Thank you Wells Fargo! Apparently when you borrow a few hundred thousand dollars from a bank the least they can do is send you a bottle of wine!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Perks of Buying a House
A few weeks after we closed on the house I came home and found a package from Wells Fargo on our doorstep. I figured it was more disclosures, our property appraisal, or one of the thousand other things I had to sign during the home buying process. But I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box to find this...
Thank you Wells Fargo! Apparently when you borrow a few hundred thousand dollars from a bank the least they can do is send you a bottle of wine!
Thank you Wells Fargo! Apparently when you borrow a few hundred thousand dollars from a bank the least they can do is send you a bottle of wine!
Project 1: Microwave
The first thing I've learned about home ownership is the overwhelming feeling. It's easy to think of all the fixes, projects and changes you'd like to make. Unfortunately for us, Brett and I both have full-time jobs and a budget to adhere to. So it's time to prioritize! While I can still rattle off about 30 projects I'd like to tackle (this is where the overwhelming feeling sets in!) we NEEDED a microwave! Thus project Number 1 for our household is installing a microwave, woot woot!
I'm a big believer of the built in microwave for many reasons but the most important reason being, it saves valuable counter space. Since our kitchen came with no microwave (don't worry it did come with a wine fridge) I got to choose the exact microwave I wanted. I researched, shopped and priced out all our options. In the process I learned something very interesting, the space above our stove was 36 inches wide and as luck would have it most microwaves, at least the affordable ones, are 30 inches. You can buy extension pieces, which are essentially just 3 inch stainless steel pieces that can be installed on both sides of the microwave to cover any gaps between the cabinets. But it turns out the extension pieces are almost as much as the microwave! Yikes! We decided to create our own trim pieces and still purchase the 30 inch microwave.
So...onto the installation! We started off by ripping out the old hood vent which was super easy! Turns out that the demo part is much faster than the installation/rebuild! In our microwave research we learned that we needed a space of 30 inches between our stovetop and the top of the cabinet and the cabinet needed to be at least 66 inches from the floor.
Drawing is courtesy of the handy dandy Frigidaire Installation book.
We knew going into the project that our space didn't really fit those dimensions, we had about 28 from stove top to cabinet and 64 inches from floor to cabinet. Our solution was to adjust the height of the cabinet. Simple, right? Not so much. If you adjust the cabinet height then you have to adjust the size of the doors if you plan on replacing them. And with the detail the cabinet doors have it just may not be worth the effort. We decided instead to keep the cabinet sans doors, my idea is to make it a cook book shelf. Maybe a good idea, maybe not but we'll see. Overall we took 3.5 inches off the cabinet. It wasn't easy mostly because whoever installed the cabinets stripped the screws when the cabinets were installed therefore we had to get creative and cut the cabinet while it was still hanging. See below...
Look at that focus! Once we got through the obstacles of using a saw to cut a cabinet without damaging the others, things started moving! With the cabinet height now corrected we reinstalled and reinforced the bottom of the cabinet. We also learned that we need a better drill! The next step was to patch the hole that use to be the hood vent. Because we adjusted the height of the cabinet we weren't able to reuse the vent from the old hood. We decided the easiest option was to allow the microwave to vent back into the kitchen (this decision may not have been the best however it was 11pm on a Monday, I was irritable and tired!)
Here's our beautiful patching job...
After patching the wall we needed an electrical outlet for the microwave to plug into. Luckily I married an electrical engineer who knows how to do things like install a junction box, install and ground an outlet. Power source - check!
Next we had to cut part of the tile to mount the bracket that the microwave would rest on. Valuble lesson learned here, any time you cut tile cover everything you don't want covered with a fine layer of dust! Suffice it to say there was a plume of masonry dust floating in my kitchen. Once we cut the tile to make room for the bracket (and cleaned up the dust) we installed the bracket.
It took a couple tries at it but we finally go the bracket installed correctly and it was time to mount the microwave. We had a few ill fated attempts at getting the microwave into the bracket but around the 4th attempt we got the microwave locked correctly in place. The last thing to do was to mount the top of the microwave to the bottom of the reinforced cabinet using screws. This is when I realized we really absolutely definitely needed a better drill! A couple screws that should have taken not 2 minutes to get in took 30 minutes of me holding a 100lb microwave in place...not fun. But we survived and have completed our first of 30-ish home improvement projects ahead of us!
Check out our almost finished work!
I'm a big believer of the built in microwave for many reasons but the most important reason being, it saves valuable counter space. Since our kitchen came with no microwave (don't worry it did come with a wine fridge) I got to choose the exact microwave I wanted. I researched, shopped and priced out all our options. In the process I learned something very interesting, the space above our stove was 36 inches wide and as luck would have it most microwaves, at least the affordable ones, are 30 inches. You can buy extension pieces, which are essentially just 3 inch stainless steel pieces that can be installed on both sides of the microwave to cover any gaps between the cabinets. But it turns out the extension pieces are almost as much as the microwave! Yikes! We decided to create our own trim pieces and still purchase the 30 inch microwave.
So...onto the installation! We started off by ripping out the old hood vent which was super easy! Turns out that the demo part is much faster than the installation/rebuild! In our microwave research we learned that we needed a space of 30 inches between our stovetop and the top of the cabinet and the cabinet needed to be at least 66 inches from the floor.
Drawing is courtesy of the handy dandy Frigidaire Installation book.
We knew going into the project that our space didn't really fit those dimensions, we had about 28 from stove top to cabinet and 64 inches from floor to cabinet. Our solution was to adjust the height of the cabinet. Simple, right? Not so much. If you adjust the cabinet height then you have to adjust the size of the doors if you plan on replacing them. And with the detail the cabinet doors have it just may not be worth the effort. We decided instead to keep the cabinet sans doors, my idea is to make it a cook book shelf. Maybe a good idea, maybe not but we'll see. Overall we took 3.5 inches off the cabinet. It wasn't easy mostly because whoever installed the cabinets stripped the screws when the cabinets were installed therefore we had to get creative and cut the cabinet while it was still hanging. See below...
Look at that focus! Once we got through the obstacles of using a saw to cut a cabinet without damaging the others, things started moving! With the cabinet height now corrected we reinstalled and reinforced the bottom of the cabinet. We also learned that we need a better drill! The next step was to patch the hole that use to be the hood vent. Because we adjusted the height of the cabinet we weren't able to reuse the vent from the old hood. We decided the easiest option was to allow the microwave to vent back into the kitchen (this decision may not have been the best however it was 11pm on a Monday, I was irritable and tired!)
Here's our beautiful patching job...
After patching the wall we needed an electrical outlet for the microwave to plug into. Luckily I married an electrical engineer who knows how to do things like install a junction box, install and ground an outlet. Power source - check!
Next we had to cut part of the tile to mount the bracket that the microwave would rest on. Valuble lesson learned here, any time you cut tile cover everything you don't want covered with a fine layer of dust! Suffice it to say there was a plume of masonry dust floating in my kitchen. Once we cut the tile to make room for the bracket (and cleaned up the dust) we installed the bracket.
It took a couple tries at it but we finally go the bracket installed correctly and it was time to mount the microwave. We had a few ill fated attempts at getting the microwave into the bracket but around the 4th attempt we got the microwave locked correctly in place. The last thing to do was to mount the top of the microwave to the bottom of the reinforced cabinet using screws. This is when I realized we really absolutely definitely needed a better drill! A couple screws that should have taken not 2 minutes to get in took 30 minutes of me holding a 100lb microwave in place...not fun. But we survived and have completed our first of 30-ish home improvement projects ahead of us!
Check out our almost finished work!
Moving is....fun?!?!
It seems like everytime we move we say "next time we'll use movers"....well I think after this move we REALLY mean it! Or at least I really hope we mean it! It has become a trend for us to only move during the summer which makes an already exhausting chore even worse. I realize we were extremely lucky at we only had a 1.25 mile move but nonetheless packing all our stuff (and the physical move) is still exhausting. Being that my husband and I just recently got out the of whole "move every year" phase of life we don't have too much unnecessary baggage, however since we did just get married we have all those wedding presents to move. I must admit I was DREADING the thought of moving everything but thanks to a little planning I managed to save a lot of the original boxes presents came in!
Anyway on to the good stuff...the move! On Saturday we showed up at U-Haul at exactly 11 am to get our moving truck much to my surprise it was actually ready on time! And so the moving commenced. After 2 trips with a FULL 17 ft U-Haul, the only things left to move were my husband's garage stuff including the most impressive collection of power tools you've ever seen, car jacks, miscellaneous car stuff, and my husband's prized possesion, his Green Egg Table. For those of you who don't know, a Green Egg the most amazing grill/smoker ever! No, seriously! It's amazing, it's only flaw it's about 250-ish lbs (or at least it feels that heavy). That's just the egg, that's not including the built-from-scratch table my very handy husband built to set his Green Egg in. The table is probably another 250-300 lbs. We decided to cover the entire table in slate, in hindsight we should have considered the weight thing. Needless to say this table is on wheels! As we load up the truck for the last load my husband realizes the table is 3 inches too wide for the U-Haul's ramp....lovely, right? Well after trying to MacGuyver a ramp for about an hour my husband discovered if he used his ATV jack to jack the table off the ground he could then change the wheels on the table from the outside to the inside thus making the table narrow enough to push up the ramp. After the switch was complete it still took my husband, my dad, and my brother-in-law to push the table up the ramp! We finally finished loading the truck waved goodbye to the house we had as a couple and headed for our new home!
Here's what I thought our Green Egg Table would look like...
And here's our infamous Green Egg Table, it's a little different but, hey, it has more character (blood, sweat and tears as well).
Anyway on to the good stuff...the move! On Saturday we showed up at U-Haul at exactly 11 am to get our moving truck much to my surprise it was actually ready on time! And so the moving commenced. After 2 trips with a FULL 17 ft U-Haul, the only things left to move were my husband's garage stuff including the most impressive collection of power tools you've ever seen, car jacks, miscellaneous car stuff, and my husband's prized possesion, his Green Egg Table. For those of you who don't know, a Green Egg the most amazing grill/smoker ever! No, seriously! It's amazing, it's only flaw it's about 250-ish lbs (or at least it feels that heavy). That's just the egg, that's not including the built-from-scratch table my very handy husband built to set his Green Egg in. The table is probably another 250-300 lbs. We decided to cover the entire table in slate, in hindsight we should have considered the weight thing. Needless to say this table is on wheels! As we load up the truck for the last load my husband realizes the table is 3 inches too wide for the U-Haul's ramp....lovely, right? Well after trying to MacGuyver a ramp for about an hour my husband discovered if he used his ATV jack to jack the table off the ground he could then change the wheels on the table from the outside to the inside thus making the table narrow enough to push up the ramp. After the switch was complete it still took my husband, my dad, and my brother-in-law to push the table up the ramp! We finally finished loading the truck waved goodbye to the house we had as a couple and headed for our new home!
Here's what I thought our Green Egg Table would look like...
And here's our infamous Green Egg Table, it's a little different but, hey, it has more character (blood, sweat and tears as well).
Trading in Manicures for Power Tools
Homeowner - now there's a role I didn't think we'd be taking over at least for another few years but thanks my type A/planner personality, here we are, brand new homeowners! It all started over a sushi dinner to reward ourselves for both getting raises. My husband and I started talking about our 5 year plan; specifically the goals we had, things we wanted, etc. We managed to land on the topic of home ownership, we pondered it, played with our realtor.com app, and drove around the neighborhoods we really liked. We came across an awesome "project" in a fantastic neighborhood and decided to take the plunge and become homeowners!
I won't bore you all with the details of the house buying process, suffice it to say our buying experience was not easy. We FINALLY closed on our new home June 3rd. And first few weeks of homeownership have already given me a taste of what I'm in for. From serious cleaning (like hands and knees scrubbing; my mom and grandma would be proud) to electrical fixes to re-keying doors, I'm coming to the realization that I'll be trading in the manicures for power tools for the foreseeable future! Oh and did I mention we are renovating this house the diy way....I can promise this is going to be a fun ride full of up, down, the occasional breakdown and lots of comical moments.
Here's our project!
I won't bore you all with the details of the house buying process, suffice it to say our buying experience was not easy. We FINALLY closed on our new home June 3rd. And first few weeks of homeownership have already given me a taste of what I'm in for. From serious cleaning (like hands and knees scrubbing; my mom and grandma would be proud) to electrical fixes to re-keying doors, I'm coming to the realization that I'll be trading in the manicures for power tools for the foreseeable future! Oh and did I mention we are renovating this house the diy way....I can promise this is going to be a fun ride full of up, down, the occasional breakdown and lots of comical moments.
Here's our project!
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