Wednesday, 14 May 2008

The Joy of Home Ownership


It's official. Paul and I are homeowners [again]. We've been living as renters for over 3 years now, and it sure has been convenient to ring the landlord when something isn't quite right at the house. Not that we've had too many issue to call the landlord about...but, you get the idea.

We haven't moved in yet--that will be another 6 weeks or so--after we knock down a wall, rebuild the kitchen and the bathroom and all the demolition that that entails. We don't do anything the simple way!

It only took us 3 days to experience the full joy of homeownership.

Incident #1: Cyn gets a little too brutal with that pesky lock on the back door and the key breaks off in the lock. Result: We can't get into our own garage from the house. Oops! Resolution: Paul drilled out the lock and was able to unlock it! Whew!

Incident #2: After 2 days of flushing toilets, filling buckets and generally "normal" use of the taps [faucets].. the water stops coming out of the taps when you turn them on.. Hmmm...A brief conversation with the former homeowner helps us discover that we have created an air lock in the water system. It's a fairly complicated system, by Texas standards--but we'll be simplifying that with the upcoming alterations to the house. Resolution: Purchase one standard issue garden hose [more on that later], attach one end to the outdoor tap [faucet], take the other end up into the loft [attic] and put it in the "out" pipes in the cold water tank. Turn on the outside tap, and it flushes out the air lock...Viola!

So, now that we have running water again and can actually open the door to the garage, all is well at the new house.

In addition to fixing the things that we managed to break ourselves, we are trying to remove some of the decorating ideas of the former owners [more on what we've found in a later post]. We've been busily stripping wallpaper from almost every room in preparation for putting our own design stamp on the place. We've also been preparing for when the builders descend on the place to tear it up and put it back together.

So, as a colleague so eloquently put it, you cannot have creation without destruction. So, that's what we're doing, creating our new home.

And we hope to fill it with friends and family and laughter as soon as we can!

We look forward to scheduling your visit...and in this place, there's room for you to bring the kids!


Here are a few pictures of our weekend, picnicing in the yard and stripping wallpaper!


Emilie Working

Cyn & Mollie Steaming off the Wallpaper

The Girls Picnicing in the Back Garden

3 comments:

Hachie Gal said...

Congrats on the house. AND THE BLOG! keep the posts coming!

Hachie Gal said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Paul from Dallas, Texas said...

Are you pinching the blond haired girl in the last picture? You so mean... ; )

What a wonderful idea setting up this blog. It's giving me a few ideas.

Congratulations on the new place!

Hope all else is well!