Saturday, February 23, 2008

New House

On 23 Feb 2008, we moved into our new home! (Big thanks to the many family members who helped us!) It was quite the learning process, and also quite the stress, getting ourselves locked into thirty years of mortgage payments, but we are mainly settled now and we are happy here. (S is finally getting used to the freeway noise, which is fairly constant since we live seven houses from the freeway. He is quite excited for the freeway sound wall, which the Department of Transportation is in the process of building.) The house is 15 years old, and we bought it from the original owner, so it is in pretty good condition. However, the pictures will showcase some interesting events that have occurred in these past two months.On our first day here, S's brother D took us to buy a new washer and dryer, with which we have ultimately been very pleased. Here is a picture of the pure exhaustion S felt after he and D carried both appliances into the basement themselves. We were both excited to hook them up and watch the new front-loader washer spin around really fast. So, we got all the cords in line and started to plug things in. Unfortunately, I, knowing nothing about electricity, plugged the dryer cord into the wall before the dryer plugs were separated and plugged into the dryer themselves. Thus, we both saw one of the biggest sparks in history, and the entire house lost all signs of electrical activity.

Luckily, S is an electrical engineer. Oh wait, that's not the same as an electrician. He went over to the fuse box (excuse my use of incorrect terminology, if it is indeed incorrect), and found the fuse that goes to the washer and dryer. He jimmied it a few times, and nothing happened. He then tried to brainstorm what could be done to get electricity, all the time needing to comfort me, who thought I had broken the brand new dryer! :) Eventually, he thought to go outside and see if there were any kind of electrical things out there. Fortunately, there was an 100 amp breaker out there that had been flipped. Apparently pulling 100 amps is a big deal (although I wouldn't know)! The problem was very easily fixed by flipping the breaker, thus restoring power to the house, and replacing the washer/dryer fuse in the basement.

Then, a few weeks ago while I was at work, S managed to push the dead bolt too far into the front door (if that makes any sense). He confessed upon my return, and I accepted the fact that the dead blot was broken and would need to be replaced. Eventually, we went to Home Depot and found a dead bolt that we thought would fit. This past week, however, while S was on a business trip, I messed with the dead bolt for awhile and got it to lock again! When S returned, I announced the dead bolt to be "fixed." An easy win, I thought. Until Sunday, when some church members stopped by to deliver the stake newsletter and we discovered that we were locked in our house for good! After repeated tries to open the door, S finally went out by way of the garage. Then followed a comical scene, in which both of us exited the garage, and unwittingly closed the garage door, completely forgetting that we could not get in the front. Luckily, we have a garage door code. So now, once again, fixing the dead bolt is "on the list" of honey-do's for S.Lastly, apparently the previous owner was into some strange plants. It took us awhile to put our finger on it, but we discovered that the big ivy bush that was growing on and creeping all over our porch really bothered us. So, on the Saturday before Spring Cleanup (when they come once a year to pick up anything that you leave on the curb), S finally tore it down. We also pulled some other strange things out of our yard, and we are all the happier for it. (Yes, S did perform all these tasks while wearing "business casual").

The rest are some pictures of our house when we first moved in (thus there is nothing on the walls and the items on the floor are in disarray). We now have more furniture and a number of decorations, but we are still not done yet. Eventually, we would like to replace all the carpet (it is all light blue), and paint almost all the rooms (they are almost all light blue as well). But, these are things for later, and right now, we are really enjoying the house and doing our best to make it our home!From top to bottom, the pictures include: the kitchen, the front room, the family room, the guest bathroom, our future daughter C's room, the office, the baby's room, the Master bedroom, the Master closet, the Master bathroom, and another view of the front room. Not pictured are the unfinished basement, the dining room, and the rest of the closets and halls.

3 comments:

Laurie said...

oh Man! Oh boy! That's what kills me is that he does everything wearing business casual. It's so funny!

Anonymous said...

This is your brother, Shad. I can completely see the whole scene with the dead bolt! That is very funny. I also loved the story about the dryer!
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Now this is your mother. That is a hilarious story about the dead bolt! It reminds me of a few occurrences at our house, with our door.

Anonymous said...

I would have to agree with Laurie. I was thinking the same thing. ha ha... But Congrats Ash on the baby and the house. Life just gets more and more exciting. The fun never stops.