Home & Living Blog Posts

Do you want to know what really hurts? My legs, that’s what.

I am not sure if I ever told you that I hate moving. Boy, if there’s anything that can suck the excitement out of the big day, it’s the actual work involved with it all. And we even had a moving company this time. Oh well. Everything went well with the move. We filled a 24′ truck all the way up. I really didn’t think we had that much stuff. I actually had to leave my little blue recliner back at the house. That’s ok, I got that for free anyway.

So, now that we’re here, I think we’re getting used to it. Since we don’t have any plates (they are still back at the house…we have a few more bins to grab when we go back to do a final cleaning), we ventured out to the local Chinese food place last night. We were soooo hungry. I hadn’t actually eaten anything all day and was ready for some food. I have to say, the Chinese food wasn’t bad.

The place is still all full of stuff like big bags and boxes, but we’re getting there. I have the garage about half unpacked. I am starting a list of stuff I need, so when we go to Lowe’s, we can grab it. I need some of those automatic door closers, like the ones for screen doors. I don’t want any of the animals to get out. Also, we are going to grab some new door knobs…some of them are a little wiggly. All in all, everything seems to be in good order. One thing I am finding that I really need is a few 2X4s and some shelves.

I think the cats really like the upstairs. They seem to be very lazy and like to lie on the carpeting.

I will write more later, when I get some rest. I think I was so tired last night that I didn’t sleep all that well. I hate it when that happens.

Wow, what a long day. Driving over to the new house takes about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It seems longer than it is.

Today was the big day…not only for us, but also for the sellers. It must feel great to sell a house. I mean, your mind is most likely on your new one and all you want to do is to get the process over with. Congrats.

We are thrilled. I think it is a very good move. From what we gather, people tend to move around in the same town a lot, meaning, they like the town. That’s a good thing.

We met the realtor over at the house at 2PM for the final walk through. The house was nice and clean and everything was just as we expected. We dabbled for a bit and talked for a while and then we went to the closing at 3:30PM. Everything went very smoothly and yes, the sellers are just like us. You can almost tell by the way they kept the place…clean, tight and when something broke, they fixed it. As a buyer, I definitely appreciate that. They were actually very personable people.

Ok, enough of that, now for the pictures. I mean, who cares about the writing anyway? It’s not like anyone reads it anyway.

Here is the front of the house. I think it has a nice “Connecticuty” look.

This is the rather large kitchen. There is room for a table in there and it also has a nice island. The door that is open goes out to the garage. Also, there are doors that go out to the back deck.

This is the fireplace. I am very happy there is a fireplace. I plan on getting a pellet stove insert for this and using it as a main heating source. Since the house heat and hot water are run off the oil burner, I am going to get an electric hot water heater and solar panels. I just have to figure out a way to make the look good and fit into the neighborhood.

These are pictures of the main entryway. Do you know how hard it is to get good photos of two floors up close? Not easy.

This is the blue room, AKA, the dining room. We have no plans for this room right now beyond walking through it. We don’t have much furniture.

This is one of the upstairs bathrooms. It’s pretty big and has one of those tubs that bubbles.

If you want to come over to visit, you can stay in the guest bedroom. It has a large walk-in closet and a full bathroom.

Here’s that bathroom I was talking about. So that’s two full baths on the top floor and one half bath on the main floor.

This is going to be Laura’s office. She gets the purple room. It’s pretty soothing. The girl that this room belonged to has a nice little setup. Perfect for a young girl.

I also got a picture of the room that’s going to be my office, but it came out blurry. It’s pretty much like this room, but different colors.

Here are some photos of the master bedroom. It’s a large room with a dormer facing West. There are two closets and a cable hookup. I am starting to sound like a realtor myself.

This is the one of the finished downstairs rooms. It is really comfortable and cool. It’s going to make a perfect…something.

This is the other downstairs room. This used to have an exercise machine in it. Laura wants to use it as a Pilates room. I have to buy her one of those exercise balls.

Can you say, “garage?” It’s about time. Yes, I am going to like the garage very much. I know that almost all homes now come with them, but I have yet to have one. I am quite excited about the electric garage door openers too.

Ok, last one. This is the little patio in the back that comes out of Laura’s exercise room.

You want to hear a funny story? You know how much I have grown to hate barking dogs, right? I never used to hate dogs, it’s just been lately, since so many people don’t seem to take care of them. Actually, I love dogs, especially my old dog, Mickles. I really really love Golden Retrievers.

I had a hunch that the only close neighbor had a dog. I wasn’t sure, but I did notice a fence around the back yard. They have an in-ground pool, so it may have been for that. I didn’t think so. I kept on telling Laura that there was a dog next door. I was really hoping it wasn’t a yappy little white dog.

Today, after the closing, we went back to the house to drop off a few boxes we brought with us. We were trying to loosen the load for moving day on Thursday. I parked the car and started walking in the back yard. I noticed something moving inside the neighbor’s fence. I quickly turned around and told Laura, “THEY HAVE A DOG!!!” I turned back around to see what kind it was. My stomach almost dropped through the floor. Upon closer examination, I noticed that it was a reddish dog. I then realized is was a Golden Retriever. I am not sure how it happened, but I found myself over there petting the dog. The neighbor called me over all excited, “Are you my new neighbors?” I say yes and both Laura and I walked over to talk to her. Then, out of nowhere, three more Goldens came trotting over…all offering tennis balls. I was in heaven. I was on my knees, petting them and shaking their fur all over the place. I was really excited. They are fairly quiet with the ever so often bark while looking at the ball. In Golden talk, that means, “Hey stupid, throw the ball.” I threw the ball a few times and what a riot it was watching the four of them jump all over themselves trying to get to it.

I am really happy that both Laura and I met the neighbor so soon and got to know the dogs. Now, we can go over and play with them without actually having to own another one. That’s fine with me.

So, now we have two houses. Anyone want to buy an 1,150 square foot cape on 1.25 acres? Just remodeled…You let me know.

For some reason, I am getting a magazine from Sam’s Club. Perhaps it is because we used to be members of the store. A few months ago, we stopped going because we just couldn’t take another bite of their food. Not that it was bad, but let’s just say there wasn’t too much variety.

Back to getting their magazine. Anyway, as I was tossing it into my recycling bin this afternoon, I noticed a big full page ad that read, “Eco Home Makeover.” I saw a picture of a wind turbine as well as solar panels on a roof. It also had a price in large print – $44,000.

Needless to say, I was a little intrigued. Apparently, Sam’s Club is now offering energy efficient home services. Here is what you get for the $44,000:

– One week vacation while your home is being “greened”
– Solar panels
– Wind turbine
– Internet monitoring
– Energy Star appliances for kitchen and laundry
– New Energy Star lighting throughout house (CFLs)
– A housewarming party upon your return home
– PBS will cover the renovation

I’m sure there will be some opinion out there about this, but that doesn’t seem bad to me at all. At least a big retailer is doing something like this. Also, it’s good that this kind of stuff is put right in front of the faces of Sam’s Club shoppers. Sometimes it needs to be put right in front of some people’s faces, if you know what I mean.

They claim that this makeover will be able to provide energy to a 3,000 – 4,000 square foot house. That’s not bad at all.

Well, we visited the house again this afternoon with the realtor. We liked what we saw and headed back to the office to sign all the paperwork and give a deposit. Before we did, both Laura and I took lots of pictures and even a video of the road the house is on.

Just a few minutes ago, as I was resizing the pictures, I thought to myself, “How would I like it if someone posted pictures of the inside of my house on the internet?” I mean, I know the realtor posted them in the online ad, but still, we took pictures of all the bedrooms and stuff. I don’t think it would be too cool if I posted them. After thinking about it, I decided that I will just post the outside shots and then the video of the road. That way, no one will get mad at me if they ever come across them. Hey, you never know.

So, without any more fluff, here you go.

This is obviously the front of the house. The master bedroom is over the garage and is pretty big. It also has that nice dormer to let in the sun.

This is the back of the house, looking up from the woods.

This is looking into the woods from the back porch. There are 4.25 acres of land.

This is looking into the woods from the backyard.

I thought I would give you a little update on the house. The homeowners accepted our offer. The real estate agent is drawing up the contract and we are going to visit it once more on Monday. We are going to walk up and down the road for a second once-over. I guess it would be called a twice-over. If everything is cool, we are going to head to the real estate office and sign the contract. I will be sure to take photos of the neighborhood and post them.

I already called the mortgage company and gave them the revised numbers and I have an appointment on Tuesday morning to get everything done. He says that we could have the closing before the end of the month. I would say that’s pretty fast. He told me that he had a closing in four days, a few weeks back. That is just nuts.

Needless to say, I am a little nervous. We are going to be swimming in the house, but at least Laura will get her own office and so will I. There will also be another bedroom with a bathroom, so if we ever have guests, they will be hooked up. We can then have another whole family living in the finished basement. Also, the two car garage is something I have always wanted. No more scraping ice off the windshields. Ye haw.

It seems that many people aren’t writing in their blogs these days…with me being one of them. As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s just been all sorts of crazy ’round these parts. Honestly, the last thing I have been motivated to do is write. Well, I think my dry spell is over.

One of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because I have been hiding a horrible secret from my mother. See, in the past few months, I have been loudly complaining about the Winter blues. Much like every other Winter of my life, I threaten to move down South. This time, I went as far as to sell the idea to each of my family members…who happen to live down South. You can imagine their overwhelming joy at the thought of having my pretty face much closer to them.

A while back, I began a real estate search in certain cities and towns in Northern Virginia. I was extremely excited and wanted to live on a warm lake in the worst way. I found some good stuff, but after giving it some hard thought, discovered that those areas weren’t for me. As a side note, if you don’t know me, I am famous for changing my mind soon after a forceful decision has been made. It’s part of my charm. I had to break the news to my mother that we weren’t moving down South before I wrote this post. The silver lining of the whole thing is that we will have a nice place up North for her and my father to visit for the Summer.

I am not sure if I ever mentioned that I have been looking for that “perfect town” since I was in college. I think I may have solved the problem. For the longest time, I have been looking at these tiny towns in the middle of nowhere. The problem is, while they sunk some money into their main streets, they were virtually broke because there was no real revenue, besides tourism. I can’t live on tourism alone. Last year, I wanted to live in Woodstock, NY because I thought it was a neat little town. Well, after visiting a few times, the novelty wore off and there was nothing to do. I need some reality in a town. I need indoor tennis and golf courses.

The other day, I had an epiphany. I thought to myself, “Jay, perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places. Perhaps you need the money of a city, but the peace and quiet of a suburb.” Ah, a suburb.

Last week, I started searching realtor.com for some properties around the Hartford, CT area. There are some very nice places around that city. There are some not-so-nice places too, but those are easily avoidable. I zeroed in on two towns…one very nice and busy, the other very nice and not busy. I like to live on the outskirts, but have the real world close by. I found a real estate agent and had her email me some listings for the area. Laura and I picked out three houses that we liked and took a trip on Thursday. The trip has two purposes, one was to see if we liked the area and the other was to see if we liked the houses. This, of course, was after I went to the bank to get pre-approved for another mortgage.

When we arrived, we immediately liked the area. We met the realtor and had her drive us around all day. We took tours of both towns and visited all three houses. The first two were very nice, but just ok. The third one was really nice. I think Laura and I just kept looking at each other thinking that we would get lost in the place. It was really big. It was also on four and a half acres of land.

Needless to say, we liked the third house. It is a very nice Connecticut colonial on a really nice cul de sac. The neighboring houses are all right up my alley. They are new and very, very clean. I did some research and it seems that most of these people live in this town and work in Hartford.

We have been going back and forth with the realtor and the homeowner and may put an offer on the house this weekend. If that doesn’t work out, we will keep looking at existing homes or build a brand new one. There are many options to build new in the area. Since these homes are on a totally different level from what we are currently living in, we have to do this slowly and carefully.

The bad part is that I brought my camera on Thursday, but totally forgot to take any pictures. We may go back out there on Monday, so I will be sure to take some photos.