One Year House Anniversary

Friday was our one year house anniversary! We closed on our house one year ago!

If you would have asked me two months ago, I would have said it only felt like we had lived in our house for about six months. But now that we have been getting back into all of the yard work, I am feeling more like it's been a year since I feel like I've done this before.

In this past year we have had roommates, got a second dog, had our roommates move out, had a flood, thrown a couple parties.

We have arranged the house, bought a new TV, put in a bigger doggie door, built a garden fence, painted, got new carpet downstairs.

I have decorated and redecorated.

We have been through a full year of seasons, complete with raking, shoveling, weed pulling. 

I have absolutely loved living in our house. I have really enjoyed making it our own, one small step at a time.

It has become such a home to me. I prefer it to any place in the world. I feel more comfortable in my house than my parents house. I couldn't wait to come home after being in Italy because I missed our house. 

Our house isn't absolutely perfect, but it is darn close and more importantly it is ours and we can make it even better as time goes on.

And I obviously have some big plans ahead:

• We are planning on re-doing our deck this summer and sodding part of back yard. 
• We WILL be getting our bedroom set.
• My mom has graciously said she will give us my sister's desk, hutch and dresser for the nursery and hopefully getting to decorate that room :)
• I am making progress on my office and craft room, which I will hopefully be able to do a basic reveal this next week
• And I am sure there are a lot of little projects too!

I am looking forward to all of the things that will happen in this next year and the next thirty-ish years we live here.

Lifestyle of a Home Owner

I have spend my last couple Saturdays driving around looking for apartments with one of my best friends who just recently moved back into town ( :) )

Since she is looking for a one bedroom, at the first couple places I would just say I was there to be the chauffeur and then after a couple places I decided I was also there for the decorating ideas. Some of the model apartments were SO cool! Apparently I really like some modern stylings... I'll have to keep that in mind.

What I realized via my comments and the comments of our various tour guides was how much work it is to be a home owner and how different the life style is.

It boils down to ownership and maintenance.

As a renter in an apartment, the complex takes care of all of your maintenance. One of the tour guides even said to call if you need a light bulb fixed.

Obviously this is not the case for a home owner. If you need a new light bulb, you replace it. And of course chances are it is one of those fancy light bulbs that are a pain in the butt to remove and replace.

And it doesn't stop at light bulbs. If there is a hole in the wall, it's not just that it comes out of your security deposit. That stupid hole is there until you convince the husband to fix it. (Thankfully we have not had any holes to deal with)

A couple of the places my friend and I looked at allowed you to pick a color for your accent color in your apartment (how cool is that?). Then by the time you move in, you get a couple walls in a pretty color you choose out of four colors.

As a home owner, you have every color to choose from, but you better pick right because otherwise you'll have to spend another 7+ hours painting that room again.

In an apartment complex, you get to go lounge by the pool and enjoy the pretty smelling flowers and not worry about mowing the grass or anything like that.

In your own home, you have to slave away for hours most weekends to do the weeding, mowing, edging, trimming and by the end you are too hot and tired to sit outside and enjoy your hard work.

So how exactly is this a lifestyle difference? Well I have realized during the last 11 months and especially these last couple weekends that a house is a commitment. Both Dylan and I agreed when we bought our house last year that we felt buying a house was more of a commitment than getting married. Now I agree even more that home ownership is one of the biggest commitments you can make.

It's not just that you spent all this money on one big item and that is is a lot of work to get out of, but it is a lifestyle commitment.

So much of our time is spent working on the house. I absolutely love doing things to the house, whether it is decorating, working on the yard, or arranging a room, I love it.

It is a lot of time, money and planning to own and decorate a house that you can be proud of!

I spend a lot of my waking and daydreaming hours thinking about what I want to do with the house, which I definitely never did before. Most of the weekends are spent working on some project and/or doing yard work and the rest of the time is spent looking around at ideas by browsing online or at the stores.

Not that being a home owner has impacted my social life a whole lot, so it definitely isn't an over-commitment. Dylan might argue it has impacted our hiking time this last month or so though...

You definitely put in as much as you want to get out of it. You are the only one that is going to do it. No HOA, no maintenance crew, you. Overall think it is an enjoyable independence.

Does this make you glad you are a renter or glad you are a homeowner? Or is the grass greener on the other side?

2011: Home Ownership

Probably the second biggest thing we did this year was buy a house.

We started the process in 2010 by looking at house with our realtor and deciding on the area we wanted.

Then this February we started looking again. We had our first house we put an offer on that ended up being a dud. It definitely worked out for the best and we now have been in our amazing house since May.

Since then we have experienced the joys and challenges of being homeowners. 

Financially, I love having my money go towards something and have the eventual goal of not having to pay a mortgage or rent.

But houses are EXPENSIVE! Between decorating, furnishing and maintenance, it adds up faster than I can keep up. We are always adjusting our priorities and keeping a continuous to-do list.

I have developed a lot of decorating ideas (mostly thanks to blogging) and have had a chance to implement a few.  Learning how to arrange a room and make things functional has been a really interesting experience. There are so many options, so I think it is key that you get pieces that are versatile.

We finally got some things up on the walls, which has made our house feel more like ours. I never really hung anything up in my other houses before, so it is a nice change. This is definitely one of those things where I think about what I want for a good long time before I actually do it and hang it up. Dylan is really adverse to multiple holes in the wall. Hopefully our new laser level we got for Christmas will help.

We have added little bits of furniture, but overall once my cousin and his girlfriend moved out, we lost a lot of furniture and our house is kind of on the empty side. Instead I rearranged and that really helped make our house feel more cozy.

New barstools for the kitchen

Living Room before

Living Room after

Dylan and I learned a lot about yard work this year. Both of us did gardening, poop patrol, and watering while Dylan did the mowing and trimming. We added some lattice under the deck as well.

We have had a couple maintenance experiences including the bathtub, the garbage disposal and the sprinkler system breaking. We have a long list of things to hit up this Spring once it gets nice out.

Overall the first 7 months have been a great adventure! I am very proud of the progress I have made. Cannot wait to fill it up with more stuff and some chillins! Cheers to the next 30 or so years of living here :)

Our First Flood

And hopefully our last...

About a week and a half ago our basement flooded. It was definitely our fault, but it still sucks.

We have a sprinkler system. The system started dying back in August. We had a hose break. Half of the caps broke off the system. Just an old system.

Then it came time to winterize. Dylan called about 7 different yard people to have them come aerate, fertilize, and blow out our sprinkler system. We had only one person call him back and they played telephone tag a couple times and eventually never called back. So we never got the system blown out. I very carefully laid this responsibility in Dylan's hands. He knew he was and is in charge of the yard. But I guess we/he kind of figured since half of it was broken anyways, not too big a deal.

And we probably would have been alright if we knew about the sprinkler shut off valve that is located next to the main water shut off. Dylan said once the flood happened he remembered hearing about it, but I really don't.

What happened is that with all the freezing and slight unfreezing, one of the caps broke on the system and started flooding water into the window well in the basement. When Dylan got home from work, one of the neighbors was just getting home too and mentioned that it sounded like water was running around our house. Dylan went downstairs and the whole window well was full and water was coming in the bottom sides of the window. He told me there was about an inch of water on the floor.

The water came in through a hole built into the concrete sides of the window well and the speed made everything foamy and dirt piled up in the window well.

Still some water stuck in the window panes

I, of course, was working a ton this week and didn't even have a chance to call him back until he had already taken care of most of it and I said I was still going to be two more hours and that it was probably better I wasn't there anyways since I would probably stress out.

In the end we got the water vacuumed up in the kitchen room with the tile and got a lot of water out of the carpet in my office. After a couple days of trying to dry it out (with a fan, not open windows since it was freezing this whole time), it was starting to really smell and just wasn't drying. We decided we would need to get rid of the carpet. The issue was that it smelled before. Our previous owner must have let an animal pee on the carpet down there since even with the maximum strength Febreeze, I would have to spray it every other day.

We have decided to go with the vinyl/laminate flooring. It is water proof, not to difficult to install, not too expensive and looks nice.

First we went to Home Depot to check out the flooring and get some details on it. We also wanted to asked what we needed to do to get the floor ready for the new flooring.

I love Home Depot! They are always so nice and helpful and ready to answer any of your questions. We have decided on one that comes in "full pieces" meaning that each piece you lay down looks like one cut of wood rather than like 3 cuts and then when you line that up it doesn't really match. Ours will also have the padding built in, so we have one less step to do.

Each piece of "wood" above is a separate slat

We decided to wait a little bit on putting the floor down, but we did have to pull up the carpet ASAP.

We moved the office into the kitchen and then Dylan pulled up the carpet tacking and got most of the glue off the floor.

We will still have to get a little more glue off, fill in the gaps from where the nails for the carpet tacking were in the cement and remove the baseboards (since they will end up too high once the new floor goes in).

Here is the floor sample we liked with the baseboards. Not too shabby!

Ultimate timing will probably either be around Christmas or maybe in like February. We don't especially need it at the moment, and it is an unexpected cash flow during Christmas, so my guess it that we will wait for a bit.

Our first home disaster turns into our first home improvement project! I am very excited to have the waterproof flooring since it is in the basement and since it will be our craft room and that will make it a lot easier to deal with paint, glue and glitter.

Welcome to Home Ownership

This first week and a half has already been quite a welcome to home ownership.

The first night, Dylan used the Jacuzzi tub. He filled it up high enough for the jets and then got in, resulting in the water rise well onto the overflow drain. When I went downstairs, water was dripping into the kitchen through the ceiling. Not awesome. We have a one year home warranty thanks to our fabulous realtor, and they came a checked out the issue. It was the overflow drain that is not sealing appropriately. Since the plumbing guy didn't have anything to shorten the screw for the overflow drain to make it tighter and seal better. But he still recommended that we avoid filling it up to the overflow since even when installed properly, they have a tendency to leak. So now we know. We also still have to get the ceiling in the kitchen repaired, but we wanted to wait until after the party we are having this weekend.

The other thing is our internet and phone company. We were a little slow in calling them to move (we moved Wednesday and called Thursday). Turns out it takes 3 full business to get a technician out to set it up. So that was supposed to happen on Tuesday. Tuesday came and by 5 pm (when the said everything would be working by), we still had nothing. So I call their tech support, and they said the order was placed on hold, that they don't know why and that I will need to call Customer Care, which is only open from 8am-6pm. So I had to wait until the next day. I called right at 8:00am, and I guess the issue was that the old line had not been disconnected yet. So the phone company failed to A) verify whether that was the case while I was setting up the move/transfer, which is one thing they are supposed to do and B) call and let me know my order was not going to go through, again, something the customer care guy said they are supposed to do. So somehow I managed to completely fall through the cracks. Then it takes another 3 full business days (with the day I called not counting, even though I called at 8am), so I still don't get internet at my house until next Tuesday. Ugh. It better work once I get it. I just called to confirm my order, and it is all set.

Our DirecTv went really well on the other hand. They were over 24 hours after I called to have them set it up. They did have a couple of hazards at our house though. There was a bird nest on the power box, and one of the baby birds (they were in the learning how to fly stages) fell down into the window well, so Dylan had to fish that out when he got home. There were also wasps in the old dish, so they had to spray that down and kill them. Oh the delights of having a yard...

Speaking of yard, we bought a lawn mower this weekend to mow the lawn. I don't think the previous owner had mowed at all this year, since it was really thick in the back. Dylan did a great job though:

It helps that we don't have a huge yard :) I did poop patrol in the back in about 2 minutes and I think it took Dylan maybe 15 whole minutes to mow the front and back. We are both excited about the yard in general though, so that is a good joy of being a homeowner.

We'll see how the rest of this year goes. I think it will quite an adventure (and probably an expensive one at that!).