More House Updates, Winter 2017

When we bought our house so many people told us that our to-do list would be neverending.  I can agree with that, but I will say that the to-do list we made when we bought the house is so close to being finished.  The only thing left to do is for Robert to paint the ceiling in Sarah's bedroom, the guest room, and the kitchen, and we have this scheduled to happen on Saturday.  Then we'll finally just have to-do list items that pop up occasionally, but the big list will be finished.  There's still the "some day" list that would include kitchen and bathroom updates:

• Kitchen
• Stove
• Flooring
• Counters
• Backsplash
• Bathrooms
• Counters (matching with kitchen)
• Tub/tiling for shower

But for now we're so excited to really feel settled in our home.  We're very thankful for our house, and we've truly enjoyed making it our own.  It's so fun to dream about things we could do to it in the future, too!

Like I wrote about several weeks ago, Robert and Pepaw built me an upholstered headboard which we love!

We ordered a new washer and dryer, and it arrived yesterday!  Our old washer and dryer were free hand me downs which we have been very thankful to have for the first five years of our marriage, but the washer stopped spinning very well and would wring out all of the water, and it would shake forward about a foot during the spinning process and was super loud.  Because the dryer wasn't super strong and the laundry was dripping wet the drying process would take 3-4 hours, so I would just end up hanging up as much laundry as I could to let it air dry.  When we started the search for a new washer and dryer Robert asked me what I was looking for in a W/D.  Pretty simple - bigger, faster, quieter.  Bigger so I can stuff in more laundry in a load, faster to save time, and quieter because we can hear the machines quite a bit since they're in a closet in the hallway near our bedrooms.  Besides that, I knew I wanted a traditional top loading washing machine.  We went to Sears and got an incredibly pushy salesperson.  I understand that they need to make commission, but we just weren't connecting with this guy.  We told him the washer and dryer we were interested in from our online research, and he wouldn't show it to us because he didn't think it was great.  Instead he showed us a W/D that was $400 more expensive, and then he said that if we were going to spend that much that we might as well spend another $400 to get this other super duper one, so he was trying to push us to spend $800 more than we had come in to spend.  That's a huge difference!  Then he was really pushing the warranty plan which was $40/year per appliance with a 5 year minimum.  That's another $400!  It was just crazy.  Thankfully, he had to leave for a meal break shortly after we got there so we got to look around and ask questions with another sales person who was more our style, and we ended up purchasing the W/D that we had come in planning to purchase.  Robert got them installed yesterday, and I did one load yesterday. It went great! 

The previous owners had put a very large shower head on our bathroom shower.  I understand the idea was to provide a spa effect, but this was the kind of shower head you should use in a large standalone shower, not a standard shower/tub combo.  It sprayed everywhere, used the hot water too faster, and made a lot of weird noises in the pipes.  Robert was afraid that it would be a huge project, but I suggested we just buy a more standard shower head and see if it improved the situation at all.  It totally did the trick!  It took 30 seconds to replace, and now the water doesn't spray, the hot water lasts for the whole shower, and it doesn't make any unusual noises.  Why didn't we do this sooner???

We also replaced a couple of window screens that were torn up. I'm guessing the old owners' dogs did it.

Finally, we replaced our attic ladder.  When we moved in, the wooden attic ladder was broken.  It had been too long for the ceiling height, but the old owners had used it anyway.  We trimmed several inches off, but the damage was done.  I think they also exceeded the weight limit.  Every time Robert had to go up to the attic he dreaded it.  We got an aluminum attic ladder with a 385 pound limit, so it should last us a long time.  The box said "3 easy steps" for installation.  Uh...no.  Robert and I did it on a weeknight, and Robert ended the project by saying, "I'm only going to say it once, but that's why I don't like doing house projects on weeknights."  So that about sums up our experience, but the more detailed version is that I thought we could totally do it one night after we put Sarah to sleep, he seemed up for it, so he got up in the attic and dismantled the old ladder, and then he came down using a regular ladder.  We got the new attic ladder out of the box, and Robert went back up into the attic.  He attached it to a furniture strap and pulled it up while I pushed it up.  He put in the temporary supports, but the whole time I was thinking that the trim work around the opening was going to be too tight for the ladder to come down, but Robert thought it looked okay from the inside.  It came time for me to pull down the ladder, and sure enough, the trim was in the way.  Robert was stuck in the ladder.  I had to rip off the trim, but it was really secure.  I finally got it off with a crowbar and rescued Robert! :)  We needed to trim off several inches of the ladder since it's made for ceilings between 8-10', and our garage ceiling is 9.5'.  The directions said you could just use a wood saw to cut it off, but it seriously took about half an hour of screeching and sawing to cut them off.  Overall, I think it took about three hours.  Ugh.  Glad it's over and done.