The Joys of Home Ownership...

So here's a story for you. Post-inspection, we had a few requests that the seller agreed to fix. One of them was re-attaching a piece of loose siding near the roof. We asked them to do it because it was up so high, and the seller was a contractor so it would be an easy fix for them. When we did our final walk through before closing it was still there. We asked about it and they panicked and said "OMG, we're sooo sorry, we forgot about that one! We'll do it, it's all cool. We'll come out sometime in the next week or two and fix it." Seeing as the seller was actually the listing agent's brother, we thought 'ok, we won't push for it to be done before we sign on the dotted line. we can always track them down easy because of the connections.'

3 weeks later... they still hadn't come! So I called the realtor, who called them, and they agreed to come out before end of business on Friday to fix it (this was a Monday). Well guess what happened that night? Yup, a raccoon found it. I heard banging and freaked that someone was trying to get into our house. I made Brian go check, and 'someone' was, but it was a furry someone.

The next morning there was pink construction foam all over our yard! And the piece of siding that was hanging off was now a HUGE piece. I called our realtor, and she freaked! She took care of it, and got the guys over to fix it within 24 hours. And she assured me that if the raccoon had gotten in the wall, THEY would also pay and take care of that removal as well (he didn't). Since we had a contract that this would be fixed, they had to follow through.

So luckily it all worked out, and our house has been repaired with no cost to us. Talk about a wild start!

Also, I <3 our realtor!

Woo! HP in the House!

Ok, so I mentioned at the beginning that I would also be including some posts on 'projects' that I'm working on. This one is for the house though, kind of. Last night I got a call I have been anxiously waiting over 2 months for: my Harry Potter quilt was done!

I enjoy sewing, and quilting is one aspect of that. I spent 2 years piecing together a quilt of characters, props, and locations with patterns mostly created by the lovely Jennifer over at www.sewhooked.org. I designed the borders, and painstakingly selected fabric for each square. I usually quilt my blankets myself on my Viking, but this one deserves some extra love, so I took it to a pro. With her equipment she was able to be a lot more detailed and precise then I. Here's a sneak peak of the front:

 

She matched the colors with what was on the front, and mostly did fill in the backgrounds.and I backed it in black, so that means....

 

Super awesome pictures stitched on the back!!! And of course, obligitory 'cat claiming the new quilt' picture:

The Glory of a Half Bath

So even though our budget was solidly in the 'first timers' market, I really really wanted a half bath. I feel like it adds so much class if all your guests don't know exactly what shampoos you use, or that I left a box of tampons on the sink, etc.

So I was thrilled that we were able to get one. Even if I'm closer to the main bathroom I sometimes go use that one, just cause I love that it's there. When we first saw the listing they tried to include a picture of this tiny half bath... it's little, so basically it was this big closeup of the toilet. My parents found it hilarious.

It's located at the end of our entry hall, so you can see it from the front door. I thought it would be fun to add a pop of color at the end of the white hall. You can see the green of the den from there, so I thought blue would look nice!

Sorry it's so dark. But I love the glow from the window in this room, so I rarely turn the light on. I painted it a rather desaturated medium blue. And I will never paint it again. because of getting around the sink and under the back of the toilet, and it was such a tight squeeze this little space took me as much time as the bigger rooms!

I knew it needed a curtain at the window, because it's ground level and right off the patio! But it's probably the smallest window ever made so I was having trouble finding anything. I finally bought a white cafe curtain and rod, and chopped the curtain in half. Once I re-hemmed it I stitched on the black bias tape for detail. I like black/blue/white together. So I also got black towels and washcloths to match.

This grainy one shows the opposite wall (pre-curtain).

We're Heeeeere!

I've gotta watch Poltergeist again, I love that movie.

Anyway, Friday April 30th, 2010 we officially moved in to our new house! It took us almost a week after that to get every last bit from the apartment, but that was the first night we slept there :).

A whole bunch of our friends came, and we had a moving truck, and pizza (lots of pizza). It was good times. This is what stuff looked like the first week or so while we were still putting away the basic living 'stuff':

My Studio! That's what the orange was. To the right of the door is my big work table for my sewing machine, my dress form, etc. And on the 4th wall is the big closet for storing my multitude of crap.

Our lower level, the 2 opposing walls are green, with the fireplace there on the right. This room is STILL a pit, and I don't like having the messy desks all visible from the stairs. Tonight we'll be doing something about that! So I'll make a new post about it later.

Our very blurry living room!

Kitchen!

And of course the front hall. Complete with my new old lady gardening hat!

I'll go into detail on the rooms and what we did/are doing in subsequent posts, now that we're here full time!

Moving In!

So suddenly we found ourselves at closing! Everybody always talks about how nuts it is and how much there is to sign and everything, but I was underwhelmed. The scary part for me was that it was TOO easy... 'you people are going to trust ME with a massive loan?... why?'

As soon as we left the building we screeched and hugged and jumped up and down (all while holding 2 big gift baskets!) and I teared up as always. Then we FLEW to the house and ran around inside, brought in some of the stuff we had in the car already and started taping to paint!

Then my parents came to see it for the first time and take us to dinner! We had a blast and I was sooooo happy to finally show them the house!

Then the painting began...

Ahhh! So orange!!! What room could this POSSIBLY be you ask? Well you'll just have to wait and see. For now, another in progress painting shot:

It took us a week of painting and moving stuff (Brian moving during the day, I painted after work at night while he was at work) before we were ready for the big push.

Proof Weddings can be fun

I know this isn't really related to house stuff, but here's proof that we were at some pimp weddings this weekend:

Hehe, so that's what we were doing all Saturday! I did hang some stuff this evening though, I'll post pictures soon. Once I get us caught up through the big move-in of course ;-)

The Grand Tour

So after that super busy weekend, we're back to regular life! I didn't get to do a single thing on the house which was frustrating, but it was still a good one. On Saturday we went to 2 weddings! And during one of the receptions we crashed a star wars themed reception down the hall... Then Sunday was my birthday! I am now officially a quarter of a century old. But Brian had to work and I had an appointment, so we're lucky we even got the lawn mowed this weekend.

Anyway, here is a little visual tour of our place from BEFORE we moved into it, so these pics are either from the listing, or pictures I took the day of the inspection:

This is the front of the house, and yeah, we're gonna take those trees down...

This is the hallway when you come
in with a half bath at the end:
and the other way:

Then you go up the stairs to the living room:
which connects to the dining space:
and the kitchen:

Up some more stairs, this is the hallway and that door is the linen closet:

This is the main bathroom. We're really excited to have 2 sinks:

The bathroom connects to the master bedroom(picture taken from standing in the bathroom door). And there are 3 bedrooms total.

If you go all the way back down to the lower level there is a second family room with fireplace:

(That's Brian's mom) there is a window to the left, and the utility/laundry room to the right.

We sit on a quarter acre, which gives us a pretty nice backyard:

Well that's what we're starting with! Pretty great blank canvas huh? We've got lots of plans and ideas. Up next I'll start talking about what we've done with our first month here!

Buying our first house.

Another intro of sorts, here is the long saga of buying our house. It's probably pretty boring to you, but I love it:

So why were Brian and I 'in the market'? Well, we'd been living together for several years in a tiny apartment in Ann Arbor. I'd been working, he's been trying to finish school and working part time. We lived in 650 square feet. That's not much. We made it work, and it helped that we loved our place and the neighborhood, but it was sooo hard to manage all our stuff in that small space. Since I'm an artist and 'maker' of things I have a lot of crap.

While living there we got engaged and I started really thinking about a home of our own. Then I lost my job. Then I got a new job... that paid more! I found myself doing tons of research on the house buying process and looking at homes online. We were very blessed to have a nice down payment because Brian's parents started an account for just such a thing when he was a baby. So for giggles we talked to a mortgage broker... and before we knew it we were out shopping!

We only saw 6 houses in person (but about 1000 online). Our home was the very first one. It's not within the A2 city limits, but that would have doubled our price, which obviously we couldn't do. We liked it so much we actually put in offer in that night! After some haggling the sellers accepted! The inspection was par for the course, we had a few fix requests, etc. Then the appraisal came... dun dun duuuuuun!

It came back low. REALLY low. We were worried because if the seller didn't come down we weren't going to be able to get the house! They deliberated for freaking ever about 4 days. Luckily they decided to move forward, so we saved about 20K and set our date to close!

We did a walk through right before closing to make sure they made all the fixes and the place hadn't been gutted. All was good except they forgot about the piece of loose siding near the roof, but promised to fix it in the next few weeks, that was super minor so we didn't worry about it.

And after getting completely lost on the way to the closing office we signed everything and went home with the keys! We'd done it! This is our house on the day of the inspection:

"Doing Stuff is for Quitters" is born!

Well, welcome to our new blog! I bet you're wondering what it's about... let me give a little introduction in QandA form:

Q. Who are you?
A. Well, my name is Breanne, and my fiance is Brian (he will probably make a post or two on occasion as well). We are a couple of 20 somethings living in Ann Arbor Michigan. We're extra nerdy, and prone to dorkiness. We also have a cat named Gojira. We'll flesh out our bios more later, but since we're pretty average folk I think that's enough to be getting on with.

Q. What will you be writing about?
A. Life, the universe, everything... no not really. We are in the throes of a very exciting time in life. Finishing school, working, getting married, and buying our first home! This last item is what spawned this blog.

We just moved in to our first home a few weeks ago. And though it's already amazing, we have so many projects and plans for this place! I got addicted to reading house blogs and decided with everything we have going on, it would be a nice place to keep a log of our life, projects, ideas, and adventures in being adults; mostly house stuff though.

Q. What does your blog title even mean? You realize it makes no sense right?
A. Oh, but it makes so much sense! To us anyway. Several years ago I complained to Brian that we were doing too much sitting around 'Let's go out and do stuff!' I said. In response he quipped: 'Doing stuff is for quitters'.

After my brain finished leaking out my ears I started laughing. And it stuck, and is now a favorite inside joke. When I was trying to decide what to call this thing, I thought of that and instantly knew it was perfect.

Well, that's why we're here! If you've stumbled across this page I hope you enjoy it! Or at the very least helps kill some time.