Finally an update on the house!

   Sorry for taking so long to update you on the house and all the projects we have been doing! We have been very busy the last couple months trying to get settled in and make the house more of our own! We also had some issues with the past owner stopping by unannounced and helping herself to some landscaping items (nothing crucial, but still....who takes landscaping rock after you've sold the house???). I may have gone a little passive aggressive on her the last time she unexpectedly showed up....therefore getting the hint (finally) that she was no longer welcome. We have only seen her one other time, and that was because she wanted to let us know she was treating the Ash tree in the front yard for Emerald Borers. She didn't try and come up to the house, though, and was very short in her conversation. I really hope that was the last we hear of her.

   Okay enough of that...on to the exciting things! This month we have had more visitors! We had a house warming party with all our Iowa friends the weekend of June 7-9th which prompted us to paint the living room and kitchen areas, prime the upstairs hallway and staircase wall, do some landscaping work, clean up the basement and set up the other "guest room", put up more of our IKEA shelves, and mount TVs in the living room and master bedroom. Then we had Ian's parents here June 22-26th which prompted us to secure one upper cabinet and the entire built-in unit in the living room, assemble the built-in bar in that cabinet, and do more landscaping and mulching work around bushes and trees in the yard!

   Today my sister, Stasia, and her husband left after being here for a couple days to visit and see the place. We had a great time with them before they head out to Herlong, CA for Bryce's new job as a federal prison guard. They recently bought a puppy so Boji had a puppy friend here to play with for a little bit!

   We are staying busy the next couple weeks with more painting projects and finishing up the shelving units in the living room. Ian starts back to work tomorrow and works for 2 weeks straight because he switched with another doc who is leaving on vacation next week! Then Zac and Nichole's family will be in the Midwest starting July 5th and coming up to MN to stay with us starting July 15th! So things are continuing to be chaotic as the summer rolls on quickly!

   I will try and update this blog and my other "crafty" blog more often this summer as projects continue to be completed, but I don't make too many promises on exactly how often! Hope you enjoyed seeing our updates! Keep checking back as we progress through home ownership!

P.S. Pictures will be posted soon! I haven't had time to take updated ones, yet! 

And then there was a pantry!!!

   This past Friday Ian and I finally finished putting the walk-in pantry together! It had been a couple weeks between painting it and putting the shelves in because we have been so busy with family and work. We have two coat closets and a mudroom bench with hooks. One closet is by the front door, and the mudroom bench and other coat closet are by the garage door entrance. We really don't need that many places for coats! Food on the other hand, though....so we started planning. This is what the closet looked like before:

View as you walk in from the garage

   It's a huge closet! Perfect for a walk-in pantry! We started pricing things out at the Container Store, but the system we wanted was going to cost about $1500. Umm....no.... So we went back to the drawing board and came up with a plan using Menards supplies and some good ole elbow grease! It took me awhile to figure out which color I was going to use, but I decided on Sherwin Williams Watery Blue (love it!). Here we are prepping for paint:

Boji is making sure Ian is doing it right

   Then I started the "cutting in" of the paint job by painting around the trim and along the ceiling. This took way longer than I thought, and things were busy for the next few days after that so we didn't get the actual walls painted for a couple weeks. Once that was done, Ian started cutting down the metal brackets and braces of the bracket hanging system we picked out at Menards. The whole system, including the wood shelves, cost us less than $200. Score! Plus Ian got to use his new Dual Blade saw (very loud on metal....yikes)!

   We started hanging the braces first. This took some time. We had to find studs for a couple of the holes, drill for anchors in a couple other holes, and level it all out. It was definitely a two person job.

Hanging the side wall braces (Ian didn't like that I was making him pose for pictures)

Hanging the back wall braces

   The boards we bought were on sale in a faux wood finish. They were 16" by 96" so we cut them down to 16 x 50" and 16 by 48". This way we could make a faux "flush" corner with them and still have lots of storage space (and less boards to purchase)! We also found a hanging spice shelf organizer at Costco for $35 with different size baskets included. We thought that would be good for the little things that tend to get lost on the shelves! The corners didn't line up exactly because of cutting and measuring on different walls, but it's very minimal so it's hard to tell. The brackets are screwed into each shelf, too, so these puppies can hold mega weight!

Finished shelves

View of the hanging basket system

Finished view from the garage entry! Hard to tell the paint color, but it's brighter than in the pictures.

   We love our pantry! It adds SOOO much space in my cabinets, and is SOO much easier to see all the food we have! Plus it's great for storing all the gizmos and gadgets that we got from the wedding (and are large and bulky for cupboards)! I will have to take a "full" picture soon and post it as an update. We still would like to install some baskets that slide out under the shelves, but we haven't found a system we like yet. So stayed tuned as we tweek our project!

There's snow....in the middle of April.....joy!

   It's the middle of April and we're still getting copious amounts of snow! It doesn't seem to want to lighten up or warm up any time soon either! At least for most of these pictures, the snow was melting some! This post will be of updated, semi-unpacked pictures of the house! Then we will use these "before" pictures to show you what projects we complete as the year ticks by! Enjoy the preview!

Taken from the entrance to the walking path

Looking at our patio from the left side

Standing on the patio looking out over part of the back yard

Looking at the other half of the yard from the patio

Entryway/Foyer as you walk in the front door

Looking down from the landing into the entry (sorry it's so dark)

Study/Library Room off to the left of the foyer

Formal Dining room off to the right of the foyer (excuse our boxes yet)

Gormet Kitchen off to the right at the end of the foyer hallway

Eat-in dining area at the end of the foyer hall and in-between the kitchen and the living room

Living Room off to the left from the end of the foyer hallway

Starting to install some of the built-in cabinets in here.

Mudroom off the kitchen (garage door directly to my right in this pic)

Built-in mudroom bench and coat storage

Coat closet in front of garage door

To the right of the coat closet is the laundry room

To the right of the laundry room (left of the mudroom bench) is the 1/2 bath

Upstairs guest room (if you're looking at the front of the house...this window is the most upper left)

Another view of the guest room (crib is for guests...all our friends and some family have babies still!!)

Across the hall from the guest room is Ian's temporary man cave (until the basement is finished)

Another view of man cave

In the middle of the hallway, is the full guest bath

This room is still chaos from unpacking. This is the other front facing bedroom on the right side of the house. We turned it into a his/hers office space. My stuff is on the right (and everywhere else), and Ian is on the left (only). ;)

Master Bedroom at the end of the hallway

That is a king size bed.

View out our bedroom windows

Another view of the master bedroom (closet door is on the left)

Looking down into the walk-in master closet (sorry about the mess)

Looking back the other way in the master closet

Master bath (just to the left as you enter the master entryway)

Master bath

Master bath tub (large and in charge...still haven't used it)

Walking path behind our house leads down to the Mississippi River on one side and Lake Rebecca on the other!

I think this is Lake Rebecca

I think this side is the Ole Miss

Looking back toward our house (technically on a bluff)

Boji loves walks by her new house!

Okay! That's it for now! Sorry it took so long to get these up! We will try and keep you updated as much as possible as we start to do more and more to the house!

Water Softener Woes

   We are still unpacking and trying to get things in order around the house. It's coming along, but it's a slow process! Plus we're starting to get the itch to dive into some projects! It's been really good, though, and we have already had quite a few visitors up to see the place in it's "before" stages!

   The main reason I am writing this post, though, is for advice for anyone thinking of buying a home. Our home is only 9 years old. Therefore, building, electrical, etc. is all updated and up to code. However, you never really know how the people before you treated the home and/or the things inside. Always get an inspection! No matter the age of the home. It's totally worth it! Ours went awesome (don't get me wrong), but there's ALWAYS something.

   With that said, upon the signing of our papers, our realtor offered to buy our home protection plan coverage. It's a basic insurance-like package that covers any damage or defects in appliances, furnace, water softener, heater, roofing, siding, etc. It's like a "get out a jail free" card for things that happen that first year you live there (especially if it wasn't due to the care you gave it). However, after the inspection and the raving reviews of the home, he decided it would be a bit of a waste as a "house warming gift" and decided to buy us a LED flat screen TV instead. It wasn't the biggest TV we own nor was it the one we would have picked out necessarily, but it was a very nice gesture and we accepted it. I mean what could go wrong with a house and its appliances being less than 10 years old (some even newer...like the water heater is only 2 years old!!).

   Well....you know where this is going. Owning a house is $$$. First it was the dishwasher. Doesn't like to wash dishes (join the club...). Didn't matter the soap or number of dishes. Just refused to clean em. Well we found out that it can get them clean, but it has to be on the longest, hottest setting it has (for cookware and heavy duty things). So we're wasting water and energy on that every time we use it. However, it's working for the time being.

   Then it was a couple tripped circuit breakers for no reason. One of the times it was the refrigerator, microwave, and every outlet in the dining room out. Soooo that was concerning (we were under the impression the fridge should have it's own breaker). However, it was storming that day, too, so we're not sure exactly what tripped it.

   Lastly, it was the water softener. The old owner had been using it and had filled it with pellets a month or two before we moved in. However, when I went down to check the salt levels I noticed  a black sludge all around the inside of the tank (brine) and floating in the salt (awesome!). My first thought was mold. It looked stagnant and didn't seem to be filtering. Then I thought maybe she didn't have it on. Well come to find out she was SUPPOSE to be using salt CRYSTALS instead of PELLETS this whole time (no idea how long she was doing this). For those that don't know, if you use pellets in a system that requires crystals, you can cause sludge and blockages in your system lines (that you will have to hire out for cleaning). It can also cause backups and break downs of your appliances (dishwashers are common....mmm...sound familiar??). So I called the Water Doctors to schedule an appointment. I wanted to make sure my lines were clear and that I didn't have a huge problem on my hands. They told me on the phone to go ahead and clear all the pellets out of the brine, wipe it all down, clear as much as I can from the bottom, and then refill it with crystals. Otherwise, if they had to do it when they came to inspect the lines, it was going to cost us by the hour starting at $100+ (no thanks)!

   So guess what I got to do?

Me vs. water softener

   I forgot to take pictures before I started cleaning the brine out and scrubbing. It wasn't mold, though (thank GOD). It didn't smear and wasn't "slimy" to wipe up. It was more like dirt or mud (still don't want that in my water...thanks). To give you an idea what was in there...here is what the piece at the bottom of the brine looked like before cleaning:

Yum....black sludge

Here's a close up of the caked on mess

   I simply used really hot water and some dish soap on this piece. For the brine, though, I used hot water and a rag to get the majority. I didn't want to add cleaners because I didn't want it contaminating the fresh water. I used Ian's shop vac to vacuum up water and debris from the brine as I went along. I rinsed with fresh water, vacuum, wiped, rinsed, vacuum, etc. I definitely got my workout carrying the full shop vac up the stairs and to the laundry room utility sink, though!

What pellets look like as well as the gray/black sludge clogging the bottom of the brine.

   This was taken as I was cleaning the brine. This is my garbage can with the pellet waste piling up. It took me a long while to get it completely cleaned out. However, it looked a MILLION times better when I was done.

Clean bottom piece to the softener!

Clean softener!

   The Water Doctors said to then fill the brine 1/2 full of cold, clean water. Then add the salt crystals after that. They wanted at least 12 inches of crystals above the water. Then I was suppose to go ahead and cycle it like normal. Well I didn't know if it had been cycled, so I had to get out the manual and make sure everything was set correctly.

Morton Salt Crystals. Much smaller in size.

   I then went ahead and cycled through all the filtration settings for 5 minutes each to make sure the water came through the lines. I topped the brine off with more salt to make sure it wasn't too low, and that was it!

   The water guy came out the next week and ran through everything, but he said it all looked really good! He couldn't find any more sludge backed up or further up in the lines! So that was a relief. However, it still cost me $100 to have him make the "house call" to check on the appliance. At least I had the peace of mind that it was all working properly and up-to-date! Plus, it wasn't so far gone we had to replace the system! So yay for saving money that way! Go us! Hopefully this is the end of our little housing mishaps and appliance craziness! However, that housing protection plan is looking pretty nice right about now and would have come in handy for all these costly maintenance calls. Oh well...life as a home owner (and excited about it!)