Home Owners!!!

We're officially home owners!!! We bought a condo in Taylorsville and moved in on July 16 (which also happened to be Jon's birthday).

Here's a bit about our place:

-2500 square feet

-3 levels

-4 bed, 2 and a quarter bath

-mostly finished basement

-Furnace, water heater, and air conditioner are all original. How they lasted 28 years, I don't know. But we'll have to replace them soon.

The main floor has a bedroom, quarter bathroom/laundry, kitchen, formal dinning area, and the living room. Upstairs is the master bedroom with a walk in closet, and the master bath has a tub and shower. Down the hall is another bedroom and a full bathroom. In the basement is the forth bedroom and the family room. The part that's unfinished is framed for another bed room, and there's rough-ins for a bathroom.

The previous owners had some very interesting color choices. The master bedroom is the "Green Bay Packers" room with dark green and bright yellow-gold walls. The other upstairs bedroom is the "Patriotic" room with red, white, and blue walls. The kitchen is an interesting pink or tan color depending on the light. And the old country cottage looking cupboards have got to go. And then there's the bathrooms, you've gotta give them points for trying, but they didn't do a good job. One was a creamy yellow color with brown sponged on. And the master bath is similar in color put instead of using a sponge they used a rag to brush on the other color.

Well in the 3 weeks that we've lived here we've found things wrong with the house and had some issues, let me take you through our last few weeks.......

Friday July 15, the day before the move -

Jon and I slept in till almost noon because we had gone to see the final Harry Potter movie at midnight. After we finally got up we packed everything we could until about 11:00 pm and then went to bed.

Saturday July 16, moving day -

We got up at 7:00 so we could be at the new place by 8:00 for Comcast to come and install everything. While taking the multiple trips from the apartment to the car we had Bolt on a leash so he didn't run away. At one point he jumped in the car while we were loading the TV and he refused to get out. Poor little guy, he was getting really nervous because he didn't know what was going on.

Jon's sister Diane and I had gone to the condo the night before to decorate for Jon's birthday. So he got a surprise of balloons and streamers when we walked in. Well I headed back to the apartment with Bolt to finish packing, and to tell everyone that was helping us move what was ready to take to the new place. Poor Bolt kept getting more and more frantic, he started to whine when we had to tie him up so he couldn't run out the door. And when he was off his leash he would either go lay on the pile of flat boxes or actually jump in a box that had some blankets in it and refuse to get out. It's like he was saying if the box was going, so was he.

Well we finally got everything moved out and we spent the rest of the day and most of Sunday unpacking and finding places to put things.

Bolt has since settled down, it took him a few days to realize that this was our new home and that he wasn't getting left behind.

July 17-23 -

We discover that 3 of the 8 lights in the family room don't work. We thought the light bulbs had just burned out, nope, we have to get a ladder and investigate above the cans. (Put on the to-do list).

Garbage disposal sounds weird, better check that out too.

Oh, and of course the water heater sounds like it's 28 years old, wonder how long that will last?

Friday July 22 -

I started painting the hideous bathroom/laundry room. We decided to go cheap and just paint it white. It's better than the sponged brown.

I was able to get a second coat on most of the room before I ran out of paint. We'll have to buy more so I can finish it next weekend.

Monday July 25 -

Jon broke the tip of his finger at work.

Tuesday July 26 -

Utah gets hit with rain. And I don't mean a little bit, I'm talking cats and dogs, cloud bursts, monsoons, streets turned into canals, basements flooded....

Speaking of basements flooding, we came home on Tuesday to find the carpet drenched in the basement. As bad as that it, let's add to the fact that it was the one room in the house that was actually set up completely.

So what happened was that our rain gutter was full, it over flowed and washed away the dirt that had been built up as a slope away from the windo seal. The slope now wend toward the window seal, which built up and then leaked into the basement. Since no one is aloud on the roof, we weren't the only ones that came home to wet basements. So far we've heard of 2 other condos that had the same problem. We later were able to find out that the rain gutters should have been cleaned out last Fall, but the snow came early so they weren't able to. Uhh...last I checked Fall came before December.

Wednesday July 27 -

We realize that the floor is a lot wetter than we thought it was and we end up having to move everything out of the family room that we had just set up the night before, and pull up the carpet. We borrow 2 gigantic fans and have them blowing for days.

Friday July 29 -

I finished painting the bathroom so now we can put in the used washer we got from family.

Sunday July 31 -

Jon finds out that not all garbage disposals are created equally. At least that's what I say, Jon says that it's old and would have been fine with a bunch of potato peels if it had been new.

Also we went and cleaned our old apartment since it was the last day of the month and we weren't able to clean it theday before. When we were about 5 minutes away from being done it started to pour. So we had to drop everything, run out to the car, drive the 10 minutes home, and run into the house to see if the basement was flooding again. The basement was ok for the moment, but we had to do something about the rain gutters. So we went out on the deck that's attached to the the master bedroom and take a broom handle to push out all the leaves.

Friday August 5 -

Our dryer that we bought a week ago finally arrived! I can do laundry without leaving the house!

Our projects:

-Paint the master bedroom

-Paint the "Patriotic" bedroom

-Remodel the kitchen (someday)

-Remodel the master bath (someday)

-Paint upstairs bathroom

-Pick a color for the bathroom/laundry room

-Set up the office/craft room (and possibly paint it)

-Figure out what's wrong with the lights in the family room and fix them

-Get Jon a work bench in the garage

So we're pretty much loving have a place of our own (minus the flooding, of course). It's so nice to have back the things you take for granite... dishwasher, garbage disposal, washer, dryer, and central air. Now if we can just get some painting done the place will look good enough to invite people over.

Bolt

We have a new member of the family. His name is Bolt. We got him from the Humane Society on Saturday. He's a chihuahua schipperke mix. He's about 18 months old an full of energy. He came to the Humane Society on January 25, and before that he was in California in the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation which was founded by the actress Katherine Heigl and her mother in honor of her brother.

We've come to the conclusion that he's deaf. I took Bolt to get his shots at the Humane Society vet and they said there's a good chance that he's deaf. Then I went Petsmart to get a name tag, some toys specifically for chewing, and those stick treat things. The vet there agreed that he's probably deaf. So I guess the next step is to get him trained. The Humane Society gave me the name and number of a great trainer that also trains deaf dogs. So we'll see how that works.

He loves to chew. He's destroying the stuffed animal toys we got for him, and today he destroyed a tennis ball. Luckily he hasn't gotten a hold of anything that he's not allowed to chew, yet.

We found out today that he can jump over the baby gate that keeps him in the kitchen. After getting back from the vet I put him in the kitchen and we went to do our laundry. When we got back he was asleep on the couch. So much for buying the highest gate they had at the pet store.

So the adventures of Bolt begins, wonder what will happen next...

Things I've Learned This Week

I was thinking earlier of all the things that have happened so far this week, and thought I'd make a list.

-When it rains, it pours. I swear it has been raining all week. And we won't be seeing the sun anytime soon, it's supposed to rain for the next week.

-There is such a thing as to many people helping to paint.

-When you get 4 girls together late at night, you never know what will happen.

-A smelly old free couch can be a lot of fun.

-Too much stress over a long period of time can be bad for your health. But even after loosing 20 pounds because of that stress, you can gain it back even if it takes over 2 1/2 years.

-Not getting enough sleep is a bad thing. It causes you to fall asleep during work and can make you think the car is gliding sideways while driving.

-Ants are impossible to get rid of when they get in the house.

-When given 3 weeks to do something, don't put it off till the last 3 days.

-Motorola brand phones should be shot! They're all horrible and don't work properly.

-No matter how many times you shower after painting, you still find paint that didn't wash off.

-It is possible to save your money for something you really want.

-Having a pool is pointless when it won't stop raining. The same goes for having a hammock.

-Next time everyone is doing chin ups at work, I'll save myself the embarrassment of not being able to even do one.

-Hours can be wasted on youtube when you're only planning on looking at one thing.

-Allergies are horrible and annoying.

-Co-workers have the funniest and craziest stories to tell.

-Even though there's nothing worth watching late at night, you still can't turn off the tv.

-Just because it's 1:00 in the morning, doesn't mean that I'll be tired.

And with it being 1:00 in the morning, I'm gonna turn off the laptop and the tv and try to fall asleep before having to get up at 6:00.

Wedding Day...

It's May 5, 2009, 2:06 in the morning. Why am I still awake you ask? Because today my brother is getting married. And for those of you that know me well, not only am I a night owl, but I put things off till the last minute sometimes.
I got home from work late, so I didn't get everything done that I had planned on, which means that I'll be rushing around in the morning (or should I say later this morning) trying to get it all done. The reason I'm on the computer now is because I needed to download pictures off of my camera so I can make room for a ton of pictures of the wedding, and I needed to charge the camera too.
I swear it took me like 10 minutes to decide which purple or lavendar nail polish to use to paint my toes. (Hayley and Christian's colors are black, purple, lavendar, and cream). So I had to figure out which one would match my bridesmaid dress the best. I think I finished painting my toenails around midnight, then watched tv for an hour to make sure they dried all the way. By 1:00 I was starting to get tired, but this show came on called Ace of Cakes (I think) that my neighbor had told me about. And the first one on was these people making a Hogwarts style cake for the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix premier. So I just had to watch that, but all the while thinking that I should turn on my laptop and download the pictures from my camera. Well I finished that episode and started watching the next one, and finally decided that I needed to go bed or I wasn't gonna be able to get up in the morning.
So here I am, pictures downloaded (there's some fun ones from a movie night at my house, including the hole in the wall), camera charging, nails painted and dried, in my pj's, sitting on my bed, but I'm not tired. How is it that my brother is asleep in the next room, and I'm wide awake? He was asking for sleeping pills earlier cause he didn't think he'd be able to sleep tonight. He didn't find any, so how is he sleeping? Maybe he's awake and wondering what I'm still doing up.....
Anyways, today I get another sister, and I'm so happy! It's sad to know that my brother won't be coming home on the weekends, but it's not like we saw him all that much when he did. And I get his room again! I plan to make it into a craft room for all of my jewelry making and scrapbooking stuff.
So on to a day that I'm sure will be long, but I know will be great!
But first, some sleep.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

First Post

I've been wanting to start a blog for a while, in fact I started one over a year ago but couldn't figure out how to post pictures in the order that I wanted to so I gave up. Then I actually thought of a name for my blog, but couldn't figure out how to change it or change the URL. So here I am, at 2:00 am (I will explain why I'm up so late in the next post), and decided that I wanted to post a blog and was determined to figure out how to change the things I wanted changed. So I called on my good friend Google, and figured it out.

So, without further ado, here's my blog: Life In Gillian's Shoes