash bags, etc....

Saturday AM was spent
  • sweeping and vacuuming the house
  • watering the yard
  • pulling weeds
  • mowing a little
  • picked up trash in yard

Went home for lunch and picked up Harpo; the PM was spent

  • breaking up some concrete
  • straightened up the fence
  • cleaned the upstairs bedroom carpet
  • cleaned the ceiling fans in each room
  • took house numbers off the door (there were two sets up house numbers up)
  • Kyle got on the roof and put the flu cap cover on
  • we labeled the breaker box (or parts of it)

From the beginning

Alright, so I had a grand idea to get all the work we're doing down in writing, cuz maybe it'll be fun one day to go back and look at it.... SOOO I should probably start with August 1st - CLOSING! WOOO HOOO

Friday, August 1st, 2008

Closing was set for 2:00pm and we were to meet Maleigh (our realtor) at our new house at 1:00. We still had not got the final numbers of the HUD and were waiting on our closer (Laura). I called Lesley (our lenders assistant) that morning, still now word. Finally about 9:30 we got the final numbers... PROBLEM... the bank/sellers are suppose to have 72 hours to review the HUD before closing. That wasn't really going to happen since closing was just a few hours away. Well we did go to closing, Maleigh and ourselves were the only ones there, SURPRISE... not really the listing agent was not really on top of things the whole time so it's wasn't a surprise that he did not show. We got everything signed and were just waiting on word from the bank that they approved the HUD. So we could still move in, we were just advised to maybe not do anything 'major' to the house just in case....

Leaving closing we went home to eat, which we were both about to faint since we hadn't eaten since breakfast. Then we headed to Home Depot! They had told me before that they would take our Lowe's 10% off coupon since they didn't have one for moving.... we get there and they won't take printed copies, well Lowe's only emails you their 10% off, WTF! So I just said "well you're missing out on a LOT of money, we just bought a house and have a LONG list of things to get"... she told us to hold on and she'd figure something out. So it turned out that if we opened a Home Depot credit card we could get 10% off and 12 months no interest! Sweet so it worked out. We got pretty much everything on our list (what was our first list... many more to come). The dishwasher, downspouts for the gutters, paint stuff, kitchen faucet, putty, flu cover, light bulbs, etc... for the life of me (and Kyle cuz I just asked him) we can't remember what all we got in that first trip, it was a lot, but we've also been back to Home Depot everyday since.

We took that load to the house, then came home and got Harpo and took my car, which had a lot of stuff that we had accumulated before hand that we needed to unload at the house.

So for our Friday night house work we:
  • took off this paneling over a door in the basement
  • cut out some drywall that had some mold on it from the water leak that happened during our inspection :0/
  • put the downspouts on
  • put new lightbulbs in
  • hooked up the washer and dryer
  • adjusted the garage door opener
  • adjusted the latch plate in the garage door
  • unclogged the toilet
  • put dehumidifier in basement

I think that is about it for Friday... OH OH we ordered PIZZA!! and had it delivered to our NEW HOUSE!!!!

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