The Deck Project

When I originally thought of sanding and staining the deck I imagined it being a small project taking only a full day of work, maybe two. Turns out our deck is rather large and it's been quite an undertaking.

Jared started sanding the deck last Sunday and Monday. Then it rained the rest of the week so we couldn't work on it. We resumed our work on Saturday and spent the entire day with the two of us sanding the deck. I thought for sure with both of us working we would get the deck stained on Saturday, but it took the entire day just to finish the sanding.

Today is Sunday and we were going to spend the entire day staining the deck. Again I thought with a full 8-10 hours of two people working on it, it would get done. We only bought a gallon of stain, thinking that would be plenty for our deck. My parents stain our cabin with only about 2.5 gallons so surely that would be enough. So when 5pm rolled around not only were we physically running low, we were also running low on stain. We used the entire gallon and got some of the railing and all of the floor done. I think we'll need at least 1, if not 2 more gallons to stain the underside and the rest of the railings and stairs.

Jared was also excited because he got to cut a portion of the deck off. One of the floorboards was sticking up a little because of a support that was too high. He borrowed Dave's reciprocating saw, cut a little of the post (about a 1/2 inch), and voila the board is now flush.

The weather is supposed to be nice the rest of the week so hopefully we'll finish before Friday when Jared's family arrives.

This was before when we started sanding:

And here is what we finished today:

It looks finished but the stairs, underside, and outside of the railings (only accessible from a ladder) still need to be stained. . .oye! :)

Settling In

Lots of little things have been going on lately so I thought I'd update the blog.

Last weekend we purchased our first lawn mower! We were hoping to wait until September to purchase it (after all the big bills from the move have been paid) but the weather did not cooperate and it rained so much that the lawn needed to be mowed. Yes we could have borrowed my parents lawn mower but September was only a week away so I caved. I'm pretty happy so far with it. We opted for a Honda self propelled mower. It was a little pricey but it has a lot of nice features, of which my favorite is the blade brake over ride. This feature allows the blade to stop when you take your hand off the handle (that's a federal law) but instead of killing the engine to do this which happens on most mowers, the engine stays on! It's really nice if you need to stop and move something in the yard while you are mowing. We have a lot of trees, terracing, and these little plastic covers on the gutter drains in the yard which I'm sure would get sucked up easily in the mower. It will sure come in handy.

We also got our first mortgage bill in the mail! dum dum dummmmmmmm! It's exactly the amount we expected. . .so no surprises. We also paid 100 dollars over the balance. In the long run this will cut 4 years off the mortgage and save us 40 something thousand dollars in interest. I feel so responsible :) Now I'm just on pins and needles waiting for our first utility bills. Hopefully they won't be too bad since the weather has been cool. We will also be receiving water and gas bills as well, which we never got in the apartment. I used to spend at least 40 bucks a month in laundry money at the apartment, I'm sure that will cover at least the water bill. . .so really the only new bill will be the gas. Oh the joys of home ownership! It's so worth it though.

Jared and I also started our first house project last Sunday, sanding and staining our deck! Unfortunately with the lawn mower shopping we weren't able to start until late in the day so we only got the stairs and a few boards sanded. It's rained this whole week so I'm crossing my fingers it's dry tomorrow so we can finish. We borrowed my dad's belt sander and our neighbors lent us their circular sander so that's really sped up the process. Thank you Daddy and Dave!

My next small project is going to be painting the downstairs half bath. We don't have the spare cash to decorate the larger rooms so I'm starting with something small. The room just looks so bla with the cream colored sink and toilet and cream colored walls. . .yuck. So depending on weather and how the deck goes I may start working on that this weekend too!

Eye update

I was going to put this in my last post but for some reason it wouldn't let me type below the pictures I posted.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday for my 30 day follow up and he said I still have the blepharitis in both eyes. Ugh. I actually am getting used to my glasses, but I really hate not being able to wear make up. I told the doctor that I have Jared's 10 year reunion to go to September 19th and I'm also standing up to a wedding October 17th and I'd really like to be able to wear make up and contacts to both those events. So now I'm still on the Azithromycin ointment and I'm also on an oral antibiotic. I don't know how much you know about doxycylin but it's a pretty yucky antibiotic. Here is a list of just a few rules/restrictions that go with it:
-No prolonged sun exposure (it's summer! ick)
-No dairy (you all know how much I love cheese and ice cream. . . . )
-Has to be taken on an empty stomach, no eating an hour after or 2 hours before taking
-No getting pregnant (we are not trying to have a baby, but apparently it mutates babies which is scary for accidental pregnancy)
-Drink with at least 8-10 oz water, this one isn't a problem I drink tons of water already
-No laying down for 30 min after taking
-Lots of bad GI side effects

So I have to be on this for the next 30 days at least. The good news is, is that it doesn't seem to be getting worse. The other ointments/treatments he had me doing after about 2 weeks it would start to get worse again. With the Azith ointment I seem to be just slowly getting better. You really can't see any redness anymore it just feels a little funny still to me. Also the doctor apparently could still see these "soap bubbles" in my eyes still which indicates the infection is still present.

The "empty stomach" rule and the no dairy rule are going to be the hardest. I'm trying to look at it positively. . .I've been meaning to cut back my cheese and ice cream eating to help with my cholesterol, this is the prefect time to start. :)

More good news is the doctor said although my tears were "mildly turbid" my eyes seemed to be tearing ok and he sees no reason why I won't be able to be in contacts once we kick the infection! So far so good. I also think I'm going to try disposable soft contact lenses instead of my gas perm ones. The doctor said the blepharitis is going to be a chronic reoccurring problem I figured I didn't want to worry about disinfecting hard lenses and if it was ok I'd like to switch. He asked me why I was wearing hard lenses and I told him my eye doctor told me they'd stabilize my vision (my vision is really bad). At this point he went off about how he "strongly disagrees" with that statement and it's a fallacy that hard contacts promote good vision. He said my vision would change whether I wore hard or soft lenses. Hmmmmm makes me wonder who is right. Since I went into hard contacts I felt my vision didn't change so much, but maybe that was just a coincidence? Maybe I will get a third opinion. What do you guys think?

Feels Like Home

This Saturday will be the 2 week mark of living in the house. It has really been a dream come true I love it so much. Even the hard work is fun because we are working on something that is ours and it's something we've worked, saved, and sacrificed for for the past 5 years.

Everything is pretty much unpacked. The only big thing we have left to do is organize the kitchen and pantry again. After we put everything away some stuff just didn't seem to be in the right cabinets. The pantry is nice because it's so big, but the problem is the shelves are so deep if you push stuff to the back and it's impossible to see or reach. I think we are going to try and purchase some small shelves for the shelves. . .heh.

Here are some before pictures














And here are some after photos.

The first few days

The move into the house went very smoothly. This was because we did such a great job packing and had Daniela, Greg, Brian, Sarah, Pat, and Tim to help us move. What great friends! Only one piece of furniture was broken slightly and after several discussions about where to put the over the toilet cabinet and not being able to come to an agreement about it, Jared and I have decided to just throw it away ("I had to use lose lose on that one". . .for all you office fans out there :)

A really frustrating part about the move was that the master bedroom and the family room carpets needed to be stretched before we could move furniture into them, so we could only unpack so far on Sunday. The carpet stretchers were supposed to come at 10am on Monday, and then we had scheduled at&t to come between 12 and 2 to install the cable, internet, and phone. Timing was important because we had to get the t.v. and things into the rooms in time for the cable guy to hook stuff up. Of course the only 2 rooms we couldn't move things into were the rooms that the cable t.v. was going into. 10am rolls around and no carpet guys. Jared calls the store and the owner said the contractors never showed up this morning (nice of them to call and tell us right??). Great, so after calming Jared down we just threw the big t.v. into the family room and the small one in the master bedroom. The cable guy shows up and says he needs to check things out outside before he can work inside. He comes back after 10 min and says the signal isn't strong enough to the house and he has to call the "outside work guys" to fix it before he can work inside. So basically that day we were 0 for 2. It was very frustrating waiting around all day and nothing getting accomplished. It all worked out in the end though, the carpet guys ended up coming around 5 on Monday and the cable guy was able to get back on Tuesday.

The kitchen sink was an easy fix for Jared. Here you can see him hard at work.

Nothing else has gone wrong so far except for some confusion with the dishwasher. On Sat when Daniela, Sarah, and I started unpacking the kitchen we loaded up the dishwasher to wash all the glasses. I turned the dial and nothing happened. For about an hour I was swearing in my head about another thing breaking and having to buy a new appliance already. The boys got back from moving the last few pieces of furniture and started helping us work on the dishwasher. After about 10 min of checking breakers and looking underneath it Greg stood next to the counter, looked at a light switch above the dishwasher and said "This surely isn't it is it?" and he flips the switch and the dishwasher roars to life. . . .yeesh. Apparently it's hooked up to a switch. So weird. After we discovered that I want to say the house inspector may have told us it, but honestly I can't remember.

We decided to hang the stained glass Daniela bought me for my birthday in the window over the kitchen sink.

This is the new bathroom set we bought for the guest bathroom (excuse the tags, I forgot to cut them off :)
Who knew stainless garbage cans were so expensive?! We had to buy a new one because there was no room under the sink for our old one. 95 dollars, ugh.


This is one of my favorite purchases. We put the kitty litter box in the basement and installed a cat door in the basement door! No more litter tracked all over the house! YAY! Unfortunately the cat is too much of a wimp to push the flap with her head so it will have to stay a hole for a while till we can teach her to go through it with the door.

I think that's about it for now. I will post some finished room pictures at the end of the week when everything is unpacked.

Officially Ours!

Jared at the closing when they gave us the keys to the house. He looks slightly scary I think :)


We closed on the house today so we are officially home owners. I have heard horror stories about closings not going well, being postponed or taking hours to complete. Our closing only took an hour. Our lawyer was really nice and explained things very simply, and our financing only took about 20 min to clear. Other then signing my name about 20 times it was really quite pleasant.

It still doesn't seem official yet, I think everything will set in tomorrow when we sleep there. I'm very excited for the new place. As I'm typing this (at 9:30 at night) our noisy neighbors below us are yelling in Hindi on their porch and blowing cigarette smoke up into our apartment. . .ugh, I will be so happy to be rid of them.

After the closing Jared and I went to the house and were greeted with a bottle of wine from the seller and a nice spread of sandwich makings, chips, soda, and cookies all in our fridge from our real estate agent. After eating a picnic dinner in the middle of our family room we rented a rug shampooer and I cleaned all the carpets while Jared cleaned the kitchen and all the bathrooms. While Jared was cleaning he encountered our first problem with the house (that sure didn't take long). Apparently the left side of the kitchen sink is leaking a little from where the drain connects with the plumbing. An easy fix, but still. . . .we've only owned the house for 4 hours. . .don't we get a little honeymoon period where nothing goes wrong? I'm glad it's a cheap and quick fix though, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.

We'll be moving at 10am tomorrow! Feel free to stop by and help us out.

It's growing!

Pretty much everything is packed except for a select few dishes, clothes in the dressers, and bathroom stuff!