Unlevel Walls and Floors

We knew when we bought this house that the floors were unlevel. Apparently on this side of town the soil has lime in it and it has caused a large amount of shifting and settling. Our inspector was also a engineer and felt the house was fine and that it was done settling so we felt we were good to go. However when it comes to doing things that should be easy it is much harder when the house is no longer level. We found this out when we did the kitchen backsplash. If you look real close my tiles are so off haha! Gotta love white grout as it totally disguses all of the imperfections there. Now we are getting to enjoy the issue of settling as we are laying our hardwoods. The kitchen is so close to being done that I'll share pics soon.

Oh Spray Paint How I Love Thee...

I can remember as far back at the age of 14 spray painting furniture for my bedroom and I'm still spray painting things many years later. Never quite as much as I have since moving in the new house. Changing of colors has turned into a appalling amount of cans of spray paint on our back deck. I'm sure the neighbors think I am absolute nuts! But I do love me some spray paint!

Backseat Conversations

Today while we were out doing errands, I heard Ali ask Alex what his favorite sense is. Sight, touch, taste, hearing or smell she said. Which one would he do without? She is such a smart little girl. She just turned 6 and these are the conversations she likes to have.

Oh and the verdict was we all thought sight was the one we couldn't go without. Hearing was a close second.

Decision Time

So we did close on our old house last Wednesday. What a relief! The money is in the bank so now it is time to make decisions on what we are putting into our new home. This past weekend we focused on flooring. We hit all of the local stores and decided to head into Memphis late Saturday to check Lumber Ligquidators out as well. So far our favorite has been 99 cent laminate at a local seconds store. Hilarious! However we really want to go the hardwood route. Since we are doing this ourselves, I've been on the mission to find the click type. We'll have to go with engineered but we are okay with that as long as it looks nice. I really want to find something for under $3 a square foot. I found a few options online so now I am just waiting for the samples to come in.

We came back from Memphis to find a leak in our hot water closet. Thinking it was the water heater we called into our home warranty place for service. I got in there today and noticed it was worse. Pulled the carpet up and the pad was SOAKED and that it wasn't the water heater. Oh great I thought as it seemed to be coming from the tub on the other wall. Well the service guys came and guess where it was coming from??? The freaking toliet on the other side of the tub had loose bolts and it was leaking out of it. They tightened the bolts and collected their $60. Laughing to myself was seriously my only option. We seem to play the What Will Go Wrong in this House Today? game alot around here.

Almost to the Finish Line

We close on our old house tomorrow! Finally! The relief my hubby and I feel is immense. I can wait to go out and pick new floors out. We are getting a nice chunk of equity back that we plan to spend on improvements for the new house. Our first plan was to split it in half and put half towards repairs and the other half towards the mortgage. Unfortunately the market is overflowing with houses up for sale so we sold for about $12,000 below our appraised amount. In the end though we just wanted it sold and to not have to deal with it anymore.

This weekend I plan to tile the kitchen backplash and my hubby is hopefully going to work on the pool. Did I mention we have a concrete pool here? We are excited to not have to deal with pool liners however is needs to be painted. Since the house was a foreclosure it sat for about a year so it is full of leaves,frogs and a few dead squirrels. Yuck! So we have drained it and next up is a good cleaning. From what my hubby said then we have to acid wash it and then paint. I thought of saving it for a next summer project but the kids miss their pool. No way we can afford to fill it with water twice so we will deal with it now.

Well I'm off to the bank, grocery and post office. I promised the kids one last swim at the old house so we will stop there last.

Hello.. I'm still breathing!

But barely... Wow I can't believe the last time I posted was December. This whole new house and selling the old house has been a doozy! It took us 4 1/2 months to close on our new house.. Seriously by the time we were done we has lost all of the excitement! But we did finally close Feb 25th.. The old house finally sold and we should close on it next week. The couple who bought it seem really nice and have two sweet kids. We are happy that our first "house baby" is going to people who will appreciate it.

We are working on finishing moving everything out. We moved over here full time around the middle of April but only brought the main things since so much renovating needed to be done.

The new house work is going good. I'm about half finished with the painting. That has been some serious fun as some of the rooms have two layers of wallpaper with a coat of paint on the top layer.. Seriously who does that! Lazy people I tell ya! I have the kids rooms done and they look great. I'll share pics of those soon. We are living on top of nasty carpet but as soon as I get the check from the old house I am getting wood floors asap!

So I'm living in a bit of chaos right now but I'm happy! Oh and I've lost 8 lbs since I started all this work. Nice side benefit!