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Off Topic Area => Random Musings => Topic started by: Enchantra on August 09, 2014, 08:26:37 PM
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We went and looked at the outside of our new home this afternoon.
They have installed the lighting like we asked them too and re-graded the land around the home removing the copious amount of weeds that had grown.
I'm excited! (http://smileydatabase.com/s/455.gif)
Monday morning we do the walk through with the builder and our realtor to make sure everything has been done that we asked for inside the house.
If all goes well we could close by the end of the month! (http://smileydatabase.com/s/99.gif)
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Excellent, Amanda!
Nothing is more exciting (and tiring) than buying your own home. I'm very happy for you both!
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A wonderful step ! Very exciting .
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A wonderful step ! Very exciting .
Yes it is very exciting!
Once we close I get the joy of contacting contractors for quotes to paint the inside as it had already been painted inside by the time we put in an offer on it. Apparently here in the desert all builders and it seems most people who buy homes are not very colorful in their paint choices as every house we have walked into (including the one we rent) is painted this light swiss mocha tan color inside. Peter and I find it depressing. So the house is getting repainted before we move in.
I also have the joy of talking to contractors to get quotes for extending the driveway to make a turnaround on the side of it and for landscapers to do some landscaping and masons to install a six foot block wall around the property and a patio in back. I'm going to be VERY busy....
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The good news is that you get to hire people to do the "heavy work". ;D
One of the rules of real estate marketing is to make things as neutral as possible. That way people who are looking to buy have an easier time visualizing what they like in the space. If you have non-neutral colors, some people will hate them and simply just walk away because of it instead of visualizing what it might look like with the color they like.
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Yeah well this "Swiss Mocha" is a neutral color that we hate. The fact we had to hire someone to come in to repaint a brand new place was a drawback. When your walls are basically the color of beach sand, it doesn't do anything to lighten the inside of the house. It looks like they took the same paint they used on the outside of the house and used it inside. Yuck.
Right now this is what we are looking to paint up. We're leaving the Guest room/associated bathroom and closet, and laundry room the current ugly color since they are not main rooms and we're not using them to often.
Livingroom and diningroom - medium green flat. Peter's idea. He wants a flat that doesn't reflect light so he can set up his home theater system with projector. I am however putting a white ceiling into the vaulted ceiling in the diningroom for the sake of lightening that up a bit. If we ever go to sell (Don't see that happening for 20 years at least) we'll have it repainted off-white before we put it on the market.
Entry, hallways, my studio, associated bathroom, kitchen - Cream/off white. With gloss white ceilings. Toying with the idea of having Celtic knotwork and Celtic dragons stenciled onto the entry ceiling and around the doorways in the entryway in green and metallic gold. (The entry is round and reminds you of the inside of a castle turret with 20ft ceiling)
Peter's Office and associated bathroom - white or off-white, depends on what he finds when we look at paint swatches.
Master Bedroom - warm tone off-white
Master Bathroom - Burgundy/wine w/gold accents (Again will repaint it to off white if we go to sell at some point.) Of course Peter hasn't given me his input on this yet either. This could change. Of course if he had his way the entire house would be green inside. (EEWWWWWW)
The kitchen already has green countertops in some kind of cultured stone. It looks beautiful. I'm going to find some pendant lamp adaptors that screw into the recessed lighting over the one counter and the island and put green glass globe shades on them. I found them at Lowes online, so that's probably where I will end up getting them. The beauty of this of course is that I can unscrew these and just have the recessed lighting if we ever decide to sell the place.
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Always nice to have your own twist on things,to make it your home, rather than others ideas on how things should be :)
Looking forward to seeing pics.
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(http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh240/MrsWTownsend/smilies/yes.gif) (http://s257.photobucket.com/user/MrsWTownsend/media/smilies/yes.gif.html)
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Had our walk through today with a representative of the builder. Using my Husband Peter as a yardstick in the picture to give you an idea of scale. He's 6 ft 4 inches tall. 8 ft doorways, 10ft ceilings.
We will close sometime in the next two weeks.
Thought I would share some pictures with you of our new home.
It even has a sweet view of the San Tan Mountains which are only a few miles away right from our diningroom!
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And more pictures...
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Last of the pictures...
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Congratulations on your new home! Its yours, so you can paint it any color you want. That's one of the pleasures of owning your own place. We were in a constructivist mood (Malevich etc) when we bought our first house so painted every cabinet door in the kitchen a different color, and of course the rest of the background of the cabinets a different color yet! The living room was peach - which did take a few coats to paint over when we decided to sell, but we enjoyed it while we were there.
Enjoy!
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The peach living room had a giant window that caught the afternoon sun so we planted a solid line of bamboo across the outside of the window. Within a year it fully covered the window and made for very beautiful mixing of colors. Turns out that it also hid the dead guy who got shot there in our yard in a drug deal.That was the impetus for us to make it where I live now. Take chances and have some fun with it. Life is short.
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Thanks Frank and Karen! :D
It's awesome to know we will finally have a place of our own again.
Our landlord would rather let the current house fall apart than take care of anything in it, so I cannot wait to move into this new home.
To punctuate that when I opened up the dishwasher tonight to fill it after dinner the seal fell off inside on one side and I had to push it back into place. I cannot wait to use good quality appliances again! Those are stainless steel GE appliance in the photos of the kitchen. I saw those and just about did a happy dance!
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Congrates Amanda and Peter looks like you got yourselves a very nice castle to call your own enjoy.
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Thanks Ernie!
After all the hell we went through to get his green card, being able to get the house is a blessing. 8)
It's going to be great to get out of this rental house too.
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Congrats, Amanda (and Peter)! It looks wonderful. Enjoy your new home.
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Yeehaw! Got word the loan went through, just waiting on the lender to arrange the date and time and for the money to transfer from Peter's account in Canada, and we will probably close Friday or early next week! Hot diggity! Where's the dancing smiley??? (http://smileydatabase.com/s/92.gif) (http://smileydatabase.com/s/710.gif)
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Congratulations on the house! WOW! That yard is sure a blank pallet as far as putting in a garden, you'll be having a good time with that. I'd go with a series of four foot square and four foot by eight foot beds, easy to grow things out here with those and get your soil up to snuff with good quality compost that way. I made my beds out of cement blocks instead of wood, just too many termites, even redwood wasn't resistant to their eating it, didn't last that much longer than pine. Watch out for horse manure, if they are dosing their horse's with medication you don't want that in the compost pile. In the fall see if you can find some of the grass clippings from where folks are putting in winter lawns, both before and after, before you get Bermuda and after you get fresh green rye, also find someone with a fig tree, this helps make a really hot pile. Heck, why am I telling you all this you already know most of this.
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At this point closing is going to be Tuesday morning! :D
We picked out paint colors the other night as well.
Grabbed four swatches of each of the colors we picked so we have one for ourselves and three to give out to the three contractors I'm going to grab quotes from.
Peter picked out the Livingroom and Diningroom colors and the colors for his Office. I did the rest of the house.
Some of the colors are on the darker side. Keep in mind we are dealing with large rooms here. The Master Bathroom is larger than the kitchen, and roughly the same size as the Guest room, so putting the chianti with bronze trim in there with a Navajo white ceiling won't really affect it to much in how big it looks.
Peter wanted something in the medium tone range in a flat or matte finish for the livingroom and diningroom so that way it would not reflect light when using his projector. Hence the green walls and blue ceilings, meant to look like ground and sky. (I have half a mind to paint tiny silver or gold stars on the ceilings, but I think Peter would kill me!)
The rest of the house is going to be in fairly neutral tones. White ceilings and Navajo white walls. I got smart and wrote on each swatch the room, what it was being used on, and the finish. This should in theory help make things a bit easier in getting quotes and keep mistakes by contractors to a minimum.
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More pictures.
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We signed the documents this morning! The house is ours! I'm going to be getting the keys probably this afternoon or this evening! :toothy12: :toothy10: :thumbsup: :occasion14: :hello2: :headbang:
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You are going to be busy cleaning the inside of that place top to bottom to get all the dust out from construction. It may look clean but there is so much fine stuff left behind, vacuum the carpet twice to get all that fine particulates out, then run your A/C fan on auto to get even more out and use a pleated filter for two weeks and then throw it away, yes, only two weeks. Well congratulations on the new homestead :headbang:
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Fantastic. :headbang: Cheers to you both. :occasion14: I am sure it feels good to have a place of your own. :thumbsup: Eric.
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Just got back from getting the keys, going to have dinner with Peter and then head back out to the house to do some other things. We are also buying a mailbox and pole for it tonight and I get to play miss fix-it tomorrow and install it. I called a bunch of folks and got the water, electricity, garbage and internet/phone set up today. Since it's a good month till we move in I have plenty of time to go through and clean but I'm going to clean AFTER I have the painters and other contractors in doing their stuff. Why make things worse for myself?
So I'm excited! :thumbsup: :toothy10: :hello2:
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Congrats to you and Peter, Amanda! You're going to have so much fun! :thumbsup:
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Well The ground was like rock, a mixture of clay, sand and silt I affectionately call "cement." Took me two hours of digging, putting water in the hole to loosen the soil, digging some more, repeat over an over. Got the hole dug, but by the time I finished that I realized it was time to head home to the rental and get dinner. Turns out I also discovered in this process that the builder used really nasty fill dirt around the place as I was digging up a busted beer bottle in the area where I put the hole. :angry1: That said I'm glad I'm using raised beds for most of what I'm growing because I'm shocked as heck that this soil even supported weed life...
I spent a good chunk of the afternoon just calling contractors to arrange for quotes for painting, plumbing, electrical, and to get someone out to the home to spray today for critters since the house sat vacant for a year. While I normally hate using chemicals on anything, I also don't need any surprises right now in my new home. We have friends that will be helping with the move that have a 3 year old and an infant. I don't need either child stung by a Scorpion in the house.
I'm heading back over there late this morning to meet with several contractors for quotes. Meanwhile hubby is stuck at a conference for work all week in Northern Phoenix a good hour away. He feels bad I'm stuck dealing with all this because the original plan was that he was going to handle the contractors to keep my stress level low since I have enough I'm already dealing with.
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Well I met with a bunch of contractors and got more quotes done today. I also managed to get my mailbox post cemented into the ground! So tomorrow I get to finish mounting the physical box onto the pole. I'm raiding Peter's tool chest. :headbang:
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Got the mailbox up!!!!!!!! Gina gave me a hand finishing it up today.
Yesterday I finished digging the hole and cemented the pole into place. :icon_sunny: :thumbsup:
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Read through this post and was reminded of the time I did the same. Moving into a new house that you own is a great experience and I am really happy for you.
One thing I am wondering about is what kind of view you will have after you put up a block fence. Stone pillars and metal fence would give you both security and a view. JMHO
Love the colors. Around here everything is painted off white, EVERYTHING. Like walking into a hospital.
Jim