Sunday, April 18, 2010
It's Official!
We are now homeowners! And we are very excited about our new house with its four bedrooms (plus one unfinished bedroom in the basement), three bathrooms, two family rooms, two car garage, screened patio, and .84 acre plot of land with animal rights. We are scheduled to actually move into our new house next Saturday.
We got a good deal on the house, in part because it needs some work. The previous owner was an elderly lady who really wasn't able to keep up the property very well, particularly the yard. Nothing was really cleaned before she left either. So, we have a job cut out for us, but it will be worth it. Things aren't in that bad of shape either, particularly compared to several other homes we looked at. Right now we are particularly busy though trying to finish a lot of painting, flooring, and minor repairs before we move in.
Later on, after we are a bit more settled, we will have people over to our house. But until then, and for those who are too far away to come see it right now, here are some pictures (which were taken before the previous owner had moved out).
Here is our front room. If you look carefully, you will see it is tinted pink. In actuality, it is not painting with a pink tinted paint. It has been painted with a single thin layer badly applied white paint over a bright pastel pink coat of paint. The rest of the "white" areas in the front part of our house are like this too. This is a problem we hope to fix eventually, but we don't have time or resources to do it immediately.
Here is our dinning area. If you look through the window you can sort of see our backyard, which extends to the gray brick wall behind the shed. The shed is set up for animals with a tack room and hay room. However, no one has done anything with it for years. The inside of the shed is stacked full a dirty, dusty, grimy junk from all the various previous owners. Actually, the previous owner left quite a bit of junk in the backyard and some random stuff in our garage that we will have to clean out and throw away. As soon as we are able to, we will clean it out, fix it up, and make it usable again.
Here is the kitchen. We especially like our black and silver granite counter-tops. As soon as we were able to get into our house Saturday, we spent the afternoon, evening, and night scrubbing down everything in it, which it badly needed. We also discovered our dishwasher doesn't work. The bright pastel blue you see here was put on just as sloppily as the rest of the paint in the front area of the house. We are going to repaint the blue areas to be a gray-green color.
These pictures are of our downstairs family room, a half floor from the kitchen. The double doors lead out to the screened in patio.
Here is the downstairs bedroom. It is some shade of pastel blue too.
This is the basement. It includes the one thing the previous owners left that we are actually really excited to have: an electronic dartboard. There is also a cold storage room down here.
This upstairs room is going to be the studio and will be painted the same color as the kitchen. We will also be installing a wood laminate for the floor.
This is the master room and master bath, which we will also be re-painting before we move in.
This is the third room upstairs, also painted a pastel pink. We will be repainting it as soon as we are able to, but I doubt we will have time before moving in.
Here is the hall bathroom upstairs. This room by far has the worst decoration. It is covered with patterned pink wall paper. Yuck! I don't think we will have time before we move in, but this room will definitely be de-wallpapered and repainted as soon as we can manage it.
After we re-do some of the rooms, we will post some updated pictures. Until then, you can just wish us many happy home-improvement hours...
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Some Funny Birthday Gifts
Last weekend we celebrated my mom's birthday. As is common on such occasions in my family, along with more practical gifts, my mom was given some excellent gag gifts as well.
This is a thick-soled sandal birdhouse that my aunts found to give my Mom. This gift is all the better since we have sort of an inside joke about birdhouses in our family...
And here my mom is scratching her head with the pink tinted glass hand (intended to be used as a ring holder or something like that) that Nate and I gave her.
This is a thick-soled sandal birdhouse that my aunts found to give my Mom. This gift is all the better since we have sort of an inside joke about birdhouses in our family...
And here my mom is scratching her head with the pink tinted glass hand (intended to be used as a ring holder or something like that) that Nate and I gave her.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Frary Peak Adventure
Last weekend we went on another hike at Antelope Island (we bought the annual pass and are determined to get our money's worth). For this post, I thought I'd give you the special-features-with-cast-commentary or play-by-play version of our latest hike, since it was one of the more adventurous experiences we've had. These first two pictures show the layout of the hike and have markers corresponding to the commentary below. If you have Google Earth you can open up this file and read the commentary in each marker as you follow the path. Otherwise, you'll want to open up the first two pictures in a new window to see them full size as you read. The yellow line represents the path we followed on the way to the peak, and the green lines are the path on the way down. The majority of the hike was nothing too special. There were some steep climbs at times, and some pretty views, but the adventure really starts towards the end, so that's where the commentary starts.
This is just one of the pictures along the way that we thought was pretty.
Open this Google Earth File to see more details
- This is where we thought to ourselves "why is the trail going down so much now? The peak is right there! We should be able to just walk along the ridge line. "
- "Boy this is slippery and muddy and steep! There are foot prints, so i guess we're on the trail still, but it's sure hard to tell otherwise. This trail is going to be really hard to come back down."
- "Man! These stairs are steep. We probably couldn't even make it up this part without them."
- We made it! Huh, there were some better views from other places along the trail. At least we can sit down and rest and have a snack...
Ok, we have a little more than an hour and a half to make it back. That should be plenty of time.
- "Oh look. there's a path that goes along this other side of the ridge. Maybe that won't be as slippery and steep."
- Well I can't really see much of a path anymore, but from this overlook point, It looks like we should be able to make it across the ridge line.
- "I can't make it accross that Nate! My limbs aren't as long as yours"..."Here, I'll help you, just don't look down...ok, whew!, you made it!" (This probably wasn't such a great idea, but we can't really go back now)
- Ok, I'll go ahead and scope it out. You stay here, Rebecca.
- Nope
- Nope
- Nope
- This is probably the easiest place to go down. (and it wasn't very easy)
- These rocks are really loose. I'll come back up and we'll try over there. (This is taking a whole lot longer than the way we came!)
- We made it back to the trail! Whew! Now let's book it! (We have about 40 minutes to make it back the rest of the way before the trail closes.)
This is just one of the pictures along the way that we thought was pretty.
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