Week 2 of "Rome" Ownership

Week 2 of new home ownership was interesting. It definitely would have been an easier to have stayed in town and settled in, rather than heading out for vacation, but that vacation was desperately needed.


Projects started:
1. Purchased about half of the blinds for the second floor (following rejection of the Budget Blinds scary quote). Note - not installed yet. Sorry for any inadvertent shows neighbors!
We need to pick up the rest at another Lowes/HD that has more in stock.


2. Much stalking of Overstock.com, Lowes, HomeDepot, Build.com, etc. etc. websites to select ceiling fans, rugs, lights, etc. So far, we haven't pulled the trigger on any purchases. Repeated process for actual live store visits.


3. Selling of our old bedroom set. It won't fit in the guest bedroom, and we bumped up to a king, so it was off to the local yardsale site for our pretty cherry queen set. Hopefully being picked up tonight! We need to clear out the storage unit by tonight lest we be charged another month, so the dining room set will have to come home with us until it also sells.


4. Hung big TV over fireplace.


5. Majority of boxes are unpacked.  Maybe 75%?


6. Purchased sample knobs and pulls to try out


7. Dealing with the seventh circle of hell that is Comcast. This has overtaken my poor husband's life. 30 hours and counting to get our service turned on, and account corrected. The long story involves identity fraud, horrible employees (one of whom was reportedly fired), and a generally incompetent organization. So many hours were wasted on the phone instead of dealing with house projects, I can't even begin to express our (his) frustration.




The to-do list is overwhelming. Some high priorities:


1. Install garage door opener
2. Anchor all "tippable" furniture to the walls, so as to not crush children
3. Install blinds in most critical places (LOL)
4. Seal grout
5. Purchase Munchie her big girl mattress and bed.
6. Hang rest of wall-mounted TV's
7. Finish drawer knob/pull selection, purchase, and install in kitchen and baths (for future reference, it's a pain to open kitchen cabinets using a spatula).
8. Grow some damn grass. In case you were planning to pick up a sprinkler this fall, good luck. Those are sold out at every Lowes and HD in the Philadelphia region. We are currently rotating the one hose and sprinkler we own in a pitiful 1-2 spots per evening cycle. At this rate, we'll have snow before grass.




Living in the house has also frustrated the hell out of my perfectionist Hubs. You see a lot more when you're crawling/climbing around to unpack and work on it! Not much of the finishing work is up to his standards. Paint splotches, drips, globby crap on trim work, squeaky fireplace hearth, shoddy drywall spots, etc. etc. etc. This is all after we went over everything at walk-through and thought we had caught everything!
It's all making him (me) completely crazy.


Our PM remains awesome, and has been on top of our ongoing issues. Most pressing is the swampy mess to the right of our house. The drainage swail between our house and the neighbors was never graded properly. Both of our sump pumps drain into the swamp, and the water is just pooling. Yay for Zika laden mosquitos!  We saw the surveyors there on closing day, and stakes are in, but nothing has happened yet. Only benefit I see is that we don't need to water that side of the house! (So much sarcasm).


This post has been a bit snarky, and I don't intend it to be. We really are thrilled to be in the house. It's just starting to feel a little more like "ours", and I feel blessed to be in such a lovely (big!)space.
The projects in front of us are daunting (and expensive, hellloooooo), but exciting too. This really is an amazing time in our family's history, and I go to sleep exhausted and happy thanks to this house.