New year, and a new floor!

So remember how we got water in our lower level a few times? Well over the holidays we did something about that.

We moved everything out of the room. Which included cleaning out 2 desks and several drawer units that have been used to shove random things in, and emptying our 3 very full bookcases. I spent a whole day just on this part, but it's nice to know that we don't have random drawers full of old class notes and crap from 2008!

Painted the entire floor with DRIlock.

Added a subfloor with plastic backing so if water does come in, it'll run straight to the drain.

And had the carpet reinstalled with a new pad!

Soooo much work for it to look exactly the same... BUT we have a lot more in the works too. It's furniture time!

A million little fixes

So this weekend a LOT happened on the house! Unfortunately though we can't take credit for doing it... Brian's parents have a totally awesome contractor, and he came out and brought a whole bunch of things up to code!

I don't have pictures of these things, but they aren't really the 'take exciting pictures' type of fixes anyway...

1. All of the sockets at counter-height in the kitchen and both bathrooms are now GFI's! They were regular old plugs before, and not exactly up to code. No bathroom electrocution for us!

2. Installed an exhaust fan in the bathroom! Remember when this happened in our bathroom? Well that was all because we didn't have an exhaust fan!!! So now we do, and it's small and quiet and wonderful.

3. Our front porch light now works. It had never worked right, but it stopped working completely a couple weeks ago. The light switch NEVER worked... well it turns out the last owner completely disconnected the switch. The light was directly hardwired in 'hot'. And it was attached to a crappy timer/motion sensor which had finally quit. So we took the ugly sensor down, and now the switch works! Just as it should!

4. When we bought our house, there was a loose piece of siding up on the second story on the side of the house. The seller fixed it as we requested (after we moved in and had to complain because a raccoon had been up there tearing foam out). Well apparently it wasn't fixed right, and was still close to coming off again. So they fixed that the right way.

5. Checked out our garage electrical (ugly but fine), and our fireplace. We can't use the fireplace yet because the last owner ran the gas line in the wrong spot... coming in the chimney and DOWN THROUGH THE FLU! So the flame gets a little close to the line for comfort, so that needs to be re-run before we use it. Otherwise though our chimney is good, so that's a relief!

We are so so so grateful. It really is a big weight lifted to have those things fixed. We could have possibly done them ourselves, but nowhere near as fast, and they had expertise on what to look for and stuff to fix things. It totally made up for getting up at 6:45am on a Saturday!

Water water every... you know the drill. It's wet!

Soooo we're in the middle of planting season! The time where everyone and their sister is out gardening and making the yard pretty for summer! Have we been doing the same? Noooooo no we have not. Not for lack of wanting to mind you.

We have had almost completely non-stop rain for the last month.We'll get a little sun, but before the ground can even think about drying out it rains again. So the mess of a yard that I was hoping to have at least somewhat pretty this first summer? Yup. Still a mess. We also have a low spot near the back fence that I was hoping to fill with dirt and get grass seed in (our neighbors planed their yard so it drains into ours. Jerks.) so that it won't flood when it rains hard. Yup. Still there.

Still so... blah!

At this point it's feeling like not much landscaping will be happening this year. We're already in June and I have about half a planting bed raked and weed free. Another issue we've had is that all the planting beds and anywhere around the fence or near the house, there are these bricks and pavers. They are BURIED in the ground, sometimes 3 or 4 deep! It's almost like the previous owner stole them and was trying to hide the evidence... Unfortunately with all the time it's taken to pull them up, they aren't really usable for anything. They are oddly sized and in pretty bad shape. Especially sad considering that we have 2-300 at this point.

One major thing will be happening though, we're having all the trees on the front of the house pulled out. SO once they show up we'll be able to do something to the front.

Now you're going, wait Bre, this post is supposed to be about water! We demand more water! Well, take a visit to our bathroom. The genius lovely person who flipped this house did not put in a fan in the room with the shower. Then they painted it with FLAT paint. That was one of the only rooms I was not going to paint right away. Well now I have to, the paint is already peeling off from the shower humidity. And we're getting a fan installed as well. It's not too bad yet. In reality it still just looks like this:

But in my mind I see this:

I borrowed that picture.

The question now is, what should I paint the bathroom? And how nuts do I want to go? Ideally I'd like to get a new sink cabinet (not oak + laminate) and mirrors and install bead-board. I don't know if that's in the budget though. Thoughts?

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!