Pictures to come soon. Toilet almost ready for use.

So, the plumbing in the upstairs is almost finished. By almost, I really mean its finished, save for a few cosmetic things.

Last Sunday, my father and I finished grounding the toilet to the newly secured closet flange. This baby ain't moving anytime soon. We lifted the original flange to be flush (no pun intended) with the marble floor, so when we secured the toilet, the wax ring that goes underneath would be level with everything else.

However, before any of the toilet fun could happen, we replaced the shut off valve and changed its location. Originally, the valve was inside the wall. Well, my father instructed me in the art of sweating copper tubing so we could extend the piping so the valve would be outside the wall. Sweating piping is a interesting, if not dangerous, endeavor. It involves tubes, flux, a blow torch, and solder.

First, before any fitting, you must shut off your water. Next, you clean every pipe end you are connecting. You clean it and sand it, so the copper is shiny. This is important for a good seal. Moving on, you need to make sure the pipe is dry inside. Otherwise, you cannot heat the solder up hot enough for it to work. My father told me an interesting tip. To make sure your pipe is dry, jam white bread in the plumbing. It not only blocks any water from seeping forward, it dries the pipe and disintegrates in water when you are finished with your work. Bread has been a trade tool for ages. Clever, no?

We, unfortunately, did not have any white bread at our disposal. So, we created a heat shield out of tin. The heat shield worked for the most part... Let's say, for now, that the valve was sweated properly. When you are sweating, you apply flux to the ends you want to connect. Then, after fitting the pipes together, you place the blow torch at the connection point of both pipes. You place the solder opposite the blow torch, so the solder is only touching the heated pipe, not the fire directly. As soon as the pipe reaches a certain temperature, the solder melts and spreads quickly into the gap, where the flux is. Then, you're done. The pipes are sealed together, and no water's going to be leaking out.

However, with a blow torch near the wall, things heated up. I noticed smoke coming from other wall openings near where we were sweating the pipe. Uh, oh... perhaps the heat shield didn't work so well after all... My dad and I quickly ran to the laundry room (adjecant the bathroom) and ripped down the latace work on the wall (for viewing the bathroom pipes, I assume). We looked. And we were releived. There was no insulation in this wall, and the smoke was coming from some charred paper on the dry wall. Dry wall is mostly chaulk, and does not burn so easily. We were saved... from almost having to battle a fire.

With one scare only comes another. When my father was moving the toilet, he injured his back. He was hurting pretty bad Monday... but today says he's feeling a little better. With all the help my parents (and Hilary's parents, and Tammy, and her brothers, and Sean), I would like to say thank you right now. Hilary and I are very blessed to have such supportive family and friends. My father will be better sooner than later, but with this set back, we'll be sure to be all around more careful from now on.

Despite these two shocks, we in fact have a toilet upstairs. Unfortantely, it is not fully finished. We attached the toilet, shimmed it so it was rock solid, and installed a new flusher, but the flusher was an out-of-box failure and we need to chaulk around the edge of the toilet to keep the shims in place. As soon as those two things are finished, the bathroom upstairs will be in better working order than when Hilary and I first arrived to Winifred Manor.

Though, to celebrate the flange and toilet placement, my father and I did a ceremonial first flush. Just because we could.

Finally packing... it is about time!

So, the question of the week is, "When are you moving?!" Good question, good question! I wish I knew the answer! I think we finally might have an idea though!

I had started packing up some things a month ago when we were waiting on bank approval, hoping that packing would show the universe that the deal needed to go through! But since then I haven't touched a box. I have looked at them several times and pondered packing, but that has been about it. Looking at boxes is not the same as physically putting things into them.

So tonight, since I was banned from working on the house today by certain people *ahem*, I decided that in order to feel productive that we should pack a few boxes! I am proud to say that we have officially moved three boxes to Winifred. Woohoo!

We are hoping that mega-moving day will be on Saturday May, 9th. Anyone want to lend some sweat and muscles to the cause? Please? We are slowly moving some smaller things, but won't move the necessities such as dishes, bed and clothes until that weekend. Then we will officially be living in our first home!

Outlets covers and light switch covers and rosebushes! OH MY!

Tonight Nick and his dad were working on replacing all of our outlets, for safety and for pretty-factor, and Nick's mom was vacuuming, so I volunteered to go buy the electrical outlet and light switch covers, because I love shopping- and it was kind of like decorating, which I am so ready for! I already knew exactly what I wanted for the dining room and found them instantly. The living room was another story all togehter, and we won't even begin to talk about the kitchen.

When I get to the section there is an entire wall of outlet and light switch covers before me, ranging anywhere from $1.99 each to $14.99 a piece. I stood in front of the massive collection of covers, trying to figure out how, without anyone's assistance, I can choose the perfect ones. These are choices I am going to have to live with every time I plug in an appliance or switch on a light! I haven't been this decisive since... well, since yesterday when I bought new shoes... which in the end I decided I don't like as much as I thought. Maybe I am still scarred from the yellow paint fiasco. I really didn't want to buy the wrong covers!

First I called Nick, whining about not knowing what to get. Then I called my mom trying to convince myself which covers to get by listing off all my choices to her. After a half hour of deliberation (at least) standing in front of this mecca of outlet covers, I finally was feeling okay with what I was going to purchase. For the living room I bought one fancy light switch cover and some stylish, white, outlet covers with a doubled edge. I couldn't even begin to decide on the kitchen, so that will wait until another day when I have some decision-making support.

After the light switch fiasco I was feeling overwhelmed and unproductive (who knew that so much energy could go into picking out outlet covers?!) so I pickedup more primer and painting supplies. As I meandered to the checkout looking for something that I could decide on easily, I saw that rose bushes were on sale with a rebate! So of course, I had to buy one because 1.) I can't resist a good deal, 2.) it is a rosebush, do I need another reason, 3.)I really want to garden and 4.) what is there to decide?! It is a rose bush!

So to make up for the overwhelmingness of outlets, I bought myself roses... now I need to learn how to take care of them! Once I find out I will let you, our friends, family and faithful readers, know too!

Here is the finished product of my lightswitch buying skills and Nick's new found skills in electrical!

Water and electricity do not mix. (No, I was not killed)

So, after some subtle hints from H, I realized I haven't posted in a while. Here's the main scoop as to what my father and I have been working on.

Off and on I've been working outside to fix some problems around the house. First, we had so many box elder bugs around that house that it was slightly ridiculous. So, Sunday evening I took a large vat of insecticide--with spray nozzle and all--and created a moat around the house. After several sprays, multitudes of box elder bugs sprung up from the siding and ground. They started to move very slowly, until finally, I didn't see any bugs around. That problem was solved.

The next large thing Hilary and I did, along with her brothers and help from Sean, was to remove large quantities of leaves that had piled up from last fall. There were a lot to rake up. So much so, we have 12 leave bags, packed full, sitting in our future tiki bar (also known as the art building, for now). That was a haul, especially since we worked from about 8PM to about 9:30PM to pack up the leaves before any potential rain.

The main thing my father and I have been working on is the upstairs bathroom. After finishing the main level's bathroom, we decided to continue the streak and move upstairs. Well, we knew the toilet upstairs was loose, and the drains were clogged, but we had no idea how much of a pain we were getting into.

First, we needed to shut off the water to the toilet, so we could operate on it. There was a problem. We could not find the shut off valve. It's a simple little lever near the back of the toilet, how hard could it be to find it? Turns out, during the "construction" of the upstairs bathroom, the shut off valve had been placed in the wall.

Not a problem, my father and I thought. There is wood paneling that encompasses the bottom of the wall. There should be a removable wood piece near the toilet and bath called an access panel. Well, someone with a nail gun had a one-man stand against such logical notions, because we had to remove six or seven nails before the access panel was free to move.

We shut off the water. We started to drain the toilet (bailing it out with a Great-Stuff cap and an empty paint can...) and figured out the previous tenants had solved their running toilet with shoe string to stop the rubber plunger inside... Let's just say those strings were not their original color.

With the toilet removed, we figured out why the toilet was loose. The closet flange was broken, purposefully, because the marble had not been properly cut to fit the entire flange in. SO! The placement bolts that hold the toilet firmly to the ground were not properly secured, because the installers expected a hunk of marble and some concrete to hold the mounting bolt in place. It probably did for a while, but the other side of the flange could not hold out for any longer, broke, and dislodged the entire toilet.

We ripped the old flange off, but now we have to cut out the remain plastic from the inside of the pipe in order to glue another flange down. So, that's were we are with that.

However, we did snake out the clog in the bathtub/sink. Those appliances work quite well now. These are all minor things compared to what we had initailly expected. Since we had low water pressure, we figured we would need new plumbing upstairs. Thankfully, that was not the case.

As of today, the toilet is still off of the pipes and there is a towel clogging any sewer gas that may want to travel up the pipe into the upstairs bathroom.

In order to do something more minor, my father, Hilary, and I decided to work on electricity, while my mother diligently vacuumed the upstairs. Hilary's mission was to pick out outlet covers, and me and my father's mission was to replace the old outlets with new ones. For the record, electricity and water do not mix, so we decided to work on them on two separate days.

Also for the record, if you need new outlets because your old ones are broken/painted over/hideous, do everyone a favor and BUY NEW ONES. Menard's has a 10 pack for $3.39. That's about 34 cents an outlet. In white, off-white, or black. How rocking is that?

Anyway, I figured out which circuit breakers went to which outlets. It's a tangled web of madness, so I won't elaborate any further on that. However, I will say that installing outlets is fairly simple. Unscrew the plate, unscrew the outlet, unscrew the screws that hold the wires to the outlet, and then redo those three steps in reverse order, and screwing instead of unscrewing. Hilary came back with outlet covers, which I'm sure she'll post pictures of. They are very nice, and made our living room one step closer to being complete!

Rodent count, update.

So, today we caught another mouse.

Snapper traps: 4 dead, 1 wounded.

About our House

Silly enough, we have not written a blog about the details of our house! We were so caught up in updating, painting, repairing and fixing we never gave you a descriptive picture of our new home.

Our house was built in 1903 (so maybe we have a ghost or two, who knows!). Interesting factoid of the day: there are still the remnants of the gas light fixtures in some of the rooms. When it was first built the house didn't have electricity and used gas lights to light the home.

It is located in the Cherokee Heights neighborhood of St. Paul, which is considered the West side. If you walk a block north you overlook the Mississippi River, Harriet Island and the marina below. During the summer you can walk to Harriet Island or just sit in the backyard to enjoy music and fireworks. The neighborhood is really nice with a lot of homes that have been recently renovated back to their time-era.

The house is a 2-story home with three bedrooms (one on the main floor), an office (upstairs), a laundry room (upstairs), two bathrooms (one up, one down), a dining room, kitchen and living room. We have a full basement, but like most St. Paul basements it is slightly scary. The total above ground square feet is 1,582.

When the last owners bought the house it was a duplex. They renovated it to make it a single family home. You can still try to picture what it looked like as a duplex. The previous owner turned the upstairs kitchen into the laundry room. Downstairs there used to be two bedrooms and a galley kitchen, but they expanded the kitchen to be larger by getting rid of the other bedroom.

The previous owner had a summary of the house and the abstract of all the owners, so hopefully we will get that one day and I can tell you more about the history of our home!

Weekend Two: Summary

What a busy weekend at Winifred! We have officially had the house for ten days. In ten days, with the help of our fabulous family and friends, we have:

• brightened up the entire downstairs
  
• gone to Menards at least 15 times
• bought 8-gallons and 2-quarts of paint and 1-gallon of primer
  
• killed four mice
• painted all the trim in the living room white
• painted the living room and added an accent wall
• took down and cleaned the blinds in the living room
• removed the old, dirty blinds in the kitchen
  
• painted the stair rail white and began the trim in the entry way
  
• primed and painted the wainscoting in the dining room white
• painted the dining room green and the accent wall yellow, and then repainted it a paler yellow which was much more suitable
• spray painted the cold air return vent cover
• painted the heat vents white
  
• painted the entire kitchen including the trim
• cleaned and degreased the three ceiling fans
  
• scrubbed and degreased all of the cabinets (inside and out), including most of the tops (we still have half the tops to go)
  
• cleaned the stove, including the inside, broiler and under the burners
• scrubbed the tile in the kitchen- every inch!
• vacuumed and dusted the entire downstairs
• replaced all the smoke detectors
• spackled all nail holes
  
• scrubbed down the entire downstairs bathroom
• fixed the downstairs toilet
• had a couch delivered and brought over our dining room table, picnic table and grill
  
• filled every hole or crack to the house to keep away our rodent friends
• sprayed the entire house for insects and other pests
• raked the entire lawn
  
• disposed of 12 50-gallon bags of leaves
• removed all the bed frames from the lawn
• collected all the solar lights to replace broken ones and reposition them
  
• began renovating the broken toilet and plumbing in the upstairs
• fixed all water pressure problems
• dusted and removed cobwebs upstairs
  
• primed all the baseboards in the upstairs landing to be painted
• laid down grass seed
• planted seeds for the vegetable garden
• learned a lot about plumbing
• fell fast asleep each time we have hit the pillow
  
• made our house start to feel like "ours!"
  

I am sure there is more, but I am to tired to wrack my brain! This picture basically sums up our exhaustion!

Me and Nick both want to thank everyone who has helped, especially our family who have been giving up their weekends to help us get our house up and running! We can't even begin to thank our families enough! Weekend three, here we come!

Be sure to check out all of our online picture albums located on the right sidebar of the page or just click here to view them all!

How does your garden grow?

We just finished a marathon, tweleve hour day, at Winifred. I am sunburnt and super tired so instead of giving you a summary of the entire day (I will summarize the weekend tomorrow) I want to tell you about my garden! Once the inside of the house is done I can guarantee that I will be spending a majority of ny time outside in our magnificent yard.
I worked really hard on the garden today. I worked outside so long that I now have my first sunburn of the season. Tyler and Dylan did a lot of raking and leaf disposing early in the morning while I worked on degreasing the top cabinets and fan blades in the kitchen while my mom and Tammie finished painting the kitchen for me (which is done except for the trim, and which now looks amazing!). I wanted to get out and enjoy the weather and get away from the tops of those cabinets, so I went oustide and started raking all the leaves. I thought it would be an easy task. I was wrong.
The problem I ran into is that there is woodchips every where and rock paths which made sweeping and raking the leaves difficult. Did I mention that our yard is really, really large? I was outside raking for the entire afternoon into the early evening. I did take a few breaks. I worked on collecting all the solar lights to see which ones work and which ones don't- we have so many! I am excited to rearrange them throughout the yard Dylan and I also got rid of the head and foot boards that were being used as garden ornamentation. They just weren't my style. They were very difficult to get out of the ground! I think me and Dylan both have blisters now.

The bed frames all moved out of the garden.

Despite the blister, sunburn and aching back, it was really fun to find a garden under all the leaves and debris! It was really rewarding to start to see progress. We uncovered a ton of perennials and shoots that are starting to come up! Every time I start raking I found more signs of life! It was so much fun- like a scavenger hunt. I can't wait until the bloom.

One of my discoveries underneath the leaves!

By the end of the day we bagged the rest of the piles of leaves and 12 50-gallon yard bags later, we are still not done! It is supposed to rain tomorrow so at least we got the majority of leaves and dead brush cleaned up! Hopefully the rain will bring some shoots from a few more bulbs! Next sunny day I will take pictures of the garden and the soon-to-be flowers!

You can see more yard pictures in my Picasa Web Album

Ants

We have ants. Big, black ones. Lame.

Smoke alarms and you.

Okay, safety is an important issue when living in a home. Feeling safe is a very comforting feeling, and knowing you can let your guard down relieves stress.

However, there is a fine line between safe and ridiculous. There comes a point when you just start to wonder.

When Hilary and I were visiting Winifred, we heard chirping everywhere we went. These were not baby birds. No, they were the poor, pitiful chirps of smoke detectors... er... alarms, wondering why attention was not paid to them. One of the first things I did when we started working on the home was to remove all the old smoke alarms in the house.

Winifred has 13 rooms. A basement, two entry ways, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, an office, two bathrooms, three bedrooms, and a laundry room. I counted eleven smoke alarms within this household. The only rooms that did not have a smoke alarm was the dining room, the office, and the laundry room. If you do the math, that does not add up. Yes, there were two smoke alarms in the kitchen. Only one of the smoke alarms are hardwired, so that means ten smoke alarms, most of them with low batteries.

When I bought the appropriate amount of smoke alarms (six or so), I read that smoke alarms will not operate with chirping batteries... This, folks, is safety turning into the ridiculous.

Me, and the smoke alarms. In face, this is only eight of them. I missed removing one before the photo, and another I had no idea it was in the back stairwell. Ignore the look on my face.
Here is a properly installed (link to pdf) smoke alarm. It's between 4 to 12 inches away from the ceiling (since it could not be installed in the middle of the ceiling). The alarm is also four feet away from any doors or windows.
Here is the ideal location for a smoke alarm.
For the record, I plan to replace any and all batteries if need be. That's just how I roll.

"Just Enough Yellow" was really just enough!

Yesterday while I worked late, Nick and his parents, along with our friend, Sean, were at the house scrubbing the floors and the stove (there was actually a stove under all that dirt!), monkeying around with the plumbing and working in the garden. Since I lost yesterday to work, I planned on taking a half day at work and going to paint... well, work got busy and that never happened, so I didn't make it back to the house until the evening.

I did make progress though (although not as much as I had planned) and I am happy to report that in addition to the living room, the dining room is complete! I repainted the "Sunstraw" yellow with a color called "Just Enough Yellow" which totally lived up to its name- it really was just enough! It looks really great now and not like a crayola crayon! Pictures to come soon.

I took a little garden break while the first coat was drying and planted a few seeds in some of the many, many pots in the yard. I couldn't resist buying a few seeds to see if I could start my own seedlings to put in my garden when it is officially planting time and we have the yard ready. I bought some sugar snap peas, cantaloupes, heirloom tomatoes, golden tomatoes and pumpkin seeds. I planted a few peas, the herilooms and some of the cataloupes and left them in the mudroom so they stay warm at night. Once I get more soil I will plant the rest and cross my fingers I can get the seedlings started... if I succeed I will save a ton of money! The seeds came to around four dollars all together, where each seedling at the store would be around that price. I hope they grow! I have so much gardening to do! Once we get the inside cleaned up I will be outdoors all the time! I am also anxiously awaiting the arrival of what I think are tulips- as I said, I have so much to learn about gardening!

I am taking the rest of the night to watch HGTV and eat a home-cooked meal instead of fast food and take out! Tomorrow me and Nick's sister, Emily, are going to start painting the kitchen! I am really undecided as to which walls are going to be painted. Hopefully they won't be another "sunstraw yellow" mistake!

Water Works

So, the inspector made sure that we noticed our water problem. It was not a large problem, but one that seemed inconvenient. In the main, upstairs bath, if you flush the toilet and moved to wash your hands, the facet's pressure dipped to practically nothing.

Hmm... That's not good. Especially if you want to take a shower, and you have several drips to wash yourself under. Although Hilary and I remained optimistic, we were unsure how we would solve the problem when we came to it.

April 9th, we close on the house.

Shortly thereafter, I decide to put in a lawn. (it's mostly leaves, pea rock, and dead plants) As you must with all lawns, I tried to watering it. Thus, I needed to turn on the water to the hose. This is a relatively simple task. There is a ball valve that needs to be turned. As soon as I find and turn the valve, I notice the water meter shooting up like crazy.

I run outside, to find a jet of water shooting out of the spigot. Someone had forgot to drain the spigot for over the winter time. A bad thing to forget, because the spigot had burst near the valve outside the house.

My father had the tools and parts to repair it, but from a strong jet shooting out of the pipe came a weak drip from the end of the hose. We were still having pressure issues!!!

We determined Winifred has complete copper tubing. This is a very good thing. Lead pipes work well, but there is the possibility of lead contamination. Galvanized pipes work in the beginning, but quickly deteriorate and fail, causing large amounts of water damage. So, copper pipes were the hallmark for good plumbing, until recently when plastic pipes work even better.

When today came, we decided to find out what was wrong. We knew the spigot for the hose was the first stop in the plumbing, so a blockage or pressure problem had to come before that. After thinking it was possibly a bad water meter, we found a gate valve that had been partially closed.

Hmm... We open the gate valve completely, and viola! We have constant, strong pressure everywhere! Why had they lowered the pressure to their piping system?

Turns out it was simple toilet flushing mechanisms that made them lower their pressure and making taking a shower a huge pain. The lower bathroom's toliet continually runs when it has full pressure. A $4.99 toliet repair kit would fix that problem in an instant...

However, the upstairs bathroom's toliet is another matter. Since it is loose at the moment, it leaks when it has full pressure and is flushed. Another problem, yes, but easily solved.

So, our inspector was right that it may be a huge problem. May being the keyword. We found that we had excellent plumbing all along. It was other circumstances that kept us fretting about what we were going to do about that pressure.

Living Room and Dining Room: "Before and After" and some really yellow paint

Everyone has been asking for updated pictures so here they are! We have the living room complete and are almost done with the dining room... we need to buy a different color paint for the accent wall because it did not turn out at all!

Here is the living room. Above is what it looked like "Before." The walls were a dirty beige color and the trim was a reddish-brownish-mauve. Here is the after, which looks so much prettier!

The walls make the room so much brighter now!

Next we have the dining room. Here was the "Before." The wainscoting was all wood and dirty and the color was super dark. I sadly don't have much of an after because we are repainting the yellow. It was WAY too yellow, but look at the green! It turned out magnificent!

The green turned out so beautiful! It is totally what I wanted it to be!


The yellow on the other hand turned out awful. It looks like sunshine threw up all over my accent wall. It is going to be changed to a much lighter, neutral cream. The green is too amazing to have to share its glory with another bright color. I will be painting it tomorrow. Hopefully it will turn out better the second time around! It is really too bad that paint is so expensive! Maybe we will find a way to use the yellow paint somewhere else... perhaps the art shed?

And because I can't describe how happy I am about my green wall, I have a picture that sums it all up (Note that my shirt is the same color as the yellow wall... you think I would have realized that sooner and stopped myself before the yellow got out of control!):

The first visit to our new home, Pt. 3: The view

So, to end the first tour we had of our new house.

Here is the view of the side of the lawn looking from the office window. That is Winifred Street, and our neighbor.
Here is the view from Hilary's office window. You can plainly see the two sheds we have. The left one has power to it. :-)
And, of course, here is one of Winifred's selling points. There is downtown St. Paul, as seen from Hilary's office window. One day, we're going to expand the window to be huge to fully appreciate that view. It looks even cooler during nighttime.

Hmmm... that is yellow.

So here is the blog where I start to have second thoughts... not about the house, but about a color choice.

As I said, my dining room is lime green. I LOVE the lime green. It looks really sharp. We did an accent wall in the dining room that was supposed to be "sunstraw" which is a goldenrod yellow. I really liked it last night in the dark. I saw it today in the daylight and suddenly I am not so sure. It looks really, REALLY yellow. Crayola Crayon style yellow. Once I get the second coat on and add a shelf or two to the wall I think it will look much better. I am definitely having second thoughts though. At least I can paint over it if I don't warm up to it! I am sure in a few more blogs I will be raving about how much I like the yellow. Right now, I am not so sure.

The camera battery was dead so I will try to get a picture soon once that second coat is done.

An update unrelated to mice

Nick likes to write about catching mice... because he is a boy, and boys like that kind of thing.

I am a girl, and I like paint and hate mice. So now it is time for my girly-update:

Our dining room is the coolest, prettiest room ever! It is is lime green. And it is amazing. I will post pictures and you will all see that it isn't nearly as scary as it sounds! I had a vision and it totally lived up to it! Everytime I go into the dining room I am happy! Tomorrow I will finish the second coat and we will officially have two rooms complete. Pictures to come soon!

The first visit to our new home, Pt. 2: The "Before"

Pictures!!!
This is part two of our first visit. We were very surprised by the cleaning job the previous owners did. They cleaned the place out pretty thoroughly (even though we'll clean it twice more, just for our comfort).
This first picture is of the large window in the living room. The brown trim was the first thing we decided to get rid of. Dark colors make a room seem smaller, while lighter tones make it feel larger.Here is where my television is going to go.

This was the baby's room, and there is an impressive paint job covering the walls and ceiling. This is the first bedroom we saw, and it is on the main level.
This is the dining room attached to the living room. The small hole is a port to the kitchen, so people can converse between the two rooms. We plan on making that hole larger someday.
Here is the cabinets in the kitchen. We have PLENTY of space to entertain guests.
The other side of the kitchen. Starting where you are from the above picture, you take a left and look at the picture below. The fridge is nice, but the oven is going to go soon.
Here is the full kitchen looking from the slider door.
Starting where you are from the picture above, if you head left you'll find the entrance to the bathroom on the main level. There is also a door that leads into the bedroom from that bathroom as well.
This is the bathroom in a nutshell. It's a 1/2 bath, so that means no shower/tub.
This is Hilary's office on the second floor. Near the first bathroom is the second flight of stairs (the place used to be a duplex). This room is right near that stairwell. Out that window you can see downtown St. Paul. I'll post about our view from the second story later.
Next to the office is the laundry room. It's nice that it's upstairs. The washer/dryer needs to be relocated to a better spot.
This is the main bathroom. It also needs the most work. The room lacks proper ventilation and could use some new trim pretty much everywhere.
That little port is the rooms only ventilation...
This is going to be my office. It is also the only room with white trim... which annoys Hilary, because it's the only room that could have kept the black trim...
Here is our master bedroom, complete with French style doors. It's one of the selling points of the house. It's a very large room.
This is the large hallway area we plan to make into a library/sitting area. Some window expansions would do the room some good. That's for down the road.

Anyway, this is the before pictures! The after pictures will be posted soon. We're well on our way for the first level. Now, we just need to start to paint all that black trim. It's everywhere!!! We're looking for volunteers!

Rodent count, update.

Today we scored two more mice on the clamp traps. The clamp traps have been doing all the work! I have four traps total, placed around where the mice leave signs. The two clamp traps have the highest score, while the TomCats (traps with swirly blades that are disposable) have zero kills.

So...
Clamp traps: 5 (4 dead, 1 wounded)
TomCats: 0
Mice: One bag of grass seed....

Weekend 1: summary

We worked all weekend on the house. One weekend down... several thousand more to go!

Starting on Friday we made our first trip to Menards- one of many! With the help of our friend Sean, we cleaned the ceiling fans- so disgusting, dusted all the base boards and sills and began painting all of the base boards and window frames a nice white. The old color was a brownish-reddish-mauvish color that made the room really dark.

Later in the evening Nick got off of work and the parents showed up to help us. Both my mom and Nick's mom scrubbed the kitchen and the rest of the downstairs until it began to sparkle! Nick and his dad worked on getting all the old smoke alarms collected so we could install all brand new ones. I had my brothers dust all of the upstairs- a project that won't start for a while. My mom also brought by a wonderful housewarming gift: a brand new Oreck vacuum! I took a much needed break and bought everyone pizza. Everyone was working so hard! We continued our work, I learned to spackle and we called it a night around 10 p.m.

Saturday started early, at 8 a.m. and didn't end until 10:30 at night. We made our second trip to Menards (followed later by a third trip for more paint). We finished painting all the baseboards and doors in the living room, began the baseboards and railings in the entry way and the wainscoting in the dining room. My type-A perfectionism came into play as I tried to get every crack in the wainscoting coverd with the paint! It was driving me crazy! While I was hemming and hawing over my paint job, my mom helped paint the living room walls, which look amazing! I finished out the day by painting an accent wall in the living room and sadly ran out of paint before it was finished. I tried to use every last drop, but to no avail, we would need more paint. Nick worked on installing all the new smoke detectos and carbon monoxide detectors. My brother Dylan came to help as well and Nick and Dylan worked on washing all the screens for the windows, painting the heat grates and laying down grass seed in the yard.

Sunday was Easter so we didn't start until after our family get together. We made our fourth trip to Menards to get more paint! I underestimated how much paint we would use! Nick did a second coat on the accent wall and I started painting our dining room lime green. It sounds scary but looks really great! The dining room should be finished sometime this week!


Weekend 1 Recap:
4 trips to Menards
7 gallons of paint bought
4 pizzas eaten
1 room completed (living room)
I still have paint in my hair

Rodent count.

I'm sorry to say it, but there are mice in the house.

We have set up traps in order to eliminate them. On April 12th, we had three in the traps.

Me: 2 dead, 1 wounded.
Mice: One bag of grass seed.

The first visit to our new home, Pt. 1

Here is photos from our first visit to our new home. These are all "Before" pictures.

There is yet a "Sold" sign on the listing sign, so we had to make our own.


After making the signs, we set about getting photos in front of our new entrance.
Our realitor is in the middle. She lives only a couple of blocks away! Proof that the neighborhood is nice.
Next, we surveyed our lawn. The lot is considered a lot and a half, which means plenty of space for entertaining guests and having bonfires! It is also a corner lot, so we only have one neighbor to the side of us.
Here from looking at the front corner of the lawn.
Here is look at that corner from the side of the house.
Here is looking at the complete side of the lawn from backyard.

Here is look at the back of the house. There are three doors. The one to the farthest right leads into a mud room. The slider leads into the kitchen. The furthest left door does not open, and it is walled off inside. So, one weekend we'll have to eliminate that door. We have the siding so the back will look seamless.

This is our two sheds. One is a utility shed, the other is an art shed, complete with four different colored walls and electricity.

The inside will be continued later... in Part 2

A story about our house hunting rollercoaster!

Getting our house was a crazy, rollercoaster adventure. And nothing like what they show you on HGTV.

It all started Sunday, February 8th. On a whim we had decided that week that we wanted to start house hunting. After crunching some numbers and googling the area we wanted we decided to go see two houses in West St. Paul. The first house was super cute but way too small and the yard was not right for us. The second one was beautiful... on the outside. They had a beautiful door with a great window. That is the only good thing we can say about that house. The inside was that of a horror movie. There was the scariest "finished" basement we had ever seen and the upstairs was a shoddy edition that looked like Willy Wonka created it.

So we started getting a listing of all the houses in the West St. Paul, Homecroft and Cherokee heights area of St. Paul. We had made an appointment to get preapproved so we held off on house hunting until then. Before we could get approved, the house on Winifred went down in price by $20,000 It was a house we had been watching on the listings. We asked to see it immediately because it looked too good to be true. We toured it on Feb. 21st and fell in love with it, and the next day told our relator that we wanted to make a bid. After a mad scramble to get the parent's approval (which we got!), we got preapproved for our mortgage and that day we made an offer! And the first of many waiting games began. A bidding war ensued and we had to up our bid.

On March 2nd we found out that we were out bid. I cried. And then we started our search again. That next weekend we saw so many houses that all blur together into a mess of awfulness. Leaky roofs. Scary bathrooms. Awful yards. Disgusting everything. Did we mention how cold it was? Most of these houses were vacant and the heat was so low that it was warmer outside than it was inside!

And then suddenly, on March 12th we got great news! The house on Winifred was back on the market! We made an appointment to see it one more time along with a few other homes. On March 15th we made an offer... again. And by the beginning of the week we had an accepted offer! They wouldn't cover all of our closing costs, which was another stressful point, but we managed to scrape together the money!

And then the waiting game began... again. We waited so long that the first date we set for closing passed. The house was a short sale, which is where the bank that owns it sells it for less than the mortgage owed. So basically, the bank loses a lot of money, but saves some by not going through a lengthy, costly, foreclosure. There were two mortgages on this house so we had to get two bank approvals in order to go through with everything. We waited, waited and waited and finally got the first bank approval. We went through with the insepection (where there were no surprises: we needed a new furnace, some plumbing and a mouse trap), even though there was a chance that it could all fall through and we would lose our money. The house was a few weeks before its redemption period, and if we waited any longer the house was going to go into foreclosure, and we would most likely end up losing it.

So the week of closing came and I became increasingly crabby and Nick continued to wait patiently. We were closing on Thursday, April 9th and each day we waited and heard no response from the second mortgage. Finally, on the morning of closing at around eleven o'clock we got verbal approval and were able to close on the house!

As of Thursday, April 9th at 4:00 the house was officially ours! And thus... the adventure continues!

We have started to Blog, about starting our house!

We have started a blog about how we are updating our house to make it our own!

It's pretty simple. Before and after, and bam, we have a chronicling of our very first home.

We closed on our little house on April 9th, 2009. We purchased the house for a whopping $94,000.
The yard is huge for its location near the city. It's a lot and a half. We are very excited to get started working on it!!

For our first weekend, we started painting the living room and dining room. As soon as pictures are available, we'll describe what we did in detail!