house weekend 1: painting and wiring

Well, I spent the majority of last weekend at the new house painting and wiring.

Wiring
Since I had Andy's help on early Saturday, we started with the Ethernet wiring. My plan is as follows:

-Cable jack in the living room going to cable modem on TV stand.
-Cable modem hooked to wireless router, also on TV stand.
-2 of the ports on the wireless router will go to the PS3 and TV, located right by it (short cables).
-The other 2 ports will go into plugs in the wall, which will route to the master bedroom and the office.

That means we needed to run two cables through the walls: one from the living room to the master bedroom, and one from the living room to the office. I bought a kit at Fry's that had everything I would need for the cables themselves. I also needed a drill to make holes in the joists to feed cables, and basic tools like wire strippers, wire cutters, etc. One thing that proved invaluable was Mark's wire snake tool. It's basically a long metal wire that winds out so you can fish cables up and down walls. It's stiff enough to go straight down walls without coiling in the wall. Even with that tool, Andy and I had to do some clever things still to get the wires up and down the walls. It wasn't hard, but it definitely wasn't easy.

Overall the job was a 6/10 on the difficulty scale, which I just randomly devised.

Painting
For some reason, I naively thought that painting would be a few hour thing at the most. Man, was I wrong. Masking the rooms itself took a few hours...

We started with the office, which is half dry wall and half wood paneling. We decided that, for now at least, we're going to paint over the wood paneling instead of removing it. Removing the wood paneling could have easily turned into a huge project that we did not want to handle right now (it could require dry wall replacement).

When masking the room, we realized how poor of a job the old owners did at masking the room. It's akin to them not coloring within the lines of a coloring book. There was paint on the baseboards, moldings, and door frames. We masked it all anyway, but knew we would have work ahead of us to fix their mistakes. After masking, we laid down drop cloth and began work. The first coat took a few hours, as we learned how to effectively use the paint rollers and also get all the details with the paint brushes (the window sill areas, etc). That took us until around midnight to do.

On Sunday, I worked on my own for the majority of the day. I masked the master bedroom, laid out the drop cloth, and got to work. I tried to work more systematically after learning what I was doing with the office. I worked one wall at a time, painting the edges and then rolling on paint over the surface. It took me a majority of the day because the room is so big, and it still ended up looking uneven. Good thing we were planning on doing two coats, right?

I started doing the second coat in the office when Taylor got off work and helped me finish it up. Another day in the books.

I was originally going to take a half day on Monday, but that magically turned into a whole day off. After getting a much needed haircut, it was time to begin the end: finish painting.

I basically repeated what I did on Saturday for the master bedroom, except I didn't need to mask or lay drop cloth because it was already there. I did the edges then filled in. It's amazing how much the second coat helps. Going from the first, uneven coat to the second coat basically evens the whole thing out. Thank goodness.

Once we had the coats done and dried to touch, we started un-prepping the room by removing all the drop cloth and masks. As we expected, there is a fair amount of touchup work to be done around the edges. But honestly we're so tired of painting that it'll be one of those "when we get to it" things. I'm more interested in getting myself moved in at this point.

I'm leavin early today!

 Thanks Mark

It just so happens that I'm leaving work early today. Supposedly the house is officially ours, and we no longer have tenants. I haven't heard anything from the previous owners, though, so I'm hoping this is still the case. Our lease was only for November 30th through December 1st.

What's on the docket for this weekend? We hope to paint the two rooms (master bedroom and office), and I hope to run Ethernet through some of the house. This weekend we should have most of our utilities up and running (aka we'll have internet), and we have a few more companies dropping by on Monday to take care of remaining loose ends. Another half day? Smells like it.

At that point, the house should be ready to move into. I'll be starting this weekend, but will move more next week and finally move the big stuff the following weekend. Coincidentally, my dad is coming into town when I need to move the big stuff. What a lucky break for him, he gets to help me move!

What else do I need to do? I'm sure there's a lot that I haven't thought of yet. Oh, that reminds me, I need to buy a drill.

Funny video

Bam - homeowner!

Hey, I'm a home owner now. Weird, huh?

I can't move in until December 2, because the old owners are leasing the house back from me for today and tomorrow. This weekend I'll hopefully start painting and moving some stuff.

I hope to be moved in sooner rather than later, for obvious reasons. It's my first house, after all. It should come as no surprise that the first purchase I made for the house was a TV for the living room. That might be more exciting than the house itself. Nah, just kidding.

Here are some projects that I need to take on (not necessarily anytime soon):
-Repaint a couple rooms (asap)
-Run ethernet cables through walls
-Eventually remove wood paneling (we are going to paint it preliminarily)
-Restain deck
-New fancy kitchen faucet?

Still trying to figure out how we're going to furnish the living room, but Ikea has a cool modular entertainment center.

I'll take pics of the empty house once I can.

goodbye old friend

A sad thing happened last night... I went to take out the trash and I realized my motorcycle was no longer where it used to be. Gasp.

It's sad to think that someone, somewhere, is taking her apart and selling her piece by piece. How cruel. How unjust.

You were fun while I had you. We had many good memories and I spent hours maintaining you. I only wish that we could have spent more time together. Goodbye old friend.

15 days

15 days until the closing date of our house. Our appraisal came back today and everything is good on that front, so I think that means we're essentially set. That was the last variable as far as I know that would have hindered a smooth close. Now the credit union just needs to put everything together and do what they need to do. Given that, I've officially given my 60 days notice to Justin.

I'll want to move in as soon as possible, since you know, it'll be my brand new house. On the other hand, we really should paint and stuff. How do I balance?! That reminds me, I need to call the utility companies.

In other news, Taylor showed me this cool shirt and I bought it:
http://www.threadless.com/product/3333/Live_Music_Capital/tab,guys/style,shirt

countdown to close - 20 days

20 days until my scheduled closing date. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited so this is really drawing out my days. You know how your day feels longer when you are anxiously awaiting something that night? That's how the last week felt, and the next three will probably feel.

The last variable left is the appraisal which should be in at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. Assuming everything is good there, I'll be set to go.

What will we need to do when we get the keys? Nothing needs to be done, but we want to repaint any necessary rooms. We're not totally keen on a couple of the room colors, so we'll probably do that first. Also one room as wood paneling which I'd like to remove, but other people have told me they'd just leave it. Maybe that'd be easier?

I'd also like to run Ethernet drops to the rooms. Why? Because I'm a nerd, mostly. But more seriously, I'm sure most of you can attest to the numerous problems you run into when dealing with wireless internet. Random cutouts, having to power cycle the router, random speed drops, etc. I want to run ethernet drops to each room so you can just plug in your PC and go. No need for random wireless problems. Wireless is good for laptops, phones, tablets. Running desktops off of wireless is just asking for problems. Who's with me?!

Speaking of problems, the "Great Desk Soak of 2011" ended without much issue. Like I said before, I noticed some speaker problems and it still seems a bit messed up. It turns on and off, but the volume knob doesn't work most of the time. It stays at one volume regardless of what the knob is set at. Maybe I can take it apart and try to fix that. Otherwise I'll just learn to deal for now.