High-Jacked

So some crazy, negative chick high on Lupron, who complains a lot, high-jacked my blog and changed it to this new darn "enhanced" look with no gadgets on the sidebar. It's too much of a pain to change it back to the way it was, so I'm just going to have to deal with until it improves. She also changed my Facebook over to timeline!

Yeah, well besides having multiple personalities, I'm doing well. I got all of my Christmas shopping basically done this Saturday online and a little in the stores. My credit card got rejected because apparently shopping at two online retailers (Barnes & Noble and Amazon), filling my car with gas, and then going grocery shopping is a sign of fraud. I guess I need to shop more.

I hope this school week goes fast. No one wants to be there (and that includes the teachers). I'm looking forward to sleeping in for several days in a row. After school is out, I have a couple different get-togethers planned with a couple different high school friends. Besides that, I don't really have much planned for my break. Maybe I should start contacting contractors to put the build-in in the front room... Or buy the crown molding for the front two rooms.. Or paint the kitchen and family room... Or...eh, I'll probably do nothing.

Basement Floorplan x 14

So, I found a bunch of contractors in my area through some website called Service Magic about a month ago and scheduled four different appointments to try to get some estimates of how much it would cost to finish our basement.  Our estimates ranged from $13,000 to $25,000.  Luckily the contractor with the lowest bid proposal was the one that we liked the most BEFORE we knew what the bids were and that we were going to pick him.

Yep, that's right.  I think we're ACTUALLY going to finish our basement.  This is, if the contractor doesn't give up on me and decide that I'll be too much of a pain in the butt to work with.

At this point, I've come up with 14 different floor plans for the basement.  Luckily for him, I've only emailed him four of them.  So here are SOME of the different floor plans I've come up with.

 Plan 1: This was the ORIGINAL plan that we sent to the contractor.  Simple, but the office isn't separated by a wall and I thought it might be nice for Doug to have his own computing space that I DIDN'T see. :)

Plan 2: I decided that this plan didn't use the space well AND I didn't like the random pole in the middle.

Plan 3: I sent this plan to the contractor and I really liked it because we had added a whole room and changed the old office in the upper right-hand corner to a library with built in shelving. But then I taped it out for Doug to see on the basement floor and he thought the section of the office closest to the bathroom was too small to make it into a room... and I kind of agreed with him begrudgingly.  Sooo, back to the drawing board.  I was worried that I was trying to do too much with the space we had, but the levels above the basement do more with the same amount of space, so I was determined to keep trying.

Plan 4: I really was liking this plan because it increased the size on the office and changed the entry of the food storage room so I wouldn't have to go into "Doug Territory" each time I needed an extra can of tomato sauce and such.  It also had the added advantage of a big linen closet in between the storage and workroom. I didn't like the small entry way into the office, but it was doable.  THEN we ended up going to Washington DC with my cousin and saw this amazing salt water aquarium display at the Museum of Natural History, so we needed an unfinished place for a tank.  If Doug decides that he's not going to do a tank after all, I guess this plan could still be in the running.

Plan 5:  I still like this plan, but I'm not sure what I would do with the 7x5 space in the middle of the basement, so I added it to the storage space in one of the final versions of the plan.

 Plan 6 (above) and Plan 7 (below): I sent these last two plans to the contractor yesterday.  I know that the ceiling is going to need to be lower in some places because of the central air ducts in the basement, so I'm not sure if I can place the bathroom where I did in plans 4, 5, and 6. I'm not sure if I like the little hallway in plan 7, but I do like the little linen closet off of the bathroom.  Also, it won't be a problem having Doug's workroom right off of his office because he's the only one that will really use it.  The one thing that I kind of don't like about either of these plans is that the door to our unfinished space is right in the middle of the basement.  There's a part of me that thinks that the entrance to storage should be tucked away in a corner like in Plan 4.

Yep, so now I'm waiting for him to respond back to my email from yesterday.  Usually he responds within a day, but he could be on vacation or something or just really busy on a job.  One of the reasons we really like him was that he was easygoing, but very business-like.

Painting Project

So it's taken me forever to update my blog because I wanted to be done with my painting project beforehand so I could show you the beautiful finished pictures of it.  You know, because infertility is kind of depressing and I like to have happier things on my blog.

SO, yeah the painting... It's kind of still NOT done.  BUT, most of it is, so I'll show you some pictures of the stuff that's done and the stuff that's not done.  Also you'll get to see some fun pictures of me and my sis, Kate painting together. (By the way, Kate is awesome!  She stayed at my house and painted for three whole days and only was paid with my cooking.)

Upstairs hall-ish area where we started.

The actual painting ended up taking 4 days.  We started on Tuesday by going to the grocery store to get groceries for the week and then to Home Depot to pick up paint.  I had intended on starting and finishing EVERYTHING on that day (riiight), but by the time we finished all of my errands, it was 5:30pm.  When we got home, we decided to just make a yummy dinner that my sister Bekah cooks and then just watch TV.  We didn't actually get started on the painting at all, but I felt like the day was productive so we went to bed early and "officially" started the next day.  That day continued onto the next day, which continued onto the NEXT day...

I taped the top and then Kate painted the top.  We both almost died in the process.

I seriously had a blast painting with my little sis!  I hope it wasn't too torturous for her, but I really enjoyed hanging out with her those four days.  We got to catch up on all of the sisterly gossip that we've missed out on the last three years that she has been living in Hawaii.  We laughed about crazy things that we did as kids and just talked about our lives and our plans for the future. 

The stairs going up and down are now all done!

The entry hall (finished) and the stairs that go down into the basement (not finished).

Kate needed to go home on Friday to do some stuff related to becoming gainfully employed, so I released her from her servitude.  I came home and started finishing up the area that we had started in the basement.  I had gotten most of it done when Doug got back from work and wanted to talk and have dinner.  So, thinking that I would just get right back to it after making dinner, I put the paint brush and roller down, and made dinner.  The second my butt hit the couch, I knew I wasn't going to finish.  So this is how it still looks two weeks later.  I'm not sure when I'll get the motivation to finish.

Oh YES, and this here is the tape ball we made.  That's $25 worth of tape right there.  This picture also coincidentally kind of shows (in a blurry way) all of the different color paints that I've done so far in my house.  There's still A LOT more to do, but that's what teacher summers are for, right?

Basement Plans

So, I've been bothering my husband non-stop about finishing the basement of our house for about two years now.  I've toyed with different ideas and done some drawings.  Yesterday, I sat down on my computer and drew this up in Paint. (I don't have any other software on my computer that I thought could do the job.)



First in the upper left-hand corner is the storage room/tank maintenance room.  I want to put in some big metal shelving units to organize food storage on the left side of the room.  Also, Doug and I used to have a salt water aquarium upstairs that we absolutely loved, but maintenance on it was overwhelming with Doug's long work hours from his last job, so we had to get rid of it.  He now has a job that has more reasonable hours (for the most part) and the location of the tank near the bathroom would make it easy to design some automated systems that would make the management of the tank a lot easier.

I call the place in front of where the tank is the "Tank Room" where the front of the salt water tank could be seen.  I'm thinking that there could be a couch or a built-in bench with storage underneath up against the bathroom wall.  I figure that area could also double as a play area if/when we get to have kids.

Doug has ideas for the TV room that involve surround sound and other such man toys.  The office is below the laundry room upstairs and it's kind of this random area that juts out of the house.  I figured we could put a desk and some shelves in there and call it an "Office" even though is really just an awkward 8x8 space.  The bedroom has a egress window so it technically can be called one.  The gray area next to the bedroom is a storage place under the stairs.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about construction or building anything.  I simply took measurements of where everything was in the basement.  There were a few things that I had no choice over like the two support beams in the middle of the room seen on either side of the blue tank.  The area where I have placed the bathroom is where the rough in's are located.  The workroom contains the water heater and HVAC system for the house, so that is dead space as well.  And of course the location of the stairs can't be changed. 

This would move our house into another buying category, a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath house which would be good if we ever need to sell.  Also, it would just be nice to not have it unfinished.  I lived my whole life in a house that was in various stages of unfinishedness so the current state of our basement basically drives me insane.

I tried to look up some basic guidelines for quotes on finishing the basement and I got a range from $4,000 to $24,000.  So right now we're looking for an actual quote that can narrow down that range a little further.  If it is in the upper end, I will just have to deal with the current state of my basement basically forever.  I don't think Doug would ever go for a price tag like that.  I'm hoping that we could get it ALL done for somewhere between 10-12,000, but that may just be hopeful thinking.

Any know someone handy in the Northern Virginia area that can do a job like this?

We Painted

Doug and I finally got around to painting his office on Memorial Day weekend.  We went with a deep blue color.  I like how it looks, but we're definitely going to need more light in the room.  It looks great during the day when the blinds are open and tons of sun is shining in.  When its night time, it can seem like a black hole.  I'm happy with the deep color, but I think this is the last deep color we will paint with.  It took four coats for the blue and then I screwed it all up by waiting too long to take the tape off.  It peeled a little at the top.  I told Doug that this means we need to put in crown moldings because I'm not repainting...

Here are some pictures.  We still are looking for a good desk to go in Doug's office.  I want to get an L-shaped desk with lots of space.  Unfortunately those can be pretty pricey so we're keeping an eye out for sales.

I haven't taken a picture of the room yet without the tape on, but here is what it basically looks like.

 

Snowmageddon 2.0

Doug and I headed over to Home Depot to get some paint for our dining room on Wednesday the 10th. After several days snowed inside with nothing to do, I finally decided on a color for the dining room. My friend Cassie recommended an application on Sherwin William's website. It helped tons! We bought two buckets of RED Behr paint with the primer already included.

The icicles at my parents house were huge! This isn't even the biggest one, it was the only 

one that I could reach with all of the snow on the back deck!

 We knew that the second part of the storm was coming, but we were hoping to make it back home in time. We went to go pick up the paint and when we left the store the roads were completely covered and slick. Luckily, my parents only live about a mile away from that Home Depot, so we went to their house instead of trying to brave the roads all the way home. It was nice to have a change of scenery after being snowed in at our house for several days with only each other for entertainment, but we were ready to get home and sleep in our own bed after a couple days.

We headed back home Friday morning and couldn't even make it into our garage with the additional accumulation and snow drifts. After about an hour of shoveling snow and a slight detour of making an igloo, we finally made it inside.

Our igloo! Doug and I are really just big kids!

Once we got inside, we got right to work painting the dining room. Red paint is REALLY hard to work with it, but I really liked the color and Doug said yes, so we went for it.

Here are some pictures of us painting...

  

The room after the first coat of paint.
 

Doug and I were both pretty skeptical after the first coat of red paint. It didn't really look that good and it was discouraging after all the work that we had put into it. We had bought plenty of paint, so we did a second coat... and third the next day to make sure that the walls would have a solid, even coverage.

Sherwin Williams projected results:

Actual Results:

Note: We didn't actually use the Sherwin Williams paint that I put on the wall 

in the Visualizer, but I picked one that looked close at Home Depot.

I like it. I think it totally transforms the room! I want to paint Doug's office across the entry hall a dark blue (I think) during my upcoming spring break. We'll see if he agrees to the color.

Small Print

Today was the official start of my Spring Break. The first thing on my Spring Break Agenda was our drywall inspection. When we bought the house back in October of 2007, we were told about all of the "features" of building a Ryan Home. The great warranty on the house was one huge sell point for us in particular.

The house has now been completed for a year, so we scheduled our drywall inspection. We were told upon purchase that they would fix the nail pops and then sand and paint those areas. Early this morning, the outside contractor comes to the house and the first thing he shows me is a bright orange form saying that we are ONLY getting the nail pops fixed and that they will NOT being painting or sanding. Umm no, we were told otherwise.

So he gave me a number to call and started working. I talked to several Ryan people and it turns out that the cut off for them including sanding and painting was October 2007. Well we bought in October of 2007 so this shouldn't be an issue, right? Apparently we bought 26 days too late and the salesperson must have not known about the new policy... They asked for the name of our salesperson. It turns out that just about every person involved in the sale of our home has been "let go." Ryan has had to lay off 53% of its employees.

Yeah I know that the economy sucks. I'm looking at possibly having to sell this house right now because of location concerns. I know it is a hard time to try to sell a house, but it's not okay to cut corners and do a half job. The contractor finished up everything that he was paid to do and apologized for the situation. He gave us his card and said that if we wanted the job completed it would be $200. So this is what my house looks like now...






Big white spots on your walls are a sell point, right?

EWW!

In the fall before winter hit, I saw one of these little bugs outside my house. It seemed harmless enough, so I let it be.


Fast forward to this Sunday… It is a beautiful spring-like day, so I decide to go out and walk around the neighborhood. In our house, we very rarely go out the front door because the garage is on the back of our house and we usually leave that way. I decided to leave the house through the front door for a change. As soon as I opened it a few of these little bugs started crawling into the house. I shut the door quickly and tried to figure out a way to get rid of these terrible little bugs crawling around on my floor. I was going to get a dust pan, but then I had a great idea and ran to get my trusty Black & Decker hand vac that Doug got me for Christmas. I sucked up the few unlucky critters that had wandered into my house.

I then got a little zealous and decided that since it worked so well I would go for the rest that were on my front door. I quickly jumped outside and shut the door behind me with vacuum in hand. Focusing on the little section of my door, I unmercifully went to work sucking up about 15-20 of the little bugs. The noise of the vacuum cleaner had startled many of them and they started flying away. I was being swarmed by these bugs so I jumped back off the stoop and stared in horror at my home. There were hundreds, THOUSANDS of these little bugs stuck to the front of the house. I gave up on my little endeavor to exterminate them because I was so overwhelmed.

I called Doug up right away and he told me to (1) CALM DOWN (2) Exterminators are really expensive and we should try to do something ourselves before resorting to that. (I’ll let him use my hand vac.) And (3) Do the neighbors have them on their houses?

I walked down the sidewalk and the next four newly built houses on the block have the same issue that our house does. Our neighbors on the other side that have been there for almost 2 years now and they didn’t have any bugs on their house. I’m going to ask them if they had similar issues and what they did about them.

I had to empty out the vacuum cleaner in the front yard because many of them had survived the initial suck. Once again, EWWW! I usually don’t get all freaked out with bugs, but the sheer amount of them and the fact that they were on my house was the thing that freaked me out.

Starting far away from the house and zooming in...

Notice the 2 bushes on the right that they've taken out!

They're everywhere!

Eww!

Trying to look at the positive side... Um, at least they’re not on the inside.

My visiting teaching companion lives on the other side of our neighborhood and she hired an exterminator for something else a while back. They required her to get a year long contract. She told me they barely did anything and getting rid of the services is as bad as trying to get rid of a cell phone plan.

If anyone knows what these beetle-like creatures are and how to eradicate them from my home, PLEASE let me know.

Divert Your Eyes!

I've been babysitting Doug's tank while he's been out of town with his dad. I normally don't go into the basement because it's not finished, but I've needed to get water for Doug's tank. (His special water making station is down there.)

Everything above the basement is basically my territory (besides Doug's Office) for organizing. We always joke about when I clean/organize stuff I hide it on purpose to further Doug's dependence on me for finding things. (Totally not true, but not a bad idea either.) We have unofficially divided the basement into 2 halves... HIS half and MY half. I normally don't go down to the basement, but when I do, I do my best to divert my eyes from Doug's side. What you are about to see is pretty terrifying! (for me at least)

DIVERT YOUR EYES!

GASP!

Doug's Idea of Organization

My Idea of Organization

Now you're probably wondering how two people have this much stuff...

Well, over 70% of the rubbermaid containers on my side are filled up with girl baby stuff from my oldest sister who can't wait for me to have kids. The other ones are holiday decorations. We like to be festive and also like to catch things when they are 75% off after holidays. All of the boxes on the side are from appliances and such that we have purchased over the years and not gotten rid of the boxes because we've moved so much.

Doug's side is mostly computer stuff/electronic gizmos that he has collected over the years. At one point in time when we were living in Provo, I found over 11 computers hidden in our TINY apartment. Only 3 were in use at the time! Even if something is not running, he likes to take it apart and see what he can use or learn from it. He needs a special room with a lock and no windows to do this in. Something detached from the house would be preferable.

I'm not saying that Doug is a total slob because he's not. He just likes to have things readily available to him. His office is better and will be a lot better once he finds the time to put in the build in bookshelf/cabinets in the room.

Do you think Doug will notice if this pile is mysteriously missing when he returns?

Nail Pops and Blue Tape

It has officially been a year since we closed on our home. We went to settlement on February 29th last year. (Leap Year) Part of the home warranty is a dry wall inspection where they come and fix all of your nail pops. Nail pops are inevitable with any new construction, so its nice that they come and fix it for you. Doug picked up some blue tape and we went around the house marking little spots the other day. I tend be a little OCD, so this was quite the adventure for me.

I took a picture of the worst section in the stairwell next to the big window. The rest of the house doesn't have this much tape. I thought I might be going a little overboard, so I joked with Doug that we should put tons of little pieces of tape in the front room to freak them out when they come in so they won't think the rest of the house is that bad.

We will be paying on this house till we're in our 50's. I'm just getting my money's worth... right?

Close up of a GENUINE nail pop!

Darwin making sure the tape doesn't go anywhere.

More nail pops!

And the value of your house IS...

$15,000 below what you paid for it less than a year ago.

We saved EVERY penny, put down a good-sized down payment, haggled the sales people, bought well within our price range, got a fixed mortgage, made every payment, etc... I thought we were doing everything right. We are now officially in the hole with our mortgage.

THIS ECONOMY STINKS!

Hopefully we don't have to move anytime soon...

I know there are a lot of people that are in a worse situation. Our neighbors paid almost twice what we did for our house the year before us and I'm guessing their appraisal is about the same. I guess I should feel lucky, but I don't.