Journey of a Homeowner

A true story of a First Time Home Buyer.

Finally some pictures are going to get posted.  It came to be last minute. Other wise I would of had some pictures with all the wall paper still up. These will still make a good before and after down the road. My lender Stonegate Mortgage wanted me to keep track of my renovations as well. I think she just wants to use what I did as a sales pitch for other future home owners. My Realtor thinks the same thing.

This is the west wall of the Dining Room. I decided that I did not like the wall paper. It made the dining room feel more dated. I think a nice coat of primer and paint will go a long way. I will be replacing that light with a nice ceiling fan with built in lights. Being a larger room, that will help with the air flow.
 Here is the sliding glass door against the South wall. Other than the tracks needed to be clean, its a great door. I did purchase some vertical blinds for it. As you can see it gets very bright.
This is the North wall. It looks like thought about painting it before they put up the wall paper. I think they made a poor choice. Both in that paint they were thinking about and the wall paper that they chose. Of course someone may think that about me when I choose the colors for the house.
 Just thought I would take a picture of the ceiling to give you guys and gals an idea of the height of the room. This is why I really want to get a fan in here. Push that warm air back down. Considering its snowy out side, you can understand why I want it. I do plan to paint the ceiling. Most likely a shade of white.
Finally got all the wall paper off. As you can see, its not that great. At least I don't think so. Someone may think this is absolutely beautiful. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Luckily they all came down in single strips without tearing or even applying water to the walls to loosen up the glue. Made clean up easy.
 The floors are really nice in here. I will spend a lot of time just trying not to scratch them. I do have a large area rug that I will lay down to help. Just need to get an under mat for it so it doesn't scratch the floor if it slides.
Here is the South opening to the Sun Room and fireplace. Not much will change with it. Just a new coat of paint. The exposure is really making that room a lot brighter than it really is at the moment. It still nice to have so much natural light coming in.
This is the easy wall of the Dining room. Not a fan of the shade of burgundy they chose. It just makes the room feel so much smaller. I will go with a much lighter paint. Make the room feel bigger and more open. Dark paint makes it feel like you are hiding things.



I will try and do much better with documenting everything with photos. This way not only Stonegate but I will also have an easier time referencing what I am talking about.


UPDATE: I have not painted anything. These colors are original from when I moved in.

I had my Realtor come over. He doesn't like my fridge. He thinks its way to big for the size of the kitchen. I agree to an extent but I'm not going to leave the refrigerator to the next owners. They can have everything else.

We did go over some great ideas of what to do with the place. He wants me to keep my focus on the top floor. Dont do anything to the down stairs. No matter what I do it will always be a man cave and man caves do nothing for the resell value of a home. No walk out to boot. I agree with him. Ill just put my home theater down there.

We decided that the best idea for the kitchen is to take the dimensions and go to home depot. They will take the dimension and render my drawings of the designs that I come up with or they can do it for you. I think this will save a lot of time, plus I wont have to pay for custom cabinets. They will all be stock cabinets. And after removing one of my base cabinets. I don't it would be that hard to put new ones up myself. Few screws and your done. Oh and a nice level. That way things are square. All the appliances will be stainless to match the fridge.

We moved on to the living/dining room. Going to go with lighter paints. While the sun room connected to the dining room can go a couple shades darker since it has so much natural light. The trim will stay white. Going to replace the lighting in the dining room with a nice ceiling fan that has built in lighting. Since the room is so big and has vaulted ceilings, this will help with ventilation.

Then comes the bathrooms. The two bathrooms are connected by a bathtub. Its also know as a hollywood bath. Not sure who came up with that name. The guest part of the bathroom will be painted. A new faucet and vanity will be installed. Toilet will stay. Just clean it up and put a new seat on it. The master part of the bath will need a new mirror. New faucet and vanity also needed. Huge mirror to go across the vanity. Both will need tile and trim. Now the center part (the actual bath). This room is going to be converted to a giant shower room with two heads and seating area. I think this will be huge selling point. My Realtor thought the same thing. And this was my idea. I felt great about that.

Still trying to get some photos together. Just so you know I am talking about a real home and not a fictional one.

I know most people think that I am crazy but I really enjoy my movies. I want that true theater experience. This has brought to building my own IMAX quality home theater. This is not cheap to do. Im only a fraction of the way through the process.

Im building a 7.2 IMAX surround. Right now the only part I have complete is the .2, which is the stero sub sonic frequencies. AKA sub-woofers. I have two custom built boxes. Each is 11+ cfs. Each one houses a CV 18" 4DVC Stroker. They are being powered by a QSC Powerlight 236 (3600w RMS). So my bass end is killer.

I only use pro grade equipment that I purchase off ebay. I get more DB for my money that way.
I am still working out what surrounds to use. Right now the system is just ran in stereo. I have a pair of Yamaha NS-10S's as my left and right. I need to switch these out soon before I damage them. They are very hard to replace parts. They are meant for my home studio.

One of these days I will get around to taking pictures of everything like I said I would in numerous other blog post. That way you will have a better sense of what I am doing.

I went out last night to purchase a fridge. I am so glad I didnt. I can home and measured the two entrances to my kitchen. Both have a width of 31". Im really contemplating tearing down one section of the wall so I can fit the refrigerator that I want. I plan on take the wall down anyway. Just wasnt planning on doing it so soon.
My one worry is that if the wall goes down. Then I must do some additional work right away. Notably the floor. I either have to tile or cover it with something. I just dont want to do something stupid.

At the same time I can save myself all the frustration just by buying a small fridge. Then I just have to hope it has enough room on the inside.

After looking over the counter space. It doesnt look like it will take much to remove the counter. This will give me the clearance I need to install the fridge I want. Plus this fridge with doors off will come in at 29 3/4" inch. This will allow me to get through my kitchen doors.

Oh and I am choosing Samsung. They are going to give me over $625 off the fridge. I am going to get RF266AERS. Its stainless steel and has every feature that I wanted. I think its a good purchase.

I really with I could go with someone else. The problem is that they have a good product and the price is not that bad as long as you stay within a contract with them. Month to Month, they are to expensive. Now you are thinking, "But you say all these good things about them." Its call customer service. They have let me down every time.

My current complaint with them is that they want to charge me to transfer my service. Its not much. $19.99 to move me. The cost does not matter to me. Its the fact that they do not need to do anything. I can plug the modem in myself. I know the house previously had Time Warner cable. If it never did then I could understand about them coming out.

They were first suppose to coming out on the day that I moved. Problem was that I called the day before. I specifically asked about them calling me before they head out. I was told that I would be called 30 minutes before they arrive. Saturday comes and they call me when they are waiting at my door. Problem is that I am still at my old apartment moving. They would only wait 10 minutes. They would not wait 15 minutes. I was furious at this point. I asked to register a complaint. They transferred me to customer service. They were not help. They didnt even care about what happened. They just told me that the other person must have told me wrong. The kicker was that they didnt even register me as calling. So they didnt even believe me. I asked for a fax number so I could send them my call history. They shut up a little bit about that but still pressed that I was told wrong.

I then asked to speak with the cancelation department. Now Im finally presented with a person that cares that I am a customer. They are actually trying to fix the problem and make me happy. I told them all I want is my service transferred and for it to not cost me anything. They said they would waive the transfer fee. I said fine. Book me an appointment.

Appointment was made for monday. It came and went and it was installed. Now it stops working tuesday night. They cant get out to see me until friday after 5. I'm livid. Now I am trying to get discounted those days of service. Still have not found that resolution but I will not give up.

Sounds easy but it is not. I just moved in and I'm already having to buy stuff. Blinds (Both verticle and horizantal), Refrigerator, Washer, Dryer, Mop, Broom, vacuum, and crap I dont even know about yet. I know these are all one time purchases but it still adds up.

All these things will make it feel more me. It will be my expression in visual form. Hopefully it looks good. I still plan on taking some before photos. That way I can get them up here to everyone can see them. Im waiting for my cable internet to get fixed again. Its not working. Not very pleased about that.

One thing that I struggle with when it comes to buying things is that I want to make sure that I am buying the best. I want to know it will last me. I dont want to see something die over the next couple years when Im doing my renovating. This is also the reason why I am getting extended warranty on a couple items. Namely the fridge, washer, and dryer. Those are my only real big expenses. The other big expense has been the blinds. Two inch blinds are not cheap. Blew me away when I went to home depot to look at them. Cheapest one was $32.00 USD and of Course I needed the $38.00 USD and above. I went with the white ones. I want my place to have a bright interior and I felt the wood color would have been to much. Plus with wood floors. I think it would have been to much.

Tonight is the night that I am going to get a refrigerator. It looks like its going to be a GE unless something extrodenary happeneds. Honestly I will only buy it I feel its the right decision. I want to know I will be happy with it. Its the most expensive purchase I have planned in the next 12 months. I will either edit this post or make another post of what I decide on tonight.

I plan on going to Nebraska Furniture Mart. I'll bring my phone with me so I can search the local stores (Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowes). Nebraska Furniture Mart will be any local stores price by 10%. Thats a win win for me.

Working on getting the apartment whipped back into shape. It really wont take much as I was a good tenant. Its still more work that I thought it was going to be. Need to scrub down pretty much everything, vacuum the floors, clean the bathrooms, and anything else that might look dirty. If they ding me for the leak in the ceiling and it ruining the floor I will be pissed. They have known about the leak for over a month and have chosen to do nothing about it since I was moving out. I have had a bucket catching the water while I was there but after leaving it has had nothing to catch it.