Curb Appeal

So today I checked out HGTV.com, to see if they needed anyone for Curb Appeal: The Block. I love this show because not only do you get your house done, some of your neighbors do too! I find out they were only looking for people in the San Fran area. No fair! I guess I will keep checking back.

The reason I want to be on it so bad is because I have literally no idea what to do outside. The previous homeowners were obvious gardners. Me on the other hand, will scream if I see a bug and have no interest in tending to plants. I have even killed one of those supposed “no matter how much you don’t take care of it, it will still live” bamboo plants that were all the rage a few years ago. And I even took care of it! I followed the directions! And it still kicked the bucket. I do not have a green thumb whatsoever. I apparently have a plant murdering thumb.

We have beautiful rose bushes, and they are too pretty to cut down. They have even supplied some free bouquets in my kitchen this summer. So that’s awesome. But they have  now taken over our walkway. Boo. The previous homeowners were also what I would consider hoarders of outside decorations and potted plants. They even had some fake plants in pots. I AM NOT KIDDING. Dirt and all. Like. “here you go fake plant, absorb all the nutrients of the soil! Grow! Prosper!” A neighbor told us that the lady who lived here would go to the flea market every Tuesday and come home with some other outside decoration thing each week. Plus we have the bottom of a birdbath or something that the man who lived here told us at closing he would be back to get it once the snow melted. Dude, the snow melted four months ago. In another month, it’s going to the trash. It’s freaking concrete and heavy, so I am not looking forward to moving it. Crossing my fingers he remembers and comes and gets it someday before I throw it out.

Over the course of a few weeks, we are trying to clear everything out. We can put up to 8 trash cans out at a time and so far we’ve been doing 4 at a time. There are still some pots that we need to remove, but we are getting there. We also hired a guy back in April to remove some overgrown and old bushes. I literally said every morning as I walked into it because it was freaking humongous “I HATE THIS BUSH!!” And that could be taken so many ways ha. He’s also supposed to contact us about a fence, but he went on vacation like a month ago and haven’t gotten back to me. Dude might have dropped the ball and missed out on our business after that…

But just looking at the landscaping, I have no clue how to even start. Like what bushes to remove and what to plant that- here’s the key- I can’t kill! We don’t have shutters, should we? There are also chairs literally chained to a tree out there, and a huge lilac bush in the backyard that I am pretty sure is on the neighbors property but they have passed it off on us! Plus probably a years worth of overgrowth that leads to the alley behind the house. Oh, where to start.

Seriously, Curb Appeal, if you ever feel like coming to PA, my house is probably the red headed stepchild of the block. Sorry neighbors. Hopefully one day we will get to work on it.

Painting.

Painting is not as fun as I thought it would be, like I thought here. Why does HGTV make it seem all easy and crap?

Our house had previous homeowners who had the opposite color choices we would have picked. They always say when looking at houses that paint is the easiest thing to change in a house. And yeah it is, if you hire people to paint for you. I am not kidding, we have to paint every single room in this house. The entire upstairs had a different color room. Plus a million holes in the walls where there were a ton of nicknacks and pictures tacked to the wall. So we began the task of patching. Dusty. And priming over dark paint colors. Annoying.

We started with the master bedroom, thinking it was the largest room, so let’s get it over with. My father in law actually did that room one week while we were at work, which was awesome. It went from an old antique-looking french country blue to Behr’s Silver Screen, a nice soft gray.

Then we moved onto the office, the smallest room. It was, not kidding, vampire blood red. I like Twilight and all, but the smallest room felt like a coffin. Now it’s a beachy blue, Behr’s Delicate Mist.

Eventually, we started the guest room. Previously, it was a light green room. It was the only one room which color I couldn’t stand. However, you could literally see where paintings must have been hung for years! So it had to go. It’s now it’s a creamy Behr’s Cozy Cottage. We are going to use that color in the hallway too. Also Bindi now thinks that room is especially hers.

We still have one room to do. It’s NEON YELLOW. You do not need a light in the room because it is so bright! It’s going to turn a light green, Behr’s Mountain Haze. We think it will be a nice neutral color for a future kiddo. That room will probably be empty til the kiddo arrives too, since we have no furniture to put in it!

We painted all of the trim bright white. The previous owners also liked to have cream trim, making the place seem really aged. Plus they painted the office closet door that same color, so when the weather is cooler I get to try my hand and removing paint from a door!

Eventually the whole place will be painted. We are actually thinking of hiring painters for the dowstairs, so we will see how that goes. Also I want to know if the Behr paint with the primer in it actually work? Also I am thinking of painting the wall going up the stairs an accent wall, but have no idea what color. Any suggestions?

I need (want) new furniture.

So have you ever noticed that when you move into a house, you decide that all of the things you have now are not good enough?

Take my couch. First off, it smells like dog pee, because all of a sudden one day Bindi decided she would fancy a couch pee. It’s a sectional, so right now our living room contains the chaise and the one part that has an arm. The middle is downstairs in the dungeon (I mean basement). So of course I want a new couch. If we did get a new couch, I would put the entire thing downstairs in the basement, so it wouldn’t go to waste.

Which then makes me wonder, if I did get a new couch, would it go with the IKEA furniture that worked in the apartment? I truly only like the bookshelf that we have turned on it’s side that is our mail catcher, etc. Everything else honestly could go (tv stand & coffee table). But even then, the darn thing is in blonde wood, and I feel like that finish just screams first apartment. That’s one of the major problems with IKEA, their “wood” finishes. Even if you get darker wood, down the line you may not find any matching furniture because they change what their “brown” is. So we went with the blonde wood, and now this house just doesn’t seem like a blonde wood house. Our house has medium pine floors and beautiful dark cherry wooden doors. So the lighter wood kind of sticks out.

Also I would love to find an area rug that isn’t a hand-me-down from my mom’s house. It’s pretty and all but I would like something more modern.

Don’t even get me started on the bedroom. We have some more IKEA dressers in a reddish light brown which we bought from a friend when she moved to Germany. One of them got a large chip on it during the move.  So now there is MDF filling showing on one side. But I do like them. I actually like my metal bed and my white night stands (kind of like those but with a drawer at the top). I just feel like it’s time for dressers that are of better quality and could go with the room better.

I love my new desk for my office. That room also holds another IKEA dresser and a bookshelf. But again the wood finishes don’t match my new, darker desk. I would also love a new computer to put on my new desk . And new flat screen TV’s to make everything sleeker.

So…in total I need like $20k. Any offers? We did get a powerball ticket today. Here’s hoping we win.

Whip It

I have been wanting to see Whip It since it was in the theaters. I have a wee obsession with wanting to a roller derby girl. I actually went to see the championships at the Philly convention center and was just in awe. I was never a good skater, and I am too afraid of hurting myself to do it.

So anyway, this movie was aight, the story of an alternative girl stuck in a small town who has a mom who forces her into beauty pageants and she secretly takes up roller derby and is really good at it. She falls in love with roller derby and also a boy (Landon Pigg who I have seen in concert before, he was a little awkward). Eventually parents find out, she gets in a fight with her friend, boy doesn’t call, the big championship game falls on the same night as the pageant…kind of a predictable storyline. This movie was nothing too amazing to write home about with the exception of the actual roller derby scenes. Loved those. Ellen Page thankfully didn’t play Juno again, and I was happy she can actually act. The other roller derby girls were a little over the top, but I enjoyed Kristen Wig and Drew Barrymore.

So maybe one day, I will be my own hero and put on a pair of skates and get up enough courage to do it. Until then, going to roller derby matches may just have to do.

We bought a house!

So after the honeymoon, life went on. Blah blah blah. Our doggie got cuter (is that possible?), my job got better (promotion!), and we decided to look at houses. We stopped the search 3 times in order to save up some funds. On one of our trips, I fell in love with an almost Victorian built in 1912, and also used to house a dentist’s office. It was such a great house, except for the fact that it was “as is” and we couldn’t get financing with any outstanding repairs. Plus the house was in a bad neighborhood, so unfortunately we had to say goodbye to that house.

After that we saw so many houses…almost all of them horrible in our price range. We really didn’t want a townhome, or to move far away from our work (especially mine since my commute is a bitch). Then one day we went to see 2 houses. The first house we couldn’t even see inside, because the owner didn’t leave the door open and apparently didn’t want to sell the home because it was a foreclosure. The neighbor had a sweet pitbull though. I wanted to adopt him. That was the only thing we saw of the house, the neighbor’s pitbull.

Then we went onto the next. From the outside, we loved it. It’s a brick colonial in a good neighborhood with people who take care of their houses and don’t have mattresses on the laws (not kidding, we saw some with that). We fell in love with it! It’s got 4 bedrooms, a gas fireplace, a den in the basement, a door to the kitchen that swings!, and a nice backyard for the Bindo.

We decided to put in an offer, and the first one was a FAIL. Rejected. Then we decided to offer more, and it was accepted! We went through the inspection and found no major flaws, and after the U&O certification, the owner’s got all of those repairs taken care of. We also just got the appraisal and we close on Feb. 19th.

Now comes the fun part. Packing. We started with the computer room, aka the junk room. The husband dontated clothes this weekend and freed up 1/2 of a double closet. I packed some boxes, and at the rate we are going we are looking good to not feel rushed and to have everything neat and organized for the move.

We are hiring movers. Frankly I am too weak to move a sectional couch, a king size bed, mattresses, a huge TV, etc. I am thinking it will be the best $ spent in this whole process!

The countdown is on. I cannot wait to move. Here’s why:

1. Won’t have to hear Bindi snoring every night

2. Won’t have to smell pot from the neighbors next door

3. Won’t have to listen to the teenagers outside practicing their curse words every other second

4. Won’t have a major traffic road outside our door with all of that noise

5. I can finally paint!

The house needs some updates. The kitchen and bathroom mostly. I have been watching too much HGTV and looking at too many design blogs. This blog will probably have more blog posts on this stuff when we buy the house and get started on changing things.

Yay!