1 sink, 2 sink, 3 sink, FLOOR!

Our new sink hardware

So here we are 2 weeks or so since the last posting....and yes we are still working on that 200 sq ft of house that we started 3 weeks ago!!! Nothing MAJOR has happened since the last post it's just more or less been SUPER time consuming!!

Sammy went to a bachelor party which left me home alone all weekend and since I don't know how to do anything home improvement wise except painting....I painted then ENTIRE 4th of July weekend. So this means I have now officially 'started' projects in about every room of the house so of course the various projects all over the place are making us crazy!!!

When Sam got home we went to work on finishing the floors and the bathroom. Luis came back from Mexico on July 4th so we wanted to have the laundry room/bathroom done by then....so here we are a week later and we are just now finishing the rooms!!!

Floral wallpaper...enough said--Laundry Room & Bathroom Phase II

The half bath

Ahhhh yes the sweet smell of construction dust and home renovations!! As you can see from the previous posts Dear Reader we are making progress in our new house by renovating the laundry room and bathroom...the office/bedroom will be next. So we have entered into Phase II of the 200 sq ft renovation, the small half bath.

As you can see....it needs MAJOR updating....and yes that is floral metallic wallpaper on every inch of the bathroom. The toilet is on a marble slab (I guess they REALLY wanted a 'thrown' feel to the bathroom!!!) and that vanity looks like the original 1977 version.

Yes that's the same sorry excuse for carpet that had dog pee all over it in the laundry room....and the inside of the builder stock medicine cabinet is all gross. What you don't see in these pics is the exhaust fan/light which is SCARY!!! There are no other lights in this room and no towel racks etc. About the only thing worth keeping is the toilet which is in better shape than any of the other toilets in the house for that matter!!

Originally Sam and I were just going to just do the tile and paint....but since we were already ripping everything else out why not just rip out the sink, vanity, and toilet....not to mention get new baseboards, light fixtures, and medicine cabinet??? So that's what we did.

Square pegs and white spray paint--Laundry Room & Bathroom Phase I

Laundry room

Somewhere in between painting the 'tiki hut room' and unpacking hundreds of boxes, Sam and I decided that we couldn't STAND the laundry room for even ONE more day. I suppose that's the downside to DIY home renovations....we OBVIOUSLY need a project manager to keep us on track LOL.

The laundry room is right next to the tiki room which is now 'Luis's room', off the laundry room there is the entry to the garage, another bedroom/office, and a small half bath.....of course all of which need to be gutted and re-done.

Laundry room carpet and trim

Sam and I got this crazy idea when we were finishing the paint in Luis's room (he's in Mexico for 2 weeks), both of us couldn't stand being in his room because the laundry room smelled like dog pee SOOOO BAD!!! The same genius who put the tikis up carpeted the laundry room, half bath, and the bedroom/office in this industrial grade office carpet and then kept their large dog in the laundry area during the day.....I say large dog because the walls had dog pee stains on them about 3 feet high.

 

 I swear to God this carpet should have been condemned!!! We didn't even want to walk on it without shoes let alone put our clothes in there (dirty or not). The more we walked on the carpet the worse it smelled....I think us walking on it actually made it worse!! We put our dogs in there during the day too and everyday I came home wondering if they died from ammonia exposure!!

Tiki take down!

Sam taking down the tikis

Well after my inlaws FINALLY left on Monday (2 hours late mind you) Sam and I had some time to actually look around us and take in the whole home ownership thing. The one room in the entire house that bothered all of us more than any other was the 'tiki hut room'.

The tiki room looks like it might have been a second living room since there is a fire place in there complete with wet bar/sink. Luis decided to claim this room as his and we all decided that the tiki huts needed to go right away and we needed to at least clean out the closets/storage areas for Luis to put his stuff before he leaves to visit his mom in Mexico on Wed June 22.



Tiki Huts!!

 Now I would just like to know....who puts up tiki huts INSIDE of a house??? And who picked the hideous two tones bronze and peach wall color?!?!? This is probably the most hideous room I have EVER seen!!!

As I said before in our 'background story'....when we bought this house, we knew it would be a fixer-upper.....2800 sq of DIY projects to keep us busy for at least the next 30 years. I guess you do have to start SOMEWHERE and that somewhere was in the tiki room.



Sliding door needs replacement

Obviously our plan is to make this room a bedroom NOT a living room and given it's current state, we have a lot of work to do.

Here's the list of 'projects' in this room alone:

1. Take down tiki huts
2. Paint walls/baseboards/closets/doors
3. Clean out junk from closets/build ins

4. Replace switch plates and floor vent

5. Replace flooring/carpet

6. Replace sliding door

7. Replace door knobs/cabinet knobs

8. Take off popcorn ceiling and repaint
 9. Replace gas fireplace

10. Re-do brick

11. Decorate

12. Replace window treatments

The circus has come to town

The sun has risen......the morning mist is just lifting.....and we are waking up from our first night sleep in our new house....the summer breeze blows through our patio doors....Sam's mom is in the kitchen making us some nice beans and eggs for breakfast......and the birds are singing in our backyard....and there's a peahen sunning itself in our front yard.

)(*@#()&*@????!!!!!

Who the &#()$* has a peahen.....in the city?!??!!? Apparently here in Salem, you are able to keep small livestock in your house within the city limits...I think the city council only recently approved chickens as 'domestic livestock' within the city but apparently that rule must apply to peacocks because there is a whole family of them randomly wandering around our neighborhood!!!

First of all, our grass hadn't been cut for....hummm I don't know.....at least 4 weeks!!! So the front yard looks like a jungle and apparently ripe for the nesting of peahens and peacocks!!! Sam and his dad were out front observing the peahen wondering how the hell to get rid of it when the neighbors started to come out wondering who the hell brought the peacock to the neighborhood!!!

According to the neighbors....they have NEVER seen this peahen before and just assumed we brought it when we moved in....()!@*#()@*# really do we look like the kind of people who would keep a peahen as a pet?!?!? They eat EVERYTHING and leave droppings all over the place oh and they are LOUD especially during mating season!! Why the hell would we have this animal as a pet?!?!? But since it was sunning it self in our front yard jungle suddenly we are the 'owners'!!!

The move in from hell

So here we are.....4:30 in the afternoon and we just get the keys to our new house....4 days past the move out deadline. We've been 'homeless' for a few days now and sleeping on couches with my in laws visiting. We've spent an extra $1000.00 to be homeless....who knew one would need to invest in homeless-ness. At any rate we got the keys so then the real fun started.....the move out.

We already had everything more or less loaded in the U-Haul and our truck....the stuff that didn't fit we just crammed into my mom's garage. Sam and I had this vision of walking into our first house with doggies and having it be all exciting and new and 'movie perfect'.....mistake number one, we should have know the 'Mendez Law' would apply :).

We raced over with the U-Haul, Sam's parents, doggies, Luis and his girlfriend and immediately started throwing stuff into our garage racing against the setting sun. Now keep in mind, Sam's dad is having knee replacement surgery as soon as they get back to AZ so he's more or less the 'supervisor' of the whole move in operation. Sam didn't want his parents to feel like they needed to help us move in so he told his mom to go on into the house and do what she loves.....cooking.

So Sam's mom (who brought 2 carry ons FULL of Sam's fav foods from AZ mind you....really I didn't think TSA allowed stuff like that as carry on but who knows!!!) is like 'I'm just going to whip up a light dinner for us all!!'. I looked at her like she was TOTALLY INSANE.....here we are moving in to a new house with no idea where ANY of our stuff is....the house itself has been vacant since Oct so God only knows what might be in the kitchen....we have just gone through weeks of HELL and STRESS....and here is this wonderful sweet lady wanting to cook for us....more power to her I thought she was LOCO though!!! 

I wondered to myself as I see her unloading her suitcases full of food.....'do I dare ask what she's going to make??' Well I did....and she's like, oh I'm just whipping up something simple, some homemade tortillas, carneasada on the BBQ, guacamole, rice, and beans! @*(&#*(@&#?????!!!!! Are you KIDDING?!??! I was right she IS crazy!!!

Waiting...Waiting...Waiting...the most chaotic closing known to man

Here we are...the first posting for my new blog!!! As you can see, this blog is all about our home buying/rennovation adventures....our family is one of those families that stuff just happens to so I see the potential for a book SOMEWHERE in all this madness and decided why not document our expeirences :).

So that brings us back to the first posting, the move in from hell. To give you all some background info, the last 60 days have been hellacious....we have been renting a house and the woman who owns it lost her job in Arizona and has to move back to Oregon so that means we had to move out. The rental company gave us 60 days notice at which point my husband and I decided we would go a head and buy a house since the market is a 'buyers' market. What we didn't know is that apparently it takes 90 days to close on a house according to our real estate agent.

In April we started frantically looking for a house to buy which suprisingly went fairly smooth....we figured the whole closing thing would be a cake walk too since we were already preapproved etc. Well let me just say...it took a little longer than expected .Our deadline for 'rental eviction' was June 13th at 5:00 pm....we were supposed to close on the house May 25th so we thought we had plenty of time.

Oh and did I mention both my husband and I work for a high school and are heavily involved with graduation....oh and our adoptive son is a senior who is graduating from the same school we work at?? Graduation was June 10th and the last day of school for all underclassmen was June 15th. So let's just say this time of year is almost worse than the first week or two of school.