Week in Review

So, what's happened this week? Well...

February 4 - A field trip to The Franklin Institute. Lots of gizmos and gadgets to explore.

February 5 - The Wheaton Promise event at the Union League. We ate delicious food right as the snowstorm settled in.

February 6 - Day 1 of the great Blizzard of 2010! (We got about 2 feet of snow that day...)

February 7 - Snow church at our house! That's what you do when everything else gets canceled, right?

February 8 - A day of being snowed in...

February 9 - A story of being locked out...

February 10 - Still to be determined - check it out later. Though, we're getting pummeled with snow again - we've gotten about 8" so far, and it's still snowing... so it may very well be more documentation of Blizzard 2010!

In other words... I'm posting every day at my 365 Project, and if you're interested in daily happenings, you should check it out! =) 

Joy in the City

Last January, our church started a project to build a new adult ministry center across from the church building. Well, let me rephrase that. Last January, our church started a project to totally renovate an old, abandoned, dilapidated factory warehouse into a new ministry center called Joy in the City.

It was a pretty major undertaking, and despite a number of setbacks, we held a pseudo dedication for it last weekend. There are still a number of things to be finished, but the windows are in, the drywall is up, and it's actually being used this weekend!

This center has long been a dream for our church, and it will be a new, expanded, consistent home to a counseling center, legal clinic, adult education classes, offices, and Biblical Seminary's urban M.Div. track, to name a few. Although I was definitely participating in the dedication, I managed to snap a few pictures...

 

 

 

 

 

The Adventures of Jack Sparrow

Just thought I'd share one of my lunchtime emails with you all, concerning one of our cats, Captain "Jack" Sparrow...


From: Josh ChenTo: Hannah
Date: Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Subject: Adventures of Jack Sparrow

So I'm working away, and Jack starts doing his pathetic meowing in the bathroom. I can't figure out why until I realize he has jumped down and trapped himself in the bathtub. Survival expert he is not.

Now, I don't know if you can tell, but the reason Jack is sitting there so helplessly in the bathtub is that our shower actually has glass doors across (though we also put up a shower curtain to try and hide the awesome '70s style), and Jack was trapped. How, you ask, did he get in there in the first place? Well, take a look at the picture below...

It's really horrible quality (both photos are from our phones), but this was the site that greeted me when I got up a couple mornings ago: both of our cats, sitting atop the supporting/dividing wall beside the shower. Mizu is in front, Jack is in back. They were just as cozy as can be, perched a good, oh, 7 feet up. We're still not quite sure how they get up there (the cabinet you see is in between two walls, with no place to jump/climb onto)... I'm guessing they jump on the toilet first (below the cabinet) and then up. Regardless, they looooove being up on their high perch.

You're probably piecing it together now, but Jack must've been sitting up there, then jumped down - into the shower with the closed doors - and commenced his pathetic meowing that just melts my heart. =)

I'm so in love with our cats. It's ridiculous, I know.

And that's my lunchtime email. For some cuter pics of our little troublemakers, check out my 365 Project from a few days ago!

P.S. Just as a disclaimer, the bathroom is one of the rooms we haven't remodeled yet. Though, you know how I love me some great blue tubs, decorated glass doors, and floral wallpaper!

The "HOW MUCH DID YOU SAY?!" Gas Bill.... or, In Which We Learn What Being a Homeowner is ALL About

I'm sure you've all had bills that you open and go, "Wow, wasn't really expecting it to be that much, but... ok... what can I do now?" and pay it. It's high enough that it sticks with you, and you change your course of action the next time you almost leave the lights on, or want to turn the heat up another degree or two.

Well. Josh and I have a similar, although perhaps a little more crazy story to add to the mix.

As you know, we barely managed to move into our new house before we left for Seattle for Christmas break. We spent 3 nights in the new house (and lived there approximately 54 hours before leaving for Seattle), then left for 12 days. Even though we had our rental through the end of December, we were completely moved out, the heat was all the way down, and no electricity was being used. When we came back in January, we spent 4 days in the house before our gas meter was read. Last Saturday we got the bill.

Ready for this one? Because I wasn't.

Our gas bill was $540!!!

Yes, you read that correctly.... $540. I think I was in shock at first. I couldn't possibly fathom how we could have a $540 bill. First of all, as mentioned before, we were GONE FOR ALMOST TWO WEEKS. Secondly, we keep the house at 60 except for one hour in the morning and a couple hours at night when we put it up to 64... sometimes even 65-66 if we're really cold. And did I mention Josh works at home most days during the week? We use a space heater in our bedroom at night, and during the day if he needs it, he'll use that in whatever room he's in. Granted, we didn't get a chance to put up plastic on our windows or bleed the radiators before we left (since we spent all of 54 hours in our house), but even during those two weeks, the heat was all the way down - which was 40, I believe.

Yeah, we were completely stunned and stumped, too.

Now, once we got back, we got a couple whiffs of natural gas smell. We couldn't pinpoint it, but it was only in the kitchen and the stairs from the kitchen leading down to the basement. The same day we got the bill, we called the emergency number at the gas company. They sent someone out to check for a leak.... and the guy found nothing. Zero. Zip. We even led him around the kitchen and basement - he just told us his instruments were really advanced and powerful, and that we had no leak. Since it was the weekend, we couldn't talk to the billing department, so we simply winterized whatever we could. We bled the radiators (though it turned out they actually didn't need it), and we put up the plastic on all of our windows. But aside from that, we just had to wait.

(Side note: when we moved into our rental house we bought/installed one of the energy-saving thermostats, where you can set it at different temps for different times/days. We then took it with and reinstalled it in our new house. I know most of you probably consider this normal, but if you don't have one or live in an older home like ours, I highly recommend getting one. I love that we don't have to worry about turning the heat up or down - and that we can set it for each day of the week so that on nights we have things scheduled at church and whatnot, we're not wasting heat. Plus, it just helps us save a lot of energy and money in general.)

Well, on Monday we finally got a chance to talk to the gas company about things. They put our bill into dispute, and let us know they'd get back to us within a few days. A few days later, my heart rate started returning a little bit more to normal. Turns out a couple things contributed to the high bill:

1. Because we bought the new house on Nov 20, for their own internal billing processes, the gas company waited 2 months to send the bill. Ok. In the midst of refinishing the house, we hadn't noticed a gas bill hadn't come. But $540 for two months is still a lot, even if it was for two houses (especially since we were still only living in one).
2. For our rental house, they had ESTIMATED what our bill would be. And somehow, when they estimated our usage, they estimated way more than what any of our previous bills/usage had ever been (and yes, that's taking into account that it was for two months). So when they actually READ the usage, they found out that, hmm, we hadn't used $340 worth of gas in 2 months. We'd used $200. Fair enough, considering it has been a good deal colder this winter than last year, and we didn't winterize our rental house since we were moving out.

So, our bill was now down to $410. But, in case you didn't notice, that still leaves a bill of $210 for our NEW house... the one that we lived in for 54 hours before we left and 4 days once we got back. So how the heck did we get a $210 bill?!

After doing some more snooping, and turning on lots of appliances trying to figure things out (which, as you'll see, was actually probably pretty dangerous), we thought we could narrow it down to the gas whiffs coming from the stove. They were very inconsistent, with no pattern whatsoever, but it was the best we could do. We called our home warranty people, and they said they'd send someone out, but that first, we had to call the gas company to come out and have them "tag" the stove (whatever that really means). So, gas company guy comes out again.

EXCEPT, OH WAIT. This time, the guy comes in, comes into the kitchen with the same aforementioned "advanced and powerful" instrument, and finds that there indeed IS a leak in the kitchen.... and not only one, but there are THREE. The pipe connecting the stove to the gas line had THREE HOLES IN IT. Did you hear that? THREE. And the first guy had completely missed it. The second guy actually said he had no idea how the first guy didn't catch it because it was "very obvious". Hmm. So, for the past two months we've had a pipe with three holes leaking gas into the house that cause there to be MORE gas used than it took to heat our rental house for two months. Perhaps that's been contributing to how tired Josh and I have been? Food for thought, at any rate.

But the story gets better.

Turns out, you're supposed to have an emergency shut-off valve within 6 feet of your stove. We have an "emergency" valve.... but, um, it's down in the basement. And, the guy from the homeowner's insurance who can fix the stove's pipe actually can't, because he cannot legally hook it back up until we have a shut-off valve within 6 feet. But he doesn't do that kind of work (a plumber does), and apparently, that kind of plumbing isn't covered by our warranty. Can you see where this is going?

The plumber is coming to look at things today... he couldn't give us any estimate until he looks at how far it is, what kind of piping we have, etc. All he said was that it could be anywhere from $85-$500 to move the shut-off valve. So, in the meantime, we have no stove (sound familiar, Mom, Dad, and Jacob?), we're waiting to hear the final word on the gas bill (maybe it'll come down a little bit more?), and we're waiting to see how much money we'll have to shell out to fix the piping and make our house livable again (why aren't we still renting?). Hence the title of this post: in which we learn what being a homeowner is ALL about! =)

 
P.S. If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, we'd gladly welcome it!!!

The World of Sanding

Here's another peek into the work we've been doing... I'm a little reluctant to show them, since it'll take some of the pizazz away from the final reveal, but you'll get to see a little bit more of what we've been doing these past few days...


DOWNSTAIRS
We started refinishing the floors downstairs, in the living and dining rooms (the kitchen currently has linoleum). Here's what the floors liked like once the carpet came up:


These floors looked the best of any others in the house. You can see there are spots of random paint and primer, but nothing like some of our upstairs rooms. We're also not quite sure what the two big squares in the middle of each of the rooms were - perhaps they originally had a rug there, and didn't bother to finish under it? The floors are actually raised in those areas, too. We tried to even it out some, but we're not professionals and evening out the whole thing would have taken much longer than the full day we spent working on it.

These couple of shots show Josh using the sanding drum machine... it is actually pretty fascinating to watch it work. It takes effort, but after a few passes you get to see the grime fade away, and new wood come up, ready to be finished...

And, ta da! The post-sanding, pre-polyurethane floors! Downstairs, at any rate.

UPSTAIRS
Here's the room we spent WAY too much time working on upstairs. The room where someone at some point over the past 84 years decided that PAINTING OVER HARDWOOD FLOORS WOULD BE A GOOD THING. Agh! And not only that, but painting over it three times. It may be hard to tell, but if you look carefully, the section in the middle is painted brown, the main outside section is painted red/brown on top of that, and then there's a ring of grey in the middle. Don't ask, because I don't know what possessed them to do that.

Oh, and the picture above is actually a picture from AFTER all this paint seen below was stripped off:

Josh managed to capture a picture of me working the sanding machine... it took HOURS to get through all that point. It was pretty awful... and discouraging! It's hard when one room - and only the first of three levels of sanding - takes you SIX HOURS. But hey! I've got my protective respiratory mask on, so all is well!

Below you can see the evil, evil sanding machine in the closet. That thing is a beast! It weighs SO MUCH, and it's only a foot tall, so you have to hunch over the floor, holding it up, trying to control it. IT'S BAD NEWS. As you can see from Josh's reaction.

But look! NON-PAINTED OVER FLOORS!!!! Also, notice that in the "Before" shot, there was lovely light streaming in the windows... and now, in the picture below, it's absolutely pitch black.

STILL TO GO...
We still have a few upstairs rooms to go - hopefully Josh and Jose will get them mostly done today, and I can finish them up tonight! Below is the bedroom where, instead of painting over hardwood floors, they just TILED OVER THEM. I'm not even kidding. This whole room had square, alternating brown-colored tiles. All that black stuff? Yeah, that's the tar residue left over that we couldn't get up. We've been scraping at it for a few days now, but this is our guest bedroom, and our lowest priority. As you can see, we'll be painting its walls when we get back in January. But, I'm sure getting through this tar is going to be just as much fun as getting through that paint...

Here's a shot of the hallway, with its uneven planks. This is the "worst" section of the wood, in regards to non-cosmetic condition (such as paint and tar). At some point they obviously replaced a few planks, but just didn't finish them. The bad news is that it'll take a few times going over it to get it even. The good news is that they'll all be the same color in the end.

And lastly, this room should be pretty easy (comparatively) to sand and refinish. It has a few stains, but nothing too atrocious. And it's a sneak peek of the orange!

So, there's your day's lunchtime sneak peek... hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to report that the sanding's done! And if you want to help, feel free to come on over at any time...

Never, Ever, EVER!

Those are the three words I've repeated numerous times over the past 24 hours in regards to what my thoughts are concerning painting over hardwood floors: never, ever, EVER do it!

As mentioned in my previous post, we started refinishing our floors this weekend. It is a VERY involved process. (Another thing to add to my "If only I'd known" list.) When you refinish hardwood floors, the first thing you have to do is sand them. So, we went to Home Depot and picked up the sanding drum machine, which is a big machine that slightly resembles a vacuum, and the edging machine, which you need to use along the edges, and which is an evil, evil invention dreamt up by someone who wished to inflict much harm and pain upon people.

We also had to pick up numerous sheets of sandpaper for each machine, because you don't just get to sand the floors once. You have to sand them first with a rough grain (24) of sandpaper, to get rid of all the gunk, paint, rough spots, etc. Then you sand them with a medium grain (60) to get rid of a lot of the splinters and snags. Finally, you sand them with the finest grain (100) to get them truly smooth. And that's just the sanding.

After sanding, you coat the floors with polyurethane (which makes it all nice and shiny and protected), let it dry for 24 hours, sand it down (by hand), add another coat, let it dry 24 hours, and then you can walk on it/move stuff in. So, even if you managed to finish all the sanding in one day, it's still at least a 3 day process, simply because of letting the polyurethane dry. Fun, huh?

Oh, and did I mention we're trying to finish this all and move in by this coming Saturday? As in, 5.5 days from now?

Originally, this was our hoped-for schedule:

Saturday, Dec 19: new house finished, moved into, rental house cleaned, moved out of
Sunday, Dec 20: go to church, drive up to NYC to see Josh's family/have an early Christmas/give his car to his sister
Monday, Dec 21: drive back to Philly in the afternoon, pack for trip to Seattle
Tuesday, Dec 22: leave on our early-morning flight to Seattle

I don't know if all of that will be able to happen anymore due to the time crunch (specifically the NY trip), but we're still hoping it will!


But, back to the floors. Saturday we rented the machine and spent 12 hours at the house, with about 10 of that actually going towards sanding. It took all that time to get the 2 rooms downstairs done... but they're done! That's a big accomplishment. The first round with the machines is definitely the hardest, because you're tearing up all the old gunk. I'd say the first round of sandpaper (24) took us about 2/3 of the time on Saturday, while the 60 and 100 grains combined only took about 1/3 of the total time. It's also pretty back-breaking work. I know we're saving a ton of money doing it ourselves... but man! If I'd known what this involved, I might've insisted on staying in our rental through January. We're just plain exhausted and sore all over.

After church on Sunday we got to work again, this time tackling one of the bedrooms upstairs... THE ONE THAT PEOPLE PAINTED OVER THE HARDWOOD FLOORS. Seriously, I don't understand why anyone would ever do that. You have beautiful hardwood floors! What are you doing painting them brown? And then red/brown? And then painting grey on top of that?!

I won't get into details, but let's just say that in that ONE ROOM, we used TWICE the amount of materials as we did for the downstairs (living and dining rooms), AND we spent 6 hours... doing just the FIRST SANDING! We haven't even gotten to the 60 and 100 grains!!!! Granted, they'll probably go much faster.... BUT SIX HOURS! ON ONE ROOM! AND WE'RE NOT EVEN DONE WITH IT!!!

Please, for my sake, and for Josh's sake, and for the sake of all that is good, NEVER, EVER, EVER PAINT OVER YOUR HARDWOOD FLOORS!!!

Josh is going over to the house again today to do more sanding... and one of our friends from church is going to be helping him. They're going to try and finish the first/longest grain for the rest of the upstairs, which includes the study (which has "regular" hardwood floors), the other bedroom (which has tar all over it because some people decided to put tiles on top of hardwood floor, which we had to rip up - ugh), and the hallway (which had some pieces replaced, so it's totally uneven). I'll be going over tonight as soon as I get back from work and switching places with Josh (since much ministry time takes place in the evenings), and we're hoping that maybe, somehow, I'll be able to finish the upstairs and we can return the machines tomorrow morning (when our 3rd day of rental is up) and put on the first layer of polyurethane.

Doesn't that just sound fantastic? And can anyone tell I'm slightly freaking out? :)

Anyway. Please. Just, please. Do me the favor and never, ever, EVER paint over hardwood floors!

In Progress...

Well, we're still in the midst of fixing up our new house, but we're entering the final stages - we are officially starting the sanding process tomorrow! Now, it's a pretty involved process in and of itself, but we're finally there! The wallpaper's been removed, panels have been taken out, other panels have been compounded over and sanded to make flat walls, walls have been primed and then painted, and much, much ugly, horrible, stained, and stinky carpet has been torn up, with the corresponding staples removed. Just to mention a few things.

So, yes, it's been a busy couple of weeks, and most of the credit has to go to Josh. He's been working on the house every day, and even though I go over every night, he's done probably 70% of the work. Even though we're both a bit stressed about getting things done and moving in within the next 8.5 days, I think we'll be glad to just have it done. We'll still have things to fix and attend to come January, but then it'll be a little less stressful and a bit more fun. Instead of making tons of decisions really quickly and rushing to just to make the deadline, we'll be able to relax and enjoy the process a bit more.

For instance, I totally plan on having a BUNCH of fun looking for new knobs for the house. It's a bit random, but there's a particular lack of doorknobs on the main doors in our house, and a particular abundance of small knobs on closets (of which we have quite a number) that have a layers of decade-old paint on them. We managed to save a couple knobs, including a couple funky ones that are definitely from the 60s, but I plan on having quite a fun time searching for some new knobs and handles. Sure, we'll look at Home Depot and Lowe's when we're there (trust me, we've made quite a few trips lately), but I also plan to hit up Anthropologie and check out their AWESOME collection. I'm not even kidding. It's ridiculous and I've enjoyed drooling over it for a couple years now, without real reason to ever buy any. Now, I have a reason - lots of closets and cabinets that need a makeover. Because remember, this is a bold house, so bold knobs are totally in order. Take a look for yourself, and let me know if you have any favorites that jump out. Here are a few fun ones:

Anywho, enough of that - for now. On to the sanding. We're renting the sanding machine all day tomorrow, and will have great fun going over the floors, I'm sure. Back-breaking labor is always the best. You actually have to go over the floor with multiple grains of sand - at least 3 different grains. And do the edges. And the stairs. With different machines. Yeah, it'll be an adventure. Then, once we finish sanding (we're being really optimistic and hoping to perhaps finish by Sunday night), we'll have to put a couple layers of polyurethane on it, and each coat takes about 12-24 hours to dry. So, it'll take a few days, but our hope is that we can start moving everything in by sometime on Wednesday... then do the big furniture next Saturday... and then clean up our rental house by Sunday. It can be done, right?! Well.... let's hope so!

Here are a couple more pictures of the process. It's from before all the paint (and trust me, it's a totally different house now), but you can still see some of what we've been spending hours working on... oh, and did I mention that there's also this random thing where some rooms don't have any lights? As in, they don't even have a light switch? We've had to bring in the small freestanding lamps we have and try to make do. So, you know what to blame for the horribly poor quality of these... also that they're all taken once it's completely dark outside...


This is the lovely gold wallpaper we found on the living room/stairwell/hallway wall after we tore out the paneling. We primed over it. At that point, I don't think we could've endured tearing it all off:

Speaking of paneling, here's some in the hallway that we filled with compound and sanded over to make smooth walls into of unattractive panels. All the darker spots are the lines filled with compound. Yes, it took a while. Also, it's hard to tell here, but the banister/railing? Painted a lovely shade of deep, deep purple that's been fading and turning dark pink underneath. Oh, YOU HAVE NO IDEA how fantastic this house is!

Here's one of our special bedrooms... well, I guess we're turning it into our study. This is the room without any light switch at all, and it's completed by the awful panels (compounded over), purple carpet, purple trim, and yes, folks, a purple ceiling:

At last! It was an exciting day when we got to start priming. And hey, check out that awesome place where the purple carpet meets the maroon carpet meets the mahogany doors. I KNOW. Aren't you so jealous?!

Well, that completes this installation of my lunch break update. With the craziness that next week will bring, sanding and moving in and working jobs and, oh wait, CHRISTMAS (TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY!), I'm not sure I'll get any before/after updates in until during the break. But we'll see. Perhaps you'll get a glimpse of some orange or red or green goodness. But I'm still not telling which rooms have which. You'll just have to wait and see.

Sneak Peek

So, it's official. Our life is consumed with working on our new house (and by "new" I mean new to us - the house was built in 1925). It's pretty much all we do anymore. We're making good progress, though, and we spent the whole weekend painting - which makes it seem like we're actually getting somewhere. It's amazing how you can spend a week fixing things without feeling like there's any impact, but the minute you put paint on a wall, it suddenly feels like everything's coming together. I think I said something along the lines of, "Wow, this actually feels like a house now!" at some point on Saturday. We're not completely done with the painting yet, but should be by tomorrow. Then on to the floors!

Now, there will be pictures, as promised, but there might not be very many action shots because Josh did the unthinkable and lent our ONLY memory card for the camera to someone. See, the junior high and high school youth groups got together this weekend and served a dinner to their parents at the church. Now, this is all fine and great, except that they did a slideshow, and Josh had taken some pictures of the junior high kids, and then he lent the memory card to the high school youth group leader so the photos coudl be added to the slideshow. And then the high school leader forgot to give the card back on Friday. And then he forgot on Saturday. And then again on Sunday. I'm hoping he doesn't forget tonight, too (Josh has already made a reminder call), because I would be reeeaaally unhappy then (which I think Josh realizes). So, we've sadly missed some before shots, and some great in-progress shots, but hopefully we'll still have enough to show most of the before/after changes and the dramatic differences between the two.

In the meantime, I thought I'd give you a little preview of our paint colors. The guy helping us at Lowe's described them as "very festive". My mom did a, "You're painting your bedroom what?!" And a few people went, "Wow, that's really, uh, bright." But we've made our choices and we're sticking with them. So, I'll leave you guessing which rooms will be painted which colors - though if you want to try and match them, we're painting the living room, dining room, hallway, master bedroom, guest bedroom, and study (and fyi, the kitchen is already blue - we're saving that project for later). I also simply scanned the color swatches, so these aren't very accurate, but it'll just have to do. If you want to look up the official colors, you can visit Olympic's site and put the names into the search bar. Until the final reveal, welcome to our theme of:

Go Bold... or Go Buy Your Own House

And the Renovations Begin... Now...

Well, ok, so our renovations actually began about a week ago... but who's really keeping track, right? It's not like I'm fretting that we only have 16 days to finish everything and move... no, not me, I would never do that!

Anywho.


We are officially homeowners(!) and we are officially tearing that house up! It's great. Josh has put aside some of his studying/ordination stuff for the month of December and thus has been able to get over to the house for a few hours each day (during the day). Then when I get back from work, if it's a "free" (non-ministry) night, we head over there for another few hours to get some stuff done. It's fun, but I'm definitely feeling the time crunch (our goal to have all work done and be moved in/moved out of the rental is December 19).

Here's a list of what we're doing to our 2-story, 3-bedroom, 1200 sq ft house:

• Removing wallpaper. Lots of it. Each room has some. It's lovely. (Take a look at the picture below, with the wallpaper of china plates.... um... yes... we also had some that had cornucopias and fruit.) Then, of course, washing all the walls.
• Filling in the lines of wood panels (that have previously been painted over) with compound to make a smooth wall. Each panel is about 3" wide, and the lines we're filling in are from floor to ceiling. We have these panels in one bedroom, the entire upstairs hallway, and the hallway up the stairs on one side. And of course, each line (of which there are SO many) requires at least 2 go-bys with the compound (and drying time in between) to achieve a truly flat finish.
• Sanding all previously mentioned walls with the wood paneling. Plus, all the extra random holes around the house that we had to compound from nails, wear and tear, removing paneling (read below), etc.
• Tearing out the lovely paneling (the gold-flecked stuff) on the long continuous wall that leads from the living room up the stairs (only to find that is has more lovely wallpaper underneath... we're just painting over that). Taking out the paneling also includes removing the molding and a couple banisters, too. Oh, the adventures.
• Stripping the paint from the original wood molding in 2/3 of the house.
• Priming every room except the bathroom and kitchen.
• Painting every room except the bathroom and kitchen. For now. (Those rooms can be tackled at a later, post-move-in date.)
• Ripping up all of the carpet. From the maroon to the baby blue to the aqua to the purple. It's all going.
• Sanding the (original) hardwood floors. We've checked in various places throughout the house and they seem to be in quite good condition. But, we get to rent the big machine and sand them all (2-3 times over).
• Refinishing the floors. Yeah, the stinky stuff that will make them look pretty. Woot.
• Moving in!

So, our days are pretty full, but we have some friends and neighbors who have or will be lending some hands, and hopefully we'll get it all done in time! (Because we don't really have an option not to get it done.) I haven't taken very many pictures because we've been busy working and it's literally a huge mess (the good thing is we don't have to worry about getting stuff on the carpet since it'll all be going soon, anyway). But, for those of you who have been asking, here are just a few of our just-starting out shots... I'm looking forward to doing some before/after comparisons, so you'll get a full tour eventually, don't worry.


To start out, a glimpse of some of the lovely aforementioned wallpaper...

Then, a few of the living room and stairs (where a good portion of the work has taken place so far)...


Josh starting to loosen the paneling...

And then taking the molding off...

Ok, that's all you get for now, but don't worry. There will be more. I promise. Maybe I'll even take some today! We've removed the wallpaper and cleaned the walls... oh! And tip! To remove wallpaper, the best method is to use warm water with some dish soap in it. Not even kidding. Forget the expensive stuff and just go with that. Anyway, we've also gotten pretty much all the compounding and sanding done (which was a lot, trust me). The paneling is out, and now we're getting ready to prime. Priming and painting. Oh, if you live in Philly and want to help out, just let us know! We have a painting party coming up on Saturday... =)

We Have a Big Announcement...

... we're buying a house! (Ha. No, I'm not pregnant. And no, we have no plans to "expand" anytime soon. Ask again in 5 years.)

We are actually quite far along in the process, and by that, I mean we are closing TODAY! It's so crazy! Talk about feeling grown up. I still haven't quite wrapped my mind around it. Today, sometime after 1pm, Josh and I will own a house. Weird. And exciting!

We've been renting a house two blocks from our church for the past 15 months (since we got married), and our landlord let us know there was a rent-to-buy option on the house, so we knew he'd be willing to sell. Once the first-time home buyers credit came about, we started to really think about things - especially how long we planned to be in Philadelphia. We kinda of dilly-dallied for a while - specifically concerning the length in Philly thing. But, by September (and after lots of talks with our families and friends) we'd decided we wanted to go for it.

First things first, we approached our landlord about buying. Our rental house is super close to our church, in the middle of our church community and friends, and works quite well for us size-wise. It's big enough to have people over every week, and has 3 bedrooms (or about 2.6 - the middle room is fairly small), so we can have a guest room and study, too. We have beautiful original woodwork and wood floors (about 80 years old) throughout the house, and all in all, the house has served us well this first 1+ year.

However, the house is anything but perfect. It's old to start, and was abandoned for 1.5 years before we moved in. Our landlord did a lot to fix it up, but he fixed it up to be, well, livable - not necessarily sustainable. So, as an example, we've had one of our dining room walls knocked out twice within the past year to fix a pipe that was leaking in our basement. The first time, our landlord repaired only the part of the pipe that was leaking right then... even though the whole pipe obviously needed to be replaced. So, we had a big whole in our dining room for a week (because it always takes him a while to fix things). Then, a number of months later, we got another leak in our basement. So they came back and knocked out the same wall, so they could replace the other half of the pipe. All that to say, Josh and I weren't exactly convinced of the integrity of our rental house, and we figured that if we made an offer, we could probably get it for a pretty reasonable price (especially because we know what our landlord paid and how much we've paid in rent).

Well, we were wrong. Our landlord, it turns out, truly is a business man, 100% of the way, and doesn't care about anything else except making profit for himself. He wanted about $20,000 more than the house is even close to being worth... and in our neighborhood, where the nicest houses sell for $100,000 (if that), that is a LOT to be asking for. So, we started looking elsewhere (or I should say, Josh did... he did most of the work, I must give him credit).

And we found one!

It's actually on the same block we live on now, just two blocks down. And on top of that, it's pretty much the exact same floor plan as our rental house. Yeah, go figure. However, it was owned (and lived in - big difference) by a Puerto Rican couple for about 35 years, and they took really good care of it (they actually know a bunch of people from our church really well, too). It's been not just a house, but their home, which definitely shows. It doesn't have the original woodworking, which we'll be sad to lose, but it also has a kitchen, bathroom, and basement that our rental house can't even be compared to. I will have more than an 10"x12" counter space to use to cook/prepare food! Woohoo! AND, get this, AND we can not only turn around in the bathroom, BUT WE CAN OPEN THE LINEN CLOSET DOOR ALL THE WAY. (In our rental, we can open it about halfway before it bumps into the sink.) And the basement, while not fully finished, has had the floors sealed, drywall put up to make separate "room" spaces, and has a bathroom that I actually would use. (Our rental has a bathroom in the basement that I have used ONCE since we've lived there, and trust me, it was ONLY because it was a true, desperate, life-and-death emergency.)

So, we're pretty excited.

The only thing is that we'll be doing a lot of work with the decor. Meaning we're getting rid of it all. Mostly because of Josh. Because you know how I love me some maroon carpet, wallpaper with country scenes... and you ESPECIALLY know how much I love gold-flecked vinyl paneling. Oh yeah. *grin* Needless to say, even though we're closing today, we'll be renting our other house through December so that we can do lots of fun stuff in the new house like repainting just about every room (we're saving the bathroom for later, when we can figure out if there's anything we can do with the wood paneling), ripping up the carpet, and refinishing the hardwood floors underneath. It should be a grand adventure!

So, that's going to be our grand project over the next month... since, you know, we didn't have enough other stuff going on, with it being Thanksgiving and Christmas and the crazy season at work, and all that. But all is well, and pretty soon, I'll be a full-fledged grown-up. I mean, I've been doing the full-time job for 4 years now, I've gotten married, I'm buying a house, AND I can now officially rent a car! What else is left, right? =)

For all you who have done this whole house-buying thing, let me know if you have any tips or advice, or if you like Lowe's or Home Depot better for buying paint and supplies, or if you have any fantastic office organizational resources. And sometime soon I'll post some pictures of our new little abode, which you will all be welcome to come visit... you just might have to wait until January to do so.

Fall Adventure! Part II

What better way to lead into this post than with that picture, right? It pretty much says it all... when the Fall Adventure! continued, it was time to go pick some pumpkins! And not just any pumpkins, as you can see above, we went to the "Pick yo own" pumpkin patch! However, we had some traveling to do before we got there...

After we left the apple orchard, we took a little drive through the PA countryside, and came upon the Skippack Days street fair in Skippack Village, PA. (I love that it's a "Village"!) There were tons of vendors everywhere, selling all sorts of crafts, jewelry, antiques, and, of course, lots and lots of food. We grabbed some lunch (though we passed on the deep fried Oreos), and wandered around for a bit. Since our day's budget was already allocated to the apples and pumpkins, we passed on purchasing other goodies, but it was still great to walk around and see what kinds of things creativity inspires in people.

After a jaunt through Skippack, we hit the road again on our way to Winding Brook Farm. Although I wanted a tourist-free setting for apple picking, I totally gave in to the touristy side of things with the pumpkin patch. Part of the reason was that originally, Josh and I were thinking of going through a corn maze... however, after a day of scenic driving, apple picking, street fairing, and pumpkin hunting, we decided corn mazing would just need to wait for another time because our tummies were getting hungry and our feet a little tired.

But! Did we ever have fun hunting for our pumpkin in the pumpkin patch (the "Pick yo own" pumpkin patch, mind you). There were plenty of very gloriously orange pumpkins to choose from...

However, some of them just weren't tall enough to ride the rides.

We found a few other visitors along the way, too:

But then! Oh, then!

I found a tiny little pumpkin to love, and decided it must come home with us.

While I was swooning over my adorable little pumpkin, Josh was busy on the hunt (and graciously carrying the camera case for me). He stopped to inspect a few... and I looking at how tall Josh is (there he goes with his 6'4" business again), I realized how much bigger a pumpkin patch must seem to a small child, with so much amazing, glorious orangeness surrounding you (reminder: my favorite color is orange).

We looked and looked and looked... we had to find one that was just the right shade of orange (very bright), and just the right size (not too big, since it needs to stay inside our house), and just the right shape (round and sturdy, with a big enough side to carve into). And trust me, when it comes to hunting for pumpkins, you just can't settle for anything less than perfect.

Finally, Josh found it! Figures, huh? I think I was too busy being distracted by my cute pumpkin and running around being impressed by all the really enormous pumpkins. Sometimes he's much better than me at focusing on the goal at hand. But I agreed it was perfect, and we were able to go home happy. (Don't worry, the dirt came right off.)


As an end to our Fall Adventure! day, we went to Rock Bottom and celebrated with a belated birthday dinner for Josh. I took him there 3 years ago for his birthday, and he's asked to go every year since. It's just a good place for steaks and micro brews, especially after a Fall day filled with cavorting. Now, we just have to carve our pumpkin and roast us some pumpkin seeds... mmm, pepitas, here we come!