House

Ceiling is all scraped off… too tired to write more… goodnight.

Today was pretty sweet even though my neck, arms and shoulders are probably going to be sore tomorrow from looking up at the ceiling and scraping for 3 hours. In that time span I got the master bedroom and the baby’s room scraped so that there is no more popcorn left in them (except the master closet, I will have to get that tomorrow). I thought it would take way longer. Every time I told someone I was going to take the popcorn ceiling off, they always had the general reaction of “that is going to suck and take forever”. I am just psyched that I got more than a 1/4 of the house scraping done and it looks really good.

Tomorrow when I scrape out the guest room that I hope you all get to stay in at some point, I will take pictures. It is crazy to see the amount of material that hits the ground from the ceiling. I could make ceiling material angels if I wanted. I wonder what the material actually is. Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering the ceiling doesn’t have asbestos in it, I know that much.

I was too lazy to write on Sunday.

Sunday was interesting. Ron and I finished pulling out the particle board in the kitchen only to find what looked like some pretty bad water damage behind the dish washer. The inspectors checked the sub floor (which is under the particle board) and that was perfect (yay!). So we tried to clean out as much of the rotted particle board as we could and figured we should get some more opinions on the whole situation. Ultimately, it shouldn’t be an ongoing problem and it won’t be an issue moving forward.

Taking out that particle board ended up being a lot more difficult than I expected, but we know the foundation is good and we know what we need to do to move forward with the kitchen.

Tonight wasn’t the best night for remodeling. A few issues stood in my way:

• I got busy after work and started late
• My plan changed because the asbestos test results are not in yet
• I wasn’t really prepared for removing linoleum

Removing the linoleum required hammering and is very time consuming. Since I didn’t get started until about 8:15pm I didn’t want to hammer for very long. I don’t want to annoy my neighbors before I even move in After a little bit of linoleum removing Kate’s dad and I thought there has to be a better way. That is when the extra piece of particle board in the kitchen looked very interesting. We always knew it was there, but started toying around with the idea of just taking it off. If we took it off it would produce a much nicer result and we wouldn’t have to worry about the laminate. It was nearing 9pm so we called it quits and we will look into removing the extra piece of particle board tomorrow.

Today was the first day of the remodel. After work, I went to Kate’s parent’s house and borrowed some tools. Then immediately went over to the new place and get started. First, I like to open all the windows, because cat urine remnants are still hanging around. It is also nice to get some cool air flowing through the house. Next, I started pulling out the carpet. That was pretty quick and easy.

After Kate had stopped out home to take care of the dogs she brought me some dinner. Yay Pizza! We ate and then we went our separate ways. Kate had water aerobics and I had to pickup some stuff at Costco. When I got back I started ripping out the gross carpet padding. Kate’s parents showed up shortly after that and her dad and I cleared out the rest of the padding. Meanwhile Kate’s mom was trimming back some of the plants in the back yard.

After the padding was out, Ron and I pulled out all the tacks and swept the floors clean. The next step will be making sure all the staples and debris are off of the sub floor in the daylight and either priming the sub floor or scraping off the popcorn ceiling.

So yesterday we got the keys to our new home, horay!!!!!!!

We’re so excited to get to work on it, fix it up a little and move in. Adam is heading straight over from work tonight to rip out the remaining carpet and padding and shellac the sub floor. Then over the next week or two he’ll scrape the popcorn off the ceilings, we’ll paint the whole interior and lay laminate everywhere but the bedrooms, and lastly, have the carpet put in the bedrooms. Then we can move in. Adam took tons of before pictures so we’ll post them and keep you update on our progress.

The only trick will be trying to keep adam focused on the tasks indoors, since yesterday he was having a grand time in the yard finding spiders that had caught bugs and watching them wrap and eat their prey. EW! Maybe he’ll post a picture of his favorite spider for you.

I’m trying to get over a gross cough that started last weekend. Going to bed really early and drinking tons of fluid. I want to be fully recovered before I leave for my conference in Nashville, TN next Tuesday.  Weird to have worked only 2 weeks, and both of them 4 days weeks, and then be leaving for a week. Nice that my employer made that exception so I could still go to the conference. Its cool how they have things set up here so everyone is covered in case they are gone.

Adam’s work finally got the results from the drug screen he had to do on Tuesday, so he actually got to go work today. Hopefully he’s learning lots and enjoying figuring out a new work culture. We had fun on Monday going to Value Village (like goodwill), they were having a 50% sale, so it was crazy. We just tried on shirts over our clothes since the line for changing rooms was super long. Adam got 5 work shirts and I got 4 maternity shirts, all for less than $35, pretty cool. He’s sporting an orange dress shirt today in honor of us being beavers living living in duck town. Maybe I’ll find something orange to wear tomorrow since Saturday is a UO  day and a few of my co-workers are pretty big fans.

Okay, back to the staff manual and more learning. =)

We might be signing papers for the house next week and closing next Sunday! Horay! It’d be awesome if we get to, because they we’ll have more time to paint and replace the flooring before we need to move out of our rental.

I’m not sure when we’re actually going to move. We’ll need to rent a uhaul since we have some bigger stuff, and we only unpacked what we needed so we have a garage full of boxes to move. I can just take loads of stuff over instead of having to pack all the electronics and that’ll be nice.

Exciting week for us. Monday, my last day as an unemployed person, I have my 22 week ob appointment. Then Tuesday my first day at my new job. Then at some point we’ll sign papers for the house.

Yesterday the dogs both went to the vet. Chloe got her stitches out, and we bought her some new light dog food. Dash got his yearly exam, some antibiotics for some intestinal issues he’s got (he’s got some doggie version of IBS, ever since he was a puppy he’s been extra pooy). He also got some extra high fiber food to help sweep stuff out. I got some training tips for issues I’ve been having with them.

Yoshi has been scratching up furniture since we got her, adam made her a cat house with lots of rope and carpet to scratch on, but she still scratched furniture. We bought her the special cardboard scratcher, and the mouse shaped scratcher, still, the furniture was suffering. Then we found these fancy plastic caps that cover their nails that are supposed to retrain her, nope, she just screams when I put them on her and as soon as she can get them off, back to the furniture. I have always thought De-clawing was inhumane since then cats can’t defend themselves, so I hadn’t considered it. So I asked the vet what he’d so to train her and he said he’d declaw her. He doesn’t think it’s inhumane. Adam says cats use their back claws to defend themselves anyway. Since she’s not a kitten she’d have to stay at the vet an extra day and get more pain meds. They’d keep her for 4 days, I guess they keep them doped up for the healing so they aren’t uncomfortable. So we’re seriously thinking about doing it.

Our house appraised for $2,000 more than we’re paying for it, horay!!!!! So now we just need to finish all the loan document stuff and we’ll be on our way to home ownership. I’m so excited!

The inspection on the house went great! There were no pest or dry rot issues at all. There were a few tiny things, like the dirt needing to be swept away from the bottom of the house so it’s 6 inches below the siding, and one toilet needing a new wax ring, but nothing major. We will write a new contract tomorrow, but the only things we’re planning to ask the seller to do is a furnace maintenance, have the bricks at the top of the chimney reset, and the gas inset repaired (it wasn’t working today), and replace a window in one bedroom that is not longer sealed. Overall a pretty reasonable list. It was so nice to hear the home inspectors say that we can be confident buying this house, that everything is sound.

Now our mortgage broker will schedule an appraisal, and if it appraises for what we offered, and the seller agrees to make the fixes we’ve requested, we’ll be set to close on September 16th. I’m getting more excited knowing this might really happen. Wahoo!