You know you got a good couch...

...when 3 people are napping on it after Thanksgiving dinner:



Our first attempt at entertaining more than just each other went went better than we could have possibly hoped. Adam and 3 of my friends were able to move the couch out the back door and into the garage. Willie seems to be feeling a little better, even though he took a few naps IN HIS LITTER BOX last night... poor guy... but he seems to be better today. The wine was flowing, the food was delicious, and a good time was had by all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One of the cats has a urinary tract infection and now diarrhea, and there's a ginormous couch sitting in our dining room where the food needs to go. There are 11 people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner in less than 4 hours. I'm sure everything will be okay, and it will be lovely, but is it too early to start drinking wine yet?

The frunchroom is really coming together.

New couch!

The master bedroom is painted.

Whew - that took basically two days of painting for 6-8 hours each day. I forgot how much work painting was, but I'm glad it's finally done. The Aura paint didn't cover nearly as well as we had hoped in the lighter color, but the darker came out pretty well. Or at least until I have a chance to look at the room in bright daylight tomorrow and find a bunch of areas that need to be retouched. The two colors came out pretty nice together, but the edges where the two colors met were really difficult to get perfect. For a few hours I actually sat there with a tiny eyeshadow brush filling in the gaps. There has to be some better way to get an accurate line in the corners... but here, have a look.





The red-orange carpet is going away as soon as I manage to get an estimate on carpet and get a plush grey up there. I've had more than a few people suggest we have wood floors upstairs, rather than carpet. But the wood floors below are the raw attic floors, which are in pretty bad shape and not worth re-doing. The rest of the house is wood, so I want the upstairs to have a nice soft carpet to put my feet on when I wake up in the morning. Of course, I may change my mind someday, but thankfully I have PLENTY of time to think about what I want before the massive Upstairs Renovation and Master Suite project actually happens, in like 2036 or something.

My dad offered to help me cut down the baseboard molding that I removed, so it's not 6" tall. That way I can re-use it and restain it to a darker color more of my liking. Thankfully Adam had the foresight to number all the pieces so I can remember how they go in the room.

Painting the master bedroom has commenced.

This morning we went to our local paint store and purchased paint for the master bedroom. We decided to do a medium greyish blue on the lower walls, and a light, airy blue on the slanty walls:



We also got some advice on painting over the wood paneling in my office, and discussed possibly painting with epoxy over the hideous bathroom tile. Turns out that painting over tile is not only a fairly involved process involving sanding and priming...but the epoxy paint itself is super noxious stuff. The paint store guy recommended that the painter wear a respirator (!) and no other humans or pets be at home during the painting (!). So I think that project is going to, uhh, be tabled for awhile.

The paint we chose to use was Benjamin Moore's Aura Paint. It's supposed to be very high quality and very low VOCs, with good coverage. The colors we chose are called "heaven on earth" and "new born's eyes".

Anyway, I'm just about done with all of the prep work, which involved removing the ugly baseboard wood, taking out about 30 nail anchors (ugh), spackling the remaining holes, sanding the spackled holes, and cleaning all of the walls with Soilax. Removing the baseboard molding was a decision I hope I am happy with. I hated the color (a medium golden brown overly lacquered wood that the POs seem very fond of) and they were like 6" tall. I'd much rather get some lower profile molding once we get new carpet.

Looks like we'll be washing dishes by hand for awhile.

So yesterday I received my letter from the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association that informed me that they have indeed run out of funding for the year, therefore I will not be receiving my $500 energy saving appliance voucher. We were going to use this money for a dishwasher, but looks like that's going to have to wait.

I am a little bummed, but based on a fellow bungalow owner's recent experience, I wasn't at all surprised that I did not get the voucher. I can only hope that next year their funding will be renewed, and that we'll get our voucher reasonably soon. I guess it's tough times for everybody, but I certainly hope that the City of Chicago continues to fund the wonderful HCBA initiative. I really am proud to own a Chicago bungalow - bungalows not only have personal and sentimental value to me, but I also feel like I own an important piece of Chicago and architectural history.

So for now, we'll have to continue to wash dishes by hand. I could just go buy one and install it, but I was so excited about being able to put the appliance voucher toward a dishwasher. There aren't really any other appliances I need or want to replace. Ah well, I can be patient.

New couch, new bed, dead car.

This week we really didn't do much of anything to the house, but we did manage to stimulate the economy by buying some furniture. In one productive Saturday afternoon in the suburbs, we managed to find not only a king-sized bed (just mattress and box spring - we still need to buy some actual bedroom furniture yet) that will go upstairs, AND a lovely microfiber sectional sofa for the living room.

The sofa is a light tan and is pretty much identical to this:



It will fill up the room quite a bit, and hopefully work really well with the half-octagon wall of windows. I'm hoping microfiber is a good choice for the cats. I know it will collect a good deal of hair, but I think anything else they'd have the potential to destroy. They like to sink their claws into anything textured, like Berber carpeting or anything tweed-like.

The couch and bed are getting delivered Now we have to figure out what to do with the other couch. It's not going to fit in the basement, and I am not super-excited about putting it upstairs, so I may put it on Craigslist and see if I can get a couple hundred bucks for it.

As for the car, well, I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with it at this point. It's most likely something with the clutch, as it's not going into gear. Off to the mechanic it will go this afternoon...and hopefully won't be a super expensive thing to fix, especially as we just got the clutch replaced a few months ago. Ugh. I guess this is part of the joys of homeownership and adulthood - there's always something in need of repair.

Comcast: A rant.

I want to start by saying that I've been a "loyal" Comcast customer for at least 6 years. That is mostly because I haven't had much of a choice in the matter - they are the only cable company where I live. I could get satellite/DSL, but then I'd have to get a phone line and pay for that as well.

I am really, really upset right now. I'm bracing myself to make yet another phone call and try to be nice, yet firm, with their customer service person. I will not take out my frustration on them - it's not that person's fault I've been dicked around by their company for the past 9 days.

So last Saturday, we had a Comcast tech come out to our new house to install basic cable and cable internet. The cable TV was put in the basement, but the installer said he didn't have "authorization" to put the cable upstairs, even though they specifically asked me how many TVs I wanted hooked up when I made the appointment. He left and said he'd make someone would call us about another appointment.

Later that night, I was about to take a shower and noticed two freshly drilled holes in the shower ceiling tile. WTF? Who else would have done this but the Comcast guy? There clearly weren't any wires needed in the bathroom, and why on earth would he need to do that??! I was livid. We also found a hole in the hardwood floor in the office upstairs...again, the hole seemed to serve no purpose. And we found holes outside in the masonry without any wires going into them. Apparently he didn't need any authorization just to drill a bunch of useless holes in our house. The guy also did a really sloppy job with the wires - they're just loosely hanging from the bricks.





So Adam got on the phone with Comcast and made a damage claim, and also mentioned that the guy left the basement a mess with wires hanging out of the ceiling. We were told that someone would contact us, and another appointment would be made to a) finish the installation and b) assess the damage.

So another appointment was made for the following Saturday, and I also spoke to the company Comcast contracts out to (they are called Matrix Communications) to assess the damage for the claim. Those people were supposed to call me to set up an appointment to view the damage to the house, but of course I'm still waiting for a call back about that.

Along comes Saturday, and no one shows up between 10 and 1. I finally get ahold of someone at Comcast, and they promise to call me back once they've spoken to a dispatcher. Of course there are promises to take care of everything and get someone out there as soon as possible. It does not happen. Then the dispatcher finally calls me, and promises that someone will get in touch with me about coming on Sunday. Of course no one calls me.

I'm just frustrated and tired of dealing with now TWO different companies. Now I'm sitting on hold, going on 10 minutes. I hate Comcast. They've made what was supposed to be a routine installation a big huge pain in my ass.

Prioritizing the Punch List

There's a lot of stuff I want to do on the house. The problem is, I don't have unlimited funds to do everything at once...who does? So now that we're more settled and some of the immediate work is done, we're trying to sort out what we want to tackle first. This is the pseudo-punch list I'm starting for the time being.

1. Roof. Our inspector suspected the chimney flashing needs to replaced and that could be what caused some slight water damage in the ceiling to the upstairs stairwell. So I called a roofing company today that I found on Angie's List and I'm waiting to hear back. Hopefully this isn't an expensive problem.

2. Leaking garage gutter. While we're at it, we'll have the roofer guy look at the gutter right by the garage door that seems to be leaking.

3. Paint over hideous tile in downstairs bathroom and kitchen. My dad seems to think I can paint over all the ugly tile with epoxy paint, at least the tile on the walls. I'm a little skeptical, but I'm at least going to look into it. The tile bothers me that much, but I'm not going to re-tile at this stage. Painting seems like the perfect solution.

4. Replace toilet in downstairs bathroom. For reasons that I will probably never understand, the POs put a pink toilet in the downstairs bathroom with a white lid. As if there wasn't enough color in the room already. I want a white toilet to match the tub and vanity.

5. Carpeting upstairs. In order for the upstairs to be useable, it needs to be recarpeted. The current carpet is red/orange and just old and gross. I want a nice plush gray carpet.

6. Bed and bedroom furniture. This goes hand in hand with carpeting the upstairs. We don't really have any bedroom furniture to speak of. Adam's using the counter in the laundry room to keep his clothes, and I'm using an old dresser that will stay in the guest room once we get a real set. I'll TRULY feel like an adult once we get actual bedroom furniture (not that the mortgage wasn't enough) .

7. Painting. Oh, the things we can paint. I first want to paint the wood paneling in my office because it's kind of dark and oppressive. Everything else will be painted too eventually. This is a big project but we can do maybe 2 rooms in a weekend or something.

8. Get new living room furniture. This is a major purchase that's probably going to end up getting pushed back for awhile. I also want to get a super nice rug, so maybe we'll do that first. Who knows.

Wow... lots of dollar signs for some of those projects. And that's just the beginning.

Finally, a kitchen we can use

This afternoon my dad came by and did some more electrical work. We have a good amount of usable counter space, but we also have a healthy amount of appliances. I inherited my appliance-hoarding tendencies from my parents: in their kitchen, in addition to all of the usual appliance suspects, you can find a breadmaker, quesadilla maker, coffee pod maker, and a belgian waffler. I don't have any of those, thankfully, but we did want to have the coffeemakers closer to the sink and the coffee.



So my dad installed a new GFCI outlet, along with the switch to the light above the sink, on the proper side, and the pantry light and two additional outlets on the other side. It's the little things that can make a huge difference. Now all I have to do is clean up the dust from the red tile that seems to have gotten into every single inch of the kitchen.



But wait, there's more - we also put up a spice rack (courtesy of Target) and some shelves to store oils and salts. Somehow we've managed to gather quite a gourmand collection of cooking oils, vinegars, and spices. They barely fit on the shelves, but at least we have a nice way to display them now that doesn't involve taking up the kitchen table like they did at the apartment.

Other accomplishments of the past few days include:

- *finally* setting up my computer and office and and unpacking a few more boxes. My computer would not turn on before the move, but it somehow managed to resuscitate itself and turn on.
- taking a huge amount of recycling to the local recycling center
- unpacking and shelving all of our books
- importing some armchair rockers from my parents. Apparently we're hosting Thanksgiving this year, which is in t-minus 19 days, and I was freaking out a little about where everyone is going to sit. So the chairs are a rather unhappy shade of pink/mauve, but they'll do.
- replacing the futon mattress and cover for the futon in the basement. I've had this thing forever, since college, and it needed a new mattress BADLY, as we're using this as our basement couch.

Slowly but surely. we are getting things done.

What we've accomplished so far

So it's been a busy, busy last 7 days at the bugalow since we closed and moved in, and I wanted to post a list of all of the work we've managed to get done so far. I'm back in the office now after a week off, so I'm hoping I can still keep some of the momentum going while it's still fun and fresh.

I want to clarify that nearly all of my plans for the house involve aesthetic improvements and minor upgrades to the existing systems, rather than any complete overhauls. We don't plan on doing anything structurally for a long, long time. Eventually I would love to add a bathroom to the second floor, making it a master suite, but this is not something I'm going to have the budget for anytime soon.

So here's a list (and pics) of all we've accomplished in the last week, obviously in addition to moving in and doing a fair amount of cleaning:

1. Removed all of the curtains left by the previous owners (POs).
Every. Single. Window. had either sheer lace curtains or frumpy multicolored ones. The bathrooms had floral curtains that matched the shower curtains. The elderly love their curtains I guess. These all had to go - I boxed them up and gave them to my mom, who wanted them for reasons unbenknownst to me... I'm not going to be thrilled if I see any of these in my parents' house when I go to visit.

2. Replaced dusty sticky blinds in kitchen windows with bamboo blinds.
They look much nicer now and go really well with the wood.




3. Put in GFCI outlets and added a grounded outlet to the office.
My dad did all of this for me! I wish I could do a vulcan mind meld and get all of his home maintenance and repair knowledge downloaded to my brain. Though I am pretty afraid of doing stuff with the electrical - I will leave that to the expert.

4. Put liners in all of the kitchen drawers and shelves.
This was Adam's mom's idea and execution! I never would have thought to do this, but she did a great job of getting everything lined so I could finally put our glassware and dishes away.

5. Acquired a lawn mower and mowed the lawn.
As the previous owners lived in Poland, I'm not sure who they had taking care of the house. So the lawn wasn't in the best shape, but after my dad brought me a spare lawnmower he was able to refurbish (!) I mowed the lawn and it looked tremendously better. We're still going to need to re-seed or sod the back yard, as it's not in good shape and there are apparently grubworms that need to be addressed. I'm hoping not to have to worry about that until spring, but I need to do a little research and see exactly how one gets rid of grubs.

6. Removed ugly floral border from downstairs bathroom, got new shower curtain, replaced wooden toilet seat with white one.
I don't want to totally diss on the POs, because they took such wonderful care of their home, but their decorating style is, umm, really different from mine. Anyway, the downstairs bathroom had a bit too much going on with the floral curtains, border, and bright blue tile, along with the faded bamboo tile on the floor...so I removed the curtains and border to tone it down a bit, and got a more modern looking shower curtain. Thankfully the border peeled right off. The toilet also got a makeover - no more ugly wooden seat!

A home, at last!

As many of you know, we've been looking for a house for a long, long time. In September, we finally found the place we wanted to call home - a beautiful brick octagon bungalow in Jefferson Park, which is an old Polish neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago. This is actually the second house that we put an offer on - the first one was last October, and that place was located just a half block away from this house. The sellers did not accept our offer, and we weren't really interested in offering more... so that was that. But I remember last year when I was so incredibly excited to become a homeowner, and therefore a house blogger... that I actually started up this blog before we even put the offer in. I can be pretty superstitious sometimes, so I wasn't even going to touch this with a ten foot pole until we were finally closed.

So, to make a month and a half long story short: after some interesting negotiations with our overseas sellers, and a bit of stress over buying a place in such interesting financial times, to say the least, we closed last week. The move was long and tedious, but is finally, finally over. We're slowly getting settled in, and have already gotten a ton of work done. I had the whole week off, and thanks to the generous help from my parents and Adam's mom, we got a lot accomplished.

So anyway, this blog will detail my plunge into the world of homeownership. This is my first time owning anything, and I'm not exactly what you'd call handy. But I'm excited, and I'm going to learn - and try to keep track of it all here.