First of all, to those of you whom I scared, I have to say this: I would rather own my own home than go back to renting, at least I know that I have something to show for my monthly installments, and it is going to be a great place to raise children.
Now, for my last post of the semester I thought I would throw in my wish list for the house. When we bought this house it did not have everything that we wanted in a dream home but we quickly realized we could not afford our dream home at that time. So we have made a wish list of things we would like to add throughout the years.
I would love to have a yard that my children will never be bored in. We have plenty of land so we decided that we are going to install a pool and a volleyball court at some point in the lower end of the lot. We love to have family and friends over so I would also like to have a garage and a covered porch for those not so pretty days. My husband would also love to have a "man cave" as he calls it and I wouldn't mind that so much either so I don't have to fall asleep to the Yankees watching over me every night. (lol)
Right now we only have one bathroom which can be a pain with just the two of us, so I know we will need another one when we have children. I was thinking we would add on a master suite so we could have a larger room with an attached bathroom. And one other thing, when we do get the garage I want the laundry room to be built into that so we can get the washer and dryer out of the kitchen closet. I hate that!
I know all of this will take some time but after all of the work that we have put into this place so far, we are not going anywhere anytime soon.
In closing, I want to say that I have enjoyed reading everyone else's class blogs and I appreciate all of the comments left on mine. Blogging has been a great experience, and kind of an "out" for all of the thoughts running through my head. Who knows, maybe with the lighter class load in the summer, I will have some time to keep posting. Good luck to all of you in the future, and congratulations to those of you who will be graduating at the end of this semester.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Repairs, Upkeep, and Unpleasant Surprises
OK, so we have been living in the house for almost 2 years now and I never knew the amount of work that would need to be done throughout such a short period of time. I say short because everything was brand new when we moved in so I am thinking we should not have any problems for at least five years, maybe longer if we were lucky. I was wrong!
Did you know that when you buy a house where everything is brand new, all of the light bulbs go out around the same time. I was not expecting that. Nor was I expecting that the light fixture in the shower was caulked together because the threads that are supposed to hold it together were not fitting properly. I used a caulking gun for the first time, and ruined a pair of jeans at the same time.
We also have well water which no one told us needed to be set up before we began to use the water. Our pump was running every time we used water in the house and it messed up the pressure in the bathtub. We thought we were going to have to cut a hole in the wall to fix the bathtub issue but luckily we had a friend who knew a thing or two and got that fixed. Speaking of the well, the watter in the pump froze this winter leaving us with no water for a day. That was interesting, my poor husband was out in the snow wrapping insulated material around the well to make sure that did not happen again. We had it wrapped in old blankets and then built a cute little house around it last summer but that apparently was not enough.
Another thing we learned is that our thermostat requires batteries???? Who knew?? An for those of you who have recently purchased a newly built house, I know you feel my pain when the smoke detectors go off. There is a building code now that requires a smoke detector to be placed in every room in the house and they are all linked to each other. That means when one goes off, they all go off. There would be no need to call the fire department at my house, they can probably hear the smoke detectors going off from the fire station.
Just a few days ago, our heating unit decided that it wanted to freeze up and start kicking on the emergency heat because it would not defrost. Thank goodness for warranties because it covered everything but the labor, yet again, my father came to the rescue and knew someone licensed to work on those units so he cut us a huge deal.
So now the two main concerns that we have at the moment are getting the washer and dryer to fit into the smallest laundry room in the world and trying to take my huge desk apart so I can fit it into what is supposed to be my office. No luck on either of those yet. I guess we will have to wait until next year to buy a stacking washer and dryer set to fit into the laundry room because this year we are buying our very first riding lawn mower. I figure I will have to sell the desk and just buy a smaller one. Oh well.
So if any of you know of some great ideas on where to look for cheap but good riding lawn mowers I am all ears! By the way some of my flowers are starting to come back now that the weather has warmed up. My azalea bushes are getting their leaves back and my daffodils are growing like crazy. The hyacinths are starting to get buds on them as well. We shall see if the rest of them decide to grow this year or not.
Did you know that when you buy a house where everything is brand new, all of the light bulbs go out around the same time. I was not expecting that. Nor was I expecting that the light fixture in the shower was caulked together because the threads that are supposed to hold it together were not fitting properly. I used a caulking gun for the first time, and ruined a pair of jeans at the same time.
We also have well water which no one told us needed to be set up before we began to use the water. Our pump was running every time we used water in the house and it messed up the pressure in the bathtub. We thought we were going to have to cut a hole in the wall to fix the bathtub issue but luckily we had a friend who knew a thing or two and got that fixed. Speaking of the well, the watter in the pump froze this winter leaving us with no water for a day. That was interesting, my poor husband was out in the snow wrapping insulated material around the well to make sure that did not happen again. We had it wrapped in old blankets and then built a cute little house around it last summer but that apparently was not enough.
Another thing we learned is that our thermostat requires batteries???? Who knew?? An for those of you who have recently purchased a newly built house, I know you feel my pain when the smoke detectors go off. There is a building code now that requires a smoke detector to be placed in every room in the house and they are all linked to each other. That means when one goes off, they all go off. There would be no need to call the fire department at my house, they can probably hear the smoke detectors going off from the fire station.
Just a few days ago, our heating unit decided that it wanted to freeze up and start kicking on the emergency heat because it would not defrost. Thank goodness for warranties because it covered everything but the labor, yet again, my father came to the rescue and knew someone licensed to work on those units so he cut us a huge deal.
So now the two main concerns that we have at the moment are getting the washer and dryer to fit into the smallest laundry room in the world and trying to take my huge desk apart so I can fit it into what is supposed to be my office. No luck on either of those yet. I guess we will have to wait until next year to buy a stacking washer and dryer set to fit into the laundry room because this year we are buying our very first riding lawn mower. I figure I will have to sell the desk and just buy a smaller one. Oh well.
So if any of you know of some great ideas on where to look for cheap but good riding lawn mowers I am all ears! By the way some of my flowers are starting to come back now that the weather has warmed up. My azalea bushes are getting their leaves back and my daffodils are growing like crazy. The hyacinths are starting to get buds on them as well. We shall see if the rest of them decide to grow this year or not.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Neighbors
Overall I have to say I have the most wonderful neighbors a person could ask for. There are a few that stick to themselves and are not the social butterflies of the neighborhood but we do have a few that love to talk and be of great assistance. When we first moved in we were welcomed by the leader of the neighborhood watch who brought over vegetables and a pie. I didn't think neighbors did that anymore but it was a pleasant surprise. Over the next few weeks we met the other neighbors and learned all of the neighborhood gossip. There is a little old lady that lives near us whom I think has a secret crush on my husband because she only comes over when I am not here and talks to him. (lol) I pick on him about that, he doesn't seem to think it is as funny as I do. Adam and his wife and kids life across the street from us and they have been absolutely wonderful. So wonderful in fact that they have let us borrow everything from lawn mowers to Christmas lights, to gardening tools. He gives us vegetables from his garden and flowers that are growing in excess in his yard. Every once in a while the four men in the neighborhood houses close to ours, including my husband, will all stand around in one of our yards to talk, cut up, and drink a beer or two which reminds me of the four guys doing the same thing on the TV show King of the Hill. It is really funny to watch. Teresa is Adam's wife and she has been a wonderful help to me. She is a professor at Lenoir Rhyne University and is currently seeking her Master's degree online while I am seeking my bachelor's in education. She has come to my aid several times when I have had computer issues and needed to get something done for school. She understands what I am going through so we definitely support each other with whatever we can on that. Of course we have done some things for our neighbors as well but that is not the point of the blog. I just wanted to throw that in there so it did not seem so one sided, which it did after I read what I typed. So anyway, I am grateful that we got such wonderful neighbors with our house because I have heard so many horror stories about bad neighbors and apparently everyone was happy to see the people go that used to live in our house before someone bought it, fixed it up, and sold it to us.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Decorating
Okay, so June 11th will complete our second year living in the house. My plans were to have everything decorated the way I wanted it by now, but as you can probably guess, that has not happened. We did get one room painted, right now it is the junk room which will eventually turn into a child's room when the time comes. I spent days painting the room a beautiful light blue color and loaded it with white furniture to create a light, beachy look. After I finished painting the walls I noticed I got blue spots all over the ceiling even though I used painters tape. So I decided to get the paint out of the closet that was left here by the builders and do some touching up. After I finished and let it dry I noticed that the paint I touched up with was satin and the rest of the ceiling was flat. So now I have white shiny spots where the blue ones used to be. I realized I have used the paint that was used on the baseboards.
I have not touched any of the other rooms in the house as far as paint goes, but I do have one room that is now considered "The Wizard of Oz" room. This was supposed to be my office but my desk will not fit through the door. So instead, we made this the guest bedroom and displayed all of my "Wizard of Oz" collectibles around the room. We are thinking of painting the walls a gold color to go with the theme. Our bedroom is a disaster, for me anyway. My husband is a huge Yankee's fan and when we were looking for a house he wanted to get one that had a garage or "man cave" so he could display his stuff. That didn't happen so now I am surrounded by pictures of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez when I go to sleep at night (I don't mind that so much, lol). Definitely not what I had in mind for a peaceful bedroom but until we get a garage added that is what I am stuck with.
I do have the bathroom decorated with lighthouses but I have not painted in there yet. Our kitchen, dining room, and living room are all open to each other so I have not even begun to work on that because I know that will be a huge project. Maybe this summer I will try to tackle that when I don't have such a heavy class load. I do have a coffee theme going on in the kitchen and dining room but I just can't bring myself to carry it over to the living room, it just doesn't seem like a living room theme.
So that is my adventure in decorating so far. I had all of these great ideas in my head before I owned a home and now I can't commit to decorating ideas because I know a lot of time and money will be invested into this and if I don't like it I am stuck with it for a while. I am afraid to decoratively commit!
I have not touched any of the other rooms in the house as far as paint goes, but I do have one room that is now considered "The Wizard of Oz" room. This was supposed to be my office but my desk will not fit through the door. So instead, we made this the guest bedroom and displayed all of my "Wizard of Oz" collectibles around the room. We are thinking of painting the walls a gold color to go with the theme. Our bedroom is a disaster, for me anyway. My husband is a huge Yankee's fan and when we were looking for a house he wanted to get one that had a garage or "man cave" so he could display his stuff. That didn't happen so now I am surrounded by pictures of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez when I go to sleep at night (I don't mind that so much, lol). Definitely not what I had in mind for a peaceful bedroom but until we get a garage added that is what I am stuck with.
I do have the bathroom decorated with lighthouses but I have not painted in there yet. Our kitchen, dining room, and living room are all open to each other so I have not even begun to work on that because I know that will be a huge project. Maybe this summer I will try to tackle that when I don't have such a heavy class load. I do have a coffee theme going on in the kitchen and dining room but I just can't bring myself to carry it over to the living room, it just doesn't seem like a living room theme.
So that is my adventure in decorating so far. I had all of these great ideas in my head before I owned a home and now I can't commit to decorating ideas because I know a lot of time and money will be invested into this and if I don't like it I am stuck with it for a while. I am afraid to decoratively commit!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Landscaping
Well, after many failed attempts I am sad to say I still have not been able to add a video to my blog. I have no idea what is going on with that, but back to my topic for the week.
I have never had much of green thumb and never really cared about plants and flowers until I got a house. After about a year of living here I got tired of staring at what seemed to be just a field of grass. I had received a catalog in the mail for ordering flowers so I decided to purchase some with the money we got back for our first time home buyer's tax credit. I think the total cost was about $90.00 for about 30 plants. We ordered Azaleas, lilacs, hydrangeas, maple trees, and some other bushes that I don't even remember the names of. Well we got the flowers in a tube about three weeks later. I opened the tube to find a bunch of twigs and very brief descriptions of what the twigs were. So I proceeded to plant my twigs in the yards over the course of a week. I was so excited and ready to see some results. It is now about 7 months later and the only things that grew were two Azalea bushes and three hyacinth bushes that were supposed to be white hydrangeas. Needless to say I was disappointed. So, my neighbor came over and gave me a bucket of daffodil bulbs from his garden. My husband plowed the ground to prep it for the daffodils and I spent an entire day planting the bucket of bulbs. Those have already begun to grow, and I have recovered from the sunburns and mosquito bites, so I am looking forward to seeing what the yard will look like in the spring.
We also bought white chipped marble using some of our return money to be used to replace the mulch in the flower beds that lined the house. I removed all of the mulch there (I am afraid we will get termites) and began laying fabric and pouring the rock one bag at a time along the side of the house. I got one side of the house done and ran out of rock. We had already used up the portion of the budget set aside for landscaping so I had to stop. It looks funny but eventually I will get it all done. And that brings me to weeds.
Where do all of those weeds come from!!! I pluck weeds every week or so when I have the time and it amazes me how quickly they come poking up again, especially now that there is no ground cover in those flower beds by the house because I went nuts getting all the mulch away from the house.
Meanwhile my husband has had his own battles with the yard. When we got the house we were so excited about the whole 1.2 acres of land that we forgot about the fact that we did not have a lawn mower. My dad gave us his push mower to use until we could get the funds to buy our own rider. Well midway through the summer it got so hot that my husband was only mowing one section of the yard at a time and by the time he finished all of the sections it was about time to start over again. I felt terrible for him and offered to help but he wouldn't let me. Our neighbor must have felt sorry for him too so he offered to let us use his riding mower for the rest of the summer.
We have more plans to plant more flowers around the house when we figure out what is going to grow from the first batch and what is not, and of course finish the rock around the house. We have now realized that this all can't be accomplished in one summer like I had hoped but rather it will most likely take several summers to get it the way we want it. We did manage to get the horseshoe pits up as well so we can have something to do in the "beautiful" yard during our spare time...I think we played a total of 5 times since we got it all set up. Oh well there is always next summer!
Next week, decorating~
Thanks for reading,
Jennifer Shoemaker
I have never had much of green thumb and never really cared about plants and flowers until I got a house. After about a year of living here I got tired of staring at what seemed to be just a field of grass. I had received a catalog in the mail for ordering flowers so I decided to purchase some with the money we got back for our first time home buyer's tax credit. I think the total cost was about $90.00 for about 30 plants. We ordered Azaleas, lilacs, hydrangeas, maple trees, and some other bushes that I don't even remember the names of. Well we got the flowers in a tube about three weeks later. I opened the tube to find a bunch of twigs and very brief descriptions of what the twigs were. So I proceeded to plant my twigs in the yards over the course of a week. I was so excited and ready to see some results. It is now about 7 months later and the only things that grew were two Azalea bushes and three hyacinth bushes that were supposed to be white hydrangeas. Needless to say I was disappointed. So, my neighbor came over and gave me a bucket of daffodil bulbs from his garden. My husband plowed the ground to prep it for the daffodils and I spent an entire day planting the bucket of bulbs. Those have already begun to grow, and I have recovered from the sunburns and mosquito bites, so I am looking forward to seeing what the yard will look like in the spring.
We also bought white chipped marble using some of our return money to be used to replace the mulch in the flower beds that lined the house. I removed all of the mulch there (I am afraid we will get termites) and began laying fabric and pouring the rock one bag at a time along the side of the house. I got one side of the house done and ran out of rock. We had already used up the portion of the budget set aside for landscaping so I had to stop. It looks funny but eventually I will get it all done. And that brings me to weeds.
Where do all of those weeds come from!!! I pluck weeds every week or so when I have the time and it amazes me how quickly they come poking up again, especially now that there is no ground cover in those flower beds by the house because I went nuts getting all the mulch away from the house.
Meanwhile my husband has had his own battles with the yard. When we got the house we were so excited about the whole 1.2 acres of land that we forgot about the fact that we did not have a lawn mower. My dad gave us his push mower to use until we could get the funds to buy our own rider. Well midway through the summer it got so hot that my husband was only mowing one section of the yard at a time and by the time he finished all of the sections it was about time to start over again. I felt terrible for him and offered to help but he wouldn't let me. Our neighbor must have felt sorry for him too so he offered to let us use his riding mower for the rest of the summer.
We have more plans to plant more flowers around the house when we figure out what is going to grow from the first batch and what is not, and of course finish the rock around the house. We have now realized that this all can't be accomplished in one summer like I had hoped but rather it will most likely take several summers to get it the way we want it. We did manage to get the horseshoe pits up as well so we can have something to do in the "beautiful" yard during our spare time...I think we played a total of 5 times since we got it all set up. Oh well there is always next summer!
Next week, decorating~
Thanks for reading,
Jennifer Shoemaker
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Adventures of Owning a Home
Hi everyone,
I am creating this blog as part of a class assignment. After many days of thinking, I finally came up with a topic. My husband and I just bought a house about a year and a half ago and have found it to be exciting, adventurous, and surprising. We were so excited to stop throwing our money away on rent and getting our own place that we did not think about all the things that would come with buying a house. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't give up my house to go back to renting but wow. I wish we had some sort of warning before this all happened.
A little background information:
I am 25 and my husband is 27. I grew up in a home where I was mostly just responsible for keeping my room and bathroom clean along with a few other chores. My dad did all of the outside work so I had no experience in that department. My husband grew up just outside of New York City so he has no experience with this type of stuff either except shoveling feet of snow off the walkway. So this is where we begin our journey. Each week I will talk about a different topic on the adventures of owning a home. Hopefully this will make you future home buyers a little more aware when it is your turn to be responsible for your own home.
Stay tuned because my next blog is going to be about taking care of the yard and all of the little incidents that my husband and I went through this first year.
Jennifer Shoemaker
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
