I'm Done Painting... For Now...

When we bought our house at the end of last year, we knew there were some things we'd have to do in order to get the house to feel like our home. The basement wasn't finished completely, the deck needed to have some updates made, and we had to paint... a lot. The entire house (yes, every room in the ENTIRE structure) had not had a single coat of paint put up. Everything was still white as could be which, while nice from a blank slate perspective, didn't leave the house having a lot of character. So once we got moved in we started in on painting.

The first rooms we tackled were my office, our loft, and our master bedroom. None of them were overly difficult as they were pretty standard rooms, but it got a bit more difficult when we moved to doing the dining room with its wood borders, bay window, crown molding, and built-in cabinets. I then went a in a little easier direction and finished up the remaining two bedrooms which left just our great room and kitchen. The great room was a definite no go because of the 20+ foot ceilings and walls and sheer amount of wall space to cover. We'd have to hire that out. But the kitchen was still doable... but the most daunting because of all of the finicky trim work, maneuvering around cabinets, and working in more awkward areas. But I wanted to get it done, so last week that's just what I did. Below are some photos of the "before" followed by photos of the "after". Please ignore the masking tape and junk everywhere and just soak in the new hunger-inducing color!  I'm so glad it's done...

The desk area and left side of kitchen

The main part of the kitchen

The informal dining area and door to the deck

The view from the kitchen towards the great room

The hallway from the informal dining to actual dining room

So that's what everything looked like before I got out my paint brush, rollers, blankets, ladder, and other fun painting tools. I ended up having to put two solid coats on to make sure everything was colored correctly. There's still a tad bit of touch up left to do, but I think the color change came out amazing and I love the color and the feeling it adds to the room. It's like we have a whole new kitchen!

Kristi's new desk area and the hallway

The left side of the kitchen

The main part of the kitchen

The informal dining area and door to the deck

The view towards the great room

Some New Art

My living room used to feel really... naked, for lack of a better word. Above my couch was a gaping, open, white wall. I knew I'd eventually get something to put there, but never really knew what, mostly because I never really thought about it, I only told myself someday I'll put something up there.

It finally got to me how empty the wall looked, so while my parents were up visiting last weekend I visited some art stores with my mom to see what was out there. I narrowed down what I liked to a few large prints and pieces of art. Eventually, what you see above won out.

Yes, it looks a little lonely up there by itself, but there will eventually be other wall decorations to go with it. I'm thinking about that now, and not just in the ambiguous sense either. I have some ideas, just no money to do it right now (or at least none set aside for it at the moment).

What drew me to this piece is its simplistic nature. Some pieces of art can be extremely busy and overloaded with color, movement, and flair. I don't like to complicate things too much so something simplistic seemed natural.

The scene itself was also something I could relate to. The snow in the foreground gives it a definite Minnesota, or midwestern, feel to it. As you look through the trees there is definitely something coming on the horizon, something bright yet unknown. I know it's obviously me reading into it too much, but that gives me a sense of seeing that there is alway something approaching, something in the future coming your way and even though you don't know what it is, you know it's there and you can prepare yourself or anticipate it or enjoy the knowledge that something new is near.

I needed to put up something I could relate to and not get sick of looking at day in and day out. This managed to fit the bill, and fit it quite nicely.

Continuing Housing Woes

It's pretty apparent that the housing market is far from turning around. In reading some analysis over at The Motley Fool, existing home sales are down over 25% from last year. That's nuts. When you couple that with the fact that there are more and more houses coming onto the market because of foreclosures, the glut of available houses is just amazing. I thought I had a lot of choices when I was looking during the winter. And I also thought I had lots of bargaining power then. In thinking about it, the people that are going to benefit from this housing hurt are first time homeowners (who can actually acquire mortgages) who know how to negotiate.

Thinking back to when I was looking, there were many houses I was looking at and I put in an offer on a few. I was willing, at times, to pay up to 94% of the list price for a house. One house I even came very close to closing on at about 95% of the list, but didn't pull the trigger because I felt I could do better. I did. I ended up getting a house for a little more than 80% of original list, which was great. Sure, my house is losing value every day as the market plummets, but I don't plan on moving and I did get a good deal as it was.

Part of the reason I was so fussy with buying a house is the enormity of the purchase. A home is the single largest purchase an average person can make. You're signing up for hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. That's pretty daunting. Because of this, I took a very cautious, get educated approach to purchasing my home, especially when it came time to decide on a mortgage, especially since there are a lot of choices out there for what type you can take.

What gets me is that some people hardly pay attention to what they're doing when they sign up for a mortgage. It's evident by the sub-prime fallout we're currently experiencing, but it's also evident in how many people Ameriquest had tricked. They are now no more, but the fact remains that tons of people got themselves in a lot of trouble financially through them.

I'm hoping that one of the positives to come out of the housing problems that seemingly everyone is experiencing is that you need to pay attention and be smart when it comes to buying a home. You can't overextend yourself, get a free lunch, or hope you'll be better off in the future because, more than likely, things won't turn out how you expected and then you're screwed.

Thunderstorm Side Effects

So apparently all of the storms coming through the area lately have caused a little more havoc than simply forcing me to mow my lawn. With the intense lightning show that came with Sunday's showers also came knocked out stop lights on my bus route to and from work, which meant that they were temporarily turned into four way stops. Combine this fact with the knowledge that my bus route in one of the main alternate routes people take because of the 35W bridge collapse (which already made my bus ride longer than usual), my normal Monday bus ride went from 30 minutes each way to 50 minutes.

On a more personal note, because of the extreme amount of rain that's come through the area, I also found out that when the ground is so saturated, I get some slight water leakage into an area of my basement. It wouldn't have been too bad if the leak was in an area of the basement that was linoleum, such as in the laundry room, but it happened in the basement family room, causing some of the carpet to be damp. Nothing too serious, but annoying nonetheless.

Thankfully, it looks like there isn't any rain in the near future for the area... well, at least not high percentage chances at least. I could do without rain for a little while.

Two Ends of the Spectrum

On Saturday I did something I hadn't done since the first weekend in June -- I mowed my lawn. Since early June, we've hardly received any rain here in the northeast Minneapolis area. The few big thunderstorms that went through this summer either strayed to the south metro area or were light on the rain and heavy on the electricity.

That all changed last week and it changed for most of middle and southern Minnesota as inches upon inches of rain fell, and in some places it was over a foot of rain causing one town to basically be flooded off the map. Even my area ended up with more rain than we knew what to do with. My yard, underneath the half dead and slowly coming back to life grass covering, was saturated with water making the lawn muddy and squishy for a few days.

Even now the rain keeps coming and coming. Last night another strong storm rolled through the area and we're supposed to get even more this evening. We've got plenty of rain for now Mother Nature, thank you very much. The only fun part about all of these storms is the light show that accompanies the rain. Last night was extremely electric with some lightning striking pretty darn close to where I was, one time even being so close (probably within a couple of houses) I could hear the sizzle at the beginning of the thunderclap.

Let's hope the storms roll through in the early evening tonight because this getting woken up in the middle of the night because of storms is getting a little old.