Reality Check!

    Well, the high of owning our own home lasted a good while, but alas, the reality of being a homeowner has smacked us in the face (twice)!  To begin with, one of the largest items on our to do list, the flooring in the four bedrooms, seemed to be costing us a bit more than we budgeted for.  Fortunately, after speaking with some people at work (thank you kind, smart people), I realized that we were jumping into a price that was insane.  While we knew it was high, we never had anything to compare it to.  Since that was settled, we felt a lot of relief!
   Dun, Dun Dun....after enjoying a day at Disney, Steve and I went to the new house to do some painting....we walked in...to 86 degree heat.  Now, for Florida, that doesn't seem high, but it was in the 70's outside.

image found here

   Yep, you got it, the AC is not working properly.  Now, we have to wait until Monday to see about a repairman to come out.  A very nice friend came over and, after speaking with her brother, an AC repairmen, told us that it may be the compressor motor.  We are hoping, praying, that the fix is cheap.  Our pockets have not had time to recover from the money put down on our house.
   While we sweat it out, literally and figuratively, how many of you have dealt with similar scenarios?  Any advice? 

Wallpaper Border: 2, Amanda: 0

Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I HATE wallpaper borders.  Not the looks (though they aren't my style), but man, have you ever tried to remove those suckers?!  At Home Depot, the paint man Tim, responded with, "That's unfortunate," when I asked how to remove them.  He told me to get DIF, a paper scorer, and a paper scraper.
     A little while later we were on our way.  We got to our new home, Friday night to discover that the electricity, and water were turned off.  A night off, we figured, and we'd get it turned on the next day....NOPE...apparently the utility commission doesn't even have a phone service on the weekends, let alone can they start service!  UGH!  So, Steve and I meandered over thinking we'd get a bunch done in the day time.
   Thankfully the back bedroom wallpaper was adhesive backed and very easy to remove.  So we painted that room.  PURRRTTTY!!!!  This room is gonna be my craft room.  The color is Sunken Pool by Martha Stewart (love that broad!)

    Then the trouble started...I decided to try to de-wallpaper the master bathroom.  Why I chose a room with no windows to work in on a seriously hot day with no AC or water to drink, I have no idea.  Anywho...I learned a few things.  When removing wallpaper:

• keep things well ventilated
• pull the top layer off before applying DIF.  This is the colorful layer (with pineapples, or flowers, or continents in our case), See Photo below.



You can see the top layer vs the paper layer pretty well in this photo

• after, spray DIF heavily on the paper.
• use a paper scraper to remove paper
• YOU DON'T need to score the paper, at least in our experience, it only hindered things.

This is only one third of the border!!!

So, I learned these tricks because I spent five hours Saturday night throwing EVERYTHING up out of my stomach, and had only removed about five feet of border.Partially my fault for the dehydration, but I should have gotten way more completed for all my hard work! SOOOO, not worth it.  We discovered the tricks throughout the next day.  

Anyone else have a similar experience (I hope not!!!)

We are Homeowners!!!!

And in case we couldn't tell by all the paperwork we've signed, we spent enough at Home Depot to surely remember we actually own a place, lol!  Here is a photo of our lovely home!  We don't mind the green, but a neighbor has already requested we paint!  (We have a bunch of other things to do first!)

Please excuse the poor photo!

So, that was such a huge hurdle, it still doesn't seem real.  Sorry it's taken me so long to get this posted (there's another one I've started to follow soon after).  We've been trying to get the pictures sent over/paint/de-wallpaper, etc).  Thanks for stopping by!!!

Bamboo vs. Cork

So, as I mentioned before, we are closing on our HOUSE in  2 days!!!!!  Anywho, we are definitely going to have to change the flooring in the Master bedroom.  As of right now we are looking into the Eco-friendly option of bamboo.  We've been searching bamboo vs cork here: www.contempofloorcoverings.com; www.ehow.com. We also watched some informative videos over at lumberliquidators.com

We are thinking a lighter shade right now.  Tell me your thoughts.Of course...price is always something to factor (especially since we have to buy a refrigerator too!)

AGHHH!!!! I just cant wait....the surreal feeling is starting to clear up, now I know we are so close!!!!

<3
Amanda

Beautiful Wedding Weekend!!

   Over the past weekend, my hubby and I flew home (Thursday) for my best friend Casey's wedding.  It was absolutely gorgeous!  My friend and her hubby were the happiest people around!  And they looked amazing!  The hall and church were so beautiful with exposed beams.   I wish the weekend/wedding didn't end so quickly! It was so nice to see friends and her family (who are practically my own)! We had a wonderful time, but before we knew it, it was back to Florida Sunday afternoon for work on Monday!  I miss my friends already!  I also wish I had time to spend with family!  What a whirlwind! 
   This week is going to be crazy as well since we will be CLOSING on our house this Thursday!  I plan on posting some pics of the exterior of the house as soon as possible!  YAY!  What a great week!!!  How was your weekend????
<3 Amanda

Paint Party!

     Now that we know we are going to have a home (much sooner than we last thought!) We have finally started to really think about paint colors.  Right now the master bedroom is lavender walls with a wallpaper border and magenta (ish) carpets (not our style).  We are hoping to get bamboo flooring and we are currently thinking a soft grey for the walls.  The rooms colors are going to be very spa-like (white, grey, blue, khaki).  Do you have a favorite shade? Brand?  I was very overwhelmed at all the "Shades of Grey" at Lowe's yesterday!  lol.  PS...am I spelling grey correctly?  I always get confused about the  e or the a.....tee heee!!!!

   I will definitely be posting some before and afters once we have the house! (plus fun ones of us with the keys and being dorks!)  I just don't feel right posting the ones we have of the current owner's stuff.  They are a very nice couple (so we've been told) and I feel bad for the situation they are in. 

CLOSING DATE!!!!

That's right!  We finally have it!  I want to shout it from the rooftops!  I've heard so many horror stories of going past the date, and since we've waited so long, it all seems so surreal!  I can't believe we are going to be homeowners!!!!  How wonderful will that be!?  Yippeeeeeee!!!  As of May 3rd, Steve and I will have our home. We are going to overlap our apartment and the house for a month just to try to get things in order (ie painting!) before we have to move things around!


Wahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!