Little Steps

The laminate flooring is in. A very competent young man is putting in grout around the fireplace and finishing the corners this morning. It looks every bit as fabulous as I could have hoped. The color is warm and cheerful, and works very well with the dark walls in the family room and master bedroom.

Also, while I was waiting for the installer this morning, I nudged around in my blocked kitchen drain and managed to clear it--at least enough to let the standing water drain. I'm still going to need to run a cleaner through the pipe, I think, but it's a relief to having the standing water gone.

I know there's still a fair amount of work to do before I can move in and really make this house my home, but I'm feeling pretty good this morning. I love it when a plan comes together.

How Could I Forget?

My house has an irrigation system. And it works! I successfully watered my lawn for 7 whole minutes this evening--likely the first time it's been watered at all since the previous owner entered foreclosure.

So I can keep the lawn green, right up until I dig it out and replace it with succulents and rocks.

Bumpy Road

My family room and bedroom floors now look like they contain half-dried mud puddles, but I guess that means my floors are even now. Tomorrow, the laminate goes in.

I also have bright and shiny new appliances. The refrigerator and washer went in without difficulty, but the dryer ran into a problem. Have I mentioned the utility sink in the garage? Because I have one. It's mounted inside a green vanity that's mounted on top of a plywood block. It's entirely kludged together, but very handy for washing paintbrushes and paint buckets. If only it didn't block access to the vent hole for the dryer. After some consultation with my dad, the consensus is that an l-joint for the drier vent isn't going to work; we're going to have to cut a hole in the vanity to get more clearance. So I guess I won't be doing laundry in my own home tomorrow.

The washer and dryer are very shiny and modern-looking, with all kinds of buttons and dials and little chiming sounds. Too bad they almost block access to the house from the garage. Ah, well. At least it's only almost.

While I was waiting for the appliance delivery, I did get to repaint the bedroom with the mismatched color problem. This should prevent problems with future guests trying tactfully to ask me if the streaky effect was intentional. So all non-bathrooms are now well and truly painted.

Now I just have to figure out what to do about the bathrooms.

Well, the Tile Looks Good

It has been an interesting day in home ownership.

The day started off on a bit of a downer, when I realized that the touchup paint in one of the small bedrooms fails to match the base color. So I'll be getting up early to repaint that room tomorrow.

Then the tile guy showed up right on time, but discovered that the shutoff valve for the toilet wasn't working. Fortunately, I had a spare shutoff valve on hand, and managed to get it installed (with a little help from the tile guy to tighten it appropriately). As of 4:45 this afternoon, the tile in the bathroom looks great (pictures coming soon).

The laminate team didn't show up until after I'd headed off to work. This afternoon, when they called me to come lock up after them, they ominously said that there was a problem with the floor, and that the boss would have to talk to me tomorrow. Never good. When I got to the house, I could see that they'd done quite a bit of prep work: my formerly glue-encrusted floors were polished concrete. Sadly, it's uneven polished concrete. So I get to look forward to finding out how to address badly uneven floors. (My dad has suggested switching from laminate to tile. I'll see what the other options are in the morning.)

When I showed up at the house, the one functional toilet in the house was running. I managed to kludge the float into triggering shutoff, but it looks like once I finish repainting in the morning, I may be reinstalling toilet bits. Whee?

Here's hoping that the appliance deliveries go smoothly tomorrow, and that they happen at the beginning of the delivery window so that I don't miss too much more work. Being employed is what's letting me afford all of this, after all.

Marathon Weekend

Well, it was close, but it looks like I survived. I'm bruised and scraped and covered in paint, and I have aches on top of aches, but all the rooms are painted, and the floors start going in tomorrow.

On top of marathon painting, this weekend included ripping out a vanity, cleaning mountains (or at least two large garbage bags) of ash out of the fireplace, replacing a leaky shut-off valve for a bathroom sink, capping an unneeded line off the sink valve, getting the covers back on the various light fixtures, and replacing the faucet part of the laundry hook-ups.

The best part of the weekend was the continued evidence that my father's love for me is boundless. He took Friday off from work and stuck with me straight through Sunday evening. His expertise and hard work were wonderful, of course, but having someone there for the hiccups is beyond price. (For example: when you realize that the computerized paint tinting system failed to actually tint a couple of your gallons of paint the same color, and that as a result you have a very odd look going on in the hallway. Or when you realize that the reason the bedroom door didn't shut right wasn't the crummy doorknob after all, but the fact that the catch was a quarter-inch too high.)

I should be scrubbing face plates for outlets and light switches so that I can have everything in place for the rooms that the flooring folks will be working in tomorrow, but the pain pills haven't kicked in yet, and my back won't tolerate it. Doing laundry and grocery shopping last night after a day of working on the house just about killed me. Fortunately, sleep has been a marvelous healer for me.

For any of you out there preparing to do some interior painting in your own home, I'd like to close with a tip: 1" angled trim brush. If you, like me, don't have much experience with painting, this is a miracle tool. It keeps the paint off the ceiling, allows for a good line around doors, and gets into corners that an amateur doesn't have a prayer of reaching with a standard 4" paintbrush (or even a standard 3" trim brush). It does slow you down when you're cutting in a room, but to me, the more professional-looking result is worth it.

Bonus tip: a little watercolor paintbrush is great too, for those tiny spots in awkward places that even the 1" brush struggles with. I, for instance, have one place where 2 doors are about an inch apart, and I was trying to get a strip of color between them without leaving any obvious holidays or marking up the white trim. Then I found a wee paintbrush from a watercolor kit and gave it a shot -- et voila! C'est magnifique.

What Common Sense?

This evening, after leaving work some time after 5, I finished painting the trim in the family room, primed the edges of what is to be the light wall of the living room, and in a fit of misguided optimism, primed the wall that will sit directly behind the washer and dryer. Problem number 1: I shouldn't have been priming anything as the evening light was failing. Problem number 2: I'm really not sure how best to prime around the water pipes and drain pipes and random cords and everything else in that corner of the garage. Problem number 3: I had to postpone appliance delivery until Tuesday, so there wasn't really all that much hurry in the first place.

We'll see what it looks like in the morning.

On a positive note, the tile crew and laminate crew are due to start putting in flooring on Monday.

Not Improving

Yesterday I learned that birthday cake is delicious, even when it isn't my own. (Okay, maybe I knew that already.)

Today I learned that chair massages are fantastic, but that the relaxation doesn't last very long if the things that were stressing you out in the first place are still around.

To do this week:

• Clean and paint the corner that will be home to the washer and dryer
• Swap out the washer fixtures for some that are less corroded
• Cap the water line leading to the refrigerator so that I can turn the water back on in the kitchen
  
• Get the vanity out of the bathroom so that the tile installers can come and do their work
• Finish painting the family room and master bedroom so that the laminate installers can come and do their work
• Finish painting the rest of the house so that the carpet installers can come and do their work
• Get ready for all the pesky packing and moving that I need to do
  

Energy Star

Today, I have learned that I am not naturally talented when it comes to painting trim. Whether fortunately or not, I will have many opportunities to develop this skill.

But that's not the exciting thing about today. The exciting thing is that I bought appliances! More specifically, I bought a washer and dryer and refrigerator. Because Earth Day is this week, and because the washer and refrigerator are Energy Star compliant, I got a 10% discount on them at the Home Depot. I also got an extra $25 rebate from the power company. For the washer (and the toilet I bought yesterday), I could have gotten a rebate from the SoCal Water$mart program, too, but they've run out of rebates for the month of April. But at least I will be limiting my water use and being as environmentally conscious as my budget will allow me to be.

One last bit of excitement for the day: I set the trash out this evening. Oh, the joys of curbside trash pickup. I didn't have quite enough recycling to make it worth setting out the recycling bin this time, but I'm looking forward to trying it next week. (One takes one's pleasures where one finds them.)

Color!

Today was a lot better than yesterday. With so much of the painful prep work out of the way, my dad and I were able to focus on painting. The kitchen is now done.

Nearly done are:

• The dining room (just needs touch-up)
• The family room (needs baseboards painted)



• The master bedroom (needs baseboards and closet shelves painted

The living room is also well underway, though the scary texture on 2 of the walls is making things a bit difficult. It also doesn't help that the new shade, when wet, is pretty close to an exact match of the old shade. Still, one more coat on the 2 brown walls, and primer for the sandy, off-white wall and we're nearly there.

Progress is being made.

New Levels of Pain

Yesterday, I spent the morning buying paint, and then working with my dad and sister to get ready to start painting. Then we ate lunch. And then the fun really started.

The short version is, we primed the walls in the minty-to-limey green master bedroom and in the army-green-over-sunshine-yellow third bedroom. We (mostly my dad) put the first layer of neither-limey-nor-minty green up in the kitchen, and I put the first coat on the living room.

Last night, my level of fatigue and pain was approaching, if not at, a record high. I can bend my fingers this morning, but gripping is difficult. I'm considering whether I have any slip-on shoes I don't mind splattering with paint, because I'm not sure I can tie the laces of painting shoes.

I have learned that:

• Good paint is expensive.
• I know nothing about painting.
• My natural painting skills are few to nonexistent.
• Cutting in is harder than it looks.
• Even when I am deeply underwater at work, and the load shows no sign of trailing off, I can look forward to going into the office on Monday to get a little rest.

Ouch.

Today, the old carpet was taken out. Interestingly enough, it is only now that the carpet is gone that my nose has become aware that a cat lived in the house. I had previously had suspicions, given the number of short, very fine, black hairs that kept getting in the way as I scrubbed the walls. But the Glade plug-in that the seller's real estate agent put in the family room was strong enough that the only thing I could smell, even days after throwing the thing away, was vaguely chemical-laden, way-too-sweet vanilla.

Removing the carpet took away a lot of the fake vanilla. And in the master bedroom, it revealled cat. I'm thinking that the paint and new flooring will take away the odor. Plus, tomorrow my dad's shop vac will take away the spilled cat food and miscellaneous unidentified particulates littering the floor. Yay.

Today has been a banner day. I stripped all the hand-strippable contact paper out of the kitchen, finished removing screws and nails from the walls, took down the left-behind window treatments and shelves, spackled the heck out of everything, cleaned the ceiling fans (did I mention that I have dining room and master bedroom ceiling fans?), vaccumed the walls to get rid of cobwebs, washed the walls and baseboards, washed the doors, cleaned years of accumulated greasy spills off the outer sides of the oven, cleaned under the oven, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, and decided on paint colors. (My wrists, back, and knees are killing me, and I continue to cough occasionally from the carpet-ripping-up dust.)

Paint colors! I went back to the paint store and used the failed colors to help me choose two new greens and a brown to try. Success! Both greens were very nice, but rather than going with a slightly brown-tinged sage, I'm going with a lovely green-grey color with a hint of blue. That will be for the dining room accent wall, and for the entire family room/library. The brown for the living room is similar to what the previous owner used, but a tad darker and with just the barest hint of additional warmth. Both colors go fantastically with the carpet.

So tomorrow my dad is coming down to help me get started. Wish us luck!

Guacamole Does Not Belong on Walls

As it turns out, picking colors from sample cards is not my superpower. In fact, of the three colors that I bought samples of today, I like exactly 1 of them. I'm going to let them dry overnight, and see how I feel about them in the morning, but at the moment, I'm feeling dismayed. The mid-range slate blue in the bedroom looks pretty good. That, however, only makes the grocery-store guacamole green in the dining room and the strangely orange looking brown in the living room seem even worse.

I wasn't going for a wall full of guacamole. I was hoping for a sort of mid-range sage green. Something cool and calm, but also somewhat reminiscent of a library.

I wasn't going for orange in the living room, either. I wanted a slightly warm brown, something that would tie in subtly with the art I plan to hang in the room, and add a little brightness over the somewhat muted shade of carpet I picked.

Did I mention carpet? Because I spent almost $7000 at the flooring store today. Tomorrow, a crew comes to rip out the existing carpet. First part of next week, I get tile in the bathroom. I don't know what tile. It's a surprise, because I'm getting it free. I can veto what shows up if I hate it, but otherwise, I get what I'm given. Did I mention that it's replacing carpet? In the bathroom? Because it is. I don't want to tempt fate here, but I think it would be hard to be worse than carpet. In the bathroom.

Once I've finished the painting, I get the laminate in the bedroom and family room and unoffensive brown carpet everywhere else. (I wanted something very neutral that would be hard to stain. We'll see once it's down what I actually got.)

And once I have flooring, I can start moving my stuff in. This is getting exciting!

It's Official: I Have Cows

The sale was recorded this morning. I am officially a homeowner. I have really and truly signed up for up to 30 years of debt and a whole lot of maintenance.

I went by the house after going to the gym this evening, and a couple of my neighbors were out and about. They're very friendly. One of them gave me 2 garden hoses (for the front and back yards) and helped me figure out the water shut off valves (turns out, I did know how to shut off water to the house, but I hadn't given the pipes enough time to drain). I think I'll like living around these folks. And I'm looking forward to meeting the dogs next door.

This Is the Closing that Never Ends

It just goes on and on, my friends. Currently, it's due to be recorded first thing in the morning. We'll see.

I did spend some time spackling and cleaning walls today. In the process of so doing, I learned that half the kitchen sink is clogged. Later, I learned that every time I turn on the kitchen faucet, I send water to through the tube intended to connect to a refrigerator water/ice dispenser. Oops. Too bad there's no refrigerator. And no clear way to shut off water to the tube without shutting off water to the sink.

A while back, the refrigerator in my apartment, which had an automatic ice maker, broke. The replacement refrigerator didn't have an automatic ice maker. My delivery guys were gone before the kitchen had flooded enough for me to realize that I had some disconnected tubing. So I thought I could crawl under the sink here at the apartment to figure out what to do in the house.

Yeah, no.

I'm planning to replace the sink and faucet and all that in the near future at any rate. I'm thinking I can maybe just use the water in the bathroom until then?

My cows, they are requiring care.

Hurry Up and Wait

My loan is fully funded, but we still haven't closed. It turns out there were 2 more pieces of paper for the seller to sign. I've been told that we're likely to close first thing in the morning. That would be nice, given that I already have the keys. (That was necessary because no one else wanted to have to let the power company rep in to turn on the gas in the morning. My appointment time is between 8 and 12. We'll see how many holes I can spackle before the rep shows up.)

Tomorrow evening, I'm hoping to pick up some paint samples so that I can see how my color choices hold up to the light of morning, day, evening, and night. I'm going with an earthy pallet of browns, greens, and slate blues. If all goes will, pictures will be coming soon.

One small task that I'll need to get done before I paint is taking down the crosses over all of the doorways. I hope that the previous tenant left them as a blessing, and not as a warning that the neighborhood is full of vampires.

One Beginning

My offer for the house I'm currently buying (let's call it Cowherd) was accepted just as I was due to enter escrow on another property (let's call it Nearmiss). Both properties were foreclosures held by the same bank, but Nearmiss had been vacated so recently that the previous owners' belongings were still there. That was the first problem with Nearmiss: the clear and unmistakable fact that the previous occupants hadn't be ready to leave, and might not have even believed that they would be forced to leave. They left behind items of both financial and sentimental value.

I had initially seen hope in Nearmiss because of its light and its fruit trees. The house was small, but had good light from lots of windows. As time went on, though, and it felt more and more wrong to me. I'm used to living in a moderately sized apartment, but the place felt small. There was no room where I felt I could spread out. I took a handful of friends and family members out to look at the house and get their opinions, and their positive impression kept me going for a while. But the more time I spent there, witnessing the remains of someone else's misfortune, the less I felt that I could be at home in that space. I developed a serious case of cold feet.

Had my offer on Cowherd not been accepted, I don't know what I would have done. I might have backed out anyway, and spent however many weeks or months it took to find another house to offer on. Or I might have made myself go through with it, and been working on getting it livable right now.

I'm just as happy never to know.

Getting Ready to Rumble

Given that I have a couple of extra days before I assume the mantle of homeowner, I've spent the morning peparing to accumulate burdens. I have acquired packing tape and gloves, spackle and TSP, and a large list of pending purchases.

After pricing the options, I'm planning to go with a combination of carpet (in a mellow brown called, undescriptively, number 508) and laminate (Lamipro, in a warm medium shade called Jatoba). As a bonus, I may be getting actual tile in the middle bathroom—it's small enough that vinyl entails large amounts of wasted material. My vendor, who happens to be the father of a friend, is trying to acquire tile for me in such a way as to incur no additional cost to me.

After a long wander around my friendly neighborhood Home Despot, I think I have found a washer (front loading, even) and dryer, and a refrigerator. I had been planning to get a fridge with a bottom freezer, but I found a top freezer model that is not only cheaper, but also more energy efficient than the bottom freezer models that I can afford. (Side-by-side is not an option for me at this point.)

I need to remeasure before I pick out a sink, but I have a feel for pricing. And I need to decide whether I'm putting in 0, 1, or 2 new toilets.

But I'm ready to spend a productive Tuesday morning prepping walls while I wait for the gas company rep to come turn on the gas. That is, if I close on Monday.

Fingers crossed.

Denied!

It looks like there will be no closing today.

- Was it the lack of middle initial on my loan documents? No.

- Was it a problem with the wire transfer of my down payment? No.

- Was it missing information of any sort from me or any member of my team? No.

It's the seller. Apparently, after being rather menacing about what would happen if I didn't meet the close date, the bank that shall not be named (at least until after closing) couldn't be bothered to complete its paperwork.

Typical, really. But I'll tell the story of the long and torturous path to escrow another day.

Lessons: Part I

In my march toward closing, I have learned that:

• An unmarried woman is not the same thing as a single woman, and the difference is vitally important and could delay closing.
• First Name Last Name is not the same as First Name Middle Initial Last Name is not the same as First Name Middle Name Last Name, and using the wrong one could delay closing.
• Having FedEx delivery confirmation and the signature of a person working for the title company does not mean that anyone who needs the papers in the envelope has received them, or is looking for them.
  
• Even though I have never bought a house before, a great many people will assume that I know exactly what I'm doing, and will therefore not tell me what I need to do until after I needed to have done it. It is therefore an excellent idea to ask every single person I talk to what my next step is, and when it has to be done. If they give a date range, have it done by the first day in the range.
  

Possession

As soon as tomorrow, I may be a homeowner for the first time. The journey to this point has been strange and convoluted, and the real adventure hasn't even started yet.

I hope to use this blog to document the process of making a place my home, and to think about holding possessions—including what's likely to be the largest purchase of my life—without becoming possessed.