So I hear you bought a house...

[jfo]

Oops, I forgot to add--that's actually pretty cool about the safe--like you said, you can use it for valuables! We may have to consider getting some sort of safe ourselves.

Freke and JGator, now that you guys are "on the other side", do you have any words of advice as we get closer to the closing? It's crazy how things have picked up in the last couple of days between all the conversations and correspondence between us and our agent, attorney, mortage lender, insurance agent, etc.

What has driven me crazy about the whole process is that everyone involved has done this before a million times and we are first time homebuyers and don't know what we don't know and randomly someone will ask me a question, and I will be like, I don't know--who handles that? For example, our loan processor told me to keep her informed of the closing details. I was like, um, who typically schedules that? She was like, your attorney should tell you--they should get those details from the sellers' attorney. So I reached out to my attorney and he asks me, when did you want to close... September 4th? I replied that that was the date on our contract, so isn't that the date that everyone is targeting? He was like, oh, just checking. SERIOUSLY??

Also, no one ever told us that we had to pay our first year's homeowners insurance premium in advance in order for the mortgage loan could be cleared to close. It's like, someone should have mentioned that to me! I knew that we had to have a HOI policy lined up, but that was it.

Sigh.

 

[JGator]

Hi, Jfo. Good luck with the cleaners - I hope they do a great job so you can keep them. Ours are coming at some point this afternoon, I hope. The duct cleaning was interesting. We had a ton of gunk in the dryer vent. The rest of the stuff I couldn't really see as they vacuumed it out using a big hose directly to a truck outside. The family room still smells, though.

My DH was really frustrated with the closing process. We didn't have an attorney - maybe that's a regional thing? We had a title company who was supposed to coordinate with the bank and realtors. And, our realtor did do some coordination. The title company kind of acted like they were Project Managers, but my DH was so on top of things and annoyed by their slowness with each step of the way. He asked them for a check list so that he could check things off as we went along, but they never provided that. I told him I think they do these so often they just wait until the last second to do things. He asked to review the documents we would be signing in advance of the closing, and they acted like that was impossible, but they did end up sending us some PDFs a day or two before the closing. He even asked for them to just send the templates which aren't filled in with our specific details to review to save time at closing. I told him we should open a title company as they make a ton of money, and it didn't appear to us that they really did that much!

They also need to tell you close to the closing what you need to come to the table with in a check for closing costs, fees, etc. We wired the money to the title company a week ahead of the closing, and padded what we thought it would be - they gave us a refund check at the closing for the overpayment. I would suggest asking to review documents in advance if they will get you anything - at least it will make them realize you are on top of things and they cannot procrastinate on your closing. We couldn't even get the title company to confirm they received the money via wire for 2 days - so annoying after we did it early!

 

[swingirl]

What beautiful homes you all have!!

 

[FrekeChild]

Oops, I forgot to add--that's actually pretty cool about the safe--like you said, you can use it for valuables! We may have to consider getting some sort of safe ourselves.

Freke and JGator, now that you guys are "on the other side", do you have any words of advice as we get closer to the closing? It's crazy how things have picked up in the last couple of days between all the conversations and correspondence between us and our agent, attorney, mortage lender, insurance agent, etc.

What has driven me crazy about the whole process is that everyone involved has done this before a million times and we are first time homebuyers and don't know what we don't know and randomly someone will ask me a question, and I will be like, I don't know--who handles that? For example, our loan processor told me to keep her informed of the closing details. I was like, um, who typically schedules that? She was like, your attorney should tell you--they should get those details from the sellers' attorney. So I reached out to my attorney and he asks me, when did you want to close... September 4th? I replied that that was the date on our contract, so isn't that the date that everyone is targeting? He was like, oh, just checking. SERIOUSLY??

Also, no one ever told us that we had to pay our first year's homeowners insurance premium in advance in order for the mortgage loan could be cleared to close. It's like, someone should have mentioned that to me! I knew that we had to have a HOI policy lined up, but that was it.

Sigh.

Hahahaha!!!! If I had any words of advice for someone owning their own home, they might be, "Don't do it!"

I hate hate HATED our mortgage officer. I think she was a total waste of time, and really made our lives more complicated, and was very nonchalant about answering our questions.

Our real estate agent kind of saved me from wanting to commit bodily harm to our mortgage officer. He was the only person who seemed to remember that we were first home buyers, and that we actually didn't know everything.

There is still a ton of crap I'm sure will crop up. Like our HOA fees. And gardening. I didn't realize how much the plants would grow while we were gone, and THEN we couldn't find a damn gardening service (no one does their own yardwork here) so our yard is totally overgrown at the moment, and hopefully we'll get that taken care of soon.

We moved all of the big stuff Tuesday last week, so we're still settling in. I got sick with some kind of nasty upper respiratory thing, and it's killed my energy, plus then, my husband went out of town, so we've barely unpacked anything.

A is having a hard time adjusting to the new house. She has the best room in the house (by far!) and she seems to hate it. For what it's worth, her new carpet is stinky! I didn't realize how fragrant new carpet smell was!

Anyway, getting settled in. There are toys everywhere and our guest room is completely empty except for random bags and boxes of crap that needs to be unpacked. I'll take more pics once the yard is in better shape, and once some stuff is put away.

Dude, the list of stuff I want to do is getting HUGE....

 

[TooPatient]

Beautiful houses!

We bought our house 5 years ago but the process was... memorable! Still discovering stuff I wish I would have known when we bought....

The biggest thing we did RIGHT after closing was change all the locks on the house. FI was exhausted and wanted to wait until the next day but I insisted on changing them NOW. Turns out to have been a good idea. The selling agent (despite having signed legal documents stating otherwise) had kept one of the keys to the house. She showed up and tried to let herself in while we were gone that evening because she'd "forgotten a couple of things in the garage"
We didn't want the things she had forgotten and had no problem returning them to her, but she had NO right to let herself in after closing.

Other great discoveries include:

lousy plumbing -- the previous owner used a pipe that was too short so the kitchen sink & dishwasher drained into the cupboard and trashed the flooring.

tree too close to house -- growing straight and will damage our roof within a couple of years if we don't do something but too large and too close to the chimney to move.

IVY ---
Kill this. Get rid of it. This stuff spreads. It grew through the siding and into our garage. Nearly killed a couple of large trees. Damaged a fence. And is a favorite home to RATS

 

[TooPatient]

Duct cleaning -- Make sure the service you use brushes out all vents and runs the whacker things down each vent. That knocks stuff loose so it isn't still in there causing smells.

 

[jfo]

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your thoughts and experiences from the whole buying/closing process.

JGator, that's a fantastic idea to get them to share the closing documents in advance of the actual closing, so we can try to review them and not feel pressured to read and retain what we are signing that day! I asked our attorney, and he said to ask our mortgage lender since they are mortgage documents. So, hopefully he will give us something to review soon. In the meantime, our attorney said that we'll have a call about 24 hours ahead of our closing to discuss how much our closing costs will be to be wired. Based on what you were saying, that sounds like it might be cutting it close?? Well, I'm probably just as frustrated as your DH because I normally like to plan ahead and be organized, but I guess I can only keep asking.

Freke, I am sorry that your mortgage officer sucked. At least your realtor was ok and tried to be helpful! I don't feel like we have anyone who remembers that we're doing this all for the first time. Oh wow, yeah, gardening... That nice backyard that you have I'm sure requires work! Same here and I am most definitely not used to it living in an apartment now. I will have to learn quickly how to deal with all of that. Or make DH do it Is A starting to adjust a little better to her new room and the house? I'm really afraid that L is going to be totally thrown off, but she'll obviously just have to adjust.

TooPatient, thanks for your comments. I doubt I will forget everything we're going through now in a few years either! That's a great idea about getting the locks changed immediately. I'll need to look into that. Oh and ivy... I know all too well about it right now. Our landlord has ivy growing near our building, and there is a huge rats' nest in there... It's actually another huge reason that I cannot wait to get out of here!!

 

[JGator]

TooPatient, we had the ducts cleaned with the agitators (whacker things). It was pretty cool watching them do it. The dryer was the most visible though with snow/lint flying around outside our house!

Freke, I hope A is getting used to her new room. I hear you on the list of stuff. We have a really long list and it's overwhelming. We have an electrician coming on Friday to give us a quote on recessed lights and fans as our house has hardly any lighting other than in the closets, bathrooms, and the kitchen which was remodeled recently. We also have to figure out if we are doing our own lawn or not. Our neighbors all have meticulous lawns and so far, it looks like they maintain them themselves. We have a tree unlike any other on our street. It has peeling bark, and the leaves are already falling so we're the only yard on the street with leaves on the front yard and driveway, and it keeps raining and more leaves are falling. I feel like we are the eyesore. I ordered a rake from Amazon so maybe I'll get out there and start raking soon. My DH has swept the driveway a few times, but every day we have more leaves!

Jfo, good luck with the closing. I think they can give you a pretty close estimate but won't know for sure until the day before on your total costs so we wired a few K more ahead of time to be safe and they refunded us that amount at closing. Have you physically signed all the documents so far regarding the offer, inspection, etc. Ours were all done electronically with e-signature, and we recently asked them to send us electronic copies of all the papers we signed, and that apparently was a lot to ask. We are getting a thumb drive in the mail with everything this week though.

AFU, we are likely going to look at carpet this weekend since our family room smells like a dog. We signed up for the Costco in-home estimate thing over the weekend, but they haven't called us yet to schedule the appointment. We have those old fashioned vinyl pull down shades in all the bedrooms and the ones in our guest room for the in-laws won't go up so we have to do something about those sooner rather than later. My mom stayed in the room for 10 days without complaint, but my DH's parents are coming on Wednesday for 2.5 weeks. We still have a ton of boxes. I unpacked 4 in the kitchen this AM waiting for the nanny to show up, and K played with the boxes and bubble wrap. I think I'll try do something like that every day to make some progress.

 

[jfo]

JGator, it sounds like doing some gradual unpacking each day is the way to go. I can just imagine K sitting there playing with the boxes and bubble wrap. We are trying to pack a little bit every day. Now that L is feeling better, we are going to see if my parents can take her for a couple days this weekend and we can just knock out a ton of packing. Well, at this point, that's what we have to do--we're running out of time!

I hope you can find some carpeting you like that's not too terribly expensive to purchase and install. It will be nice to get that out of the way and you will hopefully have rid of the dog smell completely by then.

Ugh, I'm sorry that one of your trees is already shedding leaves. Maintaining outdoor space is, honestly, a ton of work. If you can convince your husband to have a regular cleaner come and also have someone do your lawn, etc. periodically, I bet that would be a huuge help. We have two really big trees in the backyard and, while I love them, I can imagine that we will be doing a TON of raking this fall. Step 1: Buy a rake. Or two.

As for the overwhelming list of to do's... I am right there with you ladies. DH and I were talking the other day about how we need to print out the inspection report and start to prioritize the fixes we "have to do" and then add in all the other stuff that we "want to do".
Oh, homeownership... this is the dream, right?

 

[FrekeChild]

Oh the list of to dos....it seems to grow exponentially!

Stuff we've been up to: moving day was Tuesday before last, and I started feeling bad the day before. Well, it was just a cold until Tuesday last week, when I started feeling worse...it turned into a bacterial infection. I haven't been that sick in almost 8 years. Great timing too, right when we're trying to unpack, my husband is still trying to work, plus I have a toddler with a cold and an eye infection who refuses to sleep in her new room, talk about a recipe for disaster! So, I'm just now starting to recover. But what lame timing!

So, updates:
- gardening service came by to clean up the yard. They cut away so much more than I thought they would! Our amazingly lush yard is a bit less lush, but the gardener said that it was in pretty rough shape, and the regrowth will be much better and healthier now.
- I think I've finally picked out curtains for the living area, just need to order some for the bedroom, and then eventually get something for the play room and the guest room.
- A has finally started sleeping in her room, although with her and I being sick, Daddy has actually been sleeping on the floor in her room because she wakes up coughing and can't go back to sleep easily, and I keep him up coughing.
- We changed the front door locks and my husband had to do a lot of stuff to get both locks to work - I think the old owners had cut bits of the door off as the house settled? The front door definitely needs to be replaced. Turns out, even for more basic ones, they are expensive!
- The only stuff, minus one kitchen box, that needs unpacking are boxes of books and DVDs that will probably stay packed for the most part.
- We need to get rid of some of A's toys. She has a whole playroom that's stuffed to the gills, and it's still overflowing to other rooms
- We hung some pictures and it's kind of weird! We have been living in our rental house without hanging pictures so we wouldn't have to fix holes in the walls, so this is strange for us.
- We cleaned the rental and so now we're just waiting for our deposit back!
- The to do list is growing like crazy.

How are you guys doing? We need more pics in this thread! I'll post some in a bit. Toddler on me.

 

[TooPatient]

FI was against paying someone to come out and clean the gutters because he assumed it would be expensive. I finally convinced him that getting an estimate wouldn't hurt (especially since he'd need a new ladder to do it himself). Turned out to be well worth the call!

We had them do the gutters, put out a moss preventer on the roof AND wash all of the windows on the outside. Came to about $130.

We're not going to have them do this every year, but do plan to have it done every couple of years.

 

[JGator]

Freke, I'm glad A is sleeping in her room now, but sorry to hear you both have been so sick. You are ahead of us. We haven't put up any pictures yet. We still have a ton of boxes to deal with- I think the kitchen and K's room are the only rooms that are completely unpacked.

TooPatient, we should probably look at our gutters too since we have a ton of trees. That's a great deal you got - especially consdering they washed the windows!

AFU, we found a loose tile in our shower. My DH decided to pop it off and re-tile it. We found some water damage behind the tile and the 2 tiles next to it so now we feel this is beyond my DH's limited capabilities and may likely involve replacing the drywall behind the tiles. So, we're hoping it's not a massive water damage job, and we're planning to call someone for an estimate. So, we can't use our shower in the master bathroom until this is taken care of. We had our lawn mowed on Saturday, and they used a leaf blower to pick up the leaves on the front yard and driveway, and it looks great. So, we're planning to use these guys regularly and that's one less thing for DH to do. It was surprisingly very reasonable too! We are trying something called Nature's Miracle on the carpet today to see if that removes the dog smell, but still thinking we'll likely just need to replace the carpet in the family room.

 

[jfo]

Quick post as we're supposed to be closing tomorrow.

Freke, it sounds like you're getting lots of stuff accomplished. I'm sorry that you and A have been sick... same in our household. No fun to be sick, packing and trying to close on a house all at the same time. Stress city.

toopatient, my DH has already declared that he is not going to get on a ladder to deal with gutters. He's not a big fan of heights. Win-win.

JGator, I'm sorry that it looks like you have another project on your hands with the bathroom drywall. Glad that you found a good law service though!

On my end... trying not to freak out. We got our clear to close like an hour ago and our lender gave us a general amount to wire for the closing, but with no details and DH is NOT happy. He doesn't want to wire anything until we know the details. In the meantime, we have a walkthrough scheduled this evening with the sellers and our agent and I am crossing my fingers that they actually fixed everything they said they were going to and correctly. I cannot wait until it's a week from now when all this will be behind us and we'll have actually moved and are dealing with the unpacking, albeit that's not exactly a party either. I think the anticipation of everything that has to happen is killing me!

 

[JGator]

Good luck today Jfo. I hope all the repairs were done to your satisfaction and that everything goes smoothly today.

AFU, we had a contractor out yesterday who said we could do a cheapie repair of the drywall and tile or replace all the tile in the shower and all the drywall behind it and the shower glass enclosure since he says the glass is too thin. He said he does not use drywall - maybe cement board instead in showers. He said he personally will not do the cheapie repair as he only likes to do a job one time. But, if he replaced the whole shower the cost would be about 8K-10K for labor without materials, and if he replaced all the tile in the bathroom to match the shower, we would be looking at 15K! So, huge sticker shock. We're going to get some more estimates and decide what to do. There is a chance we could have some external water leak that caused the problem in the shower also. And, he found a spot on our ceiling in the kitchen which he asked us to keep an eye on - this is right below our daughter's bathroom which is the one we are using now that our master bath tile has been removed from the shower! Uggh! Wish we would have caught this at the inspection!

 

[jfo]

Thanks, JGator! Gosh, I am sorry to hear about the bathroom issues. That is sticker shock for sure! Have you had any other estimates that were less expensive?

So I hear you on things that you wish were caught the inspection. There was a bit of roller coaster drama last week that I was not anticipating. Our walkthrough was a disaster last Tuesday. The sellers had not completely moved out and there was still some of their stuff everywhere and it wasn't clean. I saw spiders, ants, and just crap everywhere and we had a hard time figuring out if they fixed what they were supposed to. And, on top of it all, since they had moved some of their stuff, we finally got to look inside one of the bedroom closets and there was water damage in there that the sellers never disclosed and our inspector did not find the first time because the bedroom closets were completely filled to the gills when we had the initial inspection. So we ended up postponing the closing from last Wednesday to Friday so we could get our inspector back out there for a second walkthrough to assess the damage and also check on the items that the sellers had agreed to repair.

Long story short, we closed last Friday, but it wasn't without some tears and serious stress and wondering if we should still go through with it all. In the end, I'm glad we bought it and moved, but, I have told DH that our next house better be newer than this one because we have a LOT of work ahead of us. We have a list of immediate repairs that are big and it makes me thinking about how much this might cost us. Literally ASAP, we need to get our chimney/fireplace repaired (source of water damage) and buy a new water heater. Uggghhhh....

On the plus side, our daughter is getting used to the new house pretty quickly and seems to enjoy the space she has to maneuver around and her new room. She did wake up once last night around 1am, but I was able to get her to go back to sleep in 15 minutes. Now it's on to unpacking the millions of boxes and trying to babyproof!

 

[JGator]

Hi, Jfo, sorry to hear about the drama at your walk through, but I'm glad you found the damage prior to closing. We have not had another contractor out yet as we were waiting for some recommendations from a friend of a friend who lives nearby. We got a name today so we'll have to call and get an appt for an estimate. My DH was able to fix the toilet leak in K's bathroom by putting in a new wax seal. We are hoping that stops the water damage in our kitchen ceiling, but we'll keep an eye on it. My DH drew a pencil outline around the water stain on the ceiling a few days ago, and it grew so we updated the pencil circle after he fixed the toilet so we'll see if that stops the water damage from spreading or not. He also had to reinstall the light fixture in our main floor half bath as it looked like it was falling out of the wall. My DH took down a few more tiles in the shower and there is water on the drywall behind them also. We haven't done anything on the carept yet as the other items have captured our attention! We are waiting for Costco carpet to call us to schedule our in home consultation. Lowe's seemed like it would take forever and they had a ton of extra charges like removal of old carpet, moving furniture, etc which Costco did not have. K seems to be at home in the new house - I doubt she remembers the old place now! She loves looking at herself in the glass french doors to our deck and scooting around the house.

 

[dragonfly411]

I'll play! We moved in at the end of April. We are working on doing some updates in the house. Our upstairs bathroom was smaller than most broom closets, so we have taken out the tile, vanity, toilet, and walls, and are extending it two feet into the upstairs office. This will essentially create a master suite upstairs. We'll be updating the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, re-doing the fireplace to have a more rustic slate rock, and eventually we'll be extending the downstairs to include two bedrooms and a bathroom next to the current guest room. We have 2.6 acres of heaven, and are fortunate enough to have wild blackberries, muscadine grapes, and very fertile ground for planting things. We are surrounded by farm land, so we get to enjoy their bounty (farmers are so generous) and we also get tons of birds, rabbits, and cute critters. I swear I find a gecko a day in the house, they come in when we let the dogs in and out. I love it here, it is so peaceful and we have everything we ever hoped for.

I love everyone's new homes! Freke, your painting seems to be coming along nicely and I am jealous of your grapefruit tree. Jgator, I LOVE your new home!

 

[dragonfly411]

The fireplace we will be updating


The view of the back yard. The entire front is wooded, which I love because it cannot be seen from the road.

 

[dragonfly411]

A few more


Some of our wild grown blackberries

This is our view from the back fence line. Our neighbors have a 10 acre field and then some oak hammocks.

The view from my kitchen window!

 

[JGator]

Dragonfly, beautiful house and yard. I am so jealous of your fruit and views! Good luck with all the renovations - that sounds really exciting - especially expanding to add 2 Bedrooms. I bet you could give us some advice on our bathroom remodel. We are having a contractor come tomorrow for a 2nd opinion. Hoping we can just fix the shower without a complete bathroom remodel.

 

[FrekeChild]

I started writing a post earlier today, but then...lets just say it's been a long day!

Oh jfo, that sounds like it would be terrifying. We had a lot of those same tears and heartache right before closing too, and it was so lame, obviously not for the same reasons, but buying a house is awful and so so stressful! I'm so glad your daughter is getting used to it quickly - that makes it so much easier.

I'm sorry you guys are dealing with all of this water damage! I'm starting to feel really lucky about that.

How are things going with decorating and stuff at your place JGator??

Dragonfly - welcome! If you guys are planning on getting married outside, you should totally get married in your backyard! That would be so awesome.


So my husband wants to renovate our kitchen. Like, tear out all of the appliances, cabinets and stuff and start all over. Not really sure what to make of that. Maybe in the future? Depends on how long we're here I guess and how much it would cost. The kitchen layout kind of sucks though. When the dishwasher is open, it blocks all of the top cabinets - where all of the plates and glasses are stored. The range isn't very big. The oven is pretty small and the plastic panel on it is not in good shape. So I can totally see his point. But kitchen renovations are expensive and they suck! We do have a compact kitchen and newer appliances though, so it might not be too bad...but still. Yuck.

I will say that the rest of the cabinets in the house need to be painted I think. As much as I'd love to do a full reno on them, I don't think I could get my money back out of it, so it's not going to happen! At least, not before the kitchen!

So I've been spending my time thinking about decor stuff. I ordered curtains for our bedroom, so hopefully those will arrive soon. Our bedroom gets hot during the day, and I'm hoping if I can block off more light, it'll help a little. I've been doing lots of little things like picking out curtains (what a mess that has turned out to be!), switching out cabinet pulls, hanging curtains, shower curtains, hanging pictures, picking out furniture, arranging furniture, etc.

Surprisingly, even though we have more square footage to cool, our electricity bill was lower than it was at our old house! Weirdness!

Here are some pics.

 

[FrekeChild]

Living room and master bath.

The curtains for the living room have been such a war. I'm not even getting into it. But the ones in the dining area don't line up really. And I don't even care anymore. So long as they block some light, they get a win. I love the ones in the living room though!

Bathroom is awaiting some new hardware/towel racks/whatever. But it's getting there!

 

[TooPatient]

More beautiful houses!
DF -- LOVE your house! Your 2 acres sounds just amazing


Water damage stinks!

For toilets -- buy one of the blue tablet "cleaners" at the store and toss it in the tank. If the water leaks out of the toilet it will be blue and you'll be able to know it is leaking and can sometimes even narrow down the problem area.

For kitchen sinks -- Gah!!! Our outflow pipe was higher than the lowest point in the pipe so stuff backed up and smelled if we weren't running enough water through. We also found that plumbing can look new and okay but be too short and hidden under an attach joint
This would have been MUCH easier if we had just bought all new kitchen sink plumbing and re-done ALL of it to begin with. Swapping out a piece may fix it for a few months but it kept coming back. It isn't hard to do yourself and the people at Lowes are great about loading you up with all you'll need (especially if you bring a picture of your plumbing in on your phone!).


We need to have someone look at the flashing around the chimney and maybe even inspect the chimney itself. Water is leaking in somewhere in that area and causing rust stains in the living room.

 

[soxfan]

We are still trying to sell. In this AWFUL market.

 

[dragonfly411]

Dragonfly, beautiful house and yard. I am so jealous of your fruit and views! Good luck with all the renovations - that sounds really exciting - especially expanding to add 2 Bedrooms. I bet you could give us some advice on our bathroom remodel. We are having a contractor come tomorrow for a 2nd opinion. Hoping we can just fix the shower without a complete bathroom remodel.

JGator - I think it will depend on where your wiring and your plumbing run. Our biggest problem was that our shower was a mere 3x3, which is not much room in the end, and you had to rotate around doors to get into it. Expanding just that wall wasn't really an option when it came to the appeal of the house. We're now realizing that we're going to have to re-do some electric work though in the expansion because our wiring came up through the floor panels on both the shower and the vanity side, so we can't just re-route it in the ceiling as we'd hoped. Thanks to having an electrician and a tile worker in the family, and SO being a plumber, we aren't going to have a contractor working on it, but I definitely recommend getting multiple opinions!!!

 

[dragonfly411]

Freke - I LOVE your master bath!!! We actually considered marrying in the yard but parking is a HUGE issue, so it probably won't happen. I think we found a venue about an hour south of us (which is helpful to SO's family) that we are going to use.

TooPatient - we ripped everything out upstairs including the toilet so no worries there, and will be doing the same for both the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen. Our kitchen has a new dishwasher, otherwise all original from 1985, so it's time for an update. SO is a plumber, thank GAWD!

 

[jfo]

Freke and JGator, thanks for the sympathy. I never thought that buying a house was going to be a picnic, but boy oh boy... this whole process has really opened my eyes!

JGator, I hope that you guys can come to a good conclusion on how to address the bathroom leaking issues. Let us know how it goes. I'm so glad to hear that K has totally adapted and is enjoying exploring her new house!

Freke, everything is looking really good! I love the big open floorplan and your curtains look great. Your master bath look fantastic! Oh, to have a master bath...

Dragonfly, your house and surrounding property is just gorgeous! That would be my dream... to have a place in the country with lots of land and then also have a city place. If only I had that much money...

Toopatient, our chimney needs work too. It needs to be lined and capped (i think those are the right terms, but I could be wrong--ack, I'm so new to all of this!) because right now when it rains, water is just seeping through certain areas of the wall!

soxfan, I hope you can sell your place sooner rather than later. From a buyer's perspective, in our area, I wish we could have bought at a slower time in the market. Things really picked up and went crazy right around the time that we put an offer on our house and mortgage rates went up a full percentage point from the time we made an offer on the first house in April to when we did on the second (now ours) in July.

We are still just trying to unpack and get organized while keeping the baby busy and away from pretty much everything. When we are more settled in, I'll try to share more pictures!

 

[JGator]

Hi, everyone, I thought I would revitalize this thread. We ended up getting our bathroom shower leak repaired by one of the many contractors who came to give us a quote. He was able to replace 2 rows of tile along the bottom of the shower walls without having to re-do all of the tile. It took about a week as he took down the tile, some of the cement board behind the tile and had to put a new board in, re-grout, etc. The contractor tried to re-use the existing tile, but many of them broke so we were lucky that the owners left us 9 extra tiles (I think we used them all). My DH fixed a toilet in our daughter's bathroom and ended up touching up the grout and caulk in two of the bathrooms. We have about 6 quotes for recessed lights and ceiling fans, but we haven't compared them and decided on a contractor yet. We will likely schedule that in January. We decided not to replace our family room carpet as the dog smell has dissipated and it's in good condition. I figure our daughter is going to spill a bunch of stuff on the carpet over the next couple years anyway! We bought some shelving for our garage from a local Office Depot that was going out of business of all places! My DH wants to put them up in the garage, but the garage walls and floor are not painted so he wants to paint first before putting up the shelving. It's been cold here so I doubt that will happen before Spring now. Our daughter's room still has ugly pink/blue flowered wall paper, but we would have to move her to another room to paint that so I'm not sure when that will happen either! We have a huge list, but nothing is convenient to tackle! We also bought a used buffet/china hutch for a steal, and we' need to refinish that but again, we will likely need to do that in the Spring due to weather! We have the honey oak cabinetry in our bathrooms, and I saw something online about refinishing which I really want to try. Here is the link in case anyone else has the same honey oak anywhere in your houses. http://www.monicawantsit.com/2012/02/staining-oak-cabinets-espresso-color.html And, we need window blinds as we have the basic shades right now upstairs and some valances down stairs. We realized we will need to do outside mounting as our windows are the double-hung kind and the window sills are not very deep so if we did an inside mounting the blinds would hit the 2nd half of the window about 1/2 way down. So, we need to figure out how to measure for that! Fun times! I hope all is well with everyone else and that you are all enjoying home ownership. We LOVE our neighbors. They are all very friendly so that has been a great surprise in the move. It is funny it seems that almost everyone has Golden retrievers on our street. I think we are the only people without a dog.

ETA, we planted peonies a couple weeks ago. Peonies are my favorite flower so I'm hoping we picked a spot with enough sunlight.

 

[jfo]

JGator, thanks for reviving this thread! I’m glad that you were able to get the bathroom shower leak repaired and that your DH was able to fix up K’s bathroom. That’s wonderful that it worked out that you didn’t end up having to replace the carpet and the dog smell finally went away! I hear you on the getting new window blinds and things like that. Some of ours, we discovered, are broken, and I was thinking originally about just replacing those that are broken, but now I’m thinking that I may just want to get new window treatments all over the house. That’s great news about loving your neighbors—I personally think that’s incredibly important! Are there any other families in your neighborhood with kids around K’s age?

Since moving in, we’ve been able to buy some new family room furniture—leather couch, loveseat, chair/ottoman and a new wooden tv stand to match the room. We also bought L a new full-sized crib and a bookcase for her room, and a wooden toy chest for our family room so it doesn’t look like a storm hit our family room after she’s been playing all day at the end of the day. We still need to buy a new dining room set and buffet, a daybed for our office, and a bathroom linen cabinet that will actually be in our hallway upstairs as we don’t have room in our bathroom.

From an actual house standpoint, we still have a ton of stuff to do, especially as winter is nearly here. We have a guy coming in a couple of weeks to fix up our chimney and take a look at our separate gas fireplace that may have been installed incorrectly by the previous owners. Once most of the leaves have fallen, we are going to have someone come and clean our gutters too. We had a bad storm come through the area this past weekend, and unfortunately we had some water leakage come in over the bay window in our family room, so we need to figure out how to seal that, and we also need to put some weather seal on our back door leading into our kitchen because we’ve discovered there’s a fair amount of air coming in because the door is not set quite right. We’d love to hire a general contractor we can trust to do a bunch of projects around the house, but I guess we’ll figure that out. A lot of our projects are going to wait until spring too (i.e. I’d like to repaint our front porch a different color). Eventually I’d like to repaint all the rooms in the house—that is something we didn’t do before moving in—but what we have is neutral enough for now. We need to fix the humidifier for our furnace (I have a separate humidifier in L’s room) because the one we have obviously hasn’t been used for years… and replace our two old water heaters with one new efficient one. And we need to replace our roof. I hope that it will be ok over the winter because we won’t get that done until next year. Gosh, and these are just things we need to do that at the top of my head!

Otherwise, we also like our new neighbors, however, there aren’t that many families with young children on our block. It’s definitely been an adjustment compared to how we used to live. As I mentioned in another thread, DH and I have been a bit on edge lately with all the things that need to be done as a homeowner. I think we definitely took it for granted how easy it was to rent an apartment!

Hope everyone else is doing well and settling into their new homes!

 

[monkeyprincess]

JGator and Jfo, wow, you both have a lot of projects on your to-do list. I feel fortunate in that the house we bought was pretty much move-in ready because it is only 4 years old, and has pretty nice, modern finishes and was all painted the same color throughout, and the previous owners (or builder) installed white plantation blinds on all the windows, so it is all nice and neutrual, and I really do not have to do a thing for time being in terms of painting or refinishing. We paid a premium for that luxury though because we just really didn't want to have to redo everything, so I guess there is always a balance.

My biggest issue right now is trying to get the whole house set up in in a way that allows the cats to get where they need to go and keep the baby away from where he shouldn't be and baby proofing in general. DH's biggest complaint is that the house was not wired properly for all his nerdy tech things. He is not happy because he personally wired our previous house, so that we could listen to the tv or radio or whatever in every room of the house. The new house is not so wired, and without tearing down walls, etc. (not happening) it is not an easy task apparently. We have had a few minor issues with bathroom and dryer vents not working, but overall, I can't complain. We definitely have a lot of open space that I would like to fill with furniture, but I also don't want to have to pay for said furniture for awhile, so for now, Everett has several play rooms

Slowly but surely, it is really starting to feel like home. I feel very blessed, and I'm happy Ev will get to grow up there.