I've talked at length about how stressful August was for us. I was looking forward to September 1st for awhile now - a new month, a new start, and hopefully a lot of quiet.
But then September 1st came and I realized about mid-morning that our water wasn't working right. I flushed the toilet an hour later and the water stopped running altogether. I tried to wash my hands - nothing. Just air coming out of the faucet.
Great. September is starting off with a bang.
We have well water, which is super annoying and I absolutely hate it, particularly because the people across the street and the people up the street all have city water, but we're just a little too far down and so we're stuck with well water. Our well water sucks. It's chock full of iron and the iron build up clogs everything it comes into contact with. Our toilet and tub is stained with a layer of nasty brown filth that's nearly impossible to get rid of. We spends hundreds and hundreds of dollars each year on various water filters - UV light filters, rope filters, weird chemical filters that involved a beet-juice colored powder that stains everything it comes into contact with. Seriously, our water goes through so many filters it should sparkle like diamonds.
But it doesn't. It's brown - or sometimes purple, if the iron filter malfunctions - and today, it decided that it doesn't want to come into our house anymore.
I was lucky enough to get a guy to come out within a couple hours of realizing the problem. After over an hour of trying to figure out the problem, it turns out the motor in the well is bad. The motor in our 105 foot deep well. So I think we're looking at a repair bill of at least $500, probably a lot more. But what can you do when you have a newborn baby, lots of dirty diapers, dirty dishes and a toilet that needs flushing??? You suck it up and pay whatever you need to pay to have the problem fixed.
I've said this before and I will say it again and again and again a thousand times over - RENT, people!! Homeowner-ship is for the birds!!!
(And if you're going to insist on buying a house, at least make sure it has public water and public sewage!)
Showing posts with label Home Renovations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Renovations. Show all posts
Highchair for a Baby Murph
Continuing the trend of testing out our baby products with Murphy....
I present to you....
.... The Highchair.
And because a dog in a highchair isn't nearly funny enough, we thought we'd add alcohol.
No - the martini is NOT mine. (Although oh how I wish it was....)
Too cute, right??? It's like that thing was made for him.
I present to you....
.... The Highchair.
And because a dog in a highchair isn't nearly funny enough, we thought we'd add alcohol.
No - the martini is NOT mine. (Although oh how I wish it was....)
Too cute, right??? It's like that thing was made for him.
The Glider
Have I written about our glider yet? I feel like I did, but I can't seem to find the post. It was one of the bigger ticket items on our registry that we figured we might not get (since it was pretty expensive) but we really wanted on so we decided to put it on there anyway.
Well, DH's Dad and step-mom were oh-so-kind and bought it for us! We were thrilled!!!
The glider wood color matches the color of the crib and the spray painted dressers perfectly.
One of our main criteria for a glider was that it have a high back, so that we could rest our head's back during the many long hours that we'll inevitably spend in this chair.
Here, DH demonstrates how he is going to rest and burp the baby.
Burping success.
I took the decidely more "lounging" approach. Note the water marks on my belly. I can't wash dishes without getting my shirt wet these days.
We love the glider and were so glad to be able to "complete" this room. It was the last piece of furniture we wanted.
Murphy loves the glider too, but has a love/hate relationship with it. You see we've never had a rocking chair in our house, so he does not understand the concept of moving furniture. For the most part, he can jump up onto the chair part of the glider with only mild terror at the fact that it moves. But the ottoman is a whole other story.
For the first couple days that we had the thing set up, he would go into the room and try to jump onto the ottoman, only to quickly be thrown to the floor. He would recover, get up, and take on a defensive stance, like he thought the ottoman might try something a second time. When that didn't happen, he'd usually walk away. After this happened two or three times, he gave up, and has not tried to jump onto either the chair or the ottoman since.
It's probably better that way. At least one piece of furniture in our house won't be covered in dog fur.
Defeated.
Well, DH's Dad and step-mom were oh-so-kind and bought it for us! We were thrilled!!!
The glider wood color matches the color of the crib and the spray painted dressers perfectly.
One of our main criteria for a glider was that it have a high back, so that we could rest our head's back during the many long hours that we'll inevitably spend in this chair.
Here, DH demonstrates how he is going to rest and burp the baby.
Burping success.
I took the decidely more "lounging" approach. Note the water marks on my belly. I can't wash dishes without getting my shirt wet these days.
We love the glider and were so glad to be able to "complete" this room. It was the last piece of furniture we wanted.
Murphy loves the glider too, but has a love/hate relationship with it. You see we've never had a rocking chair in our house, so he does not understand the concept of moving furniture. For the most part, he can jump up onto the chair part of the glider with only mild terror at the fact that it moves. But the ottoman is a whole other story.
For the first couple days that we had the thing set up, he would go into the room and try to jump onto the ottoman, only to quickly be thrown to the floor. He would recover, get up, and take on a defensive stance, like he thought the ottoman might try something a second time. When that didn't happen, he'd usually walk away. After this happened two or three times, he gave up, and has not tried to jump onto either the chair or the ottoman since.
It's probably better that way. At least one piece of furniture in our house won't be covered in dog fur.
Defeated.
Garage Renovations
A few weeks ago, on a whim, DH decided that he wanted to re-organize our garage. I'm pretty sure that he thought it would only take a day or so. Three weeks later he was still working on it, and I'm pretty sure he's spent well over $1000 so far (I'm only guessing though, I'm sure he'll correct me later.)
I don't have any great "before" pictures, but let's just say it looked like a fairly cluttered garage. I didn't mind it though, but I am generally impervious to clutter. It drives DH crazy (both the clutter and my lack of awareness of it.)
First, he removed all of the weird wooden paneling that the previous owners had put up (they did some weird shit in that house, let me tell you.) The paneling was crappy, thin wood and near the back of the garage, where we would sometimes get moisture during the rainy seasons, most was growing on the wood.
Most garage renovation stories do not include stories about fires. (In all honesty, most garage renovation stories are not interesting enough to tell. This one probably isn't either. That's the beauty of writing a blog though, I can tell stories whether they're worth telling or not!) But of course, our story DOES involve a fire.
A fairly intense fire that I am glad I was not around to see when it was in full swing. Normal people might just put all of that wood out for the trash. But when you have a fire pit and you don't want to haul wood down your steep, gravely driveway, fire just makes more sense, right? Not to mention all of the space in a landfill that you're saving.
Apparently it starting raining really lightly, and DH panicked. He was afraid that the fire was going to go out and that he was going to have all of this wood leftover. So he threw it all on.
Then it almost immediately stopped raining. And we had one hell of a bonfire.
I'm glad I wasn't around when it was in full blaze. I would have been pulling the hose out in preparation for disaster.
Since then he's finished the garage and it's a good thing too, because that's where the first two hours of our Pittsburgh baby shower were held when it started pouring down rain the minute it was supposed to start.
More about that shower (also known as "Baby Bonanza" coming soon!)
I don't have any great "before" pictures, but let's just say it looked like a fairly cluttered garage. I didn't mind it though, but I am generally impervious to clutter. It drives DH crazy (both the clutter and my lack of awareness of it.)
First, he removed all of the weird wooden paneling that the previous owners had put up (they did some weird shit in that house, let me tell you.) The paneling was crappy, thin wood and near the back of the garage, where we would sometimes get moisture during the rainy seasons, most was growing on the wood.
Most garage renovation stories do not include stories about fires. (In all honesty, most garage renovation stories are not interesting enough to tell. This one probably isn't either. That's the beauty of writing a blog though, I can tell stories whether they're worth telling or not!) But of course, our story DOES involve a fire.
A fairly intense fire that I am glad I was not around to see when it was in full swing. Normal people might just put all of that wood out for the trash. But when you have a fire pit and you don't want to haul wood down your steep, gravely driveway, fire just makes more sense, right? Not to mention all of the space in a landfill that you're saving.
Apparently it starting raining really lightly, and DH panicked. He was afraid that the fire was going to go out and that he was going to have all of this wood leftover. So he threw it all on.
Then it almost immediately stopped raining. And we had one hell of a bonfire.
I'm glad I wasn't around when it was in full blaze. I would have been pulling the hose out in preparation for disaster.
Since then he's finished the garage and it's a good thing too, because that's where the first two hours of our Pittsburgh baby shower were held when it started pouring down rain the minute it was supposed to start.
More about that shower (also known as "Baby Bonanza" coming soon!)
Cuteness in a Crib
We decided that Murphy is going to be our test subject for all of the baby things that we receive. We decided to start right away with the crib.
So cute. His tolerance for putting up with all of the ridiculous crap that we make him do is one of my favorite things about him.
The verdict? Murphy thinks that the crib is perfect and that Critter will be very happy there. We couldn't agree more.
So cute. His tolerance for putting up with all of the ridiculous crap that we make him do is one of my favorite things about him.
The verdict? Murphy thinks that the crib is perfect and that Critter will be very happy there. We couldn't agree more.
The Critter Room (aka "Nursery")
Things have been kind of quiet around here recently, but that's exclusively because we've been crazy busy. We started work on Baby Hartman's room - also known as the Critter Room - months ago, and we finally finished it. We are so excited and we both think that the whole thing is just so stinking cute. Even DH can't get over the cuteness, and he is definitely not known to use the word "cute" on a regular basis unless he's talking about Murph.
I am really sad that I don't have a "before" picture of what this room looked like. For the first three years that we lived here, it was out office, housing our two enormous and craptastic old desks from college, as well as our bookcase, which was probably the nicest thing in the entire room. It didn't have overheard lighting, was painted a light blue color, but only with one coat of paint, so in some areas the previous pink wall color showed through. And it had an obnoxious pink rug, which seemed to be more like an old piece of carpeting that they threw down. Hideous, I tell you, hideous.
Anyway, get ready for picture overload. This post is going to have a lot of them!
After that we started work on the closet doors to take them from that weird honey color to bright white.
And the room was starting to come together. Here it is almost ready to go. We had decided a long time ago to use the dressers that we already had for this room. They are solid, hardwood dressers but were stained an awful green color. When DH first retrieved them from a rental property he brought them here and we considered just throwing them away or burning them.
But at the time we really needed something more in our spare bedroom, which currently had only a bed. It was also at a time when I was really into spray painting things, and I suggested that we at least try that with these. After all, we were just going to throw them away, so if it didn't work, we'd only be out a can of spray paint. We liked them a lot after spray painting them and although it's pretty obvious that they're spray painted if you look closely, we're ok with it. We decided to keep them and selected our other baby furniture based on this color.
This is the crib that we registered for, gifted to us by DH's mom. I picked the color rather blindly, hoping it would work and was thrilled with the color match. DH also appreciated that it was high quality and fairly easy to assemble so it was definitely a great purchase.
Now all we needed was the carpet. Even though our hardwood floors aren't in great shape (they look better in the pictures than they do in real life) we decided that we had to be ok with that. They aren't horrible, just not great. We ordered an area rug from Home Depot.com so long ago that we both forgot what it looked like, and were crossing our fingers that we still liked it and that it matched everything else that we did in the room.
But first we put down carpet padding to make it softer, since it will be a bedroom carpet after all. And the had a little fun with the tubing, which Murphy did not appreciate at all.
And then, all of a sudden, it was done.
The carpet was amazing. It was the perfect combination of attractive and kid-friendly cute. The brown circles complimented the brown furniture and the green circles were almost the exact shade of the wall paint.
So stinking cute, right?!!?!?
After months and months of work, we are so excited to finally have this room done. Murph loves it as well.
You might be thinking that it's a little crazy that we finished this room so far in advance. After all, I still have three solid months to go. But our summer is already crazy packed, and there are only a small handful of weekends that we're actually going to be home with no plans this summer, and most of those weekends are the ones right before my due date. Not exactly when I'm going to want to be doing home renovations. Plus, we're hoping to spend whatever time we do have fixing up our master bedroom, hopefully before Critter arrives.
It's a lot to hope for, but in the meantime we're just glad to have this room done. I look into that room at least twice a day, just to remember how awesome it is. Seriously.
I am really sad that I don't have a "before" picture of what this room looked like. For the first three years that we lived here, it was out office, housing our two enormous and craptastic old desks from college, as well as our bookcase, which was probably the nicest thing in the entire room. It didn't have overheard lighting, was painted a light blue color, but only with one coat of paint, so in some areas the previous pink wall color showed through. And it had an obnoxious pink rug, which seemed to be more like an old piece of carpeting that they threw down. Hideous, I tell you, hideous.
Anyway, get ready for picture overload. This post is going to have a lot of them!
Before - Blue walls, lot of holes, very messy
Then we painted and added overhead lights, which helped a great deal
After that we started work on the closet doors to take them from that weird honey color to bright white.
And the room was starting to come together. Here it is almost ready to go. We had decided a long time ago to use the dressers that we already had for this room. They are solid, hardwood dressers but were stained an awful green color. When DH first retrieved them from a rental property he brought them here and we considered just throwing them away or burning them.
But at the time we really needed something more in our spare bedroom, which currently had only a bed. It was also at a time when I was really into spray painting things, and I suggested that we at least try that with these. After all, we were just going to throw them away, so if it didn't work, we'd only be out a can of spray paint. We liked them a lot after spray painting them and although it's pretty obvious that they're spray painted if you look closely, we're ok with it. We decided to keep them and selected our other baby furniture based on this color.
This is the crib that we registered for, gifted to us by DH's mom. I picked the color rather blindly, hoping it would work and was thrilled with the color match. DH also appreciated that it was high quality and fairly easy to assemble so it was definitely a great purchase.
Crib built and furniture in place
Now all we needed was the carpet. Even though our hardwood floors aren't in great shape (they look better in the pictures than they do in real life) we decided that we had to be ok with that. They aren't horrible, just not great. We ordered an area rug from Home Depot.com so long ago that we both forgot what it looked like, and were crossing our fingers that we still liked it and that it matched everything else that we did in the room.
But first we put down carpet padding to make it softer, since it will be a bedroom carpet after all. And the had a little fun with the tubing, which Murphy did not appreciate at all.
And then, all of a sudden, it was done.
The carpet was amazing. It was the perfect combination of attractive and kid-friendly cute. The brown circles complimented the brown furniture and the green circles were almost the exact shade of the wall paint.
So stinking cute, right?!!?!?
After months and months of work, we are so excited to finally have this room done. Murph loves it as well.
You might be thinking that it's a little crazy that we finished this room so far in advance. After all, I still have three solid months to go. But our summer is already crazy packed, and there are only a small handful of weekends that we're actually going to be home with no plans this summer, and most of those weekends are the ones right before my due date. Not exactly when I'm going to want to be doing home renovations. Plus, we're hoping to spend whatever time we do have fixing up our master bedroom, hopefully before Critter arrives.
It's a lot to hope for, but in the meantime we're just glad to have this room done. I look into that room at least twice a day, just to remember how awesome it is. Seriously.
Help us pick a color!
Although it's probably at least a few weeks off, we're getting ready to pick a paint color for our master bedroom.
Even though I am dying to buy a new comforter and bedspread to give our room a new look, I recognize that the one we have now is in perfectly fine condition and is totally usable. In many ways, it would be foolish to buy a new one. That doesn't mean that I don't still want to.
But for now I'm thinking of keeping, at least for another year or two. So I want to pick a color that will add some brightness and well, color to our room without being so over-the-top coordinated with our bedding that we'll forever be stuck with that color scheme.
Here are the options that I identified most recently. The valance that you see in the right hand corner is the same design as our bedspread, so you can get a sense of what we're working with here.
What do you think? They are so similar yet oh so different. I definitely have a preference but I want to see if anyone else thinks a particular color would look better than the others. I would definitely appreciate the input!
Even though I am dying to buy a new comforter and bedspread to give our room a new look, I recognize that the one we have now is in perfectly fine condition and is totally usable. In many ways, it would be foolish to buy a new one. That doesn't mean that I don't still want to.
But for now I'm thinking of keeping, at least for another year or two. So I want to pick a color that will add some brightness and well, color to our room without being so over-the-top coordinated with our bedding that we'll forever be stuck with that color scheme.
Here are the options that I identified most recently. The valance that you see in the right hand corner is the same design as our bedspread, so you can get a sense of what we're working with here.
A broader perspective with the curtain in view
And a close-up
What do you think? They are so similar yet oh so different. I definitely have a preference but I want to see if anyone else thinks a particular color would look better than the others. I would definitely appreciate the input!
The Moat
You know the old saying, "When it rains, it pours." And that has been true for us in many ways, both literally and figuratively, during the past few weeks.
First, you might remember our debacle with the emergency roof job. Well, that left us with no gutters, and although we quickly called a bunch of places for estimates, our jaws hit the floor when we started getting prices back. They were astronomical - far higher than we were expecting or prepared to pay. We continued to get a few more estimates, but unfortunately the only company that gave a price under $1000 was super shady and we were not comfortable with him nor were we confident that he would do a good job.
So we negotiated a price with one of the other contractors and signed a contract, only to find out a few days later that he had to cancel on us because he got a bigger contract that was going to pull away all of his staff. So then we were back at square one.
Ultimately we had to suck it up and pay way more money than we wanted to, to a national company that we sort of hated, but in the end they came through for us. We send in the contract and they told us "they were scheduling 30 to 45 days out." "But we don't have any gutters!" we exclaimed, but clearly the receptionist didn't care.
You see, that's where the "literal" rain comes in. If you've been anyway near Pennsylvania for the past few weeks, you know that we've been getting a TON of rain. It was just pouring off of our house, damaging some of gardens and saturating the ground near our foundation that is already pretty bad at keeping water out of our basement and garage.
Fortunately, three days later the company called to say that they were coming tomorrow, weather permitting. The weather held up, the gutters were installed, and then it poured for the next couple days. Although it was really painful spending that much money on gutters, in the end we were so desperate that it felt well worth it.
Then it was realized that some of our downspouts were clogged. This resulted in DH digging a trench (that I affectionately called "the moat") through our driveway so that the could run new pipes.
Once that was finished and filled, he then started working on yet another trench on the other side of our house, that will hopefully connect to an existing pipe that waters the plants/mulch on our enormous driveway garden.
All of this work and all of that money and in the end, none of these projects really add anything to the value of our house. It's sad, really. And that's just a small sampling of all of the work we've been doing recently. More on that to come.
First, you might remember our debacle with the emergency roof job. Well, that left us with no gutters, and although we quickly called a bunch of places for estimates, our jaws hit the floor when we started getting prices back. They were astronomical - far higher than we were expecting or prepared to pay. We continued to get a few more estimates, but unfortunately the only company that gave a price under $1000 was super shady and we were not comfortable with him nor were we confident that he would do a good job.
So we negotiated a price with one of the other contractors and signed a contract, only to find out a few days later that he had to cancel on us because he got a bigger contract that was going to pull away all of his staff. So then we were back at square one.
Ultimately we had to suck it up and pay way more money than we wanted to, to a national company that we sort of hated, but in the end they came through for us. We send in the contract and they told us "they were scheduling 30 to 45 days out." "But we don't have any gutters!" we exclaimed, but clearly the receptionist didn't care.
You see, that's where the "literal" rain comes in. If you've been anyway near Pennsylvania for the past few weeks, you know that we've been getting a TON of rain. It was just pouring off of our house, damaging some of gardens and saturating the ground near our foundation that is already pretty bad at keeping water out of our basement and garage.
Fortunately, three days later the company called to say that they were coming tomorrow, weather permitting. The weather held up, the gutters were installed, and then it poured for the next couple days. Although it was really painful spending that much money on gutters, in the end we were so desperate that it felt well worth it.
Then it was realized that some of our downspouts were clogged. This resulted in DH digging a trench (that I affectionately called "the moat") through our driveway so that the could run new pipes.
Using the tiller to aid in the digging process
The moat made turning around in our driveway rather difficult
The new downspouts and the means by which we can fill the moat with water to protect the castle
Creating the rock waterfall at the end - he's so handy
Once that was finished and filled, he then started working on yet another trench on the other side of our house, that will hopefully connect to an existing pipe that waters the plants/mulch on our enormous driveway garden.
All of this work and all of that money and in the end, none of these projects really add anything to the value of our house. It's sad, really. And that's just a small sampling of all of the work we've been doing recently. More on that to come.
The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is.... nevermind
This post is about the roof! Our stupid, leaking, good for nothing roof.
That DH and his brother so kindly replaced. Good thing little brother Hartman didn't have anything going on for this past weekend....
They look excited up there, right? This was Saturday, around 8:30 a.m. They had barely gotten started, so I have no idea why they look so excited. If they knew what was really in store for them, they would not look so happy. This picture was taken after Breakfast 1 and just before Breakfast 2. A lot of food is in order to keep Hartman men working hard.
If I ever wanted to convince someone that I lived in poverty, in a dilapidated shack, I would use this picture as "evidence." There are stray cats and everything.
Demolition continues following Day 1 Breakfast 2. The gutters were an unintentional casualty of this project. Apparently it's hard to tear off a roof and preserve the gutters. You can imagine my excitement over discovering yet another unplanned expense. But boys love themselves some demolition, so I'm pretty sure this was their favorite part of the entire weekend.
Day 1 After Lunch, the roof is off and about 15 pieces of plywood are replaced. We probably should have replaced all of them, that's how crappy those boards were. But we are poor with a capital PO. So 15 pieces of plywood it is.
Here I am checking out the yard across the street from us through the whole in my house. It's a good thing the sky was clear blue without a cloud in sight or I would have been seriously worried.
Day 1 After Snack, just before Dinner. Plywood is all in place, and shingles start going down in the front. We live in the middle of a mountain, so it can't get a picture of the front roof because I'm too far downhill at that point. Believe it or not, this picture is taken only 3/4 of the way up our back yard. Seriously - I wasn't kidding when I said we live in the middle of a mountain.
Day 2 after Breakfast 1 and Breakfast 2, the shingles start going on the back of the roof and I can finally photograph some progress. I think the boys consumed about 96 cups of coffee by this point, between the two days. I thought shingling would be the easy part. I've shingled a roof in my day, if you can believe that (my mom didn't.) But no one likes a pregnant woman doing roofing work, so I was relegated to kitchen and coffee duty. Oh, and I painted in little New Hartman's room. When I would get bored, I'd go outside and photograph. Everyone loved it when I decided to climb the 40 foot ladder from the front of the house to check out the progress. Yep, everyone loves a pregnant woman on a ladder.
Anyway, shingling took forever, and I won't bored you with pictures of that. But here is the final product.
For all of the time, energy, and money that went into that thing I think I expected it to sparkle with flecks of gold or perhaps, I don't know, maybe shoot off some fireworks from it's peak. No such luck though. It's just a gray roof that hopefully (hopefully!) doesn't leak. It shouldn't, right?
Of course, now that the roof is done, we need to look into replacing those gutters. Our first estimate? SEVENTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!! And that doesn't even include leaf guards which are essential in the suburban wilderness and an additional $2 to $5 PER FOOT!!! Seriously!?!?! This is highway robbery, people! And now my poor husband feels compelled try to do the gutters himself, because to spend $2000+ dollars on gutters just seems outrageous.
Remember dear readers - RENT, DON'T OWN! Make your landlord fix that leaky roof!
lllll
That DH and his brother so kindly replaced. Good thing little brother Hartman didn't have anything going on for this past weekend....
They look excited up there, right? This was Saturday, around 8:30 a.m. They had barely gotten started, so I have no idea why they look so excited. If they knew what was really in store for them, they would not look so happy. This picture was taken after Breakfast 1 and just before Breakfast 2. A lot of food is in order to keep Hartman men working hard.
If I ever wanted to convince someone that I lived in poverty, in a dilapidated shack, I would use this picture as "evidence." There are stray cats and everything.
Demolition continues following Day 1 Breakfast 2. The gutters were an unintentional casualty of this project. Apparently it's hard to tear off a roof and preserve the gutters. You can imagine my excitement over discovering yet another unplanned expense. But boys love themselves some demolition, so I'm pretty sure this was their favorite part of the entire weekend.
Day 1 After Lunch, the roof is off and about 15 pieces of plywood are replaced. We probably should have replaced all of them, that's how crappy those boards were. But we are poor with a capital PO. So 15 pieces of plywood it is.
Here I am checking out the yard across the street from us through the whole in my house. It's a good thing the sky was clear blue without a cloud in sight or I would have been seriously worried.
Day 1 After Snack, just before Dinner. Plywood is all in place, and shingles start going down in the front. We live in the middle of a mountain, so it can't get a picture of the front roof because I'm too far downhill at that point. Believe it or not, this picture is taken only 3/4 of the way up our back yard. Seriously - I wasn't kidding when I said we live in the middle of a mountain.
Who wouldn't love this mess!?!?
Day 2 after Breakfast 1 and Breakfast 2, the shingles start going on the back of the roof and I can finally photograph some progress. I think the boys consumed about 96 cups of coffee by this point, between the two days. I thought shingling would be the easy part. I've shingled a roof in my day, if you can believe that (my mom didn't.) But no one likes a pregnant woman doing roofing work, so I was relegated to kitchen and coffee duty. Oh, and I painted in little New Hartman's room. When I would get bored, I'd go outside and photograph. Everyone loved it when I decided to climb the 40 foot ladder from the front of the house to check out the progress. Yep, everyone loves a pregnant woman on a ladder.
Anyway, shingling took forever, and I won't bored you with pictures of that. But here is the final product.
For all of the time, energy, and money that went into that thing I think I expected it to sparkle with flecks of gold or perhaps, I don't know, maybe shoot off some fireworks from it's peak. No such luck though. It's just a gray roof that hopefully (hopefully!) doesn't leak. It shouldn't, right?
Of course, now that the roof is done, we need to look into replacing those gutters. Our first estimate? SEVENTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!! And that doesn't even include leaf guards which are essential in the suburban wilderness and an additional $2 to $5 PER FOOT!!! Seriously!?!?! This is highway robbery, people! And now my poor husband feels compelled try to do the gutters himself, because to spend $2000+ dollars on gutters just seems outrageous.
Remember dear readers - RENT, DON'T OWN! Make your landlord fix that leaky roof!
lllll
The Woes of Homeownership
You may have noticed that I took a brief hiatus from blogging the past few days. Believe it or not, even though I have tons of back posts ready to go, I was too busy to even get online and set them up to post. Why so busy?
Well first, we're still doing renovations indoors following the dining room and office/spare bedroom work. This time it's for the "old office" aka "new baby room." Progress has been slow, to say the least, even though we're not doing much - painting walls and woodwork and installing new closet structures. We also added a new attic access to this room, which involves a pull down ladder instead of the whole in my closet that was the previous access that required a ladder.
"But why do you need a new attic access?" you might ask. Great question. Well, we still continue to be plagued by the mice from hell that simply WILL. NOT. DIE. After about 8 weeks of having a ladder in my closet, we decided we needed a better way to wage this war with the rodents. We're still losing. Miserably. Every night we wake up, listening to them dancing around above our heads. This new batch of mice are fearless little buggers, and no amount of racket that we make below stops them from their disco above. Our sleep is disturbed in major ways and we're constantly tired these days. All we want to do in the evening is relax and go to bed. Stupid mice.
Unrelatedly, during a particularly torrential downpour a week or two ago, water started coming into our bathroom. DH went to the roof to do a patch and then visited the attic. There was definite evidence that our roof was leaking. Fast forward to Wednesday of last week (hmm... or is that rewinding, since it's now Wednesday of this week?) and water started coming into our kitchen. While it was raining DH went back to the attic and found no fewer than 5 places where water was coming, and he only checked 5 places so who knows how many other leaks there were. A few quick phone calls and we had a dumpster ordered, DH brother ready to drive in from Baltimore, and a need to dip into our savings account for an emergency re-roofing project. Fun.
That was this past weekend. Do you remember this past weekend at all? It was cold. Bitter cold. 18 degrees in the morning cold. Thermos' can't keep your coffee warm kind of cold. And DH and his brother were out there from 6:30 a.m. to about 7 p.m. both days this weekend putting a new roof on our house. If that isn't commitment, I'm not sure what is.
Our roof went from looking like this:
To this:
I had no idea our original roof was tan. I kind of like it better in that color now that I'm comparing, but honestly, I could care less what color our roof is, as long as it doesn't leak. Or maybe I just like that picture better because it was taken in the spring, at a much more artistic angle, and there are flowers blooming in it.
Also, why does our house look like a shack from the back? It's really an ugly house from this perspective. I'm glad that we don't really have back-yard neighbors.
Anyway, a future post will be written with more details about the roofing weekend. It was long, hard and cold, and I wasn't even up on the roof.
It's times like these when we wonder why in the world we bother with home ownership. If we were renting, our landlord would have to replace the roof. If we were renting, our landlord would be responsible for bringing in an exterminator to deal with the mice. And if we were renting and needing more space for an addition to our family, we would find a bigger apartment to rent. Done and done.
So for those of you who lament renting, read this post again and be thankful.
Well first, we're still doing renovations indoors following the dining room and office/spare bedroom work. This time it's for the "old office" aka "new baby room." Progress has been slow, to say the least, even though we're not doing much - painting walls and woodwork and installing new closet structures. We also added a new attic access to this room, which involves a pull down ladder instead of the whole in my closet that was the previous access that required a ladder.
"But why do you need a new attic access?" you might ask. Great question. Well, we still continue to be plagued by the mice from hell that simply WILL. NOT. DIE. After about 8 weeks of having a ladder in my closet, we decided we needed a better way to wage this war with the rodents. We're still losing. Miserably. Every night we wake up, listening to them dancing around above our heads. This new batch of mice are fearless little buggers, and no amount of racket that we make below stops them from their disco above. Our sleep is disturbed in major ways and we're constantly tired these days. All we want to do in the evening is relax and go to bed. Stupid mice.
Unrelatedly, during a particularly torrential downpour a week or two ago, water started coming into our bathroom. DH went to the roof to do a patch and then visited the attic. There was definite evidence that our roof was leaking. Fast forward to Wednesday of last week (hmm... or is that rewinding, since it's now Wednesday of this week?) and water started coming into our kitchen. While it was raining DH went back to the attic and found no fewer than 5 places where water was coming, and he only checked 5 places so who knows how many other leaks there were. A few quick phone calls and we had a dumpster ordered, DH brother ready to drive in from Baltimore, and a need to dip into our savings account for an emergency re-roofing project. Fun.
That was this past weekend. Do you remember this past weekend at all? It was cold. Bitter cold. 18 degrees in the morning cold. Thermos' can't keep your coffee warm kind of cold. And DH and his brother were out there from 6:30 a.m. to about 7 p.m. both days this weekend putting a new roof on our house. If that isn't commitment, I'm not sure what is.
Our roof went from looking like this:
To this:
I had no idea our original roof was tan. I kind of like it better in that color now that I'm comparing, but honestly, I could care less what color our roof is, as long as it doesn't leak. Or maybe I just like that picture better because it was taken in the spring, at a much more artistic angle, and there are flowers blooming in it.
Also, why does our house look like a shack from the back? It's really an ugly house from this perspective. I'm glad that we don't really have back-yard neighbors.
Anyway, a future post will be written with more details about the roofing weekend. It was long, hard and cold, and I wasn't even up on the roof.
It's times like these when we wonder why in the world we bother with home ownership. If we were renting, our landlord would have to replace the roof. If we were renting, our landlord would be responsible for bringing in an exterminator to deal with the mice. And if we were renting and needing more space for an addition to our family, we would find a bigger apartment to rent. Done and done.
So for those of you who lament renting, read this post again and be thankful.
New Door!
You know you're old when you get really excited about a new front door. But this door has been a work in a progress for a really long time. We had been searching and researching for weeks, finally made a decision, then all of a sudden the price skyrocketed because it had to be a custom size, so then it was back to the drawing board.
(Ready for door photo overload?)
You might remember that this is what our current door looks like.
And this was initially the door that we really wanted.
But our fiscally conservative nature told us otherwise. You can buy my love. Or rather, you can make me not love you by costing me money.
We decided to skip the wood grain and go with a flat door that we would need to paint ourselves. It saved us a couple hundred dollars and DH felt like it would be easy enough to paint. We also got price quotes for three different vendors and different glass styles, which actually affects the cost way more than I ever knew. I liked the "center arch" look that we chose above, but when we realized that it was a more expensive design, I was immediately over it. We also went to a few places other than Home Depot, but they didn't even attempt to pretend that they could be competitive with Home Depots prices. So much for supporting the little guy.
There was one door in particular that was clearly less expensive than the other two that we were now considering, and we couldn't figure out why. Was it not as good? Or it is just that this particular company is more affordable? We almost went with one of the more expensive options simply because it "must be better, right?", but on the way to Home Depot that day I declared, "Let's get this one," pointing to the less expensive of the three, and DH seemed to be relieved that someone had finally made a choice and he fully agreed.
I now present to you, our new door.
(Ready for door photo overload?)
You might remember that this is what our current door looks like.
And this was initially the door that we really wanted.
But our fiscally conservative nature told us otherwise. You can buy my love. Or rather, you can make me not love you by costing me money.
We decided to skip the wood grain and go with a flat door that we would need to paint ourselves. It saved us a couple hundred dollars and DH felt like it would be easy enough to paint. We also got price quotes for three different vendors and different glass styles, which actually affects the cost way more than I ever knew. I liked the "center arch" look that we chose above, but when we realized that it was a more expensive design, I was immediately over it. We also went to a few places other than Home Depot, but they didn't even attempt to pretend that they could be competitive with Home Depots prices. So much for supporting the little guy.
There was one door in particular that was clearly less expensive than the other two that we were now considering, and we couldn't figure out why. Was it not as good? Or it is just that this particular company is more affordable? We almost went with one of the more expensive options simply because it "must be better, right?", but on the way to Home Depot that day I declared, "Let's get this one," pointing to the less expensive of the three, and DH seemed to be relieved that someone had finally made a choice and he fully agreed.
I now present to you, our new door.
Definitely not as fancy as the wood grain door - which I still admit to loving - but for $1000, I can live with the looks of this one. After all, it doesn't look bad, it just isn't the original one that I picked out.
We also replaced the horrible old screen door with one that has a retractable screen in the upper half. This means that we can still get a ton of light in the summer, let in the breeze, not have to worry about Murphy possible scratching through a lower screen AND we don't have to store or change the glass and screen panels every single time a season changes.
This door also lets in a TON more light than our old door. The old door was solid in the middle and the sidelights were just clear glass, so the people before us had these nasty, dusty curtains on them, which we just left because we didn't have anything better.
Old door from the inside:
And new door from the inside:
In fact, it lets in so much light now that we get this crazy pattern of light in the morning when the sun is shining (not that there's been much of that lately.)
It still needs to be painted (any ideas for paint colors? Should we do an actual color? Or just paint it white? I can't decide!) and we think that we need to caulk underneath the baseboard since there is a lot of air coming in from there, but both are things that DH can easily do himself.
We're thrilled to finally be able to check this one off of the to-do list. Done and done.
Desk #2 - Complete!
This past weekend DH finished putting together the second of the two desks that we purchased, to replace our old, mis-matched desks. Mine was a stupid plywood-like number that was great for college but sort of crappy now (moving 6 times will do that to a piece of furniture) and DH's desk was so ridiculously enormous that it deserved to have its own zip code.
Now we have matching desks.
Cheesy? Sort of. But what else could we do? We each wanted/needed to have our own desk, they needed to be on the small side, and they needed to complement each other since they would be in the same room. Matching desks just made sense.
It's a tight little space now, even thought it once felt like a really decent sized bedroom. Now, there is barely enough rug exposed (much of it is covered but our desk chair mats) that I'm not sure if I'll be able to vacuum in there when I clean.
But it's also really functional for us. We were previously dedicating an entire empty bedroom to just being a "spare bedroom." Even though we probably have more overnight guests that most people our age, it's still not frequently enough to justify an entire spare bedroom.
And cramming everything into this room means that we can take our good old time with emptying out and painting the back bedroom. It's a good thing too. When did we finish the dining and finish painting this room? I'm pretty sure it was back in November. I told you we were burnt out after that, and we weren't kidding. It's taken us nearly two full months to get this room to this point, so clearly we needed to come up with a better solution than just moving the furniture into the living room for a few days.
Originally I was supposed to get the desk with the hutch, but in the end it was obvious that DH had way more "stuff" that he needed space for than I did. He's our primary banking and bill paying so I agreed that he should get the hutch. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough storage space in my desk without the hutch but I'm pretty sure that in the end the only thing I'll be short on is filing cabinet space, so I may have to try to convince DH to give me half a drawer in his big four-drawer cabinet.
The other perk of my new desk?
The heat vent is right at my feet. A definite perk during these horribly cold winter months. And is it just me, or is this winter already way more horrible than last year? And it's only January?
Yes, definitely way more horrible.
Now we have matching desks.
Cheesy? Sort of. But what else could we do? We each wanted/needed to have our own desk, they needed to be on the small side, and they needed to complement each other since they would be in the same room. Matching desks just made sense.
The view from the door/hallway
It's a tight little space now, even thought it once felt like a really decent sized bedroom. Now, there is barely enough rug exposed (much of it is covered but our desk chair mats) that I'm not sure if I'll be able to vacuum in there when I clean.
But it's also really functional for us. We were previously dedicating an entire empty bedroom to just being a "spare bedroom." Even though we probably have more overnight guests that most people our age, it's still not frequently enough to justify an entire spare bedroom.
And cramming everything into this room means that we can take our good old time with emptying out and painting the back bedroom. It's a good thing too. When did we finish the dining and finish painting this room? I'm pretty sure it was back in November. I told you we were burnt out after that, and we weren't kidding. It's taken us nearly two full months to get this room to this point, so clearly we needed to come up with a better solution than just moving the furniture into the living room for a few days.
My new blogging space
Originally I was supposed to get the desk with the hutch, but in the end it was obvious that DH had way more "stuff" that he needed space for than I did. He's our primary banking and bill paying so I agreed that he should get the hutch. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough storage space in my desk without the hutch but I'm pretty sure that in the end the only thing I'll be short on is filing cabinet space, so I may have to try to convince DH to give me half a drawer in his big four-drawer cabinet.
The other perk of my new desk?
The heat vent is right at my feet. A definite perk during these horribly cold winter months. And is it just me, or is this winter already way more horrible than last year? And it's only January?
Yes, definitely way more horrible.
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