Mud room and morning room question!

Hope you all had a merry Christmas!  We have been enjoying our long weekend with a small mud room update.  I bought a wall mounted shoe rack and it has made all the difference.  Now my son doesn't have to duck under coats to hang his backpack.

By the way we had all our floor squeaks fixed.  They tried to pull the "you are out of warranty" card but thankfully it was all documented from before our warranty expired.

Also, has anyone made their morning room something other than a dining room?  We are seriously considering moving our dining table into our formal living and using our morning room as a coffee station with a computer and sitting area.  The morning room is so big and we think we'd get more use out of it in other ways---but our dining room table is so long and would barely fit into the formal unless we take the chairs off the ends.  We just don't eat at the table as much for the amount of space it takes up and we don't use the formal living room at all.  So why not put a table we don't use into a room we don't use and make our morning room a cozy little area to hang out?  Thoughts??

floor squeaks

As winter approaches, so do more and more floor squeaks...I can hear my husband wherever he is upstairs just by him walking...

How much of this is normal?  When it warms back up will it stop?  Or does it warrant a complaint?

Extra cabinets put to use

Our new cabinets are installed and they let us keep these.  Not too shabby for garage junk lol!

Ready for fall

My porch is ready for some fall!  Sad we didn't get that deck done and we had to scrub mildew and algae off the concrete but I'm excited to enjoy it like this for this year and can't wait what next year brings back here.

Finished...for now

Gotta give RAVE reviews to Timberlake cabinets.  They came out and replaced our separating cabinets and re-leveled another and they are looking fab!!  The best part?  They let us keep the bad ones!  Hubs is going to mount them in the garage somewhere, woo!

Rite rug came as well and looked at the issue in the loft where you can feel the flooring slump down a little, they pulled everything back and the subfloor was fine.  The pad was fine.  They could not find an issue there.  They put some leveling stuff there but now that they are gone, I can still feel a little hill that slopes down to the loft...I don't get it.  Hubs said he looked with them and could not find an issue.  Oh well, letting that one go.

For now, our house is done.  We have had to take a break from projects until we get caught up on the ones we have not finished--staining the fence being the main one.  We have the stain but have not finished so this weekend that is on the list.  We need to do some touch up painting as well from our 10 month fix where they fixed all the nail pops.  Did I mention I hate painting though?  ugh

October is full of festivals and a camping trip, family coming to visit so not much going on until November/December when we plan to paint the whole house.  Bummed we didn't get to the deck yet but there is only so much money for all we want to do and have going on.  May have to wait on that until Feb or so.

But for now, my house smells like pumpkin everything and I love it!  Happy fall y'all!!

cross your fingers

I have both Rite Rug and Timberlake scheduled in 2 weeks to come in and finish those pesky 10 month things I have been working on for THREE.MONTHS.

I'm looking forward to being done with the whole building process and quirkiness that has required all these repairs.

Now we are taking care of that 1 year maintenance list, anyone done the bleach pour in that thing in the attic yet?  I know we have to buy some crazy filter for up there too.  Life has been too busy to stop and deal with that quite yet.  But soon.

And not so surprisingly, we never got around to the deck, the camper took priority over that.  That will be coming eventually though...  but first will likely be painting the rest of the inside.  SICK OF DIVINE WHITE.

Happy fall y'all!

New home ;)

So things around here house-wise have been going really great, and we have slowed down on having any projects to do.  We decided it would be a great time to venture out and buy something we have always wanted...

A little pop up camper!  This area is great to camp in and we can even go down and camp at the beach year round.  We tent camped last year and it was miserable...none of of slept good and couldn't even hang 2 nights...but we walked by a nice couple with a little popup and asked them about it.  It was an 8 ft box which is perfect for our little family of 3.

We looked around and found this adorable little one not far from us.  I loved the navy blue so much, so many of them seem to be green.

It's definitely nice and cozy, full size bed on one end, twin on the other (maybe a little bigger but not much).  The dinette also folds to a bed if we needed the extra room.

We bought it and met the seller at Walmart which was perfect, because after we attached it to our truck, we went in walmart and got most everything we needed to give it a little "flair".  Here are some before pics:

Again, I loved the Navy so much!  This is the twin bed

Sink/fridge

Full size bed, sink and storage cabinet.

It came with a fancier stove, with a little toaster oven.  I'll take what I can get.  You will notice the white linoleum, wood grain cabinets and gold handles.  Blah.

After, tada!  Had to take multiple pics to get everything so I hope you can envision it :)  We painted the cabinets white, with black handles.  We painted the kitchen table a gray countertop paint, but I'm not sure I totally love it because everything else is a little more on the taupe side, so we haven't done the rest of the countertops yet until we decide.  This is looking at the full size bed.

 Looking down to twin size bed.  

I purchased bedding just for the camper, we all know it's no fun dragging in and out your own bedding that smells like campfires.  This way I can wash it and put it back in, ready for the next trip.  Comforters $17 at Walmart, sheets $17 at walmart and chevron pillow $8 at walmart.  That's a steal!!

Adorable rug which I think makes the whole thing more modern.  We laid wood vinyl strips to cover up that ugly linoleum.  It looks pretty and took only 14 strips at $2 a pop!

We bought a storage rack to keep essentials (because we all know the storage capacity is not NOT there in pop-ups)

 Another view of the full size.  I brought in a little lamp, a fan and a bin to keep fresh towels.

I had make it mine with an "R" :)

View from the door.  A little trouble with the paint here...the sink flips over and we had to put some felt pads to keep the paint from sticking...lovely semi gloss

Another view looking at the twin bed

One last pic, I love it so much!  I had originally thought I'd go a completely different way with the colors but anything else just looked too bright and wild and I would have had to reupholster the cushions which A. I don't have a sewing machine and B. I just didn't want to do it.  So, I tried to keep with the colors but make it more modern.  

Can't wait to take it out this weekend and try it out!  Some memory foam pads may be in our future ;)

service = :(

We have been in our home almost 13 months and I am still fighting to get my 10 month repairs finished up.

The cabinet people came in last week and verified that yes, our cabinets are separating and they have authorized 2 new cabinets and will be rehanging one that is not quite level with the rest.  They are also ordering a few back panels on the back of the island where someone scratched it and then tried to touch it up with paint...  um yeah.

On another note, the PM who is arranging all these repairs gets a thumbs down.  If you remember, I had to fight with him over our squeaky stairs, our half dead tree...and now I have been trying to get him to fix a sunken seam at the top of the stairs/loft where you can feel that the floor sinks.  It has been THREE MONTHS.

He keeps saying Rite Rug will be calling, they never do.  I will give him over a week before bugging him again and then he says he will check on it, then I never hear back.

The last email from him told ME to contact Rite Rug corporate.  Well I called that number that I found on google because he didn't give me the decency to give me the number, and sure enough no one there was able to help me because my home is thru Ryan and they transferred me to some random extension where I left a message 6 days ago with no reply.

This is annoying!

So I submit a service request on Ryan's website for the same issue, which now my PM is going to contact me again and here I go back in the circle of waiting on him.

So the moral of the story is, while the house is in progress, THAT PM is awesome.  And he's awesome past the point of you buying the house while he still has you under his warranty (aka his survey!!).  But once we flipped from him to the regional guy....it has been a completely different and frustrating experience and I am READY to get my repairs finished and call it a day with him.

Fence stain

Well we got away for about a year without having to stain our fence but I knew our time was coming :)

We got a letter from the HOA asking us to stain it within 30 days and that was abiut 25 days ago lol.  My hubs was out of town so he got back yesterday and off we went to get the stain.

We bought a sprayer a few months back (remember the bathroom fiasco) and a 5 gal bucket of SW Belvedere Tan mixed at Lowe's.   So far we got the front done and it only took 10 min or so thanks to that sprayer!

I love it and think it looks great.  I am sure our neighbor will be getting a note soon too :)

Master bedroom again

So we had to make a few more adjustments in our bedroom.  If there is one complaint I have about the florence, its that the walls don't line up where they need to be in important spaces.  Our living room has the TV off center due to the small wall across from the couch and in our bedroom the wall across from our bed is not centered due to the closet.  After enjoying our suite for a few nights I would find my husband on my side of the bed first because it was straight on the TV and he didnt like having to turn his head apparently lol.  So we did what I thought I would never do and we pushed over the bed so it was no longer centered.   Doing this put my nightstand on the window.  However, we loved it and my husband no joke was doing pirouettes on between his side and the wall because he had so much room!  What was great is it made our sitting area smaller which we never use anyway and we were able to move the table we had into our guest bedroom as a nightstand.   We also put a little shelf we had right outside the bathroom for some extra towels since we have no linen closet in our dinky bathroom.  Love it!

Including pics of the guest and living room.   I just love my living room, makes me happy! Oh and we put the mirror back in the guest room that we had tried in the powder room, because it was a square it just wasn't big enough for my son to see himself while brushing his teeth.  I replaced it with this one from ross for $14!

10 month stuff...still

So, 10 days ago we had our 1 year anniversary of buying our home!!  Hard to believe it's already been a year, and it's been one of the best years.  We just love our home, we LOVE our neighborhood and we have the best neighbors.  Really blessed to be where we are at.

Remember those gaps in my cabinets?  Well the tech that came out, said they needed to be replaced and would have to go up the chain to make that happen.  Here we are 1.5 months later and I'm just now getting a call that a supervisor is going to come out and look at them.  Next Tuesday they will come and see all the beautiful gaps that are visible from a mile away on my gorgeous cream cabinets, that by the way were the MOST expensive option so yeah...they are going to make them right.

We are still waiting to find out when the carpet people are coming, we have a few spots that feel like they have sunk, and a few floor creaks still.  Right at the top of the loft you can feel where the floor seam dips, not sure how they are going to fix that, but I will tell you I am tired of my house settling and am ready for it to stop.  Never could have guessed how annoying that would be.

We still have not started our deck but are hoping to over Labor Day weekend...


Stay tuned!

Man office

We turned the man loft/tv area into a man office.  We never watched tv in tbere anyways and I pretty much live in my new bedroom tv suite...love it!!!

So here is the rest of our ikea stockup.  That desk top was $55 in the As Is section, marked down due to a scratch on the underside.  He used 2 brackets from lowes to attach to the wall and the 2 black metal legs are from ikea.

The chair is an extra we had, also from ikea.  The clamp on lamp was $8 and the lobster tray was also from there.  Everything else was stuff we had.  I think it looks great but still manly enough for him :)

Ikea stock up

We went to ikea to get the glass top to our dresser that they were out of last time.  Its about an hour away so of course we never end up buying just 1 thing :)

We got some cute new lamps in our bedroom that take up much less space on our nightstands, a new lamp downstairs, a pillow cover I have been trying to snag the past 3 times and its always sold out, and a bunch of desk pieces.  We found a desk top piece in the As is section and bought legs to go with it.  The man loft will eventually be my husband's home office which he will use to work from home occasionally.

But the best part is we needed new hangers for our snazzy new closet.  We had a mish mosh of hangers from over the years and they had black slim line hangers.  4 for $0.39.  39 cents!!  We got 260 for less than $20 and it gave our closet such a cleaner appearance!

Because blogger doesn't allow me to post between pics on my phone:
Glass piece on dresser $29 (dresser $199)
Nightstand lamps $29 each
Black hangers $0.39/4 pack
Black and white stripe pillow cover $5
Floor lamp $19.99

I love Ikea and you can't beat the prices.  However if you don't like putting things together from scratch, it may not be the place for you ;) so tell me, do you love ikea??

Master bedroom sanctuary

Over the weekend we decided to tackle a little DIY inexpensive project.  The closet in the Florence leaves much to be desired and it just wasn't working for us.  We purchased a new dresser from Ikea for $199 and I love it!!  We took the tv from the loft and got some nicer hampers and it just feels so much more like a place I want to hang out and watch movies.

We also spent $148 at Lowes on some new closet pieces and you can't get cheaper than that!  While I would have loved a fancy closet system,  our closet is just so tiny that I think its not worth it.  The closet had rails all the way around but the corners were unusable making even less space.  We removed the back piece and put this fabulous huge mirror there instead, LOVE!  $50 at home goods!

Then my hubs raised up the one rack we had and added a second rack and installed a shoe rack,  it is awesome.  He hasn't yet finished his side but he is going to put his rack up high with a second one below but no shoe rack :)

Overall an inexpensive way to make our room feel a little more fancy and cozy.  Our living room couch is not super ideal to sprawl out and watch movies so now we have a better spot.

Question: now that the loft is without a tv...we are trying to figure out what to make that space.   A gym is out...what else could we do there?  I can't see putting a tv there and having 3....

Thanks in advance!

New tree!

Well my efforts have paid off.  My half dead maple is gone and my snazzy new river birch is in!!! 

It is smaller but they grow fast and I am just happy happy happy to have this fixed to my satisfaction!

Still waiting on getting a few floor squeaks fixed and our separating cabinets are waiting for approval to be replaced.  After that, my house is good as new!

Powder room spruce up

We decided to purchase a paint sprayer because we will soon need to stain our fence.  We also thought we could use it to paint indoors.

We tested it out today in the powder room.  We had over 1/2 gallon left of SW Halcyon Green and thought it would look nice in there.  My husband taped it all up and went to town on it. 

I would definitely say it was more of a pain than just rolling and do not think we will use it indoors again.   It got overspray all over the ceiling,  leaked on the molding,  couldn't get behind the sink or toilet and we still had to go cut in up at the ceiling with a brush.  Major headache for such a small room.

We took a mirror from the spare bedroom to give it less of a builder standard look.  I like it!  I put the powder room mirror in the spare bedroom over the dresser and it doesn't look terrible but I may replace it eventually.

I forgot how much I HATE painting!  Ugh!  Much more of that to come over the next few months though.

10 month update

We had our 10 month inspection on Monday and a lot of good came out of it so far.

All the drywall and minor stuff is fixed/being fixed with completion of the drywall this Saturday.

Cabinets that were separating: we are getting 2 new cabinets in the corner by the sink where the major separations are happening.  Cabinet guy says the house has settled and pulled the cabinets -- RH rep says there's no way the house caused it...yeah whatever.  Just fix it.  I guess it had to go up the chain of command for approval.  These cabinets were top of the line so I expect them to look as such, so I'm glad they haven't just tried to fill the cracks with wax again.

Front yard tree:  I expected to lose this battle.  Half of our tree came dead, as in when they planted it, it was without leaves on the whole front.  PM told me it was because it was on the highway at 75 mph and would come back in the spring--I did not buy that but told him I would wait until spring to see.  Spring is here, and surprise!  That side is still leave-less.  RH rep tried to hem and haw that it would get better, other limbs would grow over it and cover it...but my husband would not take that answer.  If it never gets better and eventually all dies, then it will cost us quite a bit of money to get rid of it, so we want them to do it now.  He finally agreed to get us a new tree...and it gets better...the landscaper said he has a river birch and that we can have it!  SCORE!  I am partial to river birch, we had one at our old house and I just loved it, and was sad when we had to move.  So, I'm happy to have one back.  (Although, I won't officially believe it until I see it).  Supposedly the tree we have is a $200-$300 tree so we should be getting a decent sized river birch to replace it, unlike our little ol' $20 river birch in the back yard we planted.

I just love the peeling bark and the small leaves which still let a lot of light through. We currently have a red maple, which I wouldn't have minded too much if it weren't for the dead side.

They are telling me the tree will be delivered when the next house in the community gets their landscape, so it may be a few weeks or more.  I hope sooner!

Hopefully by this Saturday, my house inside will be looking crisp and fresh again instead of sad, bumpy and gappy.  LOL.  We have family coming to see the home for the first time, next week and they are staying a week.  I want my house to look great!  

Oh, and we are currently drawing up some plans for our deck, stay tuned!  We are hoping to get started this weekend!!

I had also hoped to paint but I think that will just be more than we can handle and I can't stand an unfinished mess!