Welcome to our home … our second attempt at a fixer-upper.

I haven’t actually recapped our house since moving in.  Other than the ½ bathroom, we haven’t done a lot over the past month.  It’s been a much needed break.  But, now the bathroom has gotten us motivated to jump back on the projects.  So, I thought I’d update everyone with where we’re at, now that we’ve moved in, settled in, and lived here for a while.

We haven’t done a lot.  But, we’ve done some.

So, let’s go room by room …

In the Living Room … we installed a ceiling fan.  This was a huge headache.  Installation was easy (unlike the Hadley house), but actually getting to installation of the fan we wanted, well, not that easy.

Feel free to skip the drama (i.e. this box) … I bought the recommended size for that room based on the Home Depot calculator.  It was WAY too small.  It looked ridiculous.  So, I just re-ordered the size larger, and it happened to be on sale – score!  But, we got a defective fan.  There were no holes in the mounting bracket, which you need to attach to the ceiling.  So, I figured I’d call and they’d send a new one and I’d return the defective one.  It DID NOT go that way.  Home Depot (online) Customer Care is not great.  The 1st rep said that he could help me purchase a new one, and then I could return the defective one to the store.  Exactly what I wanted … except he couldn’t price matched the sale price I purchased it for.  The 2nd rep (same phone call) said I could just exchange the item at the store and they would be able to get me a new one, either shipped to my house or pick up at the store … except, again, it would be a return/purchase, so I’d have to pay the higher price.  She did say that if I wanted the lower price (duh?), I could call back  after I received the new fan to get a price adjustment on the new purchase.  I said I didn’t want to call back in to talk with another person that might not understand the situation, where i might not get that refund a couple of weeks later.  She said she would call me back the next day.  She did, but didn’t have anything new to offer, and then just hung up.  I called Customer Care again, hoping for a different person.  The 3rd rep I spoke to said that she’s not sure why the previous reps didn’t just exchange the item for me (which is all I wanted to begin with?).  But, then she went about exchanging it in the same way – telling me that she could help me with a new purchase, but couldn’t help me with the price adjustment.  She did offer an alternative solution, and checked to see if she could just get the part mailed to me.  Alas, according to her product specialist, the mounting bracket is not supposed to have any holes, so it was not defective.  (Trust me, there was absolutely no way to attached the fan to the ceiling, picture below.) FINALLY, I was transferred to a 4th rep who said that she would just send me a new one for the same cost I purchased the on-sale one.  Awesome, right?  Oh, but that wasn’t real.  Because as soon as we started placing the order, she said, “I’m not going to email you a gift credit for the difference between the regular priced fan and the sale fan, and then you can read that gift credit number back to me so that I can apply it to your order to assure you aren’t paying extra for the fan.”  I was done.  Finished.  I thanked her for her time and trying to help me, but I was just going to go ahead and pay the full price at a different retailer because I couldn’t even believe what had just happened.  And, the absolute absurdity of her emailing me a gift card, and then me having to send that gift card back to her in order to replace a defective fan.  I returned both the small and larger, defective fan to Home Depot store and purchased the exact same fan from Wayfair.com.  We received it within 3 days.  Installed it.  And it works beautifully.

Side note, we did learn that Home Depot stores and homedepot.com are completely separate businesses (which is common, but I didn’t know this about HD).  So, the store cannot price match the online site, and vice versa.  The store also does not carry or exchange items that aren’t carried at both retailers, so part of the reason it was a hassle was because the fan isn’t available in the store.  BUT, due to the fact that it was defective, it should have been a simple exchange and I couldn’t believe that out of 4 customer care reps, not one of them just offered to send me a new one plus a UPS label to mail the defective one back.  I buy a lot online, and isn’t that the normal protocol?  Oh well.

We ordered a new couch, delivery in July sometime.  Our old furniture  doesn’t fit in the room well and we’re moving away from the gray.  We also bought new lamps.

Next up … a new TV!  (The one we have now will. not. die.  It is 10+ years old and we’ve replaced the bulb twice.  It emits this constant humming noise when it’s on … but it still works, so we’ve been putting it off for a while, waiting on it to just die, but it will not.)

The kitchen … has nothing new in it.  Everything is put away and fits really well.  I started breaking things in our house (not sure why, but everything I touched was just breaking) … the coffee pot, a fridge door compartment, ugh.  But, otherwise, this room is as is and is working out just fine.

(Although, on a side note, I hate the sink area.  They installed it backwards, with the dishwasher on the opposite side of the sink from the washing/disposal area.  So, if I’m rinsing dirty dishes, or stacking them up next to the side of the sink that you’d normally wash on … I have to go over the clean dishes side to get to the dishwasher.  I want to reverse it, but I don’t think we can until we put in new counter-tops, which is low on the list. 😦 ).

The family room … also nothing really new.  The furniture doesn’t fit in here either.  And, while we had big plans for this room because Patrick once thought he’d just keep his set-up on the main level, he has reverted back to wanting a finished basement, so we’ll move it down there eventually.  So, for now, this room is basically staying as is, since it’s all moving to the basement when we finish that (hopefully this fall/winter).

Miscellaneous hallway and foyer areas that aren’t any more finished than they were before.  The ½ bath was covered in the previous post, so you can read about that here.

Also, a very cool discovery.  When my mom and grandma were visiting, they showed me how my really super cool windows work.  I had no idea windows even did this!  The bottom unlocks and leans into the house so you can clean the outside of the window; and with that one leaned in and pushed down … so does the top half!!  Now, that is going to come in SO very handy!  (And, already has while cleaning some of the drywall dust. 😊)

Upstairs, the 2 guest bedrooms have furniture in them.  One of them has curtains.  The other one had curtains, but I didn’t like them, so I returned them and now it doesn’t have any.  The office is still full of boxes and is still more of a staging area.  The hallway bathroom is half demoed and barely used.

Although, we did get new toilets in all 3 bathrooms.  The toilets in all of the bathrooms were original to the house and all dated 1970!  We figured it was time.  We had to supply them, but had plumbers install them.  (And we fit all 3 toilets and a pedestal sink in a VW Passat!)  They all look really good.  (However, I kind of hate the new toilets.  They are too tall.  And we didn’t even buy the tallest ones at the store.  But they call them comfort height and they are the new thing and I hate ours.  We might end up replacing those again, maybe one at a time, if I can’t get over it.) (And, they were up on the second shelf for display at the store, so we couldn’t sit on them there, but next time, I won’t buy without sitting on it first!  Lesson learned, I suppose.)

The master bedroom is still a mess.  I did organize and clean the bathroom finally though.  We have no nightstands, our bed is still in the middle of the room, and I’m still partly living out of luggage.  And, I might be using a suitcase as my nightstand?  We did buy new dressers and Patrick put those together and they are working out well.  I also have purchased curtains and a rod, but still need to install them.

And, it occurs to me that I don’t know if I’ve ever shared the basement on the blog.  It’s completely unfinished, houses the laundry area, and until last week was a dumping ground for a bunch of stuff we didn’t know where it was going to go.  But now?  Well, now, it’s cleaned up and organized.  Eventually, as I said, we’ll finish the one side as a den/family room, and the other side will house my workout area, laundry, and storage.

And, outside, well we put our porch furniture on the front porch.  It fits well and looks good.

 

We also purchased a grill.  It’s been great.  We’ve grilled all week and it’s amazing and simple and tasty.

We also had a baby fawn in our backyard garden.  We learned that momma deer leave they young in an inconspicuous place while they go off for food.  The fawns can’t keep up.  But, we had a REALLY young one inside the fenced part of our backyard and we were a bit worried for a while – not sure if it got lost or was hurt or if the momma was going to be able to find it … it was so young we weren’t sure if it could even stand up or walk on its own?  Turns out it’s all perfectly normal and their instinct is to lie as flat to the ground as possible if something threatening approaches (like us).  So, we left it and by midnight-ish, it was gone, with it’s mom.  Patrick saw it again off to the side of our house about a week later, but it bolted when he got close.  We’ve seen a doe with a couple fawns perusing the neighborhood, so we think it’s them.

Well, that’s it for now … we have so much more on our list … and we’re ready to get started again.

Next up, clean the garage so we can finally park in there! 🙂  Then, on to more wallpaper, painting, and cleaning … and installing bookshelves, and selling furniture, and weeding the gardens, and so so much more.  But, we’re going to make sure we find the time to fit in some hiking, golfing, and fun this summer.