Buyer's Remorse

So, for those of you who discouraged us from buying a house - you were officially right. I am saying it. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from any nasty I told you so's.

For those of you who told us buying a house would be great, you were wrong. I am sorry that I went against my better judgment and convinced myself it would be a good idea.

Here's why (and this is just for 2010):

We just treated a huge carpenter ant infestation in March. So gross. Dead ant carcasses everywhere. Plus whatever damage they caused.

Now we have termites. Fantastic. And they're under the house which means that to treat them, they have to pull up our carpet and drill into the slab.

We also had a horrible infestation of flies, but I bought a fogger that seems to have killed them. I immediately got worried that we would discover a hidden nest of maggots like Julie did in Julie and Julia, but I have yet to find anything like that, thank God. I have also made precarious friends with a spider who likes to make a web in the corner of one of our windows. She killed A LOT of flies, and she is now a kind of unofficial pet. I haven't named her or anything. I have a healthy respect for her, and I'm tolerating her. As long as she stays put, we are fine. She has laid a few egg sacs that I've made J remove from her web. She might be OK, but hundreds of spiderlings are not. I thought spiders died after they lay eggs, but apparently "Charlotte's Web" was wrong about that (at least in the kind of spider I've got).

Also, the pool has broken several times this year already. I really do just want to drain it and fill it in. It's too small to exercise in (although we did buy an Aquajogger, much to my 13-year-old niece's embarrassment, I'm sure), so it's really just a paddle pool. So stupid and worthless.

We are contemplating repairing the damage to the house, then getting out of Dodge. We can sell half our furniture (or return it to the people who gave it to us), move back into an apartment or condo, and never have to deal with this crap again. Sounds nice. I really didn't want to have to spend my summer vacation dealing with this.

On a more positive note, I'm including some photos of what I wore to a friend's rehearsal and wedding last weekend in Colorado to keep with the fashion thing. I mostly just wear T-shirts and sweatpants around the house right now, and that's not really picture-worthy. Although, it might be kind of funny if I actually did take pictures of myself sitting on the couch in the same outfit three days in a row.

Squirrel Thief

Look who I caught stealing the birdseed this morning! That can't be comfortable, Mr. Squirrel.

Bathroom Floor

Jon retiled the bathroom floor himself last weekend. I think he did a fantastic job! No more hole in the guest bathroom floor! This place is really coming together.

Electricians Done!

Ceiling fan installed in the office!

Microwave installed in the kitchen! Now we can take the other one out of our bedroom!

Beautiful new pineapple light fixture in the kitchen! I really like the pattern it makes on the ceiling.

The electricity is done! Now all we have to do is the tile backsplash, wood trim, and finish up the guest bathroom, but those are all aesthetic things. Our house is now fully functional!!!!!!

Countertops!

The sink and the range top aren't hooked up yet, so that's just for show, but we can put our dishes away now!!!! Next stop - tile backsplash!

New Cabinets

Next stop - countertops!

Lots of Stuff

I have had plenty of things to write about, but haven't for some reason. I suppose I am just going to write about the house this time since that is omnipresent.

Our cabinets were delivered last Wednesday. They are currently sitting in our garage. They are so pretty! They are being installed tomorrow and Wednesday. Yay! Cabinets!

We had an electrician come out and turn the electricity on in the front part of the house, so all of our outlets actually work now! Yay! Lights!

Now we can finally unpack the gameroom boxes and Jonathan already set up the living room with the whole TV/DVR entertainment thing, and it's so much more comfortable being in there.

Plus, the HVAC guy came and installed vents in the kitchen, dining room, and reading room. So, once we start using the air conditioner, we will have circulation! Yay! A/C!

Jonathan already called the countertop people to come out and measure after the cabinets have been installed, so that will happen soon. We might have a kitchen by our anniversary! Yay!

House Update

My friend Ali told me when all this began that in his culture, people would say that someone had put the Evil Eye on us. I'm beginning to think they might be right.

The Good News:

1) We've ordered cabinets again, and they will be shipping Feb. 16. They will be delivered within 2 weeks of that, and then they will be installed at some point. So, we are looking at having kitchen cabinets sometime in March. Yay!

2) We've ordered countertops again. We have to wait for the cabinets to be installed before we can actually get the granite, but it's all in process.

3) Our pool is fixed again. It has broken every month since we've lived here. Let's see how long it makes it this time!

The Bad News:

1) We filed a lawsuit against our contractor on Dec. 19, but for some reason Dallas County has still not served him with papers. More waiting...

2) Our 4-month-old mattress developed a huge divot that was causing us some back pain. I mean, what are the odds? We had to schedule the furniture company to come out and take a bunch of pictures and measure the divot. It was big enough and the mattress was new enough that they just exchanged it for a new mattress on Friday. Thank goodness it was that easy, but seriously, the easiest thing would have just been for the mattress to do what it was supposed to do.

3) We had the HVAC guy come out to do an estimate on replacing the vents in the front of the house. It's not that expensive, but with everything else, it's just a big pain.

4) We had an electrician come out to do an estimate on fixing all the wiring (none of the plugs or overhead lights work in the front part of the house). It was very expensive, and I think we need to get more estimates. But this just takes up a bunch of time and money as you have to pay about $150 a pop for estimates.

5) Because of the big freeze this week, they didn't pick up our bulk trash, and it's still all just sitting out in front of the curb!!! I really hope they don't just put it off until next month.

So, we're pretty frustrated right now, but at the same time, we feel like stuff is sort of getting done around here. I don't know. Things are better, but they're just really not good. I guess I'm glad things are moving forward, but it's really hard to have patience when you have lived in a house for 6 months and still don't have a kitchen. Anyway, there it is.

Bulk Trash Day

A few weeks ago, we did a load of yardwork (the previous owners of our house had obviously not pruned or even raked the yard in the entire 11 years they lived here!). It's been sitting in piles in our yard since then, and this week is our bulk trash week. We spent the morning hauling it all out to the curb along with a bunch of construction trash our contractor left piled up in our garage. Here's the final result:
As you can see, the pile of brush is higher than Jon's waist! Whew! I'm glad it's over.

Backyard

I'm rediscovering the joys of having a backyard. Dallas has been blessed with absolutely gorgeous weather this week, and when we went to go water the grass and take our Jeep-ful of moving boxes to the new house yesterday, I decided to spend most of my time sitting in the yard by the pool. It was really relaxing and fun. Toad had a pretty good time, too, as you can see:

He was actually on his back sunbathing before I got up and bothered him with my camera. He has become quite the one for communing with nature.

I am getting more and more excited about actually living in the house. I think I will like it. Even though it is totally broken again - something is wrong with the water pressure now because we couldn't run both sprinklers at the same time. Whatever it is, it must be fixed. We picked out our granite countertops this weekend. They are painting this week, and the utility room is finished, so it will be ready for us to move in next Saturday. We are just waiting on the cabinets to come in, etc. so we can have a working kitchen!

House Closing

We closed on our new house yesterday. It was exciting and not as bad as we were led to believe it would be as far as the paperwork goes. We went later in the afternoon to pick up the keys, and when I opened the envelope, this fell out:



That, my friends, is a leopard print key. And now I kind of want to decorate the house like a jungle. You know, to keep with the whole theme.

We took Toad with us to see the place. He really likes the yard and had a lot of fun running around the empty rooms. I think he'll like it there.

The one bad thing was that when I went to unlock the front door with my leopard key, there was a sign hanging on the knob from the pool company that said "Pool motor went bad. Needs repair. Call me." Since we had owned the house for exactly 12 minutes at the point, I called the realtor and asked what we should do. Luckily, we have a home warranty that covers the pool, so if it is our responsibility to fix it, we don't have to pay for it. But it's kind of a bummer to arrive at your brand new house (at least, it's new to us) and discover a huge repair immediately needs to be done.

So, we are officially homeowners. We'll throw a party once we're settled in and remodeled. And we get the pool fixed!