Projects Completed

The kitchen is finally complete! That's one major project ticked off the list...

BEFORE	AFTER

In addition to the kitchen, we've also managed to finish putting up the garage door openers, so we now have two fully functional and automatic garage doors. Now let me tell you all about the debacle of putting these damn things up...

Remember how I was complaining about the fact that if there was supposed to be a part required for assembly, that it should in fact be included with the hardware in the box? Yeah, well it seems that the parts I needed WERE indeed included, and I was just to dumb to notice. So, after two weeks of trying to procure the correct screws (which I thought I was missing) in order to attach the chain spreader, without much luck mind you, I finally got fed up and decided to call the company for guidance. As I was waiting on hold, I figured I'd go through the boxes and bags of hardware that came with the opener. When I grabbed the bag that the chain spreader had come in, what to my wondering eyes did appear, BUT THE TWO FREAKING SCREWS THAT I WAS LOOKING FOR OVER A WEEK AND A HALF FOR! They were in the corner of the bag, sealed off from the rest of it. I hung up the phone immediately (and not before uttering some not very kind, yet extraordinarily colorful words to myself for actually being so stupid) and got down to the business of completing the assembly of the first opener. Suffice to say, things went very quickly after that. My brother and I set about building the support structure for the header that would be where the front of the track would mount. After several hours, what seemed like hundreds of nails, countless cuts of wood, and more than a couple of hammer smashed fingers with accompanying colorful language, the structure was built and in place. Quite the milestone! Except, it was too tall...we had to tear the whole thing down, and start over. We finally managed to get it to the correct height (using more swearing and nails) and test it out. Lo and behold, the thing actually worked! I was stoked! It looked like two blind and drunk monkeys had completed the operation, but who cares!

The second one went much more smoothly. My friend John came down to help me out with it, and since he's an engineer, I figured I would put that skill to good use in building a better anchor point for the header on this one, while I assembled the opener. He did an excellent job, but we still ran into a minor problem. This time, the anchoring point was too low. The garage door was not clearing the track. We had to tear that whole thing apart and rebuild two or three inches higher, which actually went much smoother still than the first one. Eventually, we got it up and the door did clear the track. Over the past couple of days, I went about running the wiring for the safety systems (IR beams that stop the door closing if the beam is broken by someone walking through the door). Again, this looks like complete amateur work, but it works, so who cares? I'm just excited to have two fully functional openers now!

In other projects, when we pulled up the carpet in the breezeway, we noticed that in the little "hallway" between the kitchen and the family room, the floor was not what you would call *level* - there was about a 1/2 inch difference in height between the kitchen and family room, which presented a problem for laying the tile in that area. We decided to try self leveling underlayment in order to even it out. That was our project for last night. I had built a sort of cage to contain the self leveler out of some old MDF that we had to pull up in the family room due to mold. There were a few containment failures, but nothing that appeared really major. It seems like it is working, but I'll have to see when I go back over today.

That's about it for now. We still have a couple of major projects left to complete (tiling, hardwoods, upstairs bathroom - which I'm picking up the building permit for today), but things are coming along nicely. More pictures to come as projects are completed!

Work in Progress...

Much butt has been kicked over the past few days. The kitchen and adjoining hallway have been fully painted. The family room has been essentially completely painted. Today, a friend came down and helped with the kitchen floor. We pulled up the underlayment that had the adhesive and felt backing from the old vinyl floor stuck to it, which revealed yet another layer of linoleum. We made yet another trip to Home Depot to pick up several sheets of luan underlayment to replace what we had just pulled up. Thus far, we've gotten a good amount of the floor replaced, hopefully we can get it finished tomorrow. It's important that we get it finished before the end of the week since the refrigerator is being delivered this weekend. Hopefully we can get some "after" pictures up this weekend!

Before Pictures of the New House

Here are the "Before" pictures, as promised!

House - Old

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year all! We've been in possession of the house for 5 days now, and much work has already begun. Home Depot has become almost like a third home for us (since the first home is the apartment, and second is the house currently). I've never seen money disappear so quickly before in my life!

So just to keep you all informed, so far the following has been started:

1. Garage door openers have been unpacked and partially assembled. For the record, if the assembly required a certain screw, wouldn't you think it would be included with the assembly hardware? Needless to say, a trip to Home Depot was required to procure the appropriate screws.
   
2. Ceiling in the family room has been painted. Now a determination has to be made regarding what to do about the existing track lighting in that room. It's heinous.
   
3. Vinyl flooring in the kitchen has been pulled up. This project is turning out to be our first surprise. The adhesive and felt backing on the vinyl did not come up with the rest of the floor, and upon our inquiring at Home Depot whether there was a solvent that would take that up, we learned that we will never fully get it all off the floor, which will cause problems when putting down the new vinyl tiles. What we're going to have to do is lay another thin layer of plywood over the existing sub-floor. I have a friend coming tomorrow to help me get that done, so the major project for today is to get the kitchen and adjoining hallway painted.
   
4. In order to at least like we got something accomplished, we've nearly completed painting the half bath. There's one section of the wall above the sink that still needs to be painted because we had to spackle yesterday. Today will be sanding and painting, then the light fixture will be changed out as well as the faucet. It's going to look KILLER when done!
   

We have taken before pictures of every room in the house, but I haven't had a chance to upload them yet. I'll try to get them up here as soon as possible, as well as an after picture of the half bath.

Much to do today, so we're off to go put in our work at the house. Wish us luck!

WE DID IT!!!

We closed successfully on Wednesday morning - the house is now officially ours! We are moving full swing into the renovation phase this weekend, so watch this space for some "before" pictures...

Almost there...

T minus 11 days till closing, and we are well on the way... we've arranged for homeowners' insurance and utility hookups, and the truck and movers are booked for January 28. (If you are the praying kind, please pray that we don't have a foot of snow every weekend like we did this past January!) Today we're heading out to Lumber Liquidators to check out their end-of-year sales and hopefully pick up some hardwood flooring for our family room. If we can find a good enough price on the hardwood, we might even be able to hire someone who knows what they're doing to install it, and take one project off our plate... we'll see what happens!

Redfin

Sorry for the silence lately... until we close on the 28th, there won't be too much to talk about renovation-wise. Since our last post, we've received official bank approval for our mortgage, so now it's just a matter of arranging utility hookups, insurance, and staying patient until closing day!

For the last three years, we've been saving up our down payment and stalking the online listing sites to familiarize ourselves with the local market. About two years ago, when some friends of ours went through the whole home-buying process, they introduced us to a site called Redfin, with which we instantly became fascinated. Redfin is an online real estate brokerage that allows you to browse listings in your area and essentially act as your own agent - you choose the properties you want to see by adding the ones you like as "favorites," and a Redfin agent then arranges for the tour. After you find a property you like, your agent will work with you to draw up an offer and submit it to the listing agent, and the whole thing happens online. After your offer is submitted, Redfin opens an online "Deal Room" for you, so you can keep track of what's happened so far and see all the next steps in the process. The best part is that when you close, Redfin refunds you part of the agent's commission! (The amount refunded varies according to state law, but our Redfin refund will more than pay for our new fridge.)

When the time came to make a move, we were sure that we wanted to buy through Redfin, and we have definitely not been disappointed! The concept was great for us, because the last three years of looking had given us an excellent sense of what we wanted (and more importantly, what we could realistically expect to get for our money). We only needed one tour to find our house, but if we'd needed more time, we could have done an unlimited number of tours. The entire process has been incredibly smooth, and our agent is just awesome (and I am not saying this just because she reads this blog - hi, Liane!). She responds instantly to emails, no matter what time of day it is, and her recommendations for a home inspector and a closing attorney have been spot on. It's readily apparent that she completely adores her job, and she has done so much to make the biggest purchase of our lives just about as easy as buying a cheeseburger at the drive-through.

The only drawback to Redfin is that it isn't yet available in all real estate markets, but they're expanding all the time. If you're looking for a house and Redfin is available in your area, we can't recommend it strongly enough!