Raise the Roof

Thursday:
The roof is being raised! Today Oviedo roofing began ripping off our roof, and damn do they work fast! In one day they already ripped off 90% of the roof (I took this picture before the end of their day), and they put tar paper over everything they ripped off. We, however, are not as productive. In fact, I'm pretty sure my brain is still in a box somewhere around here. Today when I was more than half way to work, I suddenly thought, "OMG! Am I wearing shoes?!?" I looked down to realize that I was not wearing my orthopedic sandals, nope, I was wearing my shower shoes that I wear around the house because I'm too scared to walk on our carpet. Yup, I worked a day in my shower shoes.

Friday:

All of the old roof has been ripped off, and at least 60% of the new shingles have been put on. Apparently there was some rot above the garage (see hole above), so they had to replace the wood. We decided to get productive ourselves.

I took off all the fan blades, and found that the previous owners were so concerned about the future owner's breath, that they left me some gum just in case...

Derek began to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling in the front bedroom so it could be done before the new carpet is put in. He also decided that we have spent far too long without the news, so he unpacked our TV and placed it on a fancy entertainment system...

Yup, our TV is on our freezer, and our cable box is on an unpacked box.

In other news, my brain is still MIA. This morning I went to work and only a few minutes after getting there I was starving. I thought, "Why am I so hungry? I just ate breakfast...didn't I?" Nope. Apparently I forgot to eat breakfast before work, so I had to make a quick run to McD.

Saturday:
There's nothing like hearing men walking around your roof, and your dog going bananas as you're eating your breakfast. But, we got news that the roof will be finished today! Whoo hoo! As the roofers arrived, Derek went outside to check on our cat Charlie to bring him inside and he, like my brain, was MIA. Great. After searching, we didn't find him.  So, Derek went back to scraping the ceilings, and he got the front room done...

Which is a bit of a messy project...

 

And in the process, he found another present left to us by the previous owner.

Make that 2 presents. There are 2 painted over layers of wall paper borders. We can't identify the top layer, but the bottom layer appears to be polka dotted elephants holding balloons. This would lead me to assume that this room belonged to a child, and the smokyness would lead me to believe that this room belonged to a smoker. A smoking child perhaps??? We also found some delightful wallpaper featuring blue and pink stipes and blue sea shells behind the toilet, but, thanks to me, at least one room is wallpaper free. Our master bathroom...

 

In the midst of my wallpaper extravaganza though, I had a bit of a melt down. This is really stressful, and the amount of stuff to do is unmeasurable, and the worst part of it all is, I'm relatively useless. I can do nearly nothing. This caused a bit of a break down, but, my husband assured me that I can still do the dishes and laundry. Gee thanks hun.

In conclusion, Derek and I got a lot done today, and so did the roofers, but unfortunately there was a bad storm which forced them to stop, and forced Charlie to run home. So tomorrow will be another relaxing breakfast full of men walking on my roof and my dog going bananas, followed by a day of scraping ceilings, and wallpaper removal. Oh the joys of home ownership!

Work + New Home Ownership = Suckie

This week has been quite uneventful so far.

Monday:
Arriving at work was a joy. Everything there is clean and clutter free, and no matter how messy I make it, it's always reset by the end of the day. Arriving home wasn't too bad either. All day I had been telling people about the house, and I guess I had envisioned it to be worse than it was because even as bad as it is, I felt a little relieved when I opened the door.

After work, Derek decided that our new neighbors had enough opportunities to see me naked, so he installed verticals in our living room. He also discovered that only half of the kitchen sink leaks, so I no longer have to wash dishes in the tub. YAY! I decided to help out by applying to be on a DIY television show.

Tuesday:
Tuesdays are my long days because I have a college class after work. Derek was feeling a bit under the weather so nothing happened in terms of home improvement. We did, however, get a call from our roofing company who said they had a cancellation and can do our roof on Thursday!

Wednesday:
I got a Lowes ad in the newspaper today and a Lowes gift card in the mail today. It felt like a sign to go shop. Only problem was that the ad featured lawn stuff, and I couldn't care less about our lawn yet. I mean really? This is my master bedroom...

Unless we decide to start camping in the yard so we can stare at our beautiful new roof, I'd rather focus on the inside for a while. So, in an attempt to focus on the inside, I went back to my new favorite hobby, wallpaper removal. The wallpaper border, featured above, in the bedroom is downright impossible and will undoubtedly require some sort of chemical treatment. The master bathroom, however, is a different story. Over the weekend I removed all the colored wallpaper, but the yellow backing that is actually glued to the wall remained. Derek discovered that if it you wet it, it comes off easily. The exciting part? I get to use a tool!

Now normally using a tool wouldn't be exciting because Derek would doubt me in the beginning, then tell me the many ways I'm doing it wrong throughout, and then stop me and re-do whatever I did. But alas, a benefit of having so much to do is my husband is so overwhelmed with his list he immediately agreed to stop pestering me when I asked him if he'd rather do it himself. Score! I got to douse our walls in water, and I peeled away a majority of the areas I can reach. All that's left are the areas where I'd have to move everything off the counter tops to do (that wasn't happening after a long day at work!).

So, in terms of home improvement, this week was a bit of a bust, but today I finally got my act together with cooking. You see, Monday I realized, at 7:15pm, when we were both starving, that I had no plans for dinner. This is NOT how I roll. I typically plan all my meals the weekend before and leave a menu posted on the fridge. So we ended up ordering pizza, and eating left overs on Tuesday (we are now dangerously close to Five Star Pizza). Today, I decided to stop and get Publix subs, and the half of a brain I still have functioning remembered to pick up something to make for Thursday and Friday. So my housewife skills are beginning to get unpacked. Now all I need is some damn carpet!!!

Next post...Raise the Roof

Home, Sweet (?), Home

We're done! The house looks amazing, and we're finally settled in! ...And then you turn your head and see (cue the sound that is made when someone is about to be murdered in an old school horror flick)...

Me: This is how we're living.
Friend: Cozy! It's like a studio!
Me: Yeah, a studio filled with 4 bedrooms of crap!

I have never wanted something to arrive so badly in my life. Because the carpet in all the bedrooms is down right horrific, we have opted to keep everything in the living room until the new carpet arrives in a week and a half. There is crap everywhere. Every time I set something down, it takes me 15 minutes to find it again. I had to come up with a special place to always put my keys because I spent an absurd amount of time in pursuit of them yesterday. I don't handle messes, a lack of organization, or a lack of a place to put something very well, so needless to say this is stressful to me. Another thing I don't handle well... grossness, which is exactly what I encountered in my washing machine. Apparently the schmucks who owned this place decided to disregard the, "Use he detergent only." signs all over the place. As a result, my washer is full of soap scum and mold. After 2 cycles of bleach, a cycle of Washer Magic, and over an hour of scrubbing away, it's much better, but the drawer that is supposed to release the soap to the clothes doesn't drain, and stays full of water meaning it will mold again. The mold I scraped out of there was nauseating. I literally felt the vomit rise in my throat as I scrubbed away. My neat freak OCD has risen to a new level.

But there's a bright side. As Derek said today, "We're like Winn-Dixie, We're Getting Better All The Time." To which I retorted, "Yeah, just like Winn-Dixie, it might be a dump now, but it was more of a dump yesterday, so at least we're improving!"

After a rain delay yesterday, the POD, which used to look like this...

Now looks like this...

And, I discovered that I have a love for ripping down wall paper while brushing my teeth...

 In fact, the master bathroom is nearly done. And apparently, my cat enjoys wallpaper too...

And for the first time, I made dinner in our new home. Yup, it wasn't delivery, it was DiGornio!
So, it may temporarily be a dump, but at least it's MY dump!

The most expensive week of my life

Buying a house isn't cheap, especially when your new home is a foreclosure that looks like this.....

So, as anticipated a lot of money needs to be spent to make it awesome, hell, even liveable, but the amount of money required is nauseating. There was the down payment, closing costs, carpet, a new roof, and the first of many trips to my new favorite store, Lowes. And this was no ordinary first trip, this was a mammoth of a trip. Have you ever wondered what $900 worth of home improvement looks like. Well, if so you're in luck because here is a picture of exactly that...

 It's a lot of stuff, and yet, it's only the beginning. But in addition to being expensive, this week has also got me really confused about who I am. No longer am I one who is searching for the latest Vera Bradley sale...my new favorite place? Lowes. Yes, I said Lowes. It's scary really, but how could you not love a place that could bring all the potential of our home to fruition? Plus, look! It's fun...

 And yes, I am holding the fencing. In fact, I did a lot of heavy lifting today. So, in sum, this week has been expensive and life altering, but I found a new place I love...

In the beginning, there was dirt.

Derek and I are exhausted after several days of scrubbing, lifting, organizing, and moving, but let's back up a few days and review.....

February:
We were so excited because we were told we were going to close on our first home on February 17. This would give us 2 weeks to have both our rental and our home so we could move in easily... until we found out there was an issue with the title and the closing would be pushed back. Ok, so moving at the end of the month and not having an overlap isn't the end of the world... until we found out a week before that it wasn't going to happen by the end of the month, and that come March 1st, we would be homeless.

March:
Nothing says, "Happy Birthday!" like homelessness. Fortunately our friends offered to take us, our dog and our cat in. Its not easy living in someone's guest room when you're used to the freedom of living on your own and having your own space, but it's ok because we'll close on the 9th, and that's not long at all... until we found out that the closing would be pushed back AGAIN. In fact, even the day before I wasn't completely sure it was going to happen, and on the way to the damn closing, I got a call that it would be pushed back a half hour, but when you've waited a month, what's another 30 minutes? Alas the closing occurred, excitement was at an all time high. We are homeowners! We own a home! We can do whatever we want to this home!

Tuesday:
After closing on the house, I headed straight there to begin the cleaning. I had the car packed with cleaning supplies and was ready to go. The weekend before the closing, we had our final walk-through, and my glasses must have been particularly rosy because suddenly the house seemed more amazing than ever. Now, I'm beginning to realize just how filthy the people who lived there before us were, but I'm excited and ready to go, so nothing matters! I even stayed up until midnight cleaning and couldn't hardly sleep thinking of al the things I was ready to do the next day.

Wednesday:
I decided that the first thing that needed to be done was cleaning the floors, and my friend/temporary roommate told me about how she bleached the floors on her hands and knees and was so glad she did. So, using her method I started cleaning. It was today that I realized just how filthy these people were, adn I thought to myself, "Who lives like this?!?!?" Apparently the kitchen grout, which I thought was black, is white, and it's been caulked or painted... joy! The main living area tile is a reddish color with black under tones, or so I thought. Apparently, it has white undertones. I spent 8 solid hours scrubbing the floors and didn't even get to the bathrooms or finish the main living area (in fact, I have a 3 tile wide strip that STILL isn't done). My knees are black and blue, my wrist and neck are killing me, but I'm not done for the day. When my husband got home, I had to move in our mattress, the couches, and many boxes. It was at this time that I discovered that I am INSANELY allergic to the bushes in front of and surrounding our home, and since I am passing by these 5x a minute, my face is officially snot central... lovely! But, it's still an exciting day because this is the first night we get to sleep in our own home.

**Pictured- tile left side unbleached, right side bleached. When you see results like this, you just can't stop, even if you are tired!

Thursday:
My goal today was to get the kitchen set up before lunch, and then run a few errands. Mission Unaccomplished. I put contact paper in all the cabinets, and got the main items into the kitchen (which means that the one and only spoon we hadn't packed and the 1 piece tupperware is no longer our shared cereal bowl), had lunch with a friend, and ran errands. It was today that I realized that OCD neat-freaks shouldn't buy dirty foreclosures.

Today:
I am dead to the world. I am not built to stay up until midnight or later after a long day of physical labor, and then get up at 6:30/7:00am the next morning. I am literally running a quarter speed. Other than bleaching the bathroom floors, I can't even think of what I did today other than make a bunch of phone calls to get stuff set up. Tonight we will go to bed early (probably right after I make this post), and I refuse to wake up before 8:00am. If I plan on having this weekend be productive, I better get some rest.

So you're caught up. Look for more updates (and the future ones will be shorter guaranteed), and if you're reading this from a rental... you've been warned.