Furniture pictures

Ah two posts in one day. Here are the promised furniture pictures. We got the chair and bench/table from my dad and I also included pictures of our front room. Last year for Christmas, Matt and I bought the other bench you see under the windows. That was the first piece of furniture for this room, and now - 1 year later we have lots! Still more to do of course but we have come a long way. The coat rack in the corner is one of our newer pieces too.

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!

I feel like I don't have a lot to say, but perhaps some of you still have me in your google reader (I am obsessed with google reader) so maybe you'll read this ;-) Speaking of google reader, I have added baking blogs to mine (thanks to Meg!) and have loved saving the recipes I one day hope to try out. I have only tried one so far and oh.my.gosh it was unbelievable. My first time making homemade ice cream with my ice cream maker I've had for 2 years! I made a lemon ginger snap ice cream. Had to cook everything the night before, let it chill overnight and then put in the ice cream maker to churn the next day. Best ice cream I've ever had for sure.

I have been trying to do a few things around the yard but it seems that every day I have available for that it ends up raining. Well we finally beat the rain last week and planted our garden. We have the perfect spot in our backyard - a rectangle of cinder blocks that used to be a one car garage (who knows when) and is now our garden. I planted more vegetables than I even like to eat but I'm curious to see what will thrive and what won't, especially considering I have a black thumb. If all goes well, those of you I see often might find yourself with some free vegetables. And one day when I feel like getting my camera cord out, I will post pictures to make up for the lack of pictures.

Speaking of pictures, one of my goals for this year is to get a fancy camera which I plan on getting for my birthday and then I will of course be motivate to post more pictures and save them in a better way.. I hope.

Matt is almost done with his spring semester at Kennesaw so in his break between spring and summer he is planning on getting some yardwork done. Here's to gutters that will be buried and maybe some new bushes! And some more tar on the roof to hopefully fix the little leak that happened in the ceiling when it rained yesterday. Luckily nothing too major, but it does mean our roof sucks. I'm told that a new roof is about $5k-$15k and that Matt could do it for under $5k but we all know I don't want to spend that kind of money! Sheesh. It's a 'new' roof when they remodeled the house in 2007, but they put a 3rd layer of shingles on the roof and you are only supposed to put 2 layers and then strip it off to put the new layer after that. Who knows what is going on under this layer!

New carpet in the living room will be coming in maybe a month or so (especially now that we have a black spot and a red spot where Molly has eaten pens.. needless to say we have a baby gate now for her).

Until next time..

Blogging drought

Sorry I haven't blogged in a little while.. if you even care ;) I just looked back at my last post and saw that I wrote that we were going to watch The Hangover -- HILARIOUS! Wow we loved it. Anyway you probably know how beautiful this past weekend was. We took full advantage of 65 and sunny. Saturday morning we walked a mile to the French restaurant and ate outside in the beautiful weather for brunch - yum!! Then I ran some errands and came home and washed both cars (Matt's Jeep hadn't been washed in 3+ years.. since I've known him) and then we installed Molly's electric fence. So we have those little flags all around our back yard. Now begins the training.. you can't just slap the collar on the dog and let them loose, you have to train them to understand what is going on and why. She seems like she is kind of understanding it. Today I kicked the ball around outside and sometimes when it went outside the fence she wouldn't go and would wait for me to get it. Other times she would run right after it (at other spots in the fence). While training, you keep plastic pieces on the collar so it doesn't shock her but it does beep. Then as training progresses you change out the plastic for the metal.

We also bought two rugs for our empty front room in the past few weeks. I ended up not liking the first one but I bought it on craigslist so I can't return it so now I'm trying to sell it. The other one just arrived today and I love it!! The room is slowly coming together and I'm realizing I can do it for cheaper than I thought (though still costly.. especially when you buy something expensive you don't want). I'll post pictures soon I hope.

This week is full of preparing for the wedding shower for Andy and Crystal on Saturday. I'm so excited! We are so close to wedding time now :) Matt and I haven't been to a wedding in quite a while (actually since the day my Civic was totaled). Weddings are always so fun!

Molly needs to go outside so I can't write much more.. I did want to say though that we went to our first small group tonight! Apparently it was cancelled and we didn't know that, but the hosts graciously invited us in and we chatted for about 45 min. We really like them a lot and the guy apparently owns the Christian music studio in Atlanta or something (Matt has always dreamed of going there if that tells you anything) so it's quite the match for us for small group! We can't wait until next week! Although we are excited to be home tonight to catch Lost ;-)