We flooded again - Sh*t happens.

Don't worry, I spared the graphic details.  You can ask us about those in person.

My parents came over yesterday to help with the basement.  We finished painting the basement bathroom.  Touched up some paint spots, and started painting the ceiling in the basement.  We also installed the outlets and covers, and did a bunch of small stuff.  My dad and brother are making some built-in shelving for the basement so they are really close to finishing that.

The things we had left to do? Install the doors, Install the trim and chair rail, Install the carpet.  We also have to paint the shelving that my dad and bro are installing. Then there's the bar.  We need to paint and install the cabinets and countertops. And do the flooring in the bathroom and bar area. We also had to install the vanity, sink, toilet and mirror in the bathroom.  But essentially we were in the home stretch.  Roughly 3 days of work as we were going to pay professionals to install the carpet. 

Yesterday we had a real fast, major downpour for about 30 minutes.  I don't know how much rain we got, it didn't seem like much, but it doesn't matter.  Because for some reason sewage backed up.

Here's how it happened.

Mom, Dad and my bro leave our house.  C and I decided to order Chinese, so we placed our order and were getting ready to leave the house.  I thought something smelled funny in the house, so I followed the smell to the basement, turned on the light, but I didn't see anything.  Our washing machine empties into the sump pit, and sometimes the sump pit will smell funny.  I just figured I needed to pour more bleach in the pit, which was a "tomorrow problem" so off we went to go pick up the Chinese food.

We came back about 30 minutes later and the smell was MUCH stronger.  I knew exactly what happened.  I went to the basement and saw a ton of water in the basement.  Probably only a few inches, but enough to do some serious damage.  I screamed that there is water in the basement, and ran past C to go see why our lift gate (which was inspected 1.5 MAX months ago) did not stop the water.  All I know is the man hole had about 2 ft of water in it, and there was no way I was going down there.

April of 2013 when we got the flood, all we had to do to get the lift gate to close was jiggle the handle.  So off I went to go find a stick or something long enough to jiggle the rod.  Somehow I didn't have shoes on, so here I was running around the yard in socks trying to find something to jiggle the handle.  Meanwhile I was frantically calling my parents trying to get them to come back over to the house.  Not really sure what they could do, but I still called them.  I kept imagining me dropping my phone in the man hole.  Thankfully I didn't do that. Anyway, I found a stick, but it was too short.  Then I grabbed a hose wand we have, and was able to jiggle the rod a bit.  No idea if that helped or not.

Meanwhile, C was in the bathroom, with his foot holding a rag in place where the toilet used to be attempting to stop the water from coming up.  It worked, but as soon as he moved his foot, the water would flood back in.  So he was stuck where he was.  Standing in sewage.

By the time I got down to the basement, the water was not coming up anymore.  But by this time the rain had also stopped.  The water drained pretty fast, maybe something like 20 minutes later all the water was drained.  But the damage was done.  Not to mention the smell and the sludge remained.

Of course by this time it was nearing 7 PM on a Saturday.  All the insurance companies were closed.  Luckily we prepared for this event, and we have double coverage.  So reimbursement shouldn't be a problem.

But the cleaner guys will be coming tomorrow.  They are going to have to remove 1-2 ft of drywall (insurance companies sometimes require 2 ft removal even though we only got an inch or so of water).  And then spray all the studs with a antimicrobial.  Then the insurance company should cover replacing the drywall.  But I'm not sure about mudding or taping the drywall, painting, nor replacing the interior doors.  

We easily are delayed about a month.  Insurance companies NEVER pay people quickly.

When the plumbers came out a month ago or so, they said our lift gate was fine, the pipes were fine, and there should be no problems, however we should pay 8k to upgrade our flood protection to a better, newer technology.

Well, I bet you can guess what we are doing now.  We have some savings.  We were going to go on a vacation this fall to celebrate our 1 year anniversary, but that wont be happening any time soon.  I really wanted to go to Tuscany.  But shit happens.... (pun intended)  I also plan to call the plumbers on Monday to bitch to them.  Seriously, this should NOT have happened.

Side note:  I did finally get ahold of my parents, and my Dad left their house immediately to come to our house.  After he surveyed the damage in the basement Dad and C went to Lowes to get some supplies to plug the toilet so it wont happen again any time soon.  Luckily, Dad and C have a great sense of humor so all throughout Lowes they were making poop jokes.  Shit happens, Such a shitty day.  I don't know the details as I wasn't there, but they had a ton of fun. Hah.

I blame myself for not going to investigate further where the smell was coming from.  C blames himself for taking the toilet out yesterday.  Perhaps that extra head (engineer term) would have helped prevent backflow.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but this blows.

Bench Seat - Finished - Sorta.

The bench seat is sorta finished!  (See previous post here if you want to read about my inspiration for this project.)

Here is the finished product.  I have to say, the camera doesn't do this thing justice!  And the cabinets and benches are much closer in color than the camera makes it look.  The main difference is the cabinets have a protective coating on it, and I didn't put a protective coating on the benches.  However, I think I'm going to put polyurethane on it sometime soon.  I think the polyurethane will make them look even closer in color. Not to mention it will help protect them if someone spills something on them.

Honestly, I'm THRILLED with how they turned out.  I designed everything myself, and my brother and father built them.  Lots of hard work.  I even have a 3rd bench that will go in the den due to an inexperienced furniture designer.  (my fault)

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I love the way the molding turned out. :) Honestly, there isn't much I don't love. Hah.  

Now I have to sew some bench covers so that you can sit on the window seats and be comfy.  

Did I mention how nice it is to have extra storage?! :) 

Building Corner Bench Seating

So - my brother decided he likes woodworking.  He also decided to take some time off from work before he starts medical school.  The last thing he decided is he doesn't like to do nothing, so I was able to give him several projects.  Including building me corner bench seating in the kitchen. :)

I'm so excited.  I can't wait for it to be done.  We will get more storage and it will complete the kitchen.  Right now the kitchen looks strange, IMO.  I don't have any photos of the strange area (probably because the kitchen is always a huge mess) but just trust me.  There are 2 windows in the corner and we could not continue the cabinets because the bottom of the window was 2 inches too low.

So, my solution is a window seat.  These are photos of the inspiration for my window seat -

 



The problem was... none of these came with simple plans.  So I modified this one with very detailed, amazing  PLANS

So that the door was on the top.

I can't wait to post the finished product!

Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 4

Well, last we left off C and I had just emptied the basement.

Once the basement was empty, C cleaned the basement first with Lysol and then after it all dried (a few days later) he used bleach.  It was the only thing we could do in order to try to get rid of some of the smell.

It was still pretty cold in the house because the circuit board was fried on the furnace.  It took a few days to get the new board in stock.  But, it wasn't too bad.  The next few days were warmer and sunny.

My mom came over one day and helped us clean the things we were going to keep.  Although I have to say this whole experience taught me that the chemicals you can buy at the store are worthless.  Seriously, read the fine print.  Bleach may kill 99.9% of bacteria, but there is always a little asterix next to the statement.  It doesn't kill ALL bacteria, only a certain strain.  And NOTHING you can find at Walgreens or jewel can kill mold.  I guess that's why the pro's cost so much money...

The quote the pros gave us over the phone was 2,000-2,500 for the square footage of the basement.  When they got to the house they estimated it being closer to 3 or 4k.  But that's OK, I had a feeling the original price was low.  We showed them the basement, and asked if they could keep the wood paneling.  They said no.  It had to go.  So they basically just took a circular saw and cut the entire basement wood paneling off.  Thus making our "partially finished basement, no longer anywhere close to being finished.

I think one of the scariest parts was after the techs took off all the wood paneling they already found mold growing.  It was nothing serious, only a patch of mold about 3 inches in diameter.  They were able to get rid of it with special antimicrobial spray stuff.  I was shocked.  It had been less than a week.  But I guess that's what happens when you get water.  The told us not to worry, concrete is porous and would absorb the spray solution stuff.  As long as the basement dried properly, we wouldn't have to worry.

It took over a week for the basement to dry.  Unfortunately, that also increased the cost.  It ended up costing $6,000 to properly clean and dry the basement.

Of course none of that includes any of the amount of damage to the walls any of the furniture or other possessions we lost.

And... insurance didn't cover any of it.  Insurance doesn't cover "acts of God." Although I should call it an "act of stupidity."  Apparently some moron didn't open the deep tunnel in Chicago and that was the main cause of the problem.  Anyway, I called the insurance company and said there was water in the basement, we don't know how it got in.  It could have been coming in through the window wells, or up through the sinks, or the sump pump, we have no idea.  They said they don't cover water coming in through the window wells, and we don't have flood insurance which would cover it coming up through the sinks.  And we don't have sump pump failure insurance which would cover if the sump pump failed.

Let me just say, Lesson Learned.  Now we have sump pump failure insurance (a few hundred a year), flood insurance ($1,000 ish a year), and major appliance failure insurance ($20 a year).  Major appliance failure insurance is if your water heater or washer burst and flooded your entire basement.  Basically, I never want to deal with this ever again.  It was hell.

Just an FYI - Insurance only covers permanent possessions.  Walls, carpet, washer/dryer, furnace.  So that real expensive surround system you have in your basement?  You'll get nothing for that.  Not even $10.

It is now almost a year later (10ish months) and we are JUST starting to redo the basement.  More on that later.

The damage -

Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 3

Well, we left off here - http://dizzyingthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/10/misery-loves-company-home-ownership_11.html

We came home and saw the damage.  The house was freezing, and basically it was gloomy.

We woke up the next morning "ready" to start digging through everything, but we weren't ready emotionally.

I had made several phone calls to flood cleaner people.  They couldn't come for at least 3 days, possibly more.  So off we went to taking as much crap as possible out to the garbage.  Most of the things were easy-ish to take to the trash.  Chairs, sofas, papers, all had to be taken out to the trash.  But there were certain things we had to think about.  What about a sleeping bag?  That can be washed... but do you really want to sleep in a poop bag?  Nope... so off it went to the garbage.

There were other issues with certain things that were not electronic or fabric that didn't need to be thrown out.  Those were just placed in a "to clean" pile.

Then there was the issue of actually taking the sofa outside... first of all, the sofa was 100% waterlogged.  It was heavy as all could be, and it was just C and I emptying the basement.  So, off we go, to the top of the stairs to get the sofa out of the basement.  It was the most difficult thing I think I have ever done, and it was exasperated by the fact that it wouldn't fit through the door.  Since we moved in we changed the door to the side yard and neither of us realized that the door was slightly smaller.  By an inch or so.  And unfortunately that inch meant the leather waterlogged sofa wouldn't fit through the door.  So after I had spent a TON of energy pushing the couch up the stairs, and C had spent a TON of energy PULLING the couch up the stairs he told me. "It doesn't fit."  Honestly, I wanted to cry.  How can this stupid heavy as h*ll couch NOT fit through the door!!

It was the worst words to hear.  So we take the couch back the basement and C starts waking it with a crowbar and saw and hammer and whatnot taking it apart.  I mean at this point, its not like it needs to stay in one piece.  I think C got a lot of aggression out this way. He dismantled 2 full size sofas, 1 loveseat, and 2 chairs.

We had to throw out a lot of emotional things...
Up until this day I had every single ribbon I had ever won while horseback riding.  I had every 1st, every last, and everything in between.  But when they are covered in poop water, its not something I want to keep anymore.... I threw out the first ribbon I ever won with my first horse.  Several first place ribbons.  Several national titled ribbons...

My horses halter was saturated.  The last halter he wore when we had to put him down.  That was rough.


C's uncle was in the military and back in the day his cousin and uncle would send him letters, snail mail.  Before this flood he kept every single letter they sent him.  Those all had to be thrown out.  You couldn't even read them anymore.  He also had a few external hard drives that had photos on them.  Those were waterlogged and had to be thrown out as well.

Those were the hardest things to throw out.  The memories.  I mean the furniture sucks... we had perfectly usable mini-fridges, enough couches and chairs to sit everyone comfortably, but the memories.... Sucks... To this day, almost a year later, it still brings me to tears.

Anyway, these are the photos.  I only managed to take photos of the 1st garbage trip.  We had just as much garbage the 2nd day of cleaning.

Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 2

Last I left off, C and I had just realized that our basement flooded with poop water.

It's after that we ask each other why the furnace hasn't kicked on.  I go upstairs to make sure I turned on the heat.  Maybe I didn't flip the switch or something.  So I take off my boots, before walking up the beautiful wood stairs we installed and hadn't had time to sand and stain.  Strange, the thermostat is turned on.  So I go back to the basement and C and I try to figure out what's wrong figuring the pilot light went out.  We take the panel off the furnace and see corrosion on
the circuit board.  Awesome. Our "newish" furnace is broken.  What about the water heater?  We turn on the laundry sink and see if the water heater kicks on. It doesn't.

I can barely keep myself from crying.  Our basement is flooded, its 40 degrees in the house.  We have no hot water, no heat and no money to replace any of these major appliances.  Luckily our neighbor owns an HVAC company so I go over and knock on the door.  I say "I know its late, but we were out of town when the flood happened we got a lot of water in the basement and now our furnace and water heater wont work and its really cold in the house.  Can you please look at it?"  He tells me he'll be over in 20 min after he puts his daughters to bed.  I'm relieved!

Our neighbor comes over and looks at the furnace.  Circuit board is fried, it'll be about $600 if that's the only problem it'll be a few days until he can get the part and its working. So that means we will be using the fireplace a lot to keep the house warm.  Unfortunately, all the water shortened the life cycle of our furnace by a lot.  Then we ask him about the water heater.  We can't get the pilot to light but after about 20 minutes he gets the pilot to light.  Woohooo! Hot shower here we come!

Our neighbor asks us how we got so much water.  We explain that we have no idea, but it came up through the drains so it must be sewage. He asks what that manhole cover is in the front of our house, and I explained that its an electronic backflow preventer.  Not the best flood prevention system in the world since it relies on electricity, but since we didn't loose power we have no idea why it malfunctioned.  We go out in the misty rain and open the manhole cover.  Everything looks ok, but our neighbor decides to jump down and see what happened.  He jiggles the lever and all of a sudden we see the lift gate close.

To this day we have no idea why the lift gate was stuck open. And the only thing I can say is in the future, every spring, we are going to have the flood protection serviced.  We had inspected the lift gate prior to purchasing the house, and there was supposedly nothing wrong with it, but what can be done? Lesson Learned #2 - inspect/service flood protection every year.

Our neighbor says to call the insurance company because we should be able to get some money to cover the cost.  So after he leaves I call the insurance agent and get a voicemail. Not surprising as its 9 PM.

We light a fire, pull out the blankets and wait until morning to start digging into the damage.

So, below are pictures of the damage.  Mind you, this is more than 24 hours after the flood started.

I promise we did NOT leave our basement this much of a disaster. Everything was neatly stacked.

Notice the leather couches have water marks and are puckering.

 Now, granted our floors weren't spotless, but they didn't look like this when we left. If you look at the wall on the right, there is a water line about 20 inches high.

I took a picture of the house outside... it looked so "normal."  Also notice its snowing out... that's how cold it was.

This is the file cabinet I was talking about. See the water line?

This is the wet bar I was talking about. Water came up through the drains.

More water marks.   

The powder room.  See the floor, with the muck... Yeah.  Nasty.

TBC.

Misery Loves company - Home ownership

The flood of 2013.

I don't really know where to start.  The fiance and I were in Pittsburgh for work.  We had a security system and a flood prevention system.  We should have been golden.

It was April of 2013, Everyone in Chicago knew a gigantic storm was heading their way.  And everyone knew when it arrived.  4 AM Eastern time, I got a phone call from the security company.  The water detection system detected water.  That meant there was water in the basement.  I tried to go back to bed as I was in Pittsburgh, I had to show up to work, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.  I kept trying to tell myself, hopefully there was only a small amount of water, maybe the water was coming in from the window wells or something.

At 6 AM Eastern I called my dad.  I knew it was rude to wake him up, but I was getting worried about the house.  The village we live in had been sending us updates on the storm.  The storm sewers were full hours ago and there was "nothing the village could do."  Turns out, my father was awake dealing with his own issues.  Everyone I knew either had their own flooding issues, or they didn't have keys to the house.

Seeing as we had the locks changed after we moved into the house we never fully exchanged everyone's house keys.  My future in-laws didn't have keys, neither did any of our friends.  (this has since changed, Lesson Learned #1)

So I waited anxiously for my parents to be able to get to our house and tell us the damage.  Unfortunately, a few hours into the day my dad calls me to tell me his water problem is under "control" but they can't get out of the house.  I get these pictures from my mom to show what he means.


The black car is parked in the street my parents garage sits on.

 If you look closely, you can sort of see a firehydrant almost entirely under water.

My parents garage.  Obviously, no way they can drive in the street.  They may be able to get a car out of the garage, but then where?

If you look closely you can see a red car with the trunk open and the water almost all the way up to the trunk.  Basically, it wasn't safe to drive.

So unfortunately, we had to wait longer. By this time the storm had died down, so hopefully it was only a matter of time before we got news about the house.

At noon, I told my boss in Pittsburgh that I had to drive back to Chicago.  Our house was flooded and I don't know how long I'll be gone or how serious the flood is.  I suspected I'd be back by Monday as "I'm sure its not that bad."

And so my fiance and I made the 7 hour drive back to Chicago.  We hit Chicago around 5 PM.  It was then that I really got scared.  There was no traffic, literally no traffic. While driving from Indiana through Chicago to the North side of the city we didn't see a single break light.  Oh jeeze I thought.  This is not good news.  Also around 5:00 my parents made it to our house.  They said there was "muck" everywhere on the floor so we definitely got water, but it "didn't look bad."  They commented on how the basement kinda looked like we just threw everything there when we left.  I was confused, I knew we had a few "storage" areas, but I thought I left everything stacked in an organized fashion.

We finally got home around 6 or 7 PM.  The house was freezing, but that didn't matter we had the heat down low while we were out of town.  We immediately went to the basement to see the damage and turned up the heat.  We put on our work boots and decided to see how bad it was.

The facts:
We had wood paneling in the basement. Not my favorite thing in the world but not terrible, it was good quality.  There were water marks 15-20 inches up on the wood.  However, wood is not a reliable measuring tool when dealing with water.  There was a metal filing cabinet that had a water mark 11.5 inches high.  My fiance makes meade using wine bottles.  We store the empty wine bottles on their sides in the basement.  3 of the "levels" of wine bottles were filled with "water." The 4th was not.  The 4th bottle opening was at 13 inches off the ground.  The 3rd was at 10.5 inches off the ground.  So, we got water, we got a lot of water.  Somewhere around 11.5 inches.

We went into the basement powder room and saw "muck" in the sink as well as toilet.  "huh, so the water came out of the sink..... that means .... this... is .... sewage." Beautiful.  We went to the wet bar, there were standpipes in the wet bar sink.  The wet bar sink was full of water because the standpipes made it so it couldn't drain fully.  Definitely sewage.  There is no way anything could come out of the sink except through the drain.  Sewage.... Poop water.  We were walking in poop water.  We are breathing poop water.  omg. But why didn't the backflow preventer work?

TBC....

Pinterest - Guest Bathroom Towel Rack

I'm addicted to pinterest.  With a new (to me) house, I have a lot of decorating and projects I want to do.  One of the biggest challenges in the house is storage.  There is no pantry, very few closets, and no linen closet.

So when I saw a pin on pinterest where you can store towels on a wine rack that hung on the wall I was intrigued.

The first challenge was locating the wine rack.  I found it at wayfair.com.  Here is the link to the wine/towel rack.  Right now the price is listed at $30.99, but I bought the rack at $19.80.  So I would watch the price, $31 is a little pricey to me.  I had never used or even heard of Wayfair before this purchase, but there were no problems with the purchase.

As a warning.  This rack did not come with any hardware.  We had screws laying around so we used those.

I plan on having navy and tan towels in the bathroom, I just need to buy some tan towels.  I also plan on painting the walls, although I'm not sure what color to paint the walls.  

Anyway, its just a small step to decorating, but it was fairly easy.  First project down, 1,000 to go.

More landscaping

This weekend we (with the help of my Dad and C's brother) cut down 2 more trees and pulled a bunch of weeds.  C's brother, lets call him Navy (he is leaving for Navy boot camp in a few months) lives with us.  So he helped me with my house today.  He didn't really get a choice, he just got a come on, we are all leaving now.  My parents did get a choice, they volunteered, although I'm not sure if they will be volunteering next week due to the amount of work we did.

Below are some before and after pictures. To the left is the house the day we closed on it. :)  In my opinion, its really cute, but I never really liked how secluded the front door was.  Its behind the bushes and trees.  I always thought the front door was a burglers dream.  And, a few months ago we actually had an attempted break in.  The house is currently undergoing remodeling and so when the contractors arrived at the house they immediately called the cops.  A police report was filed and everything.  The cops then called me and told me what happened.

A few days ago I found out that my general contractor thinks they know who did it.  We have had a few plumbers working on the house.  The first plumber had no idea what he was doing and was fired from the job, the second plumber was not licensed in our town so he was let go, and now I think we are on the 3rd plumber.  I met the first and second plumber.  The first plumber was .... interesting.  He had a ton of empty cigarette cases laying around in the house but the house didn't smell like smoke so it didn't really bother me.  I knew eventually the house would be cleaned up.

While the 1st plumber and I were talking, I noticed he had the shakes.  I assumed he was just an alch-y and hadn't had a drink for a while.  He tried to explain plumbing stuff to me; he was all excited about how he found this connection they don't make anymore and I told him I didn't really follow everything because this is my first house.  He said "This is my first house too!."  I'm pretty sure my mouth dropped.  He went on to explain that he normally does flood control and doesn't normally do indoor plumbing.

In hind sight, I probably should have called my GC and told him what I just heard.  But I thought was that my general contractor knew what he was doing!  It wasn't until my project manager went to the house and saw the plumber smoking INSIDE my house that they fired him.  All I have to say is had I seen that, I would have been PISSED.  To make things even more amusing, the plumber started telling my PM that he knew me from high school, and me and him go way back.  The plumber claimed that I allowed him to smoke in the house, ALL lies!   
 
Turns out, the plumber had no idea what he was doing and my 2nd plumber had to come in and fix everything.  Apparently the 1st plumber hadn't vented anything.  (I have since learned that venting is a MUST)

Well,  unfortunately the first plumber got paid, but not by me.  I pay my GC a flat fee, thankfully, except for change orders.  So if the plumbing or framing or whatever has to be done 3 different times it still costs the same for me.

But a few weeks/months after the first plumber was fired from the job my house was broken into.  I guess the GC, PM and some other guys who met him think he is the one that tried to break in.  The house was dead-bolted so the door frame held.  But it was pretty much 1 more good kick from yielding.  The GC thinks the plumber was a coke-head and was trying to break into the house to steal the copper pipes.  Thankfully, the GC also thinks the plumber is currently in jail so we shouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

Anyway, even though the plumber is probably in jail, I still wanted to make the front door less secluded so we cut down two trees. The one tree was pretty much dead already because of the drought we have been having. 

While Navy and my Dad were cutting down the trees, my mom and I were working on the back yard.  There are TONS of weeds and rocks everywhere.  Not to mention the fact that the former owner buried clay pots in the ground.  At first I suspected she just got angry one day and smashed all the clay pots against the fence, but I think she just buried them.  I think I found about 5 different clay pots buried.  Below are some more pictures of the day. 

Dublin enjoying his backyard.

Maggie - My parents Dog

The after picture.  : ) Now we need new lights by the garage

My Labor Day Weekend

As soon as C left to go to New Jersey for an undetermined amount of time (I'm thinking he may be home by Thanksgiving) I felt like my social life went down the tubes.   Originally we were going to go camping in Wisconsin this past labor day, but a $300 plane ticket is pretty expensive just to go camping.  So we cancelled and I was left at home with no plans.  Since my house is under construction, and has been since June 6th, I've been living with my dog in my parents house.  I should have moved into my house 3 weeks ago (I hate village inspectors), and I had reserved most of my fall weekends for getting the house livable and doing projects.  Since I am not living in the house my weekends are WIDE open. Which is another way of saying I'm spending a lot of Friday's at home.  Normally when I decide I want to stay at home on Friday and watch movies its not lame, however if I were to tell you I am staying at home on Friday with my dog and watching movies with my parents the lame factor SKYROCKETS.  All I picture when I hear that sentence is a spinster.  The story would only be better if it was a cat instead of a dog.   So I decided to tackle some of the landscaping at my house to at least be lame and productive this past weekend.   

A few months ago, I made a comment to one of my friends about how many weeds we have.  They said "Why should you pull them if you wont get in the house until winter anyway?" I thought over that response and decided it was logical, why should I pull them? 

I'll tell you why you should pull them, you should pull them because they will grow to be ~ 3 feet tall!  The picture to the left shows a small portion of my "garden."  Basically just weeds.  And that was after my mom pulled the entire pile of weeds in the picture below.  

Now, I will bet you $100 (figuratively, I don't have that kind of cash laying around now that I bought a house) that the old lady who lived here had gardeners at one point and then just stopped caring.  There is no other logical reason why on earth she would have gardened the way she did.  She had bushes in the middle of the yard (which makes mowing the lawn a pain in the butt), a garden walk way that you have to use to get to the ally where you put the garbage can that you couldn't actually walk through because the bushes were placed too close together, random rock gardens... its nuts.  I'm pretty sure she was also a pack rat because there were old broken clay planters she had in her rock garden... it didn't look pretty at all.  But we didn't buy the house for the gorgeous landscaping, we bought it for the potential.

But by far the most annoying thing (related to landscaping) was this 4 foot tall evergreen tree in the middle of the yard with 2 more evergreen trees next to it.  I don't know what she was thinking except for the fact that having a shade tree in the middle of the yard would be nice.  Why she would plant an evergreen, I have no idea.  I mean I know nothing about gardening and even I know that evergreens take forever to grow.  If you want a nice shade tree plant a maple!  Anyway, C and I did not like this random tree in our backyard so we planned on removing it as soon as we moved in.  

Well, thanks to the drought, the tree died. :) So I didn't feel like a bad person cutting down a perfectly healthy tree.  

And I spent my labor day eve (Sunday) cutting down the tree.  I didn't trust myself to use a chain saw, so I used a hand saw.  It wasn't really all that bad.  My arms got a good workout.  

But it would have been a lot easier if I trusted myself to use the chain saw.  I even used my brand new shovel to remove the stump! :) The picture to the right shows the other 2 trees smack dab in the middle of the yard, and you can see where the evergreen used to be.  

I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but personally, I think I did a pretty good job. :) 

My story of buying my first house Part 2 of ???

C and I are leaving for Boston today to go to a cousins wedding.  :) Yay for a mini-vacation!  Its also nice because I can see C since he has been in New Jersey.  But anyways, this post is pre written.  

So. I believe I left off at when we made an offer on the house.  We made an offer of approximately 13k under what we thought the house was worth.  I think our offer was officially presented to the seller at Thursday, March 15th around 9 AM.  Later that day we get a call from our relator around noon saying they came down $7,000 in price.  So we counter coming up $8,000 in price.  Mind you we are still have bout 5k in playing room. Then comes the drama.

Friday comes and goes... and then we go visit C's family to celebrate St Patty's day.  At this point its so surprising to us that it is taking so long to get a response from the seller.  My realtor will randomly send me texts saying "still haven't heard anything" but other than that we are in silence.  The same things happens on Saturday.

For those who know me, I don't do patient well... I want what I want when I want it.  And I usually want everything now.  So Its absolutely killing me that they wont respond.  Sunday I still have no idea what is going on.

Finally around lunch time, my realtor calls me.  I'm all excited but he immediately says "I have bad news.  The sellers went up in price."  My immediate reaction is - what??? Why?!  How?? I don't understand?  Well, it turns out, the sellers realtor originally gave us a counter offer without talking to the seller.  I have no idea why, but essentially the sellers realtor conned us into going up in price when the seller hadn't actually heard our offer.  So at this point, our offer is 5k below our max price, and their offer is 10k over our max price. So, sucks.

I tell our realtor to tell them I'm pissed, not with him, but just in general.  I also tell him to go up to our max price.  Tell them its our final offer.  Two days go by AGAIN without hearing anything.  At this point I'm deflated.  I'm guessing and planning on us going out again soon to look at houses.  Then I get a call from our realtor saying they counter offered at 3,000 above our maximum price.  All I keep thinking is don't these people understand what a final offer means??? Final offer means take it or leave it.

But, C and I decided to take the offer.  And so, on March 22nd we finally sign all the paperwork and we are on the road to owning our first house! :) Yay!!  We chose May 4th as our closing date and thus begin the process of securing a loan.... TBC.