Chick Day!

ITS HERE!!!!

I am so excited I can barely sit down to write this!  Today we got our 5 new chicks!  Each chick is a different breed and they all bring a little something to the table.

Firstly, I wasn't supposed to get chicks until March 4th.  I had even put in for a personal day at work!  However, yesterday I got a call saying that my chicks were in and I could come and get them.  Turns out that the hatchery wouldn't have any of the Barnevelder chicks available on March 4th so they moved me up.  I could have chosen a different dark brown egg layer but I was really excited about this one so I decided it would be fine to just get them a little early.  Did I mention I was excited?

My mom was already set to come down for a little lunch today with John and I, so we altered our plans a bit to include the chicks.

I got dressed in my best flannel in honor of our day and we all headed off to Pickering Valley Feed and Farm bright and early to go get our box of peeping chicks!

YAY!!!!!

Randy the chicken guy helped us get everything we needed and rounded up the chicks.  $112 later and I was one happy camper! (Farmer?)

We got home and hauled everything upstairs to what will be the chick nursery for the next 60 days.  Turns out, baby chicks don't require too much. We got a heat lamp with red bulb to keep them toasty (95-100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first week, lowering by 5 degrees each week until you're at room temperature), medicated chick feed to keep them well fed and ward of any sicknesses, a feeder and waterer and some pine bedding.  They also need a box.  After this week, we will also need a screen for the box because they will become little escape artists.

We had to set everything up for their brooder.

Waterer, Feeders, Chick Feed, Lightbulb, Pine Bedding and Lamp.

A brooder is a fancy word for chick nursery.  Its warm and safe and has access to food and water and it will keep them away from all of the predators.  Namely our cats.

Fancy Chicken Box

After we got them settled in and loved on them as much as we thought we could before they would be stressed out, we left them alone to get used to their new surroundings.

I've been watching them all day now and getting to see their little personalities.  You wouldn't think something so basic as a chicken, or so young as 3 or 4 days could really have a personality, but they do.  Naming them was fun!  We chose names from the list of popular names in 1910.  I knew we wanted to give them names that would be silly and "farmy" so my mom suggested the earlier time period.  Also, I don't know anyone by the names given to the chicks.  So...

Much deliberation was had.

Meet the girls!

Gertrude

Gertrude is our Buff Orpington chick.  She's the biggest of the group and looks like she will be the leader.  She has a strong, motherly personality already!

Hazel

 Hazel is the Barnevelder.  The whole reason we went down early!  She is a serious bird and quiet.  She seems to like being held.

Harriet

 Harriet is the wildest of the bunch.  She is a Barred Plymouth Rock.  Poor Randy had a heck of a time trying to wrangle her! She is very skittish and makes a lot of noise.

Nellie

 This is Nellie.  As a Silver Gray Dorking, she has 5 toes, which is more than our other chicks have.  She's happy to be one of the flock for now.

Pearl

Last but not least is Pearl.  She is an Americauna and will lay pretty blue and green eggs.  She's the tiniest of the bunch.  I got to pick her out because Americaunas do not have a set color and can turn out in a variety of ways!

Happy chicks in their new brooder!

Nom nom nom

They sleep on their faces.  It is hard to be a chick!

Me with Gerty!  (Note the flannel).

Okay, I'm off to try to love them more.  The idea is that they will get used to being handled and they can even learn to come when they're called!

Small Kitchen Projects - Its Electric!

Now you'll have that song stuck in your head.  If not, you're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.  Now that's in your head.

Okay I'm done, I just couldn't resist.

Before I write, I want to say here:  Electric work is no joke, if you're not sure about it, call in a professional.  It can be really dangerous stuff (even the simple things!).

Whether you are ready to do it or not, take a look at what we did this weekend!

After the sink fixture, we headed back to Home Depot (our favorite store!) and bought paint and new sockets, plates and switches.

Changing out switches (or... switching switches) is not too tricky, but there's a really important first step.  Find your Main Service Panel, or, Breaker Box.  This box controls all of the electricity to your house.  Once you open it there should be several labeled switches.

Closed Box

Open Box.  Find your switch(es) and turn them off.

                     



 Find the switch with the label that corresponds with your project.  For us it was "Kitchen Receptacles".  Switch them to off to stop the electricity from going to those outlets while you work.  Once they're off, test the outlets with a special tool called a Multimeter which will tell you for sure that the electricity is off.

Once you're positive (har har) that all of the electricity is off, you can get started.

For this task you will need a screwdriver and a pair of needlenose pliers. Changing out an outlet is fairly straightforward.  There are two sides to the outlet.  One side is hot, one side is cold and there's a ground wire.  There is a small marking on the back that will tell you which side is "hot".  The naked wire is the ground wire.  When you are taking the wires off of the old outlet, make sure you note where they were attached.  They should go to the same places on the new outlet.

Cold side and ground wire at the bottom.

The new outlet, hot side.

To detach the old wires, use a screwdriver to unscrew the small screws on the side.  Use the pliers (if necessary, some of our wires slipped off easily) to get the wire out from underneath the screw, remembering where you detached them from for later.

Changing out an outlet.  All of these photos have been taken on my
cell phone since I can't locate my camera.

Repeat that procedure for all of the screws.

To attach the new outlet, put the wire under the appropriate screw and tighten the screw all the way (make sure the wire is snug underneath the screw and doesn't pop out, this connection helps to complete your circuit, without which your electricity won't work (or at least won't work properly/reliably).

Repeat the procedure for all of the screws.  Push all of the wires back into the recessed area and screw in your new socket!  Put the plate over top, turn the electricity back on, test it again with the multimeter and you're all done!

We chose white ones to match our trim.  We didn't NEED to change out the outlets, but we hated the beige ones and they're inexpensive to do.  Pretty!

Small Kitchen Projects - New Sink!

We are slowly but surely making the kitchen our own.  Since moving in we have installed new appliances and cleaned (and cleaned, and cleaned...).  My dream kitchen looks quite a bit like this:

Ah, butcher block and soapstone countertops, warm wood floors, happy yellow walls and pretty appliances.  Unfortunately, I'm a teacher, so this kitchen is probably not in my immediate future. What I can do is make lots of little changes and add paint and hope for an eventual outcome that I like.  Its the journey, right?

In an effort to move in this direction, I mapped out a plan.  I want a nice cottage/farmhouse feel (sort of like Ina Garten's Kitchen, but obviously not in the Hamptons...yet).

Oh, Ina

After the appliances, its turns out that the only major expense is new countertops.  And since I obviously fell in love with the world's most expensive counter material, those will have to wait.  However, I can do some smaller things without hurting the pockets too much.  So, it was off to Home Depot to get a new sink fixture!

After looking at their selection, I found two that I really liked and decided to go with a brand I trusted since I liked both of the fixtures equally.  We ended up with a Moen fixture called Banbury.

The "Spot Resistant" claim was a big deal.

Putting in a new fixture is not that hard.  In theory.  However, our sink fixture was original with the house and due to a lack of water softener and upkeep all of the moving parts underneath the sink were completely stuck together.  For this we needed a few tools:

From left going clockwise:

So... Many... Tools..

1. Slip Joint Pliers

2.  PB Blaster Lubricant (for our stuck parts)

3. Safety Glasses

4. Crescent Wrench

5. Other Crescent Wrench

6. Diagonal Cutters

After the tools, the most important thing is to TURN THE WATER OFF.  Otherwise it will go everywhere and that will be a mess.  Directly under the sink when you open the cabinets there should be two pipes or tubes.  One is for hot water and one is for cold.  Hot is on the left, cold is on the right.  

Hot on the Left, Cold on the right.  The other tube in the center hooks up to the sink sprayer.

To turn the water off, turn the knobs on the sink pipes all the way until they're tight.  Test to make sure you didn't just open the flow more by turning on the sink.  If no water comes out of the faucet, congratulate yourself!  And proceed to the next step.  If water comes out, and continues to come out, turn the knobs the other way (all the way) and test it again.  

Once the water is off, you can start disconnecting the tubes.  The white knobs at the top spin to loosen (lefty-loosey!).

Sorry for the weird angle, it was the only way to do it.  The pipe on the bottom left is the hot water, then the sink sprayer, then the cold water, finally the other end of the sprayer. 

This is the worst.  This is the reason people pay plumbers to do things, and its the reason plumbers can charge so much (in hindsight - they don't charge enough, I would charge a lot more because this is really awful).  First off, there's stuff in the way, there's pipes everywhere.  Secondly, its in a cabinet so obviously when you go to undo the sink tubes, there's no space for a human body to fit except if you lay on your back and slide in (and there's no lumbar support... because its a cabinet) and then the sink is in the way of all the places your tools need to go to work effectively.  Awesome. 

Does this look comfortable?  No.  Because its not.

It took me nearly 20 minutes to get the original tubes unstuck, and that was only the hot water.  I gave the cold water task to John, and then we used the cutter to snip the hose for the spray (the new sink came with a hose).  

Putting in the sink fixture is the same procedure in reverse.  Check your directions for any special instructions, then place the new fixture on the sink (checking to make sure you have the hot water side on the left) and head back into the cabinet for more fun.  

Put your hot water tube back into place and attach it with the fitting that is similar to the one you took off (it should have come with the new fixture).  Put the new sprayer in place and attach the tube to the center of the fixture (make sure its not tangled or wrapped around any existing pipes under the sink before you attach it).  Put in the cold water tube with the new fitting.  Tighten everything.  Tighten the tops and bottoms of the tubes/pipes, tighten the sprayer connection and then check everything once more. 

Turn the water back on and cross your fingers (well, that's what I did).  We tested hot water first, then turned it off and tested cold water.  Once they both worked we checked the sprayer.  No leaks!  Yay!  Close up the cabinets and bask in the glory of a job well done.  Also, wash your hands.  WITH YOUR NEW FAUCET!

And now:  

Before:  Sad Fixture

After: Happy New Fixture!

 My next task is to replace the soap bottles with pretty glass ones.

Meanwhile...

Cat nap....  Har har har.

Doorknob Mania!

Those are probably two words you've never heard together.  Allow me to explain.  When we got the keys to the house, we noticed that it didn't really matter whether we had keys or not since the door to the garage did not lock.  The sliding glass doors did not have a functioning lock, and the two broken locks made the front door lock irrelevant.  Something had to be done.

I should mention here that since the first day in our house we have become Home Depot's number one customers. We already had a list going of the projects for which we could easily finish along with projects that needed to be completed in order for us to be happy/not robbed.  Clearly the door lock situation was the latter.

So Sunday morning after we moved in we trooped off to Home Depot for what would be the first of many [expensive] trips.  We purchased a myriad of things not limited to exterior lights, doorknobs and locks, caulk,window/door sealer, and tools (the tool thing will be another post entirely).

John put in a new fancy doorknob on the front door and added a deadbolt.  The deadbolt mostly serves to create peace of mind since our only neighbors are potato farmers/horses, but I like it anyways.  We also replaced the doorknob to the garage (it locks now, yay!) and the one to the basement, which also did not lock.


Putting in a doorknob is not too tricky.  The holes were already there, with the exception of the deadbolt (which we'll get to in a minute) so all we really had to do was use a screwdriver to take off the old one and follow the directions for the new one.  The entire doorknob process takes less than 5 minutes, and the hardest part is deciding which one you want (there are tons, make sure you get the kind for an exterior door for outside jobs).

The dead bolt wasn't too bad, but did require some tools.  First, when you drill a hole in the door it makes a mess, we didn't mind vacuuming, but if you're especially concerned with wood shavings you may want to lay down a drop cloth or some newspapers.  We also needed a drill with a hole saw attachment and a 1" spade bit, a tape measure, a screwdriver, a level and a pencil.

The process:
1.  Use the tape measure to determine the height of the deadbolt.  Remember to take into account the distance from the existing doorknob, we went with 6 inches to make it easy.  Once we had our six inch mark, we measured from there to the bottom of the door and wrote the measurement down.

Measure twice, cut once!

Using the hole saw.

2.  Use the level and pencil and make a straight line from your mark across on to the place where the lock would meet the wall.

3.  This part is tricky.  Center your hole saw around the original mark you made and drill your hole.  We hit some trouble here since it turns out our front door has a metal sheath over the wood and we had to stop and acquire a hole saw attachment that would drill through metal and not just wood.

4.  Open the door, measure the width of your door (the space between the side you see when its closed and the side you'd see from the front).  Make a dot directly in the middle, in line with the mark you made earlier on the door.

5.  Using the spade bit, put the very tip on the dot and drill until you break through into the hole you drilled earlier.

6.  You'll have to follow the same procedure to drill into the jamb where you originally made the mark with the level.  Drill into that dot about 1 1/2"

7.  From here on out, its mostly the same as putting in a new doorknob, and there are directions.  If you measured carefully and made sure everything was level, you should be set!

Ta-Da!  I made him pose like this. 

**I should mention... There's a tool (John says "I believe its called 'Amateur Hour'") at Home Depot for $30 that is specifically for installing deadbolts and would allow you to skip all of this, but if you're handy and careful, its fun to do these things on your own!

We did get interrupted once when the new neighbors stopped by with homemade bread and jam!

Yum!  Neighborly goodness!

There were no complaints about that, and now we can eat in total peace and security thanks to the new doorknobs!

Moving Days

Yep.  Days.  Plural.

Not helpful.

We planned to move as much as possible on the 22nd with grand plans to empty the entire apartment and only have to come back to clean it before handing over the keys.  As it turns out, we are hoarders.  Well, half of us are.  I threw out bag after bag of things we didn't use and couldn't donate as well as donating several bags to our local goodwill.  We threw out more things while we moved (a dumpster's worth of things) and we still had to make two trips with the U-haul that day.

You'd never even know we lived here.

Then there were more trips.  We went back and forth several times and could barely believe it when 10 days later we were completely moved out and the apartment was spotless (we were dead set on getting back all of the money for the security deposit).  On the last day in the apartment, we only had a few things to put in the car; the fish tank that we were absolutely dreading and some miscellaneous cleaning supplies.  We cleaned for 5 hours.  We scrubbed out windows, bathrooms, floors, walls, baseboards, cabinets, closets, shelves and appliances.  I can't take all of the credit for the bathrooms, my mom did most of that the day before when we were making one of those awful trips (thanks, Mom!).

The last trip... We're free!

I now have a complex about things.  It turns out that I don't require very much to keep me happy.  I don't want "things" anywhere near the house, and if I never see a book again it will be too soon.  I love to read, I really do, but I don't have time for the amount of books we acquire and they mostly get put off to the side until I have a chance to get rid of them (either Goodwill, the school, or sometimes even the trash... which seems like a sin, but its not I promise).  We must have gotten rid of over half of the books in the apartment and still had to move several heavy boxes of them.  Never again.

Also useless things.  I love objects that have a purpose.  I have no problem with having useful items around the house, but there comes a point when you have to say "Is this really going to improve my life?  Or is it just neat to look at?"  Most of the time, its just more stuff I have to clean or keep around.  Ick.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, I must have some moving PTSD.  The real upside to cleaning out the apartment was going to Olive Garden at the end of the day. We'd had breakfast and not much else and were really hungry by dinner time, and there's just something about those breadsticks...

The Start of it All

Hello everyone!

I started this blog as a way of keeping any interested parties up to date on our new house activities.  I don't know that anything on here will ever be particularly earth-shattering, but whether there are readers or not, it will still be nice to have a place to keep track of our journey into home-ownership.

Along the top of the blog there are tabs that will someday have appropriate posts and links to fill their pages.  In the mean time, they are blank canvases.  Not much to see there.

I suppose the best thing to do now is to start at the beginning.  (Sorry in advance for the long post.  They won't all be as verbose).

Last year I became especially whiny about living in the apartment.  It wasn't that the apartment was particularly bad, it was actually really nice as far as apartments go, it was more that I'm not really suited to apartment living.  I don't like it.  Add to that our apartment faced a line of trees similar to the Redwood National Forest which blocked out the sun so it was always dark regardless of the time or cloud cover.

 John and I had talked about buying a home after the wedding but had mostly fantasized about what we would like to have and then watched a lot of House Hunters on TV.  After roughly 6 months of this, I decided I wanted a house.  I didn't care about granite counter tops or hardwood floors, I just wanted a yard and a driveway and my own walls.  Oh, also chickens.  And maybe goats.

Clearly, I wanted to be a farmer.  The kind that doesn't wear denim overalls.

Anyways, in January we started putting money away.  We were in an interesting situation at the time. I was working as a Long-Term Substitute in a local school district (where I had been on and off for nearly two years) but was not technically permanently employed.  Buying a house in this economy sans permanent employment is not the usual definition of sane.  But I am nothing if not persistent, so we saved pennies. And dollars.  And all other forms of acceptable currency.

By the end of summer we were going to open houses, and in the beginning of the school year we attended an open house that really got the ball rolling.  We stopped off to look at a really cute three bedroom/one and a half bathroom (or in listing lingo: 3br/1.5ba) on one acre in Parkesburg.  The house was adorable, but wasn't for us.  However, the realtor that greeted us was spot on.  Bill McCormick was friendly and outgoing and we got a great vibe from him from the get go.  He was also relentless, which sounds bad, but is definitely good (especially for a couple of timid, first time homebuyers).  He took on our crazy wishlist (1 acre or more and less than $230k in Chester County) and assembled a list. If you need a realtor, he's your guy.  We looked at something like 20 houses, including split levels, a weird house from 1850, one with a room that had wallpaper the same shade of burgundy as the carpet, a very small house, one that went under contract while we stood in it, and a lot of houses in the middle.  We only happened to look at our final pick on a whim.

We loved the house from the start, but it was listed at the very tip top of our price range. Remember the 6 months we spent watching HGTV?  This is where that came in really handy.  This colonial style house has 4 bedrooms (including a master suite) 2.5ba, and a great floorplan downstairs that includes a kitchen, living room and a formal dining room.  We were in love.  AND it came on 1.5 acres.  But it was expensive, and there was no granite.  (Just kidding about the last bit).

Then the price dropped... and again... and again... (all the way to the generous price of $225k)  So we went back for a second look.  The house was in good shape since it was only built in 1998, but had had no real upkeep (oh, we had no idea how much upkeep it was lacking... more on that later).  After a lot of talking and fantasizing, Bill finally broached the topic of making an offer.  We counted all of our pennies and decided we could do it.

I haven't mentioned any of the financial stuff because its really complicated.  You should just trust that I know everything about it now.  Thanks to Greg Mason, the finance guy!  He should really be a superhero.  We officially put in an offer on October 6th (less than the list and keeping the appliances) and crossed our fingers.

They accepted it on the first try!  Let me say that again.  THE FIRST TRY.  No negotiating, no games, just thanks and see ya!  Those of you that enjoy HGTV know how great this is.  Or I guess those of you who have gone through this process (remember its new to me).

Settlement was set for Monday, December 10th and for the next two months Bill and Greg became my new best friends.  There is nothing that Greg does not know about me, my history or my bank account,  and Bill and I got close enough via phone calls that it was more like calling an old friend ("Hey, its me!") than a business relationship.

I'm going to pause a second and fill you in on some important life events here for the rest of the story to make sense.  Remember my LTS job?  Well 10 days after we put in the offer the teacher I was subbing for officially resigned, later in that time frame I interviewed for the job and was recommended for the position pending board approval (a meeting that would happen December 18th).  Also, I'm a music teacher, so December is complete insanity as it is.  I have elementary kids that I drag around the community to sing and perform no less than 6 times throughout the month. December 10th (settlement) was also a concert date.  I work an hour from the settlement area.  Also, I was heading to Chicago for the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic from the 19th-22nd.  Not expert timing, but we made the plans in June at which point the housing thing was still a vague fantasy.

So settlement.  We ended up getting postponed (whew, relief!) to the 21st (Noooooo... Remember? Chicago?  Terrible.).  Long story short, I went to Chicago, bought a one way ticket back for a day early and in day old clothes, unshowered hair, 3 hours of sleep, and 5 hours of travel, I grabbed a u-haul and met John in time to get to our walk through.

The walk through went swimmingly, so we headed to settlement!  We signed the papers, acquired keys, and just as soon as it had started, it was finished.

WE OWN A HOUSE.  Like, we OWN it.  Its ours.  We could have fuchsia walls or orange carpet and nobody could say anything .  John could play Halo with the volume all the way up and it wouldn't matter.  YAYYY!!!!!!!

We own this!  

The troops were notified and moving day was set for the next day.

To be continued....