Kim and Jeff's First Home

Looking Back at 2011

Kim — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:23:03 +0000

2011 sure went by fast for me! In addition to all the home improvements that Jeff and I had done, I was busy with my paralegal classes plus my regular day job at Go Media. I’m happy to say that I only have two semesters of classes left, so I’m close to being done!

I thought I would take a look back on what improvements we did to our home in 2011, which was the second year we lived in this house. To start off 2011, we got the living room painted. The bland white room was transformed into a warm room with a red accent wall. To complete our living room makeover we put up a new curtain rod, new curtains, and various decorations to match the color scheme including art work, candles, a rug, and a clock. The final addition to the living room was a new sectional which we bought in May of 2011. The sectional is so comfortable! Jeff and I both have our own side where we can lay down and stretch out when we watch a movie.

Another new furniture item we got in 2011 was a futon for the spare bedroom. It’s been used several times for overnight guests, but I think it’s been used more by Jeff when he takes a nap! I am glad to have something available for guests to sleep on, instead of just an air mattress.

In January we also had to replace the water heater and in June we had to replace the sump pump. Not very exciting, but we had to do it.

I never posted about this on the blog, but we got new vinyl flooring and a new toilet in the half bathroom. The half bathroom was really in need of an update. I still want to get a new light fixture in that room, but it’s not a huge priority since that bathroom isn’t used a lot.

Another home improvement we did was getting part of the basement waterproofed. The basement already had an “interior system” done back in 1999 which was clearly not working right due to the efflorescence and crumbling block in one corner of the basement. The interior system is basically where they open the floor next to the outside walls, and drain tile is installed and a sump pump is put in. The company we hired, Ace Basement Waterproofing believes in treating the outside of the house in order to keep water out. Their process is explained on their website here. The waterproofing work took about 3 days and was completed in October. The work was expensive but I am glad we got it done.

Not exactly a home “improvement”, but an addition to our home in 2011 was a cat who we named Cookie. We adopted her from the Cleveland APL and she is very sweet and loveable. She is always waiting at the door for us when we come home. She follows us all around when we are home too. If I take laundry to the basement, Cookie comes down with me. If we are watching a movie, Cookie lays on the couch too. And when we eat dinner, Cookie sits on her post that we put right by the dining room table! She’s a real pal.

Looking ahead for this year, we don’t have too many home improvements planned. I think we have spent enough money on the house for a while! Jeff and I are planning to get a new faucet in the kitchen and get the air ducts cleaned. Right now I want to focus on getting rid of items that we no longer need and donating them to Goodwill. I already have a stack of clothes ready to go. What home improvements do you all have planned this year? Here’s to a great 2012!

Our First Snow Thrower

Kim — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:24:20 +0000

Hello this is Jeff, Kim’s hubby. This is my first post on this site. I wanted to share with you the purchase of our first snow thrower (or snow blower as we like to call it). The first couple of years in our house we did it the hard way with a shovel and it would take me a good 45-60 minutes of nonstop shoveling to get the driveway done. We avoided a snow thrower because of the cost and the fact that we didn’t know how to use it! But I was tired of the hassle of shoveling and thought a snow thrower might make things more fun.

I did some research and found that they had electric snow throwers that were less expensive than gas. We’ve also got an electric lawn mower and weed trimmer but they’re not Greenworks brand. I saw good reviews for the Greenworks brand and the price was relatively cheap compared to others. The one I bought was the Greenworks 26032 20-Inch 12 Amp Electric Snow Thrower.

I also purchased a 50 foot cold weather extension cord because this version you have to plug in. Amazon shipped it for free and it arrived a few days later. I opened it up and put the thing together in about 20 minutes. There was not much assembly to do.

A few weeks later we had our first snowfall and it was about 2-3 inches I’d say. It was time to test the snow thrower out! It took a little time to get used to how to adjust the chute and get the snow blowing in the direction I wanted. But once I did I felt like it worked great! I think that my chute wasn’t tight enough because I would adjust it and the force of the snow caused it to shoot more up than out. I need to tighten next time.

My biggest gripe was probably getting used to moving the extension cord all around. I haven’t quite got the hang of that yet, but I’m sure it’s one of those things I’ll get used to. It took me probably 30-40 minutes to do the driveway this time, but I chalk that up to being a first time user and trying to figure things out.

Mouse in the house

Kim — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:13:06 +0000

Just the other day, Jeff discovered a mouse in our basement! It was a big surprise to us because we’ve lived in this house for two years and never have seen a mouse in here. Jeff went to the basement before work to get his shoes, and there was a mouse sitting in our finished half of the basement on Jeff’s “breakdancing floor.” We were able to get up close to the mouse and it did not run away. I figured it must not be doing so good since it wasn’t running away from us. We didn’t have time to do anything with the mouse since we had to leave for work right away. When we came home, the mouse was not there! I was worried, who knows where it went and what it might be chewing up? Later that same night I told Jeff to go in the basement again and see if the mouse was there. Jeff went downstairs and the mouse was back on the “breakdancing floor” and this time it was dead! My only guess for why it died is the bug spray. We spray bug spray once or twice a year in our basement to kill the spiders down there, so maybe it could kill a tiny mouse too. The mouse was so small and kind of cute! I am not scared of mice but I am scared of bugs. It’s kind of funny because mice are a lot bigger than bugs and can do more damage! I guess they just remind me of all the cute pet hamsters my family had when I was growing up.

Hopefully we do not see any more mice in the basement. Jeff and I bought a couple traps just in case. We got the “no kill” type that just trap the mouse and you can release it outside. We’ll see if it works. I haven’t seen any more mice since that one day though.

I am still curious to know how the mouse got inside. Since they are so small, they can fit into very tiny holes that we would never notice!

Check out the new couch

Kim — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:54:06 +0000

Jeff and I have recently purchased a new couch (or sectional as these are called)! Shopping for one was a long process, we looked in at least five different stores. La-Z-boy had several couches that we really liked, but they were too expensive. We ended up making our purchase at Value City Furniture, they had the best selection of modern looking couches that were in our price range. We decided that the “cocoa” color would look best in our living room out of the 5 color options that were available. Here it is:

It is the most comfortable couch ever! Quite an improvement over the old black hand me down ones we had. Our old couch and love seat have made their way down to the basement now. The day I got home and saw the sectional in the living room, my first thought was – “It is way too big!” It is a lot taller and wider than what we previously had and it didn’t look right to me for a while. I am accustomed to the size now and I think it fits the room well.

Now of course after getting the new furniture, I do not like the look of our old coffee table with it. Several years ago we bought that coffee table and it is pretty big because it has storage space and also you can lift up the top of it. I think we will eventually get a new coffee table about half the size of our current one. We just need something more simple in the room. If you are in the market for a coffee table, let me know, I will consider selling it!

You may have noticed the cool new tray on the coffee table too. It was purchased at Pier 1 just this past weekend. It works really well with our color scheme! Jeff and I have a lot more home improvements we are working on this summer including a living room photo wall and updates to our half bathroom, so look for those posts soon!

New Futon

Kim — Sun, 08 May 2011 16:01:05 +0000

Hello readers! I haven’t been able to keep this blog updated as frequently as I would like to due to being so busy with work and school. I only have one class this summer though, so hopefully I can post more often.

Jeff and I recently bought a futon for our spare bedroom. Before this, the only furniture in the spare bedroom was a craft desk that I use for wrapping gifts, scrapbooking, and framing photos. This futon will be great for overnight guests. The previous option for an overnight guest was either the couch or the air mattress. The futon is a lot more comfortable! We bought it at Sleep Source in Cleveland Heights. The nice thing with that store is that you can choose any combination of frame and mattress. There were so many to choose from! We ended up spending $600 after the delivery charges. You can definitely get a futon cheaper than that, but the quality will not be as good. Here is the new futon!

We also decided it would be a good idea to buy a cover for the mattress in order to protect it. Luckily Sleep Source had a deal where if you buy your futon there, you can get 50% off a cover. We picked a nice colorful one!

I am happy that we finally have some furniture in the spare bedroom instead of just boxes! I would actually consider the room to be a multi purpose room rather than your average guest room. Since we don’t have guests very frequently, it makes sense to keep the craft desk in there so we can get more use out of the space.

Living Room Painting

Kim — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 02:54:42 +0000

Our living room has been painted! It was actually painted a few weeks ago, but I thought I would wait to post pics on here until we had the new clock and art work up. The paint color we chose for the living room is called Nomadic Desert and you can get it at Sherwin Williams. The accent wall color is Brick Paver, also available at Sherwin Williams. The room feels so much more warm and cozy now compared to before when it was just painted white. Paint can sure do a lot for a room! Below you can see the before and after pics of our living room.

Before

After

Here are the pics of the accent wall before and after.
Before

After

The red wall color you see in the photo above is more accurate to how it actually looks, since I took that in the daylight with no flash. The red doesn’t look quite right in the earlier photo where you can see the whole living room.

I first posted on here in October about doing the living room makeover. I would say it’s 85% complete at the moment. The final remaining piece is a new couch and new love seat, and possibly an accent chair. I will wait to get the new couch and love seat and see if there is space for a chair too. We plan to get the furniture in a dark brown color.

Living Room Makeover Progress

Kim — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:32:55 +0000

If you remember from my previous post, Jeff and I are working on a new color scheme for the living room. We worked with an interior designer a few months ago, and now have been getting items on our own to add to the room. Here are the things we picked out.

For Christmas, my sister got us a nice dark red throw, which is shown here on our couch. It is really warm and cozy!

We got this nice lamp on sale at JCPenney. I think it will really look good in front of the new curtains, which will be put up after the painting is done.

Speaking of painting, we still aren’t quite sure when it will be done. Jeff talked with the company who did some painting for us in the past and they worked out a trade. Jeff would create a website for them and we would get some rooms painted in exchange. Unfortunately the process has been pretty slow. The owner of the company is not very computer savvy and couldn’t figure out how to view the website proofs that Jeff emailed him. Without much feedback, Jeff couldn’t go on creating the rest of the website so things were at a standstill. At this point, I think Jeff and the owner of that company are planning to meet in person. This way Jeff can explain the website design and get his feedback, and we can find out when we can get the living room painted. I am very excited about it and hope it can be done soon!

Another new item we got to go with the living room color scheme is this rug from JCPenney. We have it by the front door to put shoes on. (good thing to do so your carpet doesn’t get dirty and wet!)

This rug was a great find as it has all the colors in it that we’ll be using in the room. I was hoping to find a bigger size of this same rug, so we could put it under our dining room table. It was supposed to be available on the JCPenney website, but so far I have had no luck finding it. Stay tuned for the before and after living room photos, once the painting is done and new curtains hung!

2010 in review

Kim — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 16:58:32 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 47 posts.

The busiest day of the year was March 11th with 178 views. The most popular post that day was New Toilet.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, gomedia.us, mail.yahoo.com, and jeffandkimwedding.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for turquoise bathroom, stanley steemer, turquoise tile bathroom, glidden arctic stone, and bathroom color schemes.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

New Toilet March 2010
3 comments

Our turquoise bathroom: before and after January 2010
3 comments

Waiting to hear back May 2009
1 comment

Bedroom Closet Remodel December 2009
3 comments

About March 2009

Thanks for reading everyone! Here’s to a great 2011!

Winter Ready

Kim — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:41:40 +0000

Our home is ready for winter now that we have had some recent maintenance and improvements done.

Sprinkler system winterized. Last year a company charged us $120 to winterize our underground sprinkler system. This year I was lucky to find Precision Irrigation who did it for half the price we paid last year! I hope to use them every winter. They were easy to work with. I called them to say I wanted the work done and they said they would come in the next couple weeks, we did not have to be home when they came. After they came and winterized our sprinkler system, they left us a bill and that was it!
Insulation installed in basement. Our handyman John pointed out that we had no insulation in the basement. Jeff and I did not even know this was a problem or something that we should do! (He also recently pointed out there is no insulation in our walls, but that is a project for another time.) John bought the proper insulation and put it in the basement ceiling. It was a long process as the insulation had to be cut to fit in each area, and the drop ceiling panels in one half of the basement had to be removed to put the insulation in. I am glad it is done and now the basement definitely feels warmer!
New furnace installed! Our home now has a brand new 80% two stage furnace. The old furnace was the original furnace put in the home, way back in 1962! I still don’t know how it lasted that long, and I was really worried it was going to break right in the middle of winter. This is why Jeff and I decided it would be best to replace our furnace before the start of winter. The guys arrived to install it around 10:00am and were working until 5 or 6pm. They even had to come back the following day to finish up a few odds and ends such as putting new mortar on the chimney. If you need to get a new furnace, be prepared to take a day off work or find out if it can be installed over the weekend, because it takes all day to put in! We got a good deal on our new furnace by asking for help from the realtor who sold us this home. He used to work in the heating/cooling business so he has a lot of connections. Tip for home owners out there: don’t be afraid to ask for help from people you know such as your realtor, handyman, etc. They may be able to get you a better deal than you would get on your own! Our new furnace is a lot smaller than the old one, and seems a little louder. Check out the pic of the new one!

Living Room Updates

Kim — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 03:16:10 +0000

Jeff and I have recently been working with an interior designer for help with our living room. When Denise, our interior designer, came over for our second meeting she brought in several bags. (read about our first meeting in my previous post.) Jeff and I couldn’t wait to see what was inside! She had picked out two different sets of curtains. Denise went over and put them up over the existing curtains, so we could get an idea of how they would look in the room. One set was red with tan stripes, and the other set was red with different color circles. We decided to go with the red curtains with circles as those looked nicer and we really liked them. Denise also picked out a couple pillows, placemats, and some art for the walls. After she showed us all of those items, she hung up some different paint swatches on the wall. For the living room we are planning to paint the majority of the room a tan color, and then have a red accent wall. It was easy for us to pick the tan shade, we went with “nomadic desert” from Sherwin Williams. We narrowed the reds down to 3 and couldn’t decide from there. Denise told us to just leave the three paint swatches on the wall and then we could see how the colors would look in a different light. That would help us to make up our mind. After having the reds up on the wall a couple days, we decided on “brick paver” from Sherwin Williams which is a red with some orange in it. Here are some photos of the items that the interior designer picked out:

As you can see from all the items, our color scheme is going to be red, orange, brown and green. Jeff likes to refer to it as an autumn color scheme. I think the main colors we will use will be red and brown.

We are off to a great start on the living room updates! I just had our handyman replace the old 2 prong outlets in the living room with new 3 prong grounded outlets, and since we have decided on the paint colors, we are ready to paint. After that we will put up a new curtain rod that matches the one we put in the dining room, and hang the new curtains. Then we can figure out where to hang the art and all the family photos. One of the last steps will be getting our new couch and love seat, since we don’t have the money for that right now. I wish the living room updates could be done quicker, but I know everything will look great when it’s done, so it will be worth the wait!