Attic Insulation

Our house is old, which means our insulation is old and THIN. Not quite the R-39 attic insulation depth recommended for our region. With Home Depot's free insulation blower with 20 bag green insulation purchase, we decided it was the perfect time to purchase some more before winter hits. We needed 40 bags, or $215 worth of Green Fiber insulation (the recycled, none glass kind). It took all of 3 trips to the hardware store (one for the insulation and a second/third trip to pick up/drop off the machine) and about 6 hours worth of time to get the job done. You need one person to be outside feeding the blocks of insulation into the machine...

And a second person up in the attic, with a mask and eye protection, spraying the insulation to the desired depth...

To top it off, we qualify for a small energy tax credit since we didn't quite max out the tax credit from our windows!

Hopefully we will see a difference in our electricity bills this winter.

Weekend Plans

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather this weekend and stain our porch with that fancy concrete stain stuff. It really needs a face lift...

Our front door was also in desperate need of a new, darker paint color. In case you couldn't tell, our dog is a  door jumper on-er....

I took advantage of my 1-9pm shift last week, and prepped...

and painted...

the front door. The paint color is Cooper Adobe Brown from the Valspar collection at Lowe's. I've now decided that I don't like the door window trim white, so I plan on painting it too when I put the second coat on today.

Stay tuned for the front porch stain reveal after the weekend!

What Budget?

When you buy a house with unpainted walls and unfinished wood floors like this…

And an empty, blank-slate basement like this…

You know your going to have to spend some mullah to get it up to par! Since I love a budget breakdown from my fellow bloggers (yes, you all thoroughly impress me with your budget making abilities), I decided to add up just how much we put into our house in hardware store runs getting THIS LONG LIST accomplished. So, here it goes:
Nov $896.63
Dec $401.47
Jan $1019.71
Feb $626.31
Mar $755.72
Apr $197.04
May $87.95
Jun $20.22
Jul $0.00 (cuz we spent every weekend at the lake…gotta enjoy a little summer!)
Aug $70.27
Sept $1416.19
Oct $169.96
Nov $359.03
Dec $585.48
Jan $189.58

GRAND TOTAL THUS FAR = $6795.61
Why did we not invest in hardware stock before purchasing our house??! And to think this total does include our heater/air conditioner and new window instillation costs (more on this later)….geez.
Unfortunately, we simply had too many projects overlapping to accurately keep track of which money was spent on which project for the most part : ( The only projects that I actually took the time to calculate our expenses for separately where replacing the GUTTERS ($763.92) and the EXTERIOR PAINT ($479.01 for trim paint, house paint, caulk, rollers, etc). If only I could find the price quotes we got the professionals to show you just how much we saved; darn my good bad throwing away skills!

Reflections

I meant to do this post back in November. You know- the make a list of everything you accomplished in the first year you lived in your first home post. I'm a little late...I was busy working on the house after all ; )

The history of our house goes like this:

There once was a lady who owned 2 big dogs. She bought a house and had 6ft tall prison-like fences put in in her backyard to keep her dogs from jumping over. This lady liked to collect a little a LOT of junk. She collected so much junk that you couldn't even walk through her house. She also did not like to do yard work, nor did she want to pay anyone else to do her yard work. So she sat around in her junk, not doing her yard work for years and years until one day she got evicted from her home because it became unlivable.
See, her house was pretty bad...

Then a friendly guy, you could call him a contractor, got a loan from the city to clean this lady's house up. He had to clear out some a small FOREST of trees in the yard. He also had to take 8 full-size dumpster loads of junk out of the home. He wanted to make the home nicer because he thought he was going to move in, so he used his super hardware store disocunts to put in two new bathroom vanities/showers/toilets, new kitchen cabinets, and some new kitchen appliances. He painted all the inside walls white and changed the exterior color to green. Unfortunately for him some hurricanes came through Texas and his job moved him down there long-term. He had to sell the house he was fixing up to live in "as is."
So, he put in up on the market looking like this:

Around this same time there were a couple of newly weds looking for a home. They found a house they really liked, but it needed a lot of work (house #1). They put in low-ball offer and crossed their fingers. They were out bid ) : So, they found another house that they really liked in a neighborhood they loved (house #2). They didn't put in a low-ball offer. They put in a full price offer and again crossed their fingers. Their agent called the agent of the person selling the house to make sure they got the offer. They said they did. Unfortunately the offer they got was not the offer from our realtor. They started negotiations with the other offer, so the couple had to start the house search again ) : This time they found a really nice home that needed almost no work (house #3). They put in an almost full price offer and waited again................. During this time they visit Grandma. There is a house down the street from Gma for sale "by owner" (house #4). They think hummm... why not take a look? They call the guy who owns it and he explains he is selling it "as is." It doesn't even have a heater in it. He is having to move. He states the amount he wants to get backout of it. The amount is low; lower than any of the houses the couple has put in offers on. The amount to finish fixing it up and put in a heater is still going to be lower than the other houses they are putting offers on. The couple think this is a pretty deal and withdraw their offer on house #3. They put an offer in on house #4 for a couple grand less than they guy was hoping to get back out of it, since they will have to put in a heater and he seams pretty ready to sell it. The guy accepts the offer and the couple now own house #4, which makes the girl in the couple pretty happy because her favorite number is 4 she is getting tired of looking for houses every free evening and weekend.

And thus the couple, named Brandon and Debra, begins the task of fixing up an "as is" house to live in. 5 hundred million trips to the hardware store later here is what they (by they, I mean Brandon and various other family members doing the majority of the hard stuff with Debra getting stuck with taping and painting for the most part) have accomplished:

1. Had an electric heater/heat pump, airconditioner, and all needed ducts installed (we payed a professional because we couldn't close on the house until it was installed)
2. Refinished all the hardwood floors (3 bedrooms, living room, hallway)
3. Put up trim on the bottom of each wall next to the hard wood floors in every room (This got done in 1 week, but filling in all those pesky nail holes was completed a good month later...ha)
4. Ran electricity through an old sewer line (gross, I know) over to the garage (my husband also used all of my expensive lubricant I just bought for us to get the line to slide through...it worked great!)
5. Wired in outlets and lights in the garage
6. Installed a garage door opener
7. Wired internet and tv cable to the living room and office
8. Installed a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink (because I can't live without one)
9. Ran an extra duct from the heater to the master bath (because the tiles on the floor were too cold for me)
10. Put in wood studs for the beginning of walls in the unfinished basement
11. Added in extra breakers in the breaker box and wired the entire basement (this means lights, electric outlets, and surround sound...it took a little work!)
12. Built a gate between our house and garage to make our yard completely fenced in (no choice, we got a dog)
13. Paint the master bedroom, two bathrooms, two hallways, the living room, the kitchen, and the dining room (all in one week too...fun spring break from school right)
14. Installed new light fixtures in both bathrooms (the old ones were ugly, trust me)
15. Put in gutters over the front porch (there weren't any before...I guess cuz they tore that part out)
16. Decide to replace all the old gutters while we were at it (with the exception of one section which we took down and painted white and rehung)
17. Had all the window replaced (we payed someone to replace them...more on that awesomeness later)
18. Put in all new trim inside around our new windows, including priming and painting them
19. Caulked a million places on our wood exterior that were cracked
20. Replaced several sections of rotten wood including one whole wall of our garage that was infested with ants (not the wood eatin kind, but they were still terrible all the same)
21. Painted the whole outside of our house a new color using Behr's sweet primer and paint in one
22. Primed the basement ceiling with a rented paint sprayer machine
23. Painted the basement ceiling a different weekend using another rented machine
24. Put insulation up in the walls/wood studs that we got for free from Brandon's uncle
25. Hang dry wall on all the basement walls (we got 20% off using Mike's Aunt's Christmas discount)
26. Mud the basement walls a total of 3 times including sanding inbetween
27. Primed & painted the basement walls (this is where we currently are at...time to save up for carpet and trim)

This list doesn't even include all the little projects like hanging pictures/paintings, putting of shelves, repainting dressers, reapholstering chairs.... Between working 40hrs+, completing rotation assignments/projects, and driving back and forth from St. Louis every week for the majority of weeks in the past year and a half I am surprised I have had time to sleep, eat, do laundry...let alone blog!

Oops I almost forgot. Here is an after picture with the new house color:

Oh the memories! Can't wait to make some more : )

Christmas Break Bliss

Oh Christmas Break how I love thee! I can't believe this will be the last 2 week Christmas Break I will ever get- sad ) : This exactly why I am taking full advantage of everyday, and by this I mean sleeping in till 10am...ha! But seriously, I feel like am getting so much done despite my extra sleep in the mornings.

This was also the first year Brandon and I put up our very own Christmas tree, so here it is in all its glory...
Alright, I am not a professional Christmas tree decorator. We got our tree and all the green and silver ornaments/ribbon 75% off at Wal-mart's after Christmas sell. Our slim selection of ornaments come from each year we've been together. I love reading other people's blogs and seeing how their trees have changed over the years, so I went ahead and posted my first attempt at decorating my own tree so I look back and smile later. Maybe next year I will even find a tree topper!

So what have the Leslie's been up to?
Caulking and painting all our window trim
Putting pictures in the picture display
Insulating/Drywalling the basement
Refinishing the Craig's list chairs
A few other random not so exciting projects

And I acutally plan on sharing some pitcures all of the progress a little at a time. I just had the chance to look back at all my previous posts, and it was so fun seeing my year in review. Can't wait to see what 2010 brings!!!

One Crazy Yard

That's right...our yard is one crazy mess. Notice these random plants on the corner; there really is no rhyme or reason to the previous owners attempts at landscaping. There are random plants growing out from everywhere! And of course there are copious amounts of weeds to go right along with them. Luckily, Brandon got right to work this weekend. He spent Saturday digging up all the random plants, relocating some along the fence line and soaking the rest in a water-filled bucket for his Grandma. He was a muddy mess by the end of the day.

He also surprised me with this little bit of landscaping around our little dogwood tree in the front yard. I love it!

I am looking forward to planting lots of flowers in the front of our house, even though it may be over a year away before I have time to do it... Oh well, I can always dream about my future when studying is not consuming so much of my time : )

10 Gallon of Paint Later

10 gallons of paint later, and we had a party! It felt so nice last Saturday to celebrate our new home and the new paint with some family and friends.



Just like any good party, it started with food...

Brandon's grandparents came over. You can't exactly tell from this picture, but we have a whole wall of windows in the dining room. I love all the natural light.

Check out this line-up. We didn't have room in small dining room for the chairs with the leaf in the table, so we put them on our empty wall in the living room for people to sit in them.

Lots of aunts and uncles came over. Here is my Aunt Donna and Uncle Dennis. I didn't snap many pictures, but I got a few towards the end.

Like this one.... I will call it an action shot?!

At least Cayman knows to look at the camera : ) Speaking of Cayman, he won some awards for his artwork. We are going to Warrensburg this weekend to see his work on display.

Lauren brought her tiny little pup Brooklyn. This is seriously the tinniest dog I have ever seen. I think she said it weighed 1.8lbs. She isn't going to get much bigger either. I think she is a yorkie-doodle or something like that. She was rescued from those breeders they shut down in Missouri not to long ago.

Little Brooklyn and all the guests wore poor Cove out. After everyone left, we found her snuggled up next to her squirrel bait fast asleep...precious.

My Crazy-Busy, Productive Week of Spring Break

This title is about the best description I can come up with to describe how my week of week of Spring Break was for me...well technically over a week. Since I only have classes 3 days a week, I got a whole week and a half for Spring Break this year- wahoo! Unfortunately, the time flew by way too fast, and I am sad to say I am back in St. Louis again getting ready to hit the books for a therapeutics exam on Wednesday ) : Looking on the bright side though, here is a quick run down of all the things I was able to accomplish on my spring break:
Decide on colors to paint our master bedroom and living room/dining room/kitchen area
Paint, Paint, Paint all these rooms plus 2 hallways and 2 bathrooms
Cooked dinner for my parents and Grandma Leslie (luckily they still ate even after I spilled the entire taco bake onto the stove door as I was getting it out of the oven...they are way too nice!)
Finally frame the LESLIE pictures my sister gave to us for Christmas (picture coming soon!)
Eat lunch with the Dad or Mom or Dad&Mom just about every week day (Mom and me managed to get Chinese twice!)
Spend lots of time playing with our loving puppy Covey and even taught her how to catch apple slices in her mouth...we our working the way up to her catching frisbees
Got my TB test required for rotations...negative once again-praise!
Made it to a wonderful church service where we got to catch up with an old friend from high school
Replaced the 2 ugly light fixtures in both of our bathrooms with much more modern/trendy ones (pics coming soon!)
Made a trip to St. Louis to move the majority of my furniture home to put in the guest bedroom
Got the ever cool UVerse installed in our house the day after it became available to our neighborhood thanks to my dad having a little inside push ; )
Made it to my own birthday party over an hour late...oops. The cookie cake was delicious though!
And finally, held an Open House for family to see the newly painted walls- this was the first time most of my family had even seen our house...

So here are some pics to get you started with the painting progress:


These are 2 colors from Benjamin Moore (Edgecomb Gray and Shaker Beige) that I thought would look nice for the living area. I decided to go with a lighter color than either of these called Elmira White...then after painting a bathroom and hallway decided to go with an even lighter color from Dutch Boy paint called Whitetail deer (My husband and my father in-law who are both deer hunters loved the name...I love the color!)

And these were the colors I was trying to chose between for the master bedroom. I ended up going with the top one, again from Benjamin Moore called Buxton Blue. I went great with the pillows I told you guys about earlier that I purchased from Etsy...pics coming!

And so the taping and painting began. We started Sunday night and didn't finish painting till Friday afternoon. Boy did my back start hurting by Friday! I had no clue what a job I was in for. It didn't help that our textured walls required just about 2 coats of paint to finally fill in all the little holes with color.... Luckily Wal-Mart can match any paint color, so I was able to get the colors I wanted at much cheaper prices than the hardware store, especially after my good'ole discount!

Of course, I took any help I could get. There would have been no way I could have finished everything I wanted to get painted in 1 week without all my helpers. This is my dad touching up the Whitetail Deer color in our living room. In case you are wondering about the desk, we use Brandon's computer as our tv in the living room....it's our sweet flat screen tv...kind of lol.

My mom was a huge help. She was over every day helping tape and edge...sweet thing! This picture helps show the subtle difference between the new paint color and our white trim, which is just what I was wanting. It makes things a little bit more home-y, yet keeps it feeling bright and open...

And here is Brandon's hard-working Dad. He did all my top edging, and let me tell you, this was one tough job having textured walls AND ceilings. I tried to edge the hallway ceilings and he had to come over and fix them! He has an amazingly steady hand.

Thanks so much to all my amazing helpers who came over to paint or clean this week (Mark, Jacque, Dad, Mom, Kara). I couldn't have done it without you.

For those of you who haven't seen our house, sorry these pictures aren't much help in showing you what the finished walls look like. You will have to stay tuned for future posts. Don't worry, I won't keep you hanging too long! I am calling it a night tonight though; I am going to enjoy what is left of my birthday today by going to bed early ; )

A New Gate

After only having Covey a week, Brandon decided it was time to make our back yard completely fenced in. Luckily, the yard itself came fenced in. The only part left for us finish was adding a gate across our walk-through porch. With the help of Mike, Brandon went to Lowe's and used our whole Missouri tax return to purchase boards, screws, metal posts, and latches (he didn't want to wait 2 weeks to special order a pre-fab fence, so he designed his own custom one). Here is a picture of Brandon and his dad working on it last Saturday...


Brandon's sister Misty brought our niece Emarea over to play with Covey while they were building the fence. The weather was so nice, we spent most of the day outside. Here she is showing me the treat she is going to give Covey- notice Covey is already laying down...smart puppy!


And here is the completed fence! I think it looks better than any pre-fab fence we could have ordered- love my handy man! We decided to put the fence on the front side of the porch so we can still let Covey out our main door to go potty; this caused us to have to move our mailbox to where it is now in the picture. We plan on power washing the porch and staining the porch and new gate at the same time. We are going to have to put up some guttering this spring too. When the rain freezes that porch becomes a sheet of ice. I learned this the hard way...ouch!

Craig's List Find

I found a great bench on Craig's List this past week and couldn't be happier about it. I have been in search of a narrow coffee table to fit our narrow living room... we do want space to be able to walk through it after all! Thanks to a wonderful lady named Courtney, I found a "rustic" Pottery Barn bench on Craig's List for sale, since she also labeled the bench as being a coffee table. I stole this picture off of the pottery barn website to show you what it looks like. They still have the smaller and larger versions of the bench/table for sale for $149 and $249...yikes! Needless to say, I snagged my new coffee table for less than 1/4 of its original price- happy day.... It is a little scratched up, but I should have it looking good in no time. I would take a picture of it, but Brandon won't let me put it on our living-room hardwood floors till I put some felt circles on the bottom on the legs. He sure is cautious when it comes to protecting the floors he refinished : ) This is actually my first Craig's List purchase ever, but after this find, it may become my new favorite place to shop for home furnishings. Courtney gave me a tour of her beautiful home when I picked up the bench today; let me tell you, it was gorgeous. I loved two of her wall colors so much, I may just use them when we finally paint our walls. On a humorous note, both the wall colors came from the Benjamin Moore Pottery Barn Collection...nice!

2 Months Later

With the end of the semester and the move into our new house, I haven't found the time to make any new post over the past 2 months! So much for becoming a dedicated blogger right off the bat...lol. I will try to be more diligent towards this endeavor in the following months. I don't have a lot of time today, but I wanted to go ahead and upload a picture of our new house. I couldn't be happier with our first home purchase! Our house is a ranch style home with a walk through porch over to our one car garage. Luckily for Brandon, a previous owner built an addition onto the back of the garage for her hair salon, which makes our garage extra long. He has managed to fill up the space pretty quickly, as he is rebuilding an old motorcycle he found online at the end of last summer. Since the garage does not have any heat right now, he doesn't plan on working on the motorcycle till this spring when it warms up a bit. This means he has plenty of time to use his handy-man skills around our home! His list on increasing abilities continues to amaze me- I will have to show off his work around our new home in my upcoming posts...

Clementines

My first blog... After being inspired by my friend Emily's sister-in-law Joi, I figured would I try my hand at this creative little way of keeping track of my daily tid bits. This month has been a very exciting month for me. My husband and I found a perfect starter home in a perfect location to start our life together in! I am sure there will be lots of sharing about our house after we close the day before Thanksgiving. There are so many ideas floating around in my head regarding colors and decorating. I am looking forward to starting the process of painting and purchasing furniture in the upcoming months. Since the need to study is great this weekend, I won't go into details just yet. However, I would like to share with everyone that Clementines are back in season and yummy as ever! Lynn and I bought a bag last weekend at the grocery store and have been snacking on these delicious sweet fruit all week. If you have never tried them, I highly recommend them. I think I may even like them better than oranges!