Snow / Leaves and Christmas Trees

Yep, we got our first dose of snow two weeks ago. About 6 inches fell overnight and we woke up to a white blanket of snow all over everything. The steps walkway, patio and of course the car. The parking spot that we have is street parking and I am concerned that when there is a lot of snow on the street the plows that maintain the road may not see the car and either run into the car or plow us under. I've already tried figuring out where else to park it in that case; though there is nothing nearby. I'm not ready to face winter, however the snow that fell was amazing. When we got home it was already dark but I happened to snap a few shots while it was still coming down. We had Juno with us out in the backyard and she was going crazy for the snow. She's not one for rain but the snow she's totally into. She started running and would go faster and faster in circles until we started throwing snow at her which she would then eat. Ironically, the leaves that everyone had been raking for the past month were piled in the street awaiting cleanup and removal by the county, the last day for removal was supposed to be Saturday, but the leaves were covered in snow; removal didn't happen. The piles of leaves with six inches of snow on top of them looked like huge snowbanks in the street; Juno loved trying to make her way through those piles immediately sinking after jumping in.

After all the snow melted B and I made our way out to the Christmas tree orchard up the street. We picked up a nice Blue Spruce and brought it home. There's really no great place to put it in our living room. We tried several options before setting it near the side windows. We decorated it and hung some lights. Although I wasn't into it for one reason or another at the outset of the project it became really nice to get something out and up. In a way it was comforting to begin a tradition; it was probably the first time that I had felt that we were in our home; rather than somebody's apartment rental that we were going to move from in a year or so. It was with that set-up that we really have begun our own way of celebrating the holidays. I shot some photos, we put some seasonal songs on, started a fire and drank some Egg Nog, it was enjoyable devoting the evening to it. We somehow are hosting Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and now there's even talk about throwing a New Year's Eve bash so it's also nice to know that the tree we set up and decorated will be enjoyed by everyone.

Floorplans

Yesterday Bethany spent about 2 hours measuring everything and completing a floorplan and at the end of it she calculated the living space; 1450 square feet. Yep, we've been had, screwed by the man. We're a full 150 feet short of what our contract says that we bought, which is precisely why we should've calculated it BEFORE we offered.

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking, who cares 150 feet, well you're right, I really don't care about the extra footage that we had on Friday that disappeared when Bethany did her calculations, but it's the idea that it exists on paper someplace and that we signed our name to it. It's just one more reason that nobody is really looking out for you when you get into a house; especially not your realtor.

Anyhow, things here are progressing slowly if anything. Too much Tofurky this past weekend and plenty of naps. I'm almost done with the insulation and when I'm done I'll begin on doing the insulation under the house in the crawlspace, actually, I'll probably begin the vapor barrier. I've got two days of vacation left for the year and I fully expect to finish the year out at my present position even though I'm not happy there, so I'll most likely devote one of those days to working on the house. One thing that is almost done is my office. I started it awhile ago and installed my monitors on my desk, hooked up my new machine and put in a shelf about 10" from the ceiling. The idea of the shelf was to put my speakers and lay some of my unframed artwork and things that I didn't want to get too dusty up there. I was even going to use it as a home for my external drives but I couldn't find a firewire cable for less than $30. The only thing I need to finish is to get something to place my printer/fax machine on and possibly a wall mount for a television B's Dad gave us.

Good Neighborhood Signs

How can you tell if you're in a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood? What are the signs? Some people might say that if you see a cop parked on your street everyday it is neither a good or a bad neighborhood, rather a neighborhood in transition. But the idea of a "good" or "bad" neighborhood is something that realtors harp on so they can extort more money from you doesn't seem to be too far from what I believe. Sure there is good and bad to everything and each word is subjective; but when I ask "would you rather spend time in an area with bars on the windows of houses you pass while walking or pass mr. or miss sprite-like neighbor who says "howdy neighbor" while raking his leaves. To be honest both of these situations scare me, but if I were to pick I would have to go with the dork across the street who's life might be similar to the world in The Truman Show.

I do like my neighborhood; though it is in the suburbs; about a mile from the beltway, it does have some niceties that I have come to appreciate. For instance I like the people that go for walks with their dogs in the park without leashes, I like the same people who decide it's time for a walk at midnight and prance around the neighborhood with their gloves and mittens on (not at the same time) with junior and I like the tall trees that line the yards of our neighbors, the absence of graffiti and crack whores on the corner by the bus stop are also pluses. I would say that it is a good neighborhood if given the chance. One sign however that may not be a sign of a 'good' neighborhood is a crowbar through your driver side window in your 2003 Honda Accord and shattered glass both inside and outside of your vehicle. Yes; it is real, and it happened not only to me and my Honda, but another Honda down the street and around the corner from me on the same night. I'm not saying that I live in a bad neighborhood, but I'm feeling though this incident has added more character to it than neighbor Truman raking his leaves.

Our Boring Blog by Brian and on occasion Bethany...

So I spoke with a friend of mine the other night and he mentioned to me about how he and his roommate were talking about boring blogs and our blog came to mind immediately. Take off your address and don't do any shots of your house from the street; no identifying factors which means that I'll have to remove the link to our house for our Labor Day part too. Thanks Jerkface, now I feel like I have to come up with things on an everyday basis to talk about so I don't bore you. 

Well there are plenty of things that need to be done with / to the house and everything seems to take on a life of it's own. Every moment that I don't spend working on the house I spend procrastinating or trying to figure out what would make the most sense to do next on our long list of things. We've been in this place for three months; and yes it is sorry that my last post was more than a month ago. In that time it's gotten a lot colder; we've turned on our furnace and found out that it does still work, we've also planted new grass and spent considerable time raking leaves down into the street. Getting ready for winter. I've found out that I've got a leak in the roof, I've ordered a 1/2 cord of firewood that was never delivered and installed weather stripping to the front door. Today, more work on the yard; raking and such. It's been rainy lately so there is a lot of dampness in the leaves which makes it impossible to blow leaves. I'm still working on my insulation in the attic; I haven't even touched the crawl space. We've built several fires in the fireplace and realized that it really doesn't add any warmth to the front room. If you think about it it makes sense; heat rises and when you've got a big hole in your roof called a 'chimney' it allows all the warm air to escape. Regardless, it's nice if only aesthetically to have a fire going in the front room. The first time we set it up it was a replay of our wedding night at the Jefferson hotel where we forgot to open the flue and wasn't evident until everything smelled like smoke and the lights became so foggy that we were bumping into the coffee table and walls when we walked to the kitchen to fetch another glass of wine. Well, I embellish; but not much. The stank from the smoke lasted for more than a couple of days. So maybe it's better that the fire wood was not delivered after all. 

What shall I do next?

So I'm having trouble trying to figure out what I should do next. I thought that I would get home from work early enough to get somthing done but alas here I am an houre before I go to bed with nothing but large projects in front of me. There are several things that I've been talking about doing for awhile now; and here they are in no particular order. Insulation, Insulation, Vapor Barrier and new to the list is the Seeding of the Lawn. There are actually more lawn / garden projects than just that. A few days ago I came outside to notice a bunch of sawdust particles in front of the house to the right beneath the dogwood tree. Wondering what it was I walked over an looked up to find a perfect circle in a branch about 8 feet above the ground measuring about an inch in diameter. And when I say 'Perfect Hole' I mean perfect; I couldn't figure out if something in nature did it or it was something that a large drill made. I grabbed a ladder to checdk it out and sure enough it went down into the tree's branch about four inches! I was consumed by the thoughtt that someone may hve been in my front yard with a large drill making holes in my tree so I started asking around about Dogwoods and woodpeckers. Without a concrete answer I came home late that night and shined a flashlight into the tree and noticed a small bird poke it's head out as to scream "What's the big idea?! Can't you see I'm trying to sleep!?" The thing is really tiny too. No larger than 6". I can't imagine raising a family in that lille hole. It's so tiny; I hope he's not thinking about adding on. I talked to this guy who is considered by Montgomery county to be a 'master gardener' about the problem and he was absolutely no help. He said whatever you do; don't put tar in the hole to fill it. I spoke with another person at a gardening store who told me the safest thing to do is to fill it with wood glue. I dont' think there is really anything that can be done. I have a sinking feeling that in about a year it will need to come down. I've attached a photo of the tree at night. What do you think?

So buying a gallon of wood glue and dumping into a hole in my Dogwood tree is also on the list.

So Much To Do...

This will probably be an ongoing post as the projects mount up. There is so much that Bethany and I have to do to make this house our own, but even before that it's a question of maintenance and efficiency. Over the past few days I've done a little bit of the things that I've needed to but have just been putting off. For one thing I called and researched Plumbers after logging onto and getting a subscription to Angie's List, at angieslist.com. In addition to that I actually hired one for less than two hours and found out that the Plumbers are much more expensive than any other profession on this planet. I also got an HVAC guy to come out who was familliar with this house's heating system and got him to go over our options for a new heating system so our bills wouldn't be so astronomical. We've got more than a few options and all of them seem to be more expensive than any of the ones I could think of. Regardless, I think it was helpful to speak with someone who would be able to give us some direction. On the HVAC front Bethany and I would like to be as efficient as possible. we don't really want to do some half-ass job of heating and cooling our house. Right now the furnace is under the house and is just hanging beneath the utilty closet; It's huge, enormous about 85,000 btu and has been there since the early 70's. The furnace normally has a life expectancy of about 25 years, so we're well overdue for a new heating system. People have told me many things about the heating and the one thing that I know the most about is what to do before we do the heating; Insulation. We've got to place insulation under the floor in the house. Before we do any of that we're going to have to place a vapor barrier on the ground beneath the house in the crawl space; which I am not looking forward to and working my procrastination on. But alas; I'm going to have to do it sooner or later and it might as well be sooner and get it done and done right than later just trying to get it done because I'm miserable doing it in the cold and damp air of the fall. Regardless, I've still got the furnace to worry about. Grrrr. Well, the one thing that actually did get completed was the work of the Plumber. Mr. Plumber man fixed a couple of leaks, one in the shower (he charged me $30 for a part that probably retails for about $5) fixed the shower head in the front bathroom; I thought it was a diverter valve, but it was only the shower head itself which was dirty and corroded and finally he fixed the leak on the side of the house which entailed cutting out a bad piece of PVC and replacing it with a patch. All of that cost about $300 and took about an 90 minutes to do... With that said I can't wait to find out what a new furnace will cost...

Is This What Homeownership Is?

Everywhere I look, I keep finding things to do. I can't be in this house wihtout noticing something that needs to be fixed, replaced, or removed completely. This is seriously stressful, I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't understand the value of money and how little we have. I feel like we got into this house by the skin of our teeth and now here we are in it, unpacked and everything but not able to figure out what we should do now and what we should put off until we have more money. I think Bethany feels the same way.

Yesterday I called out sick, because I was really sick and thought I needed to rest and get better so I could go in on Friday I couldn't relax because I knew there was a ton of work to be done. So there was this leak in the shower and a leak outside close to the side yard spigot so I decided to call someone to take a look at it and fix it. But who? Who should I call? The previous owner was really good and gave us the list of contractors she used before she moved to Portland Maine but somehow never used a plumber after 19 years here. No wonder there are leaks. So I called some friends, my Realtor that sold us this place and the neighbors who may have advice; then I signed up with Angie's list; a friend told me about the site. I thought it would be a good thing to do since we've never done anything like this before, and it was; I found out how much a plumber costs. The advice he gave me was worth it, barely but he fixed three problems for me and gave me all kinds of answers to all of my problems, I guess that's what you get for spending close to $300 for two hours of work, which by the way, is making me reconsider my current career.

There is so much to do and so little time or money to do it. Grrr, I'm so glad I don't have any kids right now; I would be pulling my hair out.

Welcomes; No Apostrophe.

I'm a little worried as I am looking at an evite that was sent out to announce our place and the party that we're having on September 1st. I'm looking over all my old files as I'd like to go ahead and redo the evite for some friends (and without mentioning the word 'gift') and I realize that there is a huge mispelling on the flier.

No bueño, especially since I created it. Regardless, in case you were wondering how long it would take me to notice the error; it was more than a couple days. Yes, so things here are a little crazy being in our first house and trying to get up and running with everything situated but in the end it makes no difference. This is something Dick will never let me live down. The most surprising thing is that Bethany kept it a secret this whole time (her tongue must've been raw). I'm convinced that she knew but didn't say anything. Well, anyway, I hope the error does not question the authenticity of a rockin' party. There will be lots of fun, some alcohol (rumors of a keg?), lots of food and of course you and a thousand of our closest friends that we haven't seen in 10 years, some family, coworkers and our dog Juno. We hope to see you there...

Ticking Time Bomb

I somehow managed to forget about the money we need to put down at closing. We have it but it isn't easy to get to. So I woke up Monday realizing that I may have screwed us. It has been a stressful 3 days getting the money from one bank to another, and then wiring it to a 3rd bank. The last step is the cashier's check tomorrow, and we can breathe a little easier.

The seller is a little nutty. Too many stories to describe. But we originally scheduled the settlement at 4pm. A couple of weeks ago, she asked to move it up, since she has to drive to Maine afterwards. So we moved it to 10am. Then, when we met with her to "tour the gardens," she mentioned that she would need a couple of extra hours after closing to get her stuff out, "But you'll still get the keys." After a few minutes, I realized that didn't sound right...and our realtor agreed. So now she is complaining that she won't have enough time to do a walk-through and get her stuff moved out by the 10am settlement appointment. I'm not sure if she knows she's selling the house, and at the end of it all, she has to get the hell out.

Meanwhile, our apartment is packed (mostly). It's a disaster area. The dog is surrounded by a labyrinth of boxes, like in "The Shining." Except all she has to do is chew her way out. Someone asked me, "is that [big hole in the box] from mice?" No...that's Juno, the box-eating dog. No, she's not a lesbian. Well, actually, she does hump female dogs, but that is for another blog at another time...

Sitting 36 hours from being a homeowner, I desperately want to be out of boxes and have a bottle of wine. I can't wait til this is over and we're moved in.

9 gardens

Remember Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller, and the "your son has been absent niiiiiine tiiiimes"? Well, we have niiiiiiiiine gardens. We have 4 hands, one dog who poops as she walks, and 9 gardens. This can't be a good combo. Anyone who has seen our paltry plant collection knows that the fate of the countless plants and flowers in those 9 gardens is uncertain. I don't prune. I don't really get off the couch. Which is why this whole home ownership thing is going to be a challenge. I crunched the numbers a million times over - we can afford it (JUST barely)...but I didn't think about having an 80-year-old furnace, or pruning 9 gardens, or shutting off exterior water lines to prevent freezing in the winter, or paying $459 for ONE gas bill, or actually having *an electrician*. I kind of like the notion of breaking crap in someone else's house and having someone else pay for it. This whole personal responsibility thing eludes me.

But I'm looking forward to having a party!! Come visit September 1 -- hurry, before the air conditioner craps out!!

Wanna live in Arlington?

Nope, not really ready to move yet, we've gotta fill our lease. Bethany and I just did a bang-up job on the basement this afternoon. We went thru boxes that we've been hauling around from house to house for years. This is a process that has been going on for awhile now, I think we had originally started it about a month ago and always seemd to procrastinate finishing the task. Though it probably isn't done yet, no; it's not done, it's a lot closer than it was earlier. Both of us weeded and pitched a ton of stuff, crap we'd accumulated over the years. Vicki had given us a bunch of Sterelite bins to store stuff and we put all of them to good use. As a matter of fact, the reason we're not really done with the basement is because we ran out of boxes to put stuff into. Anyhow it looks great, but we've got a bunch of other rooms to go thru and pack as well. The storage area outside of the kitchen still needs to be packed up not to mention all the things in the living room, books and knick knacs all over the house. Anyway, we made some progress but there's a lot more to do.

Anyhow, Bethany and I got some good photos of the apartment that we need to rent before we move into the place. Bethany seems to think that we'll be moving into the new house the day after we close; Saturday, August 4th. That may be true but we'll still need to clean and disinfect the apartment before we leave. Hopefully we'll have a renter by that time. We put up some photos of the apartment on a FLIKR account I set up today so anyone intrested that we know can simply log onto it and check it out. If you're interested you can click here. I've also placed in the links pages. I'm hoping we'll get someone to fill the place, if we don't we've broken the lease and will need to pay a complete months rent to our landlord. Also, he doesn't want just anyone renting the apartment, he'd like to see it go to someone that is "in the family" which means that we can't advertise it on Craigslist or anywhere else; the person that we find to take over our lease needs to be a person that we have some kind of reputation with.

Scheduled a Meeting with April

A few days ago our realtor, Dan sent Bethany an email. I think he sent it to her because he likes her better, well, maybe that's not quite rite, Dan sent it to Bethany because Bethany doesn't make him feel awkward. I on the other hand however don't always have the best interactions, but that's okay. Regardless, Dan sent an email stating that the current owner of our soon-to-be home Arpil has requested a meeting with us. This isn't something tha I had never thought about but moreso something that I thought ould be out of the question due to the fact that we had yet to close on the house so I thought that everything, all dialogue would go between our realtors, Dan Metcalf and Jane Fairweather. Bethany and I werer excited to meet with April. We've got some questions that we'd like to ask her before she vacates the house but I had just assumed that all the things that we need to discuss would come after we had settled on August 3rd. Awesome, so it took us several days to contact the number in the email, a number that I thought was one of Jane's assistants, Amy. (Dan's email was not clear). So I left a message for Amy but it turned out to be for April, the outgoing message on the machine was a generic "leave me a message" type of thing. So since it did not seem businesslike I thought that maybe it was April so I got onto Zabasearch and punched April's complete name in there viola! The number I had just dialed pops up. If you haven't used Zabasearch, I think it's awesome. Comes in handy. I should put it in my links list. Anyhow. I left a message for April and we should be meeting with her on July 16th to go over teh house and how to care for her prize winning irises.

It's exciting to meet the current owner. I have a feeling that she is a little older, late 50's or something, empty nester type that is moving to get away from the citiy, rumor has it that she's going up to Maine. The original realtor that we spoke with when checking out the place said that she was an artist and an architect and had subsequently done a lot of the rennovations herself.A After we submitted our offer we found out that she was a school teacher, though she did have a very nice art collection in the house.

Photos on Snapfish

I found some photos of our place attached to the appraisal. I guess it's standard practice to place in the photos of the house when it was appraised. Anyhow, the quality isn't really that good, but I thought that I'd put a link to them in the blog since we haven't shared them much. Bethany and I still need to get over there to take some photos of the place ourselves as all the images we have of the place were shot by someone else. Oh, so the good news is that we're not overpaying for our house at least that 's what the appraisal tells us. But who knows, the closing date is more than a month away and there's been some slippery action in the housing market. I sound optimistic, huh? Anyhow, here's some of the photos...

The best thing about these images is the person who did the appraisal also had to draw a map to scale of our place, so finally we don't have to explain too much about how it's layed out and go into the detail about the third / fourh bedrooms. ...that said I might as well do it here. When we looked at the place, it could not be listed as a three or four bedroom on the contract. The reason being is that to fit the perameters of a bedroom it needs to have it's own entrance and a closet. (all potential bedrooms here have closets that are not shown), As you will see there are probably at best three bedrooms with an office or sitting room if we decied to tear down a wall... check the floorplan...

Oh I've also posted an album on Snapfish that you can access here: at Snapfish (you have to sign up for an account if you don't already have one).

Our Backyard

This is the backyard of the place; I think it's the best feature of the house. Bethany and i realized that everytime we went to open houses or looked at a house with a realtor we walked straight thru the house and into the backyard. I don't think we realized it until the day we found this house, but it was true. I think this backyard is what sold us on it. Of course Juno has a lot to do with that, Los Angeles, I suppose does as well. Being amongst concrete and dry dirt, you develop a profound appreciation of things that are green, namely trees, shrubs and grass. During our time in LA together we never had access to anythying 'green' that we did not have to share with others.

Something we reaized after we put in the offer is that we were going to have to maintain the yard, meaning trimming the hedges (good thing we don't have hedges), mowing the lawn and keeping up the gardens that are already there. Bethany and I are working on our green thumb here at our place in Arlington; I fire up the lawnmower every other week, spend hours pulling weeds out of the overgrown area that was once a garden and developing my farmer's tan. keeping this backyard will be one of the challenges while owning our own place, but working at something to make it beautiful is a challenge we're actually looking forward to.

Our New Home

Wow, I can't beleive we bought a new house, well not a 'New' house, but a house that will one day be ours. Goodbye reasonable rent, hellow excessive mortgage! I thought it would be good for us to start something that reflects our feelings on this whole proces of becomming homeowners and something that other people from our old hometown of Los Angeles might be able to access and check up on every so often. We placed in an offer on this house that we found outside of teh beltway in Maryland. The process was relatively quick; I must admit that I didn't think it thru all the way before we finished writing the offer. The next day we had heard back from the howmeowner, April. She didin't like our first offer so she came back with something different and two days later we had settled on a closing date; August 3rd, more than 60 days after placing our offer. We've got more than two months from the time we placed our initial offer and the time that we close and move in. Those sixty days can be hellish thininking about everything that happened in the first 48 hours of this process. Did we offer too high? What have we gotten ourselves into? When we applied for our loan, our loan officer showed us the breakdown of the interest over the course of the loan, and our payment which really distorted things. Over the course of 30 years we could, or anyone with a mortgage rate of 6.125% afford to buy almost two houses. Wow! That is crazy, but it feels good to know that we toghther and our dog Juno will be able to call something ours. This is something that we've waited, hoped and saved for and now we will be purchasing our fist house. What follows is a conglomeration of feelings and hopes of ours between now and the time we gett settled in 306 Dennis, Silver Spring, MD 20910.