Sunday, November 04, 2007

We Are Officially Home Owners! Happy or Crazy??

So we closed on our house after numerous ups and downs with the seller! We were unsure more than once if this deal was going to go through or not. We are glad that it did though!! On October 9th we received our keys at 5:30 in the afternoon.

We celebrated later that evening with our friends Jeff, Tammy, and Caden with yummy Chocolate Cake (the huge yummy one from Costco). It was a great way to start off this new journey!

Since then we have been SUPER busy getting ready to move in! We have until the end of November to be out of our apartment, which has been nice to do the moving in at a slow pace!

The main issue with the house was 'something' was leaking into the downstairs bathroom. So the downstairs bathroom needed to be redone. The problem was that we were not allowed to look behind the walls to see the problem until after we owned the house.

So that was step one--Finding the leak!

After ripping out walls in the downstairs bathroom no leak was found!


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So to the upstairs bathroom we went (which is directly above the downstairs bathroom)!

And this is what we found!

We were told by our plumber and our inspector that copper pipes last forever. Since they started being used they have not worn out yet, so it is unknown how long they will really last--at least 100 years guaranteed!

Yes--this is a copper pipe! And you are not supposed to be able to poke your finger through the side of one. So here was the source of the leak. The pipe had some negative slope on it, so we could assume that it got clogged many many times over the last 40 years. There were probably many many doses of Drano that sat in that same spot over and over again. This is what is guessed to have corroded the 'last forever' pipes!

Here is what the new and improved plumbing looks!

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Now that the plumbing was fixed we could get working on the 'before we move in' improvements. In discovering the upstairs leak we also discovered that that bathroom needed some re-doing too!

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Trying to keep Makadie occupied during our 'working time' was easier than we thought it would be!

First there is the backyard! She LOVES her new backyard.

One of the first days there she spent over an hour showing her Dora the Explorer doll all around the yard in her bike. It was very cute. You could hear her say, "Look Dora, here is a leaf" "Dora, see my bike . . . trees . . . pine cones . . .etc!"

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When she was ready to come in she played with toys or watched Cinderella! Here she is in the baby's room watching Cinderella!

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One Saturday Daddy took a break to play with her in the leaves in the backyard. They had a BLAST! The only downfall was that Makadie DID NOT want to stop. She kept pushing Coleman with all her might towards the back door to get him to play some more. It broke his heart to go back to work that day.

















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Makadie watching Cinderella again, another late night at the new house! Here she is in the Dining Room!


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We decided that we needed a new tub in the upstairs bathroom. We also wanted to do new tile on the floor and the shower walls. Here are some pictures of Coleman getting ready to put tile up in the shower.

Here goes the first piece of tile!

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One row down!


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This is the same tile that is on the floor! We only got this one row started because Coleman was sick and I had to take him back to our apartment to rest up!

It is a fun and tiring process getting this house ready. Doing a lot of things ourselves saves tons of money--but takes lots of time--especially when you are learning as you go!

We are really excited and looking forward to moving in soon! We will keep you updated as we go.



4 comments:

NW Varneys said...

Didn't know you were such a handyman, Coleman. You'll have to give us pointers sometime. I think I'd like to tile the bathroom here sometime in the future. I think our next big project, however, will be putting up some sort of a privacy fence in the back yard.

Brady and Karen said...

We need to come visit!

Anonymous said...

How exciting! it was great to see your new house. You are doing so much hard work but as you know it will all be worth it. Love you, Mom

Tania said...

Congratulations!!! What an exciting and exhausting step to own a home! We had some plumbing problems when we first moved in too. But it's worth the work when in the end it's YOURS. Yay!