house saga: during pics part two

so here are the latest and greatest pics from the house. it is being fumigated right now, so i have a little time off tonight from work, but we still have to pick materials out and get people scheduled to come in. still, the break is much needed let me tell you.

these images are from 5 days ago. i will more up at the end of the week, once the tent comes off. they were taken at night, so be generous when judging my photographic eye.

this is our kitchen all dry-walled with the slider in place on the left and paint going on

the fireplace has since been demoed and the walls painted

closet in its new place

slider in the dining room installed and the first coat of paint on

dining room from the living room. that is a mossy green kind of color. the picture doesn't do the color justice.

more images to come, with cabinets and paint finished. man this has been a whirlwind. stay tuned. we are about 10 days from move in and there is still a TON to do.

house saga: during pics part one

as promised, here are some pictures i took yesterday. there is still a ton happening in the next few days: electrical today, insulation tomorrow, stucco today and tomorrow, dry wall on friday. i'll have some more pictures on monday.

for now, here's the progress:

here is the gutted kitchen with the window moved and set and the old hole framed over

the window in its new home and the hole where the slider will go

new fireplace in the living room with my father-in-law hard at work

entry closet moved and the dining room in the background. you can also see the framing for the slider on the right

more pictures on monday. it will look totally different. still under budget and ahead of schedule. yay!

house saga: before pics

so i finally had some time to get my camera battery charged enough to pull our before shots off of it. tonight i'll take some "in progress" shots, which will look pretty cool because the house is basically all framing and exposed plumbing, electrical and duct work. it's pretty fun. anyway, here are the shots:

here is our dilapidated house front the day we closed escrow



all of the next shots are what will become our great room, the kitchen, dining room and living room together:

this was the view from the front door. that wall is now gone

again, that wall on the right is gone and the coat closet was moved to the corner of that brown wall. the corner right in the center of the picture is also gone, that room is now the dining room and is open to both the living room and the kitchen

this is the kitchen side of the wall we removed. this entire kitchen was gutted

the window on the right and the sink in front of it are now where the oven was. the oven was moved to where the window was in this shot. again, the cabinets are all gone and there will be an island in there

this view of our neighbor's camper is one of the reasons the window was moved. the more practical reason was so that we could move the sliding door to the dining room and be able to see the kids playing in the back yard from the kitchen. but the camper is just ugly.

that sliding door there was moved about three feet to the left and that wall with the cabinet on it is no longer. that is now our dining room.

finally, this was the fifth bedroom that is now our dining room as seen from the doorway, the doorway that is also no longer.

and there she goes. our first installment of the house rebuilding saga. so far, praise the Lord Jesus, we are ahead of schedule and under budget. if you are familiar with construction at all, that is no small miracle. i pray the miracle continues through the end of the project.

with my camera now fully charged, i will take some more pics tonight of the progress. check back tomorrow for those shots.

more house stuff

so we were running around like maniacs yesterday trying to get all our docs signed and notarized so we could start work on the house tomorrow. God bless our realtor and his patience. he really helped to fix a bad situation that wasn't really his fault to begin with. so thanks for that. and the escrow agent, jolene diaz was really nice and helpful. so jolene, if you ever google yourself (does anyone else ever do that? i had to stop trying, there are like 756 guys - and 3 girls - named adam steele in the united states) and this blog turns up - thank you!

today we get the keys. tomorrow and sunday we demo the whole front area of the house, including the kitchen. then we close escrow on monday.

here is where we stand on the place:
-found out the heater doesn't work and there is no a/c...just before summer. cost of new stuff (with a stellar deal...thanks to my father in law and his subs) - 4500. awesome!
-found out there are termites. we may need to tent the house. 2k. sweet!
-found out the pipes are galvanized, not copper. couple thousand more. ok!
-cabinets - thanks to erick corsa from rocky peak for a great price and a wonderful attitude about the work. seriously one of the best guys around. erick, same as jolene, if you google your name and read this...thanks! anyway, cabinets - 7000 - 8500
-counter tops - anywhere from 1000 to 4000 installed. we need to shop this out.
-flooring is 8 bucks a foot, for either 580 ft2 or 1520 ft2...so either 4500 or 11000. big difference, i know.
-appliances could work for the time being, and that is great. may have to wait on these and upgrade later. looking at around 4000 for all stainless steel stuff.
-sink and fixtures haven't really been priced out yet, but those can be reasonable or crazy, depending on where we go. most likely somewhere in the middle and definitely at least 1k.
-still waiting on the bids for the dry wall and electrical. don't know where to put this.

so for you mathemagicians who have been counting as you go, we are looking at about 17k if we do the bare minimum and about 40k if we go with everything we want right now. needless to say, the 40k ain't happening. we only have about 23k to work with. so we will be cutting some stuff out for sure.

owning our own home - priceless!

i will be posting before pics of the whole house on monday as well as some pics from the demo process.

stay posted for more on the saga of buying a first home. so fun. we'll see if i'm still saying that in a couple of weeks.

quick note

so things are crazy right now trying to get everything together for the house. we are trying to finalize all the loan stuff to close escrow this friday, and we have to get all this info about the 8k federal tax credit and the 10k california state credit. we are also frantic trying to get all the sub contractors into the house to bid the job so we know what we have to do and how much it will cost.

once that is all done, we have to look at what we want to do, then throw half of it out because we can't afford to do it.

5 weeks from now, we will hopefully be moving into a house that at least is half done. and if we are really lucky, our kitchen will work. what a fun, crazy, exhausting process, and we haven't even started the work yet.

God is seriously so good. we are really excited to have a house and a place we can enjoy our friends, family and future little ones. it's a blessing and we will, despite all the craziness (or maybe because of it), relish this whole process.

i will try and write something of more substance soon.

the palms

so some friends and i went to a new eatery, new for me at least, in downtown carpenteria for dinner this monday night. it was a very interesting place.

it is a bbq place where you order your meat raw, and then you cook it yourself on an indoor bbq. if there are a lot of people, you have to wait in line for grill space. there is an all you can eat salad bar that come with ever entree that also has bread, potatoes and beans.

all the food was pretty good, and i got a filet mignon for 15 bucks, and it was a good cut of meat (cooked to perfection might i add).

but i couldn't get that episode of seinfeld out of my head where kramer comes up with the idea of having a pizzaria where the people make their own pizzas. seinfeld says it best: "why would anyone pay you to make their own pizza?"

seriously, why would we drive all the way to carpenteria to pay someone to let us use their grill to cook our own dinner? for the experience i guess. and, believe it or not, it was a good one. i would actually recommend this place (to go to once, maybe once a decade...you know, for the experience)

house stuff

all of my friends who have already gone through the wonderful process of purchasing a home warned me that this would happen, but i don't think even they, having gone through the process already, knew it could be this rough.

first of all, we looked for more than 18 months. i know lots of people look for a long time, but that is a little ridiculous. and it isn't like we were being really picky, maybe in the beginning we were, but for the last year we were pretty open to anything. anyway, we finally get a place and now there is so much paperwork and stuff it's crazy.

again, our friends warned us. we sort of had an idea of what we were getting in to. but again, this is ridiculous. our broker for our loan is on a skiing trip and we are freaking out at the list of fees due at closing. we just found out that this list includes buyers (us) and sellers fees, so the number we have to come up with won't really be that scary. sweet!

and all we are hoping for is enough money to do some (pretty extensive) remodeling, remodel enough equity into the house to get the pmi removed, and have a wonderful, comfortable home that we can entertain in and make the most of while we are living in it. is that too much to ask?

i think not.

ps- guys in my group who are reading this and who offered to help with the house...your first mission has arrived. i need to visit the place and weed whack the crap out of some weeds. then we will need to follow that up with the mower and then with some weed killer. i will talk to you tonight about when and stuff.

pps- for the duration of this rant, blood by the middle east has been playing in the back ground. tough to rant about something and be frustrated when such beauty is luring you away from those feelings of frustration. thank you Jesus for great music.

amen