another week - another plumbing problem

We love our new house but needless to say we do not love all of the plumbing problems we have run into. For the first few weeks we have run into 3 different plumbing problems. First on moving in the upstairs shower was constantly dripping hot water, no matter what we did it continued to drip. We finally called a plumber and about $200 dollars later the shower was fixed.

The second plumbing problem we had was the main floor toilet. We had not been able to use it since we moved in because it would not flush. First I tried to fix it one day while Ben was at work. I disassembled the whole toilet, snaked it with our sad little snake we bought at Lowes, then reassembled it with no improvement. We caved and decided to try a plumber, we were hoping it would be something covered in our home warranty. The plumber came out and had to disassemble the whole toilet again, this time he had success! He found a huge chunk of glass that was lodged in the line (his first question to us was "Did ya'll get really mad at each other recently?"). Obviously it was something dropped down the line while the toilet was off before as it was so big it would not of been able to be flushed. So after another $160 (this repair is going to be one of our Christmas presents from my Mom and Dad) we thought we were all done with plumbing disasters for a while.

But no.........














Friday night we had our first dinner party!! We had some old neighbors from the apartments come over for dinner. After we finished eating we loaded the dishwasher and started it so it could run while we watched the Jazz game. Ben walked in mid dishwasher cycle to a sink completely backed up with dirty water. Most of the water drained overnight- or so we thought-. No it just drained down into the dishwasher.

Ben really did not want to shell more money out to a plumber so we called in the family troupes. Ben, Ben Passey and John all worked on the sink tonight and after a good handful of hours, two pizzas and some frustration we have a fully operational sink and dishwasher!!

Woo Hoo - I am glad I have a hubby who is willing to be a DIYer.

update

So we have successfully moved completely into our house! Things have been busy so we haven't taken many pictures but I promise I will start taking some more.

moving day #1

Hey all,

So today we started moving!!! Ben and I started out by scavenging for boxes. We started at some of the local grocery stores and when that didn't work we hit the local liquor store (hey the lady at one of the grocery stores told us to go there). Thankfully they had plenty of boxes, now we just don't want our new neighbors to think we are boozers.


So our moving crew consisted of Ben, Me, Megan (one of bens lil sisters) and Ben Passey, John (ben's lil brother), Matt (bens older bro) and Val, and one of our downstairs abhors Brad.
Matt was able to borrow his father-in-laws flat bed truck so we moved most of our large furniture today using that. The other stuff we just boxed up in our liquor boxes and moved them over to the house.
We took a Burger King lunch brake and then moved some more.

Towards then end of the move I was able to stay behind at the house with Meg and I started painting our accent wall. It only has the first coat on but I think it looks pretty cool. We are gonna paint the fireplace and change the tile.


A few days ago Meg was over at our house while we were doing some work on it. We were all outside as Ben was cleaning some gutters, Tafton decided to try to climb the ladder. He could only make it to the first rung with out more help but I thought it was a cute photo opp.


We are gonna spend tonight (sat night) and sun night in the apartment, then the first night in our new house will be Mon night after we watch our first Monday Night Football in our new house.

Work on the house

So we have been able to do some more work on the house the past week.
Below is a pic of the carnage that I was able to create after going nuts with the clippers and shovel.



Ben and John finishing up on some work about a week ago.



So today I spent a lot of money buying paint and suff at Lowes. I got to the house and started cleaning and preping to paint. It was amazing how dirty the place was. I just washed the walls, baseboards, molding and it was amazing how much dirt I cleaned off of them. Most of the walls in the house are green, not to knock green but it just is not my fav color. Below is a pic of the bedroom turning from green to a really pretty grey/blue color.


Then here is the front sitting room going from ..... you guessed it green now to a nice light tan color.


I was docked from work tomorrow (we don't have enough patients to keep all the nurses working) so hopefully I can get the living room painted and do another coat in the front sitting room.

work work work ---- we are gonna try to move this saturday and monday!

Our first day of yard work

So we closed on our house Friday Oct 9th at 3.30pm!!! We will get the keys Tuesday (the house usually takes 24hrs to record but we had the luck of closing on a holiday weekend). Today Ben and I just couldn't wait anymore so even though we were trespassing today we went in and started yard work.
We saw some interesting things today. So many so that I am just going to list them

1. The biggest harriest spider EVER!! Ben killed it for me and described it as "custard filled"
2. A porcelain cereal bowl.
3. A lid to a round Pyrex bowl
4. Two kinds of Lilac plants (amazingly still labeled)
5. A big pile of rocks we can use to finish a rock path at the side of our house
6. TONS of grape vine!! (one vine climbed two separate trees and was starting to choke them, the trees looked half the fullness they originally were pre vine removal)
7. Various imported Mexican beer cans
8. Various soda and energy drink cans
9. A shoe insole
10. Towels and rags
11. A ton of fuzzy stuff and random pieces of yellow foam
12. The head to an old broom
13. Oh wait..... two more kinds of Lilac for four types total
14. More grape vine!!!

I might of forgot to list some tupper-ware (sp?) that we found also but I think that covered most of the random items we found.

I didn't take pics yet but I promise to start photo documentation of the destruction and reconstruction of things.

I know that list makes our sweet little house sound like a pile of junk but I promise it isn't. We just think that two families ago were people who cared for this little house and then unfortunately the last family who lived there did not care at all. Thankfully we now have this wonderful place and we are gonna pour lots of blood, sweat and I am sure some tears into this place.

Let the work begin-----------

Hoping to close this week.

So for those of you who don't know we are in the process of buying a house. It has been fairly quick seeing as how a month ago we weren't thinking we were gonna move for a while. Wed our home inspector is going through and then hopefully we will be able to close at the end of this week or early next week. We don't think the reality has really set in yet that we are buying a home. Crazy!!!!

I am a slacker

Hello once again. Like usual it has been a long time since I have posted. Ben and I have had a busy couple of weeks with family and getting some new things started. Becca Bens little sister got married a couple of weeks ago so some family came in from out of town (Charissa and her little girl Leah from Md).


Then we were able to drive up to Nampa, Id and have a weekend with Ben's Grandpa and Grandma. Ben's gpa competes in various senior Olympics and we were able to go with him for his basketball event where he won a gold metal.

While in Nampa I bought some new running shoes and I am trying to get them broken in before I kill myself.. oops I mean before I do my half marathon in Dec.


We got home and settled from Idaho when Megan (Bens other little sister) had her second baby Mikaela! She is so little compared to the big kid that her 16 month old is. She is a beautiful little girl who we are excited to see grow up.



As Megan was recovering in the hospital John (bens little brother) got his mission call in the mail - it must of been one they were certain of because it only took one week. He is going to the DC South mission! I called my parents because they live in Falls Church, VA which is in the mission John will be going (he goes in Dec 2)

The next news is that Ben and I are looking for a house. We have been talking and shooting around the idea. We figured we are ready and we should move before the tax credit runs out. Right now we love one house on the East Bench in Ogden and today we are going to look at a few in Roy and Washington Terrace. We have discovered we are not afraid to make quick decisions, we started out with about 45 houses to look at between the above areas. We have been driving around looking at the outside and more importantly to both of us the neighborhoods. We now have that list down to about 5, 4 of which we get to look inside of today and the list will prob get much shorter.

When we make a decision you can gaurentee there will be photos!! We have already bombarded our close friends and family with plenty of them for the house on the East Bench area.

Sorry again for the long time- no post. I'll try to be better.