So I disappeared again

Sorry...but as you know, financially we are in no place to make fun updates to the house, and when you create a blog that is specifically to showcase home upgrades, well it's depressing to update that blog without any real updates. I will say though that the big decision we made for the house is one that has been awesome for us.

We got new windows! They are these super strength, even superman couldn't break them windows, and really have been awesome. We can open our windows on cool evenings. The glass is low-E so it helps keep the house cooler on hot afternoons. The whole thing is pretty cool. We ended up getting a really great deal on them that we couldn't pass up so the whole house, minus the garage, has new windows (including the scary bathroom), and we got a new back door thrown in for free basically. It is lovely, and really awesome to be able to not have to go through the garage to get to our back yard. Of course now, because we hadn't done anything to stop the deterioration of the back deck, it's pretty unstable. Ah well, we wanted to replace the wood with composite decking anyways. Composite decking lasts much longer in our hot, humid, rainy Florida summers. The deal, thankfully, gave us 18 months no interest financing so we are free from freaking out about paying for these for a little while. I have no idea what we are going to do when the bill comes due, but we have over a year still to figure it out and I just pray that the answer will come to us before that time comes.

If our financial situation ever improves, I will try to start blogging again about the house and progress we make. Until then, a shot of the new windows...

House update...

...coming soon.

We have made a big decision on something for the house. It will either turn out to be the smartest thing we have ever done, or the dumbest.

Stay tuned...

What I Iike about my house

So I realized the other day that all I have talked about on here since buying the house is what I don't like about the house and what I want to fix in the house. I mean sure there is a lot to do, and a lot that I want to see improved but I have decided to start a regular post on what I like about the house, cause there are a lot of things. Plus this will help me stay positive during this time of our serious financial crunch that is not allowing us to do anything on the house besides live in it.

So the "what I like" topic for today....

Location, location, location.

Reason #1: I love where we live. Oh sure the neighborhood is still in transition, so there are some odd little houses and odd little neighbors, but I don't feel unsafe there or anything. What I love though is that it's a diverse neighborhood. I have all kinds of neighbors. Neighbors from all different cultures, and different ages, and backgrounds. You go down one street and hear the Spanish language radio station going as some one works on the yard, and then turn the corner and there is an Asian family having a barbecue while the kids play in the front. I really love it.

Reason #2: I love that we are less than a minute's walk to a great park. This park has two fields that are used for lacrosse and soccer, it has a nice little pond where birds hang out and dance their little mating dances, and it has a great path that goes around the entire thing where everyone comes to exercise or just hang out with their families. There are also picnic benches, little barbeque's, and shaded docks out to the pond. We go out there every evening and just walk around and always meet friendly people who are doing the same. It's really fantastic.

Reason #3: I love that we are a five minute bike ride from this fantastic trail that goes for miles and miles up and down the coast. We go for these long bike rides on the weekend and just enjoy being outdoors and not having to fight traffic or bad sidewalks to get some exercise. The best part is we can ride the trail for less than 10 minutes and get to downtown and if we ride about 30 minutes to the north we get to this great small town main street where you find all sorts of boutiques and restaurants. How about this part....if we ride to the west from our house for about 15 minutes we find ourselves on one of the nicest beaches that Florida has to offer. Bike....to the beach....amazing!

So there you go. Post number one on what I like about my quirky little house.

If I had money to spend

So the one big project that E and I both want to do is a total bathroom renovation. I have mentioned my disdain of this particular room a few times on here, but it really is in desperate need of a complete overhaul.

Apparently somewhere in this poor bathroom's past, a terrible flood happened that totally messed up the floors. Now did the previous owner do anything about these messed up floors....no! They covered them with ugly vinyl flooring (or whatever that horrible peel and stick tile stuff is) and went on their merry way. The problem with this of course is that the sub flooring is totally messed up, warped, and in desperate need of replacing. With this in mind, we are seriously thinking of just hiring professionals. Obviously both of us would love to be home improvement geniuses that can handle all manner of power tools, but we are not and therefore must hire a professional for certain jobs.....like total bathroom renovations.

So, this dream like all others (did I mention I REALLY want to replace my tape window?.....650 times?....oh) must wait for better financial times. In the meantime though, I thought I'd show a collection of what my bathroom could look like...

Let's start with a layout of my closet sized bathroom shall we?

Yup, that's it. You can flush the toilet from the shower....you know, if you wanted to. The good news is, this bathroom's small size may make fixing the floors cheaper than your average bathroom since you know less material needed and all. I mean seriously, I got a flier from the Depot the other day that was advertising floor tiles (12x12) at $0.99/sq.ft. Just buying tile for the floors (oh if only that was the only thing needed) would cost us around $25. I could scrape change out from the sofa and probably afford that.

So the rest of this is stuff that would be nice to have when it comes time to have a lovely, new bathroom. I especially love the sliding glass doors on the tub. I don't love all sliding doors, but these are really quite nice looking....and with glass doors on the tub it would help make the bathroom look larger as well as let in light from the window that will have been replaced at this point (said window is located on that 4ft wall where the tub resides). The only drawback I see is I will have to be extremely diligent in my cleaning of the tub/shower; cause now unless the guest is staying for the night, I can just pull the curtain shut and pretend the mildew doesn't exist.

No news for me, but...

...there is home news in the family.

My brother and his wife just bought their first house together. It's a very nice place complete with country club membership. My brother can now golf to his heart's delight.

Here's a few pictures he shared with the fam:

Congratulations guys!

Why?

Wouldn't you know that they day after I start feeling comfortable enough in our financial situation to start daydreaming about fixing the house again, we are dealt yet another blow. I'm not going to go into details, cause frankly everyone that reads this knows me and probably already knows....and if by freak chance you read this and do not know me (highly unlikely), then you don't really care what happened cause this is a house blog.

Anyways, it is very possible that I will not get to spend any of the lovely tax money on the house and will need every penny of it to pay bills and keep us from financial ruin. Joy.

So, sorry for the blink and you missed it return to blogging, but it looks like no new news on the home front for a while.

Miss me?

OK, so I don't actually know how many people really read my little blog here, much less who would be checking back in to see if I'd ever post again, but I have decided to start posting again anyways.

The reason for the extended hiatus?

Well the problem with creating a blog with the sole purpose of posting about your home and all the renovations you want to do to it is when the money runs out so does the material for the blog. So, are there still long lists of things that we want to do to the house? Oh sure. In fact those lists have grown by quite a bit from the early days in the house. Unfortunately our cash flow has decreased significantly. So for now it's all pipe-dreams and somedays.

So lets see, the topic for today.....Everybody loves tax refunds and "economic stimulus packages."

Now normally I don't really support things like the stimulus package (see side note) that our dear Congress approved, but frankly I could use the influx of money to do a little work on my house like, oh...did someone say finally fixing my tape window? You did, well then you'd be right! It gets humid in my house on warm days. HUMID! Yeah, that's not right. I can handle hot or cold but humid indoors...oh no...not so much.

So I'm thinking this new-found money (thanks Dubbya) will go towards:

1. Installation of a new bathroom window
2. Getting the duct work looked at under the house finally
3. Beefing up the insulation in our crawl space
4. If there's any left over after the 1st three, I would love to purchase and install a new door to our back patio, but that may have to wait.

Yes I know, exciting stuff but really if you lived in the house with us you'd be thrilled. These are fantastic options. Who needs light switches that actually work (anyone know a good electrician?) or faucet knobs in the bathroom that don't suck (total bathroom reno in our future) when you can actually sit in your house on a hot day and know that you don't have cold air escaping out your tape window, your poor ducts under your house, or out your poorly insulated roof. That's what I thought.

Side note: While I understand the purpose behind the whole stimulus package thing (or tax cuts like the voters here in FL passed) it affects the public service things we depend on for day to day life. I mean hello, taxes pay for your road maintenance, police force, county library...all those things that the government provides that we just take for granted. When these tax cuts/packages occur, it means less money to provide those services.....and yes, to my dear brother who strongly disagrees with me on this point. I know that the money that I'm getting back is technically mine and I earned it, but I'd prefer knowing that our court system has enough money to run full time year round than having the extra $XX in my pocket (yes in FL they almost had to shut down some parts of the court system for (at minimum) 2 months due to a lack of funds as a result of tax cuts).