Destroying Nature...again

There are just SO MANY TREES in our front yard, in our backyard, on the sides of the house. So many trees! We had a bunch of stumps and some really gnarly roots around the front and sides of the house. A guy with a stump grinder stopped by one day to ask if we wanted some stumps removed. We did. We had thought about renting a grinder ourselves but the time plus the amount of money it would cost to rent one and get it to the house and back wasn't worth it. 

This good-ol-boy came out and ground out 5 stumps in about 30 minutes before his grinder died. Something broke. He promised to come back in two days and he was true to his word (he probably wanted to get paid). While he was there, he looked at some of the trees we had marked to take down and for a minor amount of money more, he helped my husband take them down. 

Our before pictures weren't all that great - these are from our first trip to the house. You can see how the trees are hanging all over the backyard and onto the playset, though. 

And all of that ivy everywhere!!

It sure looks different in the winter. I can't wait to see what it looks like when all the leaves come out now. This is a before pic that we took. We took out all of the little trees here except the Japanese Maple on the right side. We lovingly call that our fire tree for how it looks in the Fall. 

This is a better picture of the backyard to the left. The tree in the right corner of the picture is what started this whole business. It is dead and had ivy growing all the way up. We needed it gone and figured we could take out some others while we were at it. The area near the fence, before the stream starts, is where we plan to move the playset to. Why someone thought the playset would be great in the middle of the yard is beyond us.

You can also see the large pile of debris and wood we have already accumulated over by the fence. This is only going to grow....but a lot of it is still too green to burn. Anyone need firewood or kindling?

They toppled some trees and we had one minor casualty - the bird house took damage. Lots of damage. It's okay, it was ugly and we wanted it gone anyways. It's in the way of where I want to move the playhouse.

A better shot of the backyard clearing. This used to be full of leafy trees that fully covered the ground which gave us no room for growing grass. While we know it will take a few years to get some established, we are excited to get the yard prepped back here. We plan to move the playset to the left corner of the yard and mulch around it. Then, we want to grow grass in the main and plant a few bushes along the stream.

We hate to take down trees but at the same time, we aren't clearing them to put up buildings. We are clearing trees to make a less wild look and to make a more "backyard" look with a little wild thrown in for fun. 

I can't wait to see what happens through the spring and summer.

All I Want for Christmas is a Dry House

Date and time: December 25, 2016. 2:45pm.

Scene: 

Presents have been opened, family is inside, turkey is out of the oven and the rest of the meal needs to be started. Husband is sitting outside talking to his Dad when he notices water dripping from the doors that lead to the porch. It hasn't rained recently. He pulls on the frame and more water pours out. 

Experience:

Dan comes inside and tells me something is leaking. He disappears upstairs and I wait. I work on getting dinner ready figuring it can't be that big of a deal (you know, because water is never a big deal in a house....) 

He comes back down at one point and grabs some buckets and tells me that the tub is leaking. I was a little confused at first. We had noticed the faucet dripping a few days ago but the dripping had stopped, my best guess was it stopped the night before because when I took my shower on Christmas Eve, I didn't see the faucet dripping. We believe it stopped dripping out of the faucet and started dripping underneath at that point. 

I head upstairs to help and we realize the buckets can't help because there isn't room under there for them. I try cups and bowls for a while but the water is dripping down the pipes so we really can't "catch" it. I grab a bunch of beach towels and rags and just stuff the interior of the tub cupboard with towels which seems to be the best move until we can shut off the water to the house. We turn on a fan and blow it under the cabinet to help dry things out. 

These pictures were taken before the leak under the tub.

Original pipes and connectors soldered together. 

Original faucet and hot/cold knobs. 

I head downstairs to help with dinner again and our 4 year old comes up to me and says, "Mommy, Grandpa found a wet spot on the ceiling." 

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a big wet spot in your sunroom ceiling. The good news is we had already planned on painting the ceiling so this will be hidden once we do that. 

Our tub is an early 90's design with the Pretty Woman style tub and a cabinet built around it to hide the plumbing. It's pretty ugly. There are two doors to get inside the cabinet and once you open it, you can see the tub and the plumbing. Turns out the faucet's pipes were soldered onto the pipes leading to the main water source. Once the main water was shut off, Dan went to Lowe's and bought the tools needed to cut the pipe and add shut-off valves. We still have to remove the old faucet but we haven't had time to go look for one and thankfully this isn't attached to the shower so the bathroom is still usable.

It's 3 days later now and we still have a fan blowing into the wet area. It's slowly drying out and with the minimal damage we believe occurred, we are comfortable just drying the area out and moving on to the next disaster. 

Selling Our Old House

When we decided to look for a home, our biggest worry was timing of it all. We knew we needed the cash from our house sale to buy where we wanted to move to. It was unfortunate, having to move, we were on track to have our house paid off by 2026. That was a bitter pill to swallow but we knew we were doing this move for a good reason, even if it didn't make the most financial sense.

We watched some houses in our neighborhood sell and checked some comps that our real estate agent who helped us buy our new house gave us. We were lucky to be selling in a hot market and decided to be our own real estate agents. Through a friend, I found an agent who charged a flat $249 fee. With that fee you get your listing on the MLS, a sign and a lockbox. We also received amazing assistance from the agent who really didn't have to do half of the things he did. He was a great resource to us through the process and we feel we got a great deal.

One of the biggest things with listing a house these days is online presence. With the listing on MLS, it is not only sent to the local agent's website, but to all of the other local and national websites, as well such as Coldwell Banker, FM Realty, Realtor.com and Zillow. We were in charge of our own pictures. I felt that was something I could do but our agent told us we could use him if we needed someone to take them for us. I was pleased with how our pictures came out.

The funny thing about the internet is people really have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Since we were still living in the house at this point, my mom, dad and husband were all scurring around behind me hiding things under cabinets, hiding lamp cables and opening blinds.

These are just a few of my favorite rooms from that house and our amazing backyard that my husband transformed from a literal blank slate to this.

We listed the house on the MLS on Thursday and started showings on Friday. We did not live in a very sought after area but we felt our house showed well and was priced right.

We had 3 showings on Friday and 4 lined up for Saturday. Friday I received 2 phone calls from agents asking if we had offers already and asking a few questions about the house and the natural area behind it. Saturday we had 3 showings in the morning and one scheduled for the afternoon. By 10:30am, I had a verbal offer. At noon, we had a written offer in our hands. By 4pm, we had finished our haggling, a final offer was signed by the buyer and by us and we were under contract, with earnest money in hand. What a whirlwind.

Closing was set for a date that worked for both us and the buyer and we were on our way. The process was surprisingly smooth all of the way. The inspection report had a few very minor things on it and we offered to pay for a couple of them. The only hiccup happened at the final walk through when the buyers found the washer and dryer in the house. We thought they wanted it, turned out, they didn't. We spent a tense couple of hours that night trying to make it right and they ended up just keeping them (thankfully). Closing went quickly and smoothly (so much smoother than our closing on the new house!)

Finally. All that hard work was worth it.

Do I miss it? Yes. I miss my friends. We had great neighbors in that neighborhood. Young couples with young kids. There are not that many young couples with young kids in our neighborhood. I miss them a lot and miss having someone for our daughter to play with but we'll get through it. Hopefully we will have other young families move in close to our new house and we will work with what we've got.

Granite

While I'm still unhappy with our cabinets, I am IN LOVE with our granite. It is amazing. Beautiful. Perfect. We started looking for countertops before anything else in this project. We were leaning towards a white countertop so we started looking at quartz. We got a lot of feedback from stone companies and installers while we researched the stuff and one thing was for sure - people prefer to work with granite. We came away with the thought that granite is better because it's natural, looks natural, has a lot of different options and will stand the test of time.

I was kind of disappointed at first when we decided granite was the way to go. I was really looking forward to an all-white kitchen. But then we started looking around and found if we searched well, we could find something we really wanted. What I didn't want was something like these:

Not my style at all. Not my husband's style either. He would love to put marble in everywhere but marble is not made for the kitchen so that's out. 

I knew I wanted more of a streaky look than a splotchy look like the ones in the above picture. I took many lunch hours to go look at what the many companies around here offered. I thought I had finally narrowed it down when I found one last company who had a slab come in that I fell in love with. I told the owner's son what I was looking for. He called me the day the slabs came in and I went to see them. He listened to me and he figured out what I wanted. And what they had was exactly what I wanted. He sent me a picture of their new slabs of Himalayan White. 

Perfect! It's smooth and has the streaks I was looking for. We went the next morning to look at it. Not only was it gorgeous from far away, up close it was even better. It showed other bits of stone inside of it. It was just what we wanted. I was so excited. We went ahead and booked the granite guys that we chose and scheduled them to come out and measure the night the cabinet people were done.

This company was so great to work with. Not only did they call us when they had a slab they thought we would love come in, they had us come out and check the slab after they laid out their template. We were able to see exactly what portions of the slab would go where in the kitchen. And they showed us the seam (which is almost invisible now that it is installed). 

They came on Wednesday and it is even better than I had hoped for. 

Close up of some of the granite details

The gorgeous island

The sink

The one thing I haven't yet mentioned is the sink. Our beautiful, rectangular, not rounded sink. How gorgeous is it? And the faucet, as well. It was one of the few faucets I could find that wasn't bulbous in some way or another. I love all of the clean lines. It's perfect. I love cleaning dishes now - no more barrier in the middle of the sink to work with! We had to spend a little more to get the industrial sink but it was so, so worth it. 

Kitchen Cabinets

We hired 3 different people/companies for the renovation. We hired someone for the cabinets, countertops and a plumber (the same guy who replaced our hot water heater). We found the cabinet and countertop people through local recommendations.

Our cabinets came in first. I took a day off from work on a Friday to be home while they installed because Dan didn't want to be the one I yelled at if I hated something. He wanted me talking directly to them. Good thing. They installed the cabinets and I wasn't happy. The bottom cabinets were fine and looked great. I was in love with the island and maybe that skewed my original view a little when we went to see them in their shop.

The cabinets do not look like any cabinets I have ever seen before. They put the first few up and I had to stop them because there was about a 3" gap between the door and the top molding and then a 3" gap between the door and the bottom of the cabinet box. They fixed the gap at the top with more trim and that actually made it look really nice and finished. They couldn't do anything about the gap at the bottom of the cabinet. I'm still unhappy about it today. I've never seen cabinets that look like this before - with this big of a gap between door and end of cabinet - yet, these guys say they've never had a complaint. Now they have. The reason they added that extra trim at the bottom was to cover any under cabinet lighting we may put up. That's fine but I still think the cabinets need something else down at the bottom to make them look finished. They look unfinished to me.

I hate even blogging about it because every time I see it, I get mad. I hate it. I hate how it looks. I try to look at everything other than the upper cabinets, though, now that everything is done. I will admit - I guess I didn't know what I was looking at when I reviewed the final drawing of the cabinets. I've never done this before. I thought we were dealing with experts who would steer us in the right direction. 

There were other hiccups. The big one for both of us was that the old man who owns the business was a cranky old dude. He didn't like us inspecting the cabinets closely and complained about our choice of hardware. He said I was nitpicking every little thing and that I need to understand that nicks are going to happen. 

Um. When I buy something brand new, I expect it to be brand new. I do not expect to have nicks or dings in things. I do not expect to see bubbling in paint. I do not expect to have a cranky old man telling me to accept the flaws. $10k says there should be no flaws. 

The team worked from 9am until 3pm. They had a few outstanding items when they were done. A few doors had to be fixed and some hardware had to be evened out. They also brought the wrong size end cabinet. We ordered a 15" cabinet for the right side of the sink. The rest of the cabinets were 12" and this one was to come in slightly bigger.

Thumper. In the way the entire time. 

I love the crisp, clean look of the white cabinets. The beadboard on the island was a great upgrade and I'm so glad we did that. It makes me happy every time I see it. I also love the drawers. When we decided to redo the cabinets, I decided I wanted mostly drawers on the bottom. We ended up doing all drawers or pull-outs other than under the sink. We have a pull-out for cookie sheets, a pull-out for the trash/recycling and drawers for everything from silverware to tupperware, pots and pans to kid cups and plates. Now our daughter can get her own cup when she needs a drink, total parenting hack right there. 

After the work was done, they took the 12" end cabinet back, along with some of the doors that had bubbling to be fixed. We did get the cabinet and the doors back just a week later and it all looked great...other than that pesky bottom trim problem on the top cabinets. We still haven't figured out what we are going to do about that. 

Finally - a "real life" photo of the kitchen in action complete with 15" cabinet and 3/4 of the family. Plus princesses. Our microwave goes in soon and then we still have to find a cover for the vent under the sink cabinet. 

Tell me - would that trim at the bottom bother you? Or does it look finished enough for your taste?

Kitchen Demo

After we moved into the house and really lived there for a while, we started to notice some things. I mentioned one in a previous post about how weird the house is. The kitchen was just gross. There were extra kick plates on the cabinets, no trim or corner round on the floor around the fridge, flat edges instead of 45 degree edges cut for corners of the shoe molding. It was all so, so strange and extremely annoying.

My commission from selling our house was about enough to replace the countertops and the sink and faucet, with some to spare. That's the money I could use to reno the kitchen. Once we had lived in the house, though I realized I hated the cabinets. They became my sole focal point. Somehow I convinced my husband to dip into our earnings from selling our house and redo the countertops, as well as the cabinets. We had thought about refacing them but they were just so gross that we decided to go all the way.

It took about a month to find a cabinet company that we thought we liked. We scheduled our cabinets to be installed on Friday November 4th. We decided to save a little money and tear out the old cabinets and countertops ourselves. While it was frustrating and hard work to get them out, it was also kind of therapeutic.

  

As we pulled the cabinets down, we were able to take a look at just how bad the situation was. The cabinets that were originally installed were pressed particle board. They had what looked like a sheet of contact paper on the outside to make them look like "real wood." Then, one of the previous owners decided to reface them. Another layer of particle board was added to the ends and the doors were painted white.

For some reason they added the extra kick plates in one or two places. They also did a hideous job painting - there was paint on the hinges, inside the cabinets and drips down the sides of the doors and the sides where they added the extra panel. Once we started demo, we were both really glad we decided to rip them out.

So much wine was needed to survive this demo

Oh yay, mold.

What a mess. There was so much caulk in that kitchen from the cabinets to the floors. Most of the caulk on the floor was disgusting from years and years of being open to dust and dirt since they didn't cover it probably with trim or shoe molding.

When we tore out the cabinets under the sink, we accidentally broke off the water shut off valve. It sheared right off. Thankfully we had the water turned off before that happened and didn't need water there again until the plumber was scheduled with our counter install.

The last picture is the final shot before our new cabinets went in. After we removed the cabinets, we cleaned and sanded and finally Dan painted. He painted around where the cabinets were going to go so we wouldn't have to tape them off later. Gray is so much calmer than that awful yellow that was in there before.

Our dining room became our staging area for everything that we had removed from the kitchen cabinets. We attempted to eat dinner in here a couple of times but mostly we just ate out. We even had company while we were in the middle of this mess but it all worked out in the end.

Love

I've talked about all of the weird and gross things about our house so you're probably wondering why we bought it in the first place.

1. Bones. Our house has great bones. The layout is perfect for this stage in our lives. The main floor is a square, typical of Colonial homes. I like our layout because there is no formal living room area. The family room is in the front of the house and there is what the builder called a sun room in the back, across from the kitchen. It's currently being used as a play room, the perfect place for our daughter to play while we cook dinner. There are just enough bedrooms and a bonus room for my husband, plus a bonus room for me (the entire 3rd floor!) That 3rd floor can also become a getaway space when our daughter is a teenager.

Kitchen into sunroom

Sunroom into kitchen

2. The backyard. We have over 1/3 acre and beyond that is a protected wooded area that can never be built on. It's a great feeling to know that you will never be staring at another house behind yours. We also have a stream behind our house. It, too needs a lot of work - we have to add rip-rap and I'd like to lay river rock to make it prettier but it's also perfectly fine for now. We have an area with a lot of debris and rock that we can walk across and some really deep areas. I'm sure our daughter will continue to enjoy it as she gets older. For now, she likes to fish for minnows and salamanders.

3. The area. We moved here for the schools. We had been looking for a few years and finally found an area in this town that we loved. There aren't a lot of other kids this age around but I'm sure that will change as this is a transitional neighborhood. We live on a cul-de-sac street and spend some evenings down in the cul-de-sac on bikes or writing with sidewalk chalk. And the best part of this town? The greenways. We can travel anywhere throughout the area easily and off main roads. We have to ride our bikes about 1/4 mile to get to a greenway but then it's all safe riding from there. There are also restaurants and grocery stores within a mile. We couldn't be happier.