The joys of homeownership

The American Dream: homeownership. I guess owning a home represents what so many people work hard their whole lives for. (Well it used to anyway.. now they will give a mortgage to anyone). But I'm not here to get on a soapbox, just to share with you some of our latest home tidbits. There is one medium-sized project that I have been looking forward to us getting taken care of in our house. When we bought the house, we knew that some framing around our back french doors was rotten and that it would need to be replaced. We also knew our carpet was worn and dirty and slightly ripped and would need to be replaced. (I did clean it twice with a steam cleaner machine, so not too dirty, but definitely want new carpet). Luckily, cost-wise, we only have carpet in one room. And as much as everyone wants hardwoods and I love our hardwoods, I also love having carpet in this one room. It feels very home-y to me and I know once we have kids I will want carpet there because that is where we spend the majority of our time and kids need carpet to fall on. Plus if we spend a fortune matching hardwood floors, I would have to pay a few hundred dollars more to buy an area rug to throw on top of them anyway.

So, first project: getting the framing fixed around the french doors. We called probably 10 people / places over the span of 2 months before we finally found someone to do the job. People wouldn't return our phone calls, estimates were too high, etc. Finally, finally we got a guy to do it who was recommended to us by one of my coworkers. He did a really great job on the whole project and then in the end left all of the scrap wood pile laying our backyard and couldn't take it away! What are we supposed to do with it?? Well I would also like to tell you the cost on these projects. People aren't always willing to share the cost of owning a home with each other, but just so you understand that it's so much more than just the mortgage (as I'm sure most of you know anyway). This particular project was $1419. About what I thought it would be.. I was guessing around $1200. So $1419 plus a pile of wood - joy.

Project # 2: now that the framing is complete, we can get new carpet! There was no point in putting it in before because they would just have to rip some of it up to get to the damaged part of the floor. I had a figure in my head for this one, one room of carpet = $800, right? Sadly, no. Well I guess we could get cheap-o carpet and pay $800 or less. We found one we really like, middle of the road carpet that we'll be putting in. I will be sure to post before and after pictures once we get it installed in the next few weeks. We chose to go with the carpet we liked but with a shorter fiber and standard pad since this is only our ~5 year house and not our 'forever' house. Cost of project: ~$1350. Yikes.

Project # 3: reupholster the steal of a couch we got on craigslist. Couch = $80. I thought.. can't cost more than $400 to reupholster, right? Man I am just a bad estimator. Apparently it's at least ~$500 for the labor and then you have to buy fabric and it's been suggested that we need new cushions for $150. This is not an urgent project but we'll probably be taking it to another recommended place in a few weeks and cross our fingers that his estimate will be a little lower. Plus before we bought the couch I thought that we would buy two matching chairs and they would be $200-$400 each so maybe the couch cost is not so far off anyway.

Though the framing project was a 'need', and I know the other two projects are 'wants', it's still expensive. But I still love our house and all of the projects we have taken on to make it our home. If you want to talk about 'needs' though, how about the thousands of dollars we had to spend water proofing our basement, replacing our air conditioning unit, having plumbers snake our drain, having electricians fix our wiring, etc etc. Thankfully we are blessed and fortunate enough to be able to afford all the projects that the house brings with it. But that doesn't mean I don't stress over it :) I think we'll stop after these 3 projects and take a little break before getting into anymore.

Hope you all are having a great weekend full of fun house projects or no house projects!

Morning Glory Muffins

My friend Meg got me hooked on a few baking / cooking blogs (thanks Meg!) and my sister suggested one or two also so I'm not sure who this blog comes from. I typically just 'star' the recipes I like in my google reader and search them later when I want to make something. This recipe was put up the other day and I just had to make it. While I can eat the same thing for breakfast morning after morning for years (going on 2 years or so now on my current breakfast - a mixture of two cereals from Aldi), Matt prefers to mix it up and likes a different breakfast weekly. That presents a challenge every week when I'm going to the grocery store and say "what do you want for breakfast this week?" Because he can never decide :) haha. So lately I've been in the habit of baking something if I find a fun recipe. It serves my need to bake and his need for new breakfast items without fattening us up too much baking sweets.

This recipe sounded so weird I just had to try it. It has apples, carrots, zucchini, applesauce, coconut, pecans, pineapple and normal baking ingredients (including wheat flour!). Weird, right?? I made them last night and they are tasty! I think the best thing about these muffins is that even though they have all of those fruits & veggies in them, you can't even taste them at all. They just taste like normal cinnamon wheat muffins or something of the sort. So they seem to be super healthy without tasting weird! I didn't take any pictures but mine pretty much look just like the ones on the blog. If anyone bakes them I would love to know what you think of them. (So far 3 out of 3 people that have tried mine loved them) :)

http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/morning-glory-muffins/

Minneapolis and house work

Last weekend Matt and I went to Minneapolis to visit my very best friend, Emili. We have been friends for 21 years!! wow! We had a fantastic time and I put up a few of my favorite pics below. We ate amazing food, kayaked for a few hours on the lakes, and rode bikes all over the city. The funniest thing about the bikes was when this guy told me it was dangerous to be riding on the roads. I guess he didn't know that it's the law for bikes to ride on the roads and that Minneapolis is the #1 biking city in the US.

Also pictured is a shot of the guys fixing our door (rotten wood around the frame and floor - SO glad it's done!) and one of our new couch. I'll explain below.

Ok about that couch - in Minneapolis I found the coolest couch for our front room (which is still only half furnished). We have the same store in Atlanta, BUT the couch is $1800. So it's a no-go. But it did inspire the couch that we scored for $80 off of craigslist. You can see the two below. The top picture is the one we wanted and the bottom picture is the one we got. We are definitely getting it reupholstered, I'm already in contact with two different stores about it. We want to do a similar fabric to the green one that we love. We really like this couch, it's so fun and vintage :) I think that the picture doesn't really do it justice. I will post an after one as soon as it's reupholstered.. not sure how long that will take.

We also replaced our kitchen faucet the week (the old one got water not only in the sink but on you as well) and did a few other small things around the house. As much as the list is never-ending, I really love improving our house little by little! I also love all of the cheap finds we have found for our front room. It's really coming together and I love how it looks so far.

Happy weekend!

2nd Anniversary

Happy 2nd Anniversary to the love of my life, my husband who doesn't read my blog and who I can always be silly with.