A new beginning

Now that all the hair-pulling-out stress is over (mostly), I feel like I can post about all the great things about our new house. And there are SO many great things in this house that we fell in love with. I have vowed that I won't post a full house tour until everything is how I want it, sorry for the disappointment. So instead...I am stealing a cute idea from a blog that I read where she does a weekly appreciation of the cool, and cute things in her new house (except she has a cute name for her house and does everything way better). Here is our second rate "Pemberley Appreciation":

Our charming door knocker:

I think this old door knocker is so amazing. It has the family crest and name of the previous owners. This house has been in the same family since it was built so that really adds to the heirloom-ness of this knocker. We have plans to someday get our own family crest made into a knocker and put it on the door as a sort of geneology of ownership. This is why I love old houses.

I Can-not Believe It!

....As Tyrone would say on Little Einsteins.

To update you on our water issues we are doing much better. We were having a plumber come out the day after my last post. He ran a snake and found more roots, proving that the plumber from the warranty company was utterly useless. He hit something that he was not able to get past and said that his blade was coming back shiny which probably means it was hitting metal. But since it was draining, he didn't think that it was a broken line. So we paid him and we thought we were in the clear. Later that evening he called back and said he just didn't feel comfortable about how he left it and was worried about the line. He was worried that it might be broken and it was so far out it might be broken in the street which would still be our responsibility to fix. If that was the case we would be looking at $5,000 or more the excavate, repair the line and replace the asphalt. He told me to call the sewer company to get the plans for our house and that he would come run a camera for us the next day. It was our greatest fear but even worse now that it was possibly broken in the street.
The next morning I called the sewer company and they told me that usually the records on older houses have been lost over time. He said he would do some research and call me back. Next thing we know, the sewer people are knocking on our door. They said they can't find the records but would look around to help us locate the exterior piping and they would stay to help our plumber. It was going to be awhile because our plumber was just "squeezing us in" especially considering it was the day before Thanksgiving so he might take hours to get to us. The sewer guys found out that we were having a camera run through the pipe and said "we have a camera in the truck, should we just use that?" I jumped for joy and said YES!
As they were scoping with the camera, we heard laughing and some rather boisterous talking. Scott went down to see what was happening. About where we thought we had a broken pipe issue, they saw a pole going right through our pipe. A huge, giant, wooden lamp post was blocking 3/4 of our main sewer line. Apparently about 10 years ago, or possibly more, the city power company installed lamp posts on our street and didn't check where pipe were and went through ours. The previous owner had lived like this for years and my guess is that she never used enough water to have problems.
The sewer people called the power people and within 20 minutes they had the lamp post removed. They then had an excavation company dig up the pipe and replace it. Fortunately it was still on the park strip and we didn't have to deal with any street excavation, but it was close. They had the pipe fixed and buried all by 5 pm. We were all repaired just in time for Thanksgiving. It was the best holiday ever.
The most amazing part of it all is that it didn't cost us ANYTHING! And they agreed to pay our deductable for all the water damage. Our downstairs will be all replaced and updated and all it cost us was some time, lost sleep, and (quite a bit) of inconveince. What an amazing blessing. It worked out better than I could have ever hoped.
I love, love, love Murray so mcuh. When we moved here I thought it was a nice place and I was excited about it. But after this experience, I don't think I will want to leave. If it had been any other city I know it would have been nearly impossible to get anyone from the city here let alone argee on the problem AND take responsiblity to repair it. I love it!
I will leave you with some pictures, mostly in hopes that you will continue to visit my blog and that I won't alienate you with all this jibber-jabber-no-picutre-posts. Please enjoy the current state of my downstairs.

Here is our hallway.

This is the bathroom with everything ripped out.

A close up of the bathroom where you can see the toilet hole and the sink piping.

This one is the hardest to see because of the stupid point and shoot camera flash, but if you look closely you can see where they removed the carpet and tore off the drywall. Lovely isn't it?

Don't be angry, don't be angry, DON'T be angry

I am saying that to myself as much as anyone. I am happy to announce that we did actually move into our new house. I am not happy to say that I currently do not feel like celebrating. I only feel like griping. And you should too because I don't have any pictures to share yet.
So, here are our problems. After living here to 4 days we had a big flood in our basement from our sewer line. We had a home warrenty so they sent out a plumber to clear the line but he found roots were in the line and they do not cover that (I am not sure what they actually cover because everything seems to be excluded). After getting extremely frustrated with them because they also do not cover any clean up since its "secondary damage" we had to clean up all the water (which was disgusting). Since we didn't have a professional crew clean up, or know that we should have we now have some mold that began to grow on the walls. Now we have to replace our new carpet and everything in the downstairs bathroom including the dry wall. We had no idea all that needs to be done if you have a flood. I guess we learned the hard way. Now we have hepa filters to clear the air and dehumidifiers to dry out all the damamge. It is a serious mess.
And, now, today, to top it all off, after paying for them to "clear the line" and our deductable, we had a back up again. Since they found roots we are no longer covered for stopages by our warrenty. It's just a ridiculous rip off if you ask me.
Seriously, seriously I think we were pretty well prepared about buying an older house. We knew what we were getting into, and we had a lot of good information and repairs done before we moved in. But we were not expecting this in the first week. We thought we might have to deal with this in a year.
Gripe, Gripe, Gripe!
But, its Thanksgiving and I am done being stressed and frustrated and rather frantic all week so I should think of some great things that I'm thankful for...
-because they found lead paint in our windows we get them all replaced with new, energy efficient windows for free
-we are getting all of our plumbing problems taken care of now and won't have to deal with it later (right? right?)
-we get our downstairs bathroom remodeled (technically) because they have to replace all the damage
-it no longer smells like mildew
-we have a really cute house, even if it has flooding
-my most sweet adorable loving baby who is nice to me even when the warrenty people are not
-a perfect husband
Well, I am sure that did nothing to help your disappointment at the lack of pictures but I feel better. And trust me, I will post pictures and you will probably be overloaded. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

We don't want to suck YOUR blood

We had a great Halloween this year. There were once big plans for costumes and Wicked themed parties but the new house kinda reeked havoc on all plans. Maybe next year. So instead we threw together some makeshift costumes and called it good. Olive was a ballerina, 1) because I had the costume and 2) as inspiration for her because she does always walk on her tippy-toes so I have high hopes she will someday be a ballerina.

My flash wasn't working so the pictures are a bit dark and blurry but you get the idea.

I just had to include this picture. Look at those thighs!

This is her looking at the scary decorations. She is so funny!

Olive went trick-or-treating with her cousins and it was hilarious. She was running the whole time to keep up with them. Also, she wouldn't hold her basket (all I had was an Easter basket for her to use) but just grip the candy to death. Then when we would get to the door she would drop the candy in her hands and grab the new treat. All of her candy was pretty smooshed by the time we were finished. I think she loved just being out with everyone more than anything.

Like I said, Scott and I just had to throw something together. We wanted to be pop-culturish and current. So we decided to be Edward and Bella from Twilight. We aren't that into the series, I havent't read any of them, but we thought it would be easy. Here I am doing my best to look pouty-ish. Although this picture doesn't do it justice, Scott has a pretty good "Edward face" or in other words I am going to be an old creepy controling vampire look.

What a difference a week makes

It always proves to be true that if you put a lot of energy and time into the preparation, the actual project will go fast. We spent weeks and weeks getting it ready to paint and once it was all prepped, we got it painted in one weekend. Every square inch, including the ceilings! We had so much help and we couldn't have done it without all of our family. Yippee!
Plus, we got new carpet installed, counter tops refinished, cabinets rehung with hardware, and hardwoods refinished. That is big progress. We are getting there! It is all coming together and I love how it is turning out. There is something so gratifying in doing it yourself.

Remodeling

Right now I feel like we are crazy to have taken on this remodeling project. It is the second time in less than 2 years that we have completely remodeled our house. First we repainted everything in our condo and installed beadboard, new light and electrical, and new hardware before we moved in and that felt like a lot of work. Now we are doing the same for our new house plus tons more. It is going to look great when it is all done, but I can't help but feel really discouraged at how it looks worse before it starts looking better. We have been stripping wallpaper for 2 weeks now. I will never ever wallpaper anything ever. Fortunately we only had 2 layers in the main room, and three in the kitchen. Everything else was only one layer! The other discouraging part is that the progress and changes are so slow right now. I just keep telling myself that is will really suck right now and then it will all be over. I should start thinking about the good things. Like, Olive has been super awesome and plays there everyday. And at least we are not trying to live there and remodel because that is even harder. Hopefully this next week it will all start coming together and I will be able to sleep at night without waking up to think about all that I have to do on this house.

P.S. Please have the moral conscience to not wallpaper your house.
P.P.S. I wish I had pictures to show but I've been to busy.

Yay for houses, boo for moving

Great News! We bought a house. It is a 1923 Arts and Crafts style house. It has lots of beautiful wood work and detailing. We have been looking for a few months but we finally found something that we could comfortably afford. We saw a lot of nice houses, but it felt like they were still priced so high even in a soft market. A very sweet older lady lived there, actually it has remained in the same family since it was built. Now we have quite a bit of remodeling that we want to do (blasted wall paper!). It is going to be a crazy October, but it is worth it to have a yard and a garage! Yay! Pictures to come soon.