Wowsies

It's been a busy week or so. We've ALMOST finished painting the house. All we've got left to do is the bathrooms. I got most (all but one) of the ceiling fans and light fixtures that we've got put up. I got a new toilet (because that's something that everyone inevitably wants to know) because the one that was there was TINY. And I'm NOT. hehe.

Anyway, that was fun. We're moving THIS SATURDAY, so I don't anticipate that it'll get any less busy in the meantime. I'm really looking forward to moving though. We've been spending so much time there anyway that it's really starting to feel like home. :) I can't wait to be living there.

That's it, I'll try to write more later. At work now. Kinda a busy morning. I've been good n' productive. hee.

OH, and I got a 30GB Video iPod for my birthday, so I'm happy. :)

Teehee

Still not too much to report in the way of painting -- the living room made it further along today, Donna came by and edged everything off nicely. Laura and I went up in there and Laura edged the ceilings in the master bedroom and closet and re-did the master closet to even it out a bit. I took down all the blinds, because I spoke with the painter, and she's going to be doing the trim and such tomorrow. So, that should help. We got up the trash, threw out the blinds, dismantled the old ceiling fans, etc.

The most exciting part of my evening was installing the new ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Never knew I had it in me. Directions are (usually) for pansies... except when working with electricity, I guess.

I'm Beat

We went by the house and did a lot of painting today. it was great, we mixed the colors for the laundry room, and used that in the laundry room and the master closet -- it's sort of a taupe color.. sort of a dark caramel? maybe?

Anyway, it turned out really well and covered up all the scuff marks and stuff that generally get left behind in a laundry room. It makes it look pretty dark in there, so now I think we're going to have to get a new light fixture, but that's ok.

Anyway, I know I said I was going to take pictures, but I didn't. Donna (the painter) didn't come on Friday, so there wasn't much more done that's worth taking a picture of yet (with the exception of being able to see some of the colors.)

I'm going to wait until she gets more color up on the walls and then get some shots to post for everyone.

Speaking of pics! Yahoo Pics is going away, so I had to transfer all my stuff over to flickr. I'm going to have to re-link all my links. hehe. That's cool though. I hope all my pics transferred like they should have. I guess we'll see.

Back to work tomorrow. Joy of joys.

I'm such a kid

I totally want these.

http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2660650&cp=1413252.2599945&pg=1&searchSort=TRUE&searchSort=TRUE&s=D-StorePrice-DSP&parentPage=family&searchId=17527995683

So

Not much new to report.

Donna started painting on the inside of the house, and it look fantastic. I think we really picked out some good colors.

Laura and I were originally planning to do all the interior painting ourselves, but after we 'discovered' what a pain in the ass it could be, we decided to hire someone to do the downstairs for us. It ended up being one of the best things that we could have done because I SOOO don't want to have to paint a lot. We've done about half of two bedrooms now, and it's a royal pain in the ass. So, we've got a professional doing the entire downstairs (less the laundry room) and the common area upstairs. She's done half the downstairs, and none of the upstairs (as of yesterday). But it looks awesome. Granted, for nearly $1,300, it should.

So that's about it. I don't know if we're going over there at all today or not -- probably to see the paint. I'll try to remember to take the CAMERA and get some pics that I can shoot up here for you folks to see. :)

Hope everyone's doing well.

:/ I need a flickr account or something.

Agh

I have teh dumb! I cannot brain today. :/

I'm working on this hugely complex abstract problem at work and I can't figure it out!

And it's not really even that big of a problem. I just can't get it.

I hate days like this. It's like there's a concrete wall enclosing my mind. If I could just break through, I could have this figured out in an hour.

*Grumble*

NOTHING

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The culmination of the house

I'll have to get some more pictures to post on the net, I guess, just so people can see what I'm talking about in entries like this.

But, it's all starting to come together. We got a lot of work done in the yard (though not nearly enough). So, that looks nice. We've gotten a lot of work done inside as well. This weekend will really only be our second weekend working in the house, so I guess that's not too bad. We're planning to start painting, and that should make a WORLD of difference. We've gotten most of the holes patched and the caulking done. Laura's cleaned the kitchen and dining room really well, and even the living room now. We’ll start painting the ceilings first. We’re just painting all of them white.

It’s hard to describe the color that’s in there now. It’s a white…ISH. But it’s like a white that’s been stained by someone smoking in the house for years. Mind you, the previous owners didn’t smoke, so the house doesn’t smell of smoke or anything like that. That was just their choice of colors. It’s so drab, it’s boring. All of the trim in there accentuates the yellowy of the walls with a light beige color, imitating an off-white. Not really very attractive.

So, we’re going to put some color on the walls. Nothing drastic, mind you, but something. The ceilings and trim should really pop with the sharp white contrasting against the colors that we chose/choose to put on the walls. It should make such a huge difference to get it painted. I’m really looking forward to it.

TONIGHT, however, Laura’s making me climb under the front porch and deck. We’re putting down some landscaping sheets under both and covering them with a light colored pebble of some kind. Probably going to stop by Lowe’s and get that tonight. That should help to spruce up the front of the house nicely. I’m not sure how it’ll look under the deck, but we’ll see. The deck is a good 4 feet off the ground in some places. There’s a small slope away from the back of the house. *shrug* We’ll see!

:)

Like a day off!

Wow, sunday was a beast. We had about 12-15 people over at the house out in the yard doing yard work, inside doing house work. Laura's uncle installed some celing fan's (he's an electrician, and actually had to run the wires to the switches and cut holes in the ceilings of the 2 rooms). My dad helped out with locks, and cutting down a gigantic bush with a chain saw. A ton of people helped out with yard work, and a bunch more hleped out inside.

Still more fun, I got to break in the new grill. We fired it up and cooked 12 burgers, and about 15 hot dogs. (not all at the same time) Worked well though. I finished getting all the new locks put on the doors, and I got the new kitchen faucet installed. I patched most of the holes, tightened the railing on the front porch, we tore down the defunct swingset in the back yard. Granny got that a bunch of that ugly ass wall-paper down from the master bathroom, and Ellen got a lot of the grass cut.

The grass is thick as hell in the yard, and it's that nasty clumpy kind too, so it's hard to cut. Her lawn mower kept cutting off, so she only got about half of it done. My boss at work is going to give me one that he had that stopped working. He dropped it off with someone to get it fixed, so as soon as that's done, hopefully I'll snag that from him. HOPEFULLY it'll be this week so that I can finish cutting the grass, because having HALF the yard cut looks kinda funny. Though, it is the half of the yard that's visible from the street, so it makes it look way better than it did.

Laura and her aunt and my mom and several others tore up a bunch of the bushes, weeds, and spider grass from the front yard lining the driveway and side walk. That improved the look of the front of the house dramatically. Anyway, sunday was a crazy day. Today, we didn't do ANYTHING, and it was good. Nice and relaxing.

Also, http://www.lunarwars.net

:)

So!

We got in there today. We had a painting contractor come by to give us an estimate on some painting that we wanted to get done, and she was able to give us a lot of little pointers about fixing up the walls. There are tons of little holes in the walls where the previous owners had pictures hung and shit. They had a LOT of pictures.

Anyway, so we got some stuff to fill in the holes and a bunch of other shit we're gonna need for painting, calking (!?), etc. We spent over a hundred bucks there, but it's okay. There still aren't any chairs. We need to take some of those over there. Hehe.

Anyway! Good times. We didn't do any work tonight because Dave came over and so did Mom and Dan, and we showed them around. But it was good times.

Yay!

We just closed on the house!

Off to work.

Just a typical, lazy weekend

Laura and I pretty much just hung around here all weekend. It was pretty nice, very relaxing. We just got back from her choir thing at church a while ago. It was really good. On the way home, we stopped by Chung Hing (or whatever) to get chinese for dinner. Omg, awesome.

I ended up with some boneless spare ribs and pork fried rice. I only ate about half of it, but that was still more than enough food. Anyway, it was really good.

So, back to work tomorrow! I reeeally hope we hear back from the attorney about the house pretty early in the morning. I hate just not knowing what's going on with things. it's always easier to just KNOW one way or the other. Anyway!

Hope everyone has a goodnight!

Mother F*ckers.

So, our whole weekend's shot. Here's how it went.

We got to the attourney's office at 12:30 on Friday, all ready to sign the paperwork to close on the house. We sit there for about 15 minutes before the attourney (who I really don't like, because he seems like an arrogant jerk, but I only got to talk to him for about 15 minutes anyway, so no matter). We get back to the back conference room thingy to start signing the papers, and he tells us that the sellers haven't approved the HUD (?!) and haven't wired the money that they owe and have to have wired before we can sign everything to close. Apparently, the closing attourney for the sellers was slow getting the paperwork to them, and so they didn't have time to look over it and approve it before we could get in there to close.

Since the house is actually owned by a relocation company, and not the people that live there, they're closed ont he weekends, and thus can't do anything over the weekend. We'll have to wait until Monday at the earliest to hear whether or not they've seen, approved, and paid the costs that they're required to pay before we can close on the house.

Needless to say, I was peeved. So, we sit here all weekend, without a house, and without any plans, because our plans DID include cleaning, patching, etc the house and working in there.

SO! I guess we'll be waiting until next week to do anything. In the meantime, we're going to see Shrek 3. Which, should be fun, but it doesn't help the fact that we have no house. :/

Woo, got the keys!

We went and did the final walkthrough on the house tonight, and ended up walking away with the keys. We're closing at 12:30 tomorrow. I have to work, but I can't imagine doing too much at work. I doubt my mind'll be there.

The house was about what I was expecting. It looked significantly larger without all of those people's huge furniture in there. The back yard is really nice, and I'm really looking forward to getting out there and working on it. The walls are all so plain and drab, and there are little holes everywhere where there were pictures hung and stuff. We're going to have to do a bunch of patching, and a shit-load of painting. it's going to look amazing once we're done though. And, we've got TWO MONTHS to work on it. :D

I can't wait. Some of you should come by and see the before picture. hehe.

Wowsies

So, I'm sitting here on the sofa watching a program on how fish sticks are made.

Amazing.

We're closing on our house in less than TWO DAYS. I can't believe it. Also, I can't wait. It should be so much fun to get in there and do some work on the place. :D That's about all I've been thinking about lately.

Greetings from the home front.

Yeah, I'm sitting on my sofa getting ready to play WoW again. I haven't played recently.

That's about all, we ran a shit-load of errands today to pick up a butt-load of cleaning supplies and some food for next week. (The food was for next week, the cleaning supplies are more for next weekEND after we close on the house. :)

It's like 90 degrees outside today, it's insanely hot. I just want to stay in here in the air conditioner and not do anything. Although that would get somewhat boring. :)

I know, I know.

It's so spotty when I get a chance to post. It's really crazy. I guess if I were more consistant with it, it would be more fun to read.

So, let's see. Been married for a month and 10 days now. It's about the same as it was before, nothing really changed. It took me forEVER to get used to wearing my ring, but I feel sorta wierd withOUT it on now. So, I guess that makes it pretty official. I would say "I love the married life!" and I do, but it really isn't much different than it was before. :D

We're closing on our HOUSE on Friday (next Friday), June 1st. I can't wait, it should be a total blast. I'm really looking forward to having something to really work on and "customize" or whatever. It's a pretty nice house, built in '92. It's a 2 story colonial out in the "far west end" near ridgefield and john rolfe parkway (for those of you familiar). It's all white (as far as the walls, AND the outside go), and it has dark green shutters. We're going to leave the outside pretty much as-is for a while, though it's going to need to be re-sided sometime in the future.

The inside is getting a facelift though. We're repainting pretty much everything. It has new carpeting in the family room (sort of the normal tan-beige color). The dining room and entryway/hall is a hardwood. The Kitchen and eat/in area is a linoleum tile, but it's not too bad looking. The entire upstairs is also newly carpeted. It's about 1500 sq. feet, and should prove to be quite an adventure in adulthood. haha. Although I'm a few years into my career, married, and just about to buy a house, I still feel like a kid half the time. :P Nutzo.

Anyway, that's what's going on in my life. And, I guess that's all that matters, since it IS my journal, after all. :P

Wow.

I'm getting married in 2 days.

Busy as balls

Wow, today was crazy.

Good crazy.

We get to see 3 of the houses that we wanted to see tomorrow. I'm excited.

And (though I probably shouldn't post this on the internet, but i must brag), my credit score is 779. :D

Houses!! :D

I'm pretty excited. Laura and I finally got pre-approved or whatever for a mortgage the other day, so we finally got to start looking at houses. We spoke with a realtor a few days ago and she set us up on their portal so that we can really start looking at houses. She started us off with a really broad search area, and there were about 73 houses that matched our search criteria. Maybe half of those were in our price range, and out of all those, we found 3 that we really liked. They were close to home, good size, nice layout, pretty new, nice sized yard.. very cool.

I really can't wait until we get to actually start touring some. We're getting married in the middle of April, and our rent comes up for renewal at the end of JUly or early August. So, we're probably going to try to get out of the Apartment then and into a house, so we can start actually earning some Equity on where we live. I'm pretty excited too. I'm looking forward to being able to do house work and yard work. Make some minor renovations if we need to, and do some painting. I haven't had a chance to do anything like that in a long time, and I've gotten really really lazy. So, it'll be fun to be able to actually get up and do some stuff around the house.

Anyway. That's about all that's been on my mind the last couple of days. :/ Work = usual.

Rainy Days Suck

It's shitty outside today. It's friday, which is good. No more work for a whole 2 days! Woo.

All my geek friends are leaving on Sunday to go on to the annual geek-fest lan party down in Nags Head, and I don't get to go this year. On one hand, I'm a little dissappointed because it's always fun, but on the other, I'm sorta glad that I don't have to worry about it. Also, it's going to be nice to be able to go on a Honeymoon in April, and I'll be able to use the rest of my vacation when we move into a new house.. hopefully this summer. :D

PS, look forward, because I'm sure I'll be recruiting some of you guys to help me move again. lol.

Fkn Dominion. hehe.

So, we get home yesterday and there's a notice on our door that Virginia Power is going to cut off the power from 6:00 to 6:45 this morning. Shit. Our alarm clock goes off at 6:30. What if the power's not in? So, we scramble around yesterday to find batteries to put in the alarm clocks so hopefully they'll still go off and wake us up, and I set the alarm on my phone too.

Go to sleep, and at like 3:00, the power goes off. Wakes us both up, and it's a pain in the ass to go back to sleep. Then, around 4:30 or 5:00 rolls around, and we start waking up.. just KNOWING that the power's going to go off again any minute now. Goes off around 5:45 (pretty much still awake) and comes back up at like 6:05. Great. So the alarm clock does go off as it should, so I disable the alarm on my phone. Noo, couldn't be that easy. That goes off too.

So, I don't know. Just a pain in my ass. I didn't sleep like well at ALL last night and I woke up with a crazy bad headache this morning because of it. I hope it doesn't come back.