For legal purposes

I put together a list of everything that was wrong with the house when we moved in, so that we couldn't be held responsible, and emailed it to the landlord. As Jon and I thought of everything, we were really amazed that someone could leave a house in such a state of disrepair.  Shameful.  In case you're interested:

1. Sliding glass door in the kitchen lock was broken.  To address this, we have purchased a bar for the door and will install it. 

2. Two kitchen cabinets were not on their tracks; one didn't have tracks at all. To address this, we repaired both.

3. Carpet in the master bedroom was stained. We have gotten this cleaned professionally, but light stains remain.

4. The carpet in the basement was irreparably stained. 

5. Deck paint slurped onto the side of the house during deck painting. 

6. Trash was left all over the backyard, including painting supplies for the deck. We have cleaned this up.

7. Trash was left in all the closets and kitchen and bathroom cabinets. We have cleaned this up.

8. Trash was left in the garage, including a several open buckets of paint. We have cleaned this up. 

9. Front storm door mechanism to slow door closing and keep door open is broken (door slams shut); handle to this door is broken and falling off.

10. Upstairs bathroom tile cracked.

11. Paint job in bathroom left paint underneath exposed. 

12. Clothes dryer lint had not been emptied in months. It's possible that dryer lint has built up in the exhaust line. Dryer creaks as it rotates. 

13. Several closet doors (basement, upstairs second bedroom) off their tracks and missing tracks. We will fix these.

14. HVAC unit broken. We are currently working on getting quotes to replace this.

15. Dishwasher broken. A Sears repairman came on 4/29/2011 and indicated that a new circuit board is needed. We have this repair scheduled for 5/6/2011. 

16. No keys to garage door deadbolt or handle. 

17. No mail key provided for box. We purchased replacements from the post office. 

18. Exhaust fan in upstairs bathroom is broken. 

19. Light fixture in master bedroom (fan attachment) broken - chain switch is broken. We are currently investigating fixes or replacements.

20. Refrigerator door bottom shelf broken. We plan to order a replacement if it can be found. 

21. Upstairs bathroom shower doors installed incorrectly and thus they could not slide. We have moved the doors to the basement and hung a shower curtain.

22. Garbage disposal was filled with plastic trash. We have since cleaned this out and fixed it. 

23. Garage door had no opener. We have purchased two garage door openers for cars/key chains and one keypad for the garage.

24. Many windows are without screens.

25. Many light bulbs were broken/missing/burnt out. We have replaced these.

26. Downstairs sink is missing the stopper. We have replaced this. 

27. The kitchen countertops have cuts all over from knives (previous tenants probably never used cutting boards when chopping). 

Small steps forward!

Jon and I made a fair bit of progress tonight after work. One major improvement: garage door openers!  They had one, but no remotes or anything. So Jon programmed remotes for each of our cars and one keypad for the outside so we don't have to keep going in the house to get to the garage.

I also wanted to show you the front yard.  Forgive the lighting...I took these at 8:00 at night.  Nice azaleas...except that the red one looks so small and random!!  Maybe it will be moved to make it fit better, if I can find another white one to put in the front. The fourth bare looking one will also be white, it's just taking longer to bloom than the others.

I made progress tonight on the small bit of space next to the azaleas. I wish I'd taken a before picture.  But look back at the pictures I posted earlier of the backyard.  That's what it was like.  You couldn't even see the wood outline because the weeds blended into the grass.  And it had horrible red mulch WITH THE BAGS BELOW IT!!!  Who does that?  I think they intend it to keep out the weeds, except when the mulch degrades into soil, it grows weeds extra well.  The new and improved small bit o' garden, hostas and begonias courtesy of Jon's mom.  They look a little wilted because Jon hid them in the garage (since Sunday!!) and forgot to tell me they were there.

Also, I mentioned we got a second car.  Here it is!  This is Bruce the beige Prius.  My blue one is Roxanne.  Yes they are identical. Same mileage. Same year.  Bruce has leather seats and a navigation system. Niiiiiice.

Not quite losing my mind so much

Okay, soooo I freaked out to Jon who declared that I have problems and then agreed to help me tidy up enough to be able to work. We organized things a bit, put some stuff away, and then made a huge long to do list.  It felt so good to get it down on paper and see that each task was manageable. We also found the camera cord, so here are some pics.  It's cleaner than this now, but still not great.

The kitchen: Currently plain hideous white that makes the slightly off-white floor and counter tops look dingy. The floor tile has a bit of pink design in it, so I'm thinking a warm terracotta color eventually. Also I'd love to get rid of that hunter green fan and hang our pot rack. Side note: whoever stained the cabinets must have been under the age of 5 because they could not stay in the lines or hold the brush straight or learn to wipe the extra globs off.

The deck out back: weird color orange, but doesn't look bad in this picture.  Those are my potted plants which are adjusting well to the outside life. Goodbye white fly!! Still needed: nice patio set for outdoor lounging and dinners.

Crazy overgrown backyard: I have huge plans for this.  Chop down all those overgrown suckers from trees, rip out the ivy, lots of flowering plants.  This will be the fun part.

Living room: It feels smaller than our last one, but it is open to the top landing of the stairs, so it feels very open. And it has a fireplace, which you can't see in this top picture. I would love to knock down the coat closet wall in the back of the picture to make it feel more open to the entry way and dining room. One day...

Diningroom: Not much to complain about here except a weird chandelier and a very 80's mirrored wall. We got lots of compliments from Jon's parents about our Craigslisted dining room table which really pleased me.  If you remember they had been pushing for us to get some $10000 table.  This one was $300.  Huzzah!

 Office/craft room: No words for the disaster that is this room right now. Mega yikes. You can't even see the worst of it.

So there is a lot going on.  We're slowly going to cross stuff off our list and hopefully I won't go crazy while doing it. Jon got the garage door openers hooked up this morning. Now we just need to clean out the garage enough to park in it.  Soon, soon.

About to lose my mind

I have lots of pictures of the house, and I would post them if only I could find the camera cord. But given the state our house is in, I wouldn't hold my breath.

It's not terrible. But it's just.too.much. I've felt in disarray for long enough now that it's starting to really affect me. I'm not sleeping well, I can't concentrate on work or my upcoming bio final, and every time I look around the house I want to scream. Everything is dirty because we left our cleaning supplies at the apartment so we could clean it. The house is filled with boxes or piles of shit that exploded out of boxes when we were looking for something. There are clothes EVERYWHERE from all the laundry we did but didn't put away. I hate the shower head. The bathroom is too small to function. The dishwasher is broken. The heating and cooling doesn't work. Two of the bedrooms don't have central lighting so you can't even go in them at night without a flashlight. The garden is a mess. I've been getting home at 8:30 pm too tired to do anything at all. And I can't even work on it this weekend because I have a bio final next Tuesday.  Sadly Jon is much less bothered by everything than I am, so he doesn't feel the same urgency that I do.

Basically, everything is really shitty right now and I feel like I need a lot of time to make it better and I just don't have it.

Update on moving

Yeesh, what a nightmare.  It feels like this whole process has gone on for a month.  Oh yeah, because it has. Well we've finally started moving into the house. With lots of help from my mom, Jon's dad, and Roxy the blue Prius and Bruce the beige Prius, we have moved 90% of "the little stuff". The remaining 10% is either the stuff we can't live without and therefore stay with us or the crap we haven't decided if we'll keep or not.

The big stuff is moving this weekend, with the help of lots of our friends and a u-haul. I hope it goes smoothly!  I'll post some disastrous pics of our apartment looking like a hot mess later.

Also to wrestle with are the many problems with the house. Several have been easy to rectify - bought a new garage door opener, bought a jimmy bar to secure the sliding glass door (lock was broken), bought a new sink stopper (missing). Others have not been so easy.  I spent 3+ hours getting the carpets cleaned, and am spending another 4+ hours on Friday getting the HVAC system serviced because our house is continually at 60 degrees.  Not quite cold but not exactly comfortable either. I guess this is what real life is like.  I miss apartment living a bit.

We got our house!

Biggest.Change.Ever: moving to a house. Because Amentra, Jon's new work, is in McLean, and I'm still in grad school at Hopkins, we've decided to move a bit closer to the middle, to the beautiful suburb of Laurel. We're both sad to leave Baltimore and our beautiful apartment, but we're movin' on up to bigger and better things.  Starting with THE HOUSE. Yes, folks, we've fully embraced "real life".  We're married, moving to a house in the suburbs. No dog or kids yet - we'll start with fish for now. After weeks of browsing real estate websites and craigslist, we've settled on a place that likes us as much as we like it. It's nestled in the Carriage Hill community right off of 95 in Laurel - see the real estate picture below:

It's almost 50% larger than our current place, with one extra bedroom, and extra bathroom, a front AND backyard, a garage, a deck, a dishwasher, washer/dryer, AC, and a "man cave" basement for Jon! Listing all that kind of makes me wonder how we lived without it for so long. We'll keep you posted on our packing and the move itself.  The first thing we have to tackle is buying another car. We're strongly leaning towards another Prius, but we're going to test drive some others this weekend.  If you have any suggestions - cars you love, cars you hate - we'd love to hear them!