4/16/10

I first want to tell my readers that this is my only way im releasing the following information to the public is threw this post.

So we got our certificate to close today! So that means we are going to own the house early next week..... finally!

Lets see whats new... I yelled at John, his boss, and the lawyers wend. because everyone is dragging there feet. But it still did not help. I was told by John's supervisor that he would personally call me when i got the cert. well the only way found out i got it was me e-mailing everyone. I would not recommend those guys to a snail looking for a new shell never mind a person.

I also bought some new toys!

I picked up a Ryobi TSS100L miter saw.

and a Porter Cable 690LR router

Next i want to pick up a table saw and a sawz-all other than that i cannot think of anything else large, just lots of little things.

I have started planning out the move in my head, first my tools and stuff then the rest of the garage bay, so that i have a work spot and a stageing area for the appartment stuff. put things out there ready to move but i am not taking a trip right now type of things.

4/8/10

Closing tomorrow? Ya you guessed it no! There will be some choice words tomorrow with the group involved. Maybe they can step it up. I will tell them if they do not close by wend. next week that i am going to take this to a place where everyone will be in the spot light and there will be alot of people watching them. And it will make alot of people nervous. Any ideas who i should contact?

4/4/10

Today is Easter!

So we are still waiting to close but because its a holiday weekend I expect it will be slow.

So I am trying to do little things to make my move easier. And I know I have to build a chicken coop before I move in and every good coop needs good windows. So I asked online for free windows to no avail so I went digging and found some :) thanks to my in laws, shhhhh don't tell them.

So like every old thing you find it needs love and these windows needed to be re-glazed. So I told myself I can do that. And if i do them now and bring them with me then install them. One less thing to do once I'm in the house and a chance to slow me down.

So sat. morning I set in to do at least one small window, 6 panes, not bad right? Well note to the readers I have watched on TV someone doing it, once. So I scraped out all the old putty.



Watching out for the old glazing points! These hold the glass in until the putty can set.



As i was scraping the old stuff out i had some spots give me trouble and if you have trouble getting the old glaze out you can use a heat gun to warm it up and make it easier to pull it out with the putty knife. May I say find your self a good strong knife to that you can work it out without it bending all over the place and cracking the window.

Once I got out all the old stuff and it was clean I sanded it down and painted it white. I'm building a red barn with white trim.

Once it was painted i then started to put it back together. I installed new points because the old ones were rusty and bent.



Once the window was pointed it was time to apply the putty and scrape the extra off. I used this stuff for putty:



Apply it and ensure you work it in your hands first to make it work better, but when scraping the extra off ensure the angle you use matches the outside trim line so that you don't see the putty on the outside when the window is done. No matter what I did I could never get the corners to work good.

Here is a video I found that helped me out a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qssB_kLJmqQ

3/28/10 other stuff

So on DIY today i saw a retaining wall and it made me start planning out the retaining wall i want to put in this summer. If you are entering our driveway there is a small retaining wall followed by these ugly steps then grass. Well i want to extend the retaining wall to the other side and rebuild the steps while im at it. If i rebuild the steps i should continue and redo the walkway, its cracked concrete. So the sloped yard that is there where i want to place the drive way will need a retaining wall, it will be about 4 - 5 feet tall and need drainage, that will be tough, if i run a perforated pipe down the wall and terminate it into the driveway, where it would be easiest but i am afraid that if i get alot of rain and the water runs down the driveway into the street, then when it gets cold and freezes i run the risk of a slippery driveway. or i can go the other way into a dry well, that would not be too hard, just how much will it cost and what permits do i need. I am on a busy road so its not like i can just do it and hope nobody notices. The added driveway i am going to make out of reclaimed chip from the road, just do it on a hot day and roll it out with a rented roller. You can usually get it to set up as well as the old driveway, then i will seal it after it has set up for a few weeks.

Some other flowers i like:

Ballon Flower - Astra Double blue
Bleeding Heart - Specatabilis
Clematis - Bourbon
Clematis - Nelly Moser
Clematis - RoguchiShare
Columbine - Origami Pink & White
Dianthus - Sangria Splash
Foxglove - Camelot Rose


So on the top of the retaining wall i am going to install a privacy fence that will be used to keep out the road traffic, and because it will be on a wall it can be short, keeping it cheaper, It will come off the corner of the deck, and go down to the corner of the yard, and the bottom of the fence will follow the slope of the yard to the top of the fence is constant. I like that look better. And emily doesn't care. So that leaves the question to you guys. We will have a few feet between the wall and the fence, i know i am going to place my new flag pole there so you can see it from the road as long as i am avoiding the wires, should find the minimum distance. from the pole to wires. If i can get it to work the way i want it to i will have about 100 square feet of flower beds to fill in and i want something that is a perennial, that blooms all summer long, comes in many colors, and can accept full sun. In a quick search i found bleeding hearts, blooms may to sept. And my grandmother had then growing up and its one of the childhood memories from there. I still have to propose it to emily but bleeding hearts leave lots of room for annuals between them. Ill draw up some plans and scan them in and post them to the site so that i can show everyone.

3/28/10

So where are we? Well as of COB Friday the underwriter still has not completed the underwriting and we are supposedly the first to do Monday morning, ya i have heard that before. So that means i should call the lawyer and ask for an extension for one week. I dont think we will need the whole week but we may if john is as slow as he has been.

But on a lighter note house stuff. Emily has now decided that the "new office" should become the bathroom, in turn making the old bathroom into a pantry with the washer and dryer on the first floor instead of the dudgeon. Not 100% sure yet, im going to frame the wall in and look. If we like the bathroom moving then it will move if not it wont. If it does move we will have to think of a layout, but i can do that. In the "new" bathroom emily wants a fancy soaking tub and a stand-up shower. The room to be a cream yellow with bead board or wains coting up the bottom half of the wall. And thoughts? Her parents have this old chest thing that would not be hard to convert into a vanity for us, its a classic looking white thing, kinda nice; would save us a few hundred bucks. Its right around 60" long.

3/24/10

So the underwriter should have sent everything off the the field office for the usda today and if so its 72 hours and counting till we get the final paperwork then we can order the closing and be don't with all the ugly paperwork.

My chickens have upped production so i have to start being more concerned about a coop here soon, it has to be build and finished 100% for those guys to move in. I have a few plans in mind but like everything there is nothing i like specifically so its a little of this print a little of that to make the one i like. I know i need to sit down and draw one up to work off of. But i know the one i really like has a shed attached to it so that i can either use it as a goat barn later in time or a garden tool shed. The only thing is it has to be temporary because i do not want to pull a permit, I would however if it was cheep to do and the building inspector isn't going to give me grief about electrical or plumbing that i may do. Also i want to put a rain re-claim kit to give water to the chickens cheaply, that or water and flowers. So i ask does anyone have any double hung windows they want to donate? Ill take about any size.

This is what a re-claim barrel system looks like. the rain from the coop goes threw down spouts into the barrel and at the bottom there is a hose that is used to disperse water around. With a 10 x 10 shed in a 1" rain storm will give you 62 gallons of water.

3/23/10

So we are getting into the home stretch!! So we got back our title search and the insurance binder is paid for and John has a copy of it. So according to an e-mail i got from John the under writer has all of the paperwork and as soon as she has reviewed it she well send it to the bank. No wonder mortgages are so expensive everyone has there tiny part to do but they all charge a fortune and take there sweet time. So our closing date as of now it the 30th or 31st. Ill keep everyone in touch.

3/18/10

Hello followers!
So this morning we received our commitment letter! And with this the lawyers can do the title search and they are on there game, they started today, so it will be complete and sent back to the mortgage broker and me by Tuesday, so everything gets pushed out longer and longer and longer. So when i found out the date it will be returned so i called and e-mailed my mortgage guy to let him know about when things will be back and see what is next. However he still has not gotten back to me.
I do not recommend him to anyone else. But maybe its me? I only wanted to know when everything should be done and then when the date slips i am always asking him to explain why it slipped. But maybe all the bugging him is making him slower?
Well that's all the news i have ill let you know what happens as it happens.

3/16/10

So today we got back our good faith estimate from the mortgage guy, John. The preliminary reactions are we are going to have to bring a lot more money to the closing then expecting so that just tells me one thing... You need to take out a mortgage to be able to afford a mortgage.

So last night Emily and I started shopping for the stuff inside the bathroom, we found a nice dark wood bathroom vanity, white sink, white tub, and i am thinking like a lighter sage green for the walls??? Also to tie the brown in i am thinking a dark brown cabinetover the toilet and dark brown framed mirror , and possibly a dark brown molding? And to contrast all the brown and green go with a white celling and a linoleum tile floor that ties all the colors together. However we are still deciding on the layout where, to put the tub, the toilet and the sink. We really have unlimited flexibility because i am redoing all the plumbing pipes for house included water supply and drainage. The pipes that are there are poor home owner's specials. For example there is one spot that the previous owner could not get an end cap to adhere to it so he did the best he could at that time. What he did was he kinked the tube over to create a way to stop the flow but never made it water tight so still to this day it leaks. I have a feeling i am going to find a lot of those things in this house. But life is a challenge its all how we face and tackle that challenge.


Cabinet

Mirror

This is a picture of some of the stuff that i have to fix:

3/13/10 where we are

So we are currently waiting on the underwriter to sign our paperwork. Our realtor is David, mortgage broker is John, our lawyer is Bethany, and our pest guy is Rob. I know that information is irrelevant but when we had the the pest inspection he found old termite tubes that had been treated, but because there is no paperwork on the treatment we had to re-treat it. Fun fun right? So Emily and I are sitting here with a list of things we want to go before we move in but we want to move i now! But I know before i do anything to take my time one thing at a time and to do it right. In the post to follow i will have before and after photos, of ever project and hand notes to try and make this easier for anyone else who may think about doing this.

Some of the projects we want to do is:

- Expand / re-model the bathroom
- Re-carpet the house
- Add a closet in one of the upstairs rooms to make it a master.
- Increase the parking so there is room for family and friends to park.
- Gut the basement
- Move the washer and dryer.
- Update the plumbing and electrical
- Replace the old horse hair
- Re insulate the outside walls
- Put a fence
- Expand the deck
- Build a shed/ chicken coop.
- And who knows what else.

But for now its just waiting on the bank and everyone else.

Wish me luck!

Day one 3/10/10

Ok to start the blog off right i am going to give a little background. My name is William but most people call me Will. I am married to an amazing person named Emily and together we have a 9 month old daughter named Olivia. We have no other human children but we do have a dog and 18 chickens.
I work for a local out source company and am currently out sourced and an engineer to one of the largest jet engine designers/ builders in the world. And my wife is a nurse at a local hospital. We have been married for 4.5 years now.
I have a buddy in the area named Phil who bought his first home a few months ago and between the two of us we are going to be working on our homes.
So the home my wife and I are currently going threw the process of buying, just waiting on the bank approved mortgage, is a small 1,200 Sq foot house on .7 of an acre. the house it self is stuck in the 50's with ugly tye dye shag carpets and things like that.