Marriage with a Mortgage: Home Improvements

I'm running out of time tonight so I will try to be brief (yeah right). In between everything else we have found time to do some things around the house. Mainly we did some yard work and completely unpacked and decorated the second guest room. And installed a new toilet. Here it all is:

The second guest room had been a catch all for everything we weren't sure what to do with over the past 6 months. It had furniture but there were boxes and bags and junked stacked up everywhere and the closet was so overflowing you couldn't close the door. Here are a few before pictures.

Ugly brass ceiling fan

Closet o'crap

After! This room inherited some of our Virginia Tech paraphernalia.

The closet where you can actually hang clothes and shut the door!

Less obtrusive ceiling fan

I spent MANY hours going through boxes and boxes of mostly junk that we have been lugging around from house to house. I don't know why I am such a pack rat, but the past week has been great for purging. We also donated tons to Goodwill; lots of clothes, shoes, an old tv, a lamp, and a million old VHS tapes. I threw away things that I probably should have thrown away ten years ago but couldn't let go of. It feels go to have downsized and eliminated clutter as well as free up a lot of closet space.

Here is a short play by play of annoying yard work. The previous owner decided it would be great to put a post in the middle of the yard to hang a wind chime on. WHAT? Anyway, in case there was ever an earth quake or an elephant that wanted to hang from the post, they dug a two foot hole and filed it with cement to support the post.

I really thought Andrew might break his back trying to get this thing out of the ground. I was no help at all, so I just took pictures.

Hole to China

After a trip to Home Depot, we filled it in with some dirt and grass seed. Thanks previous owners for that awesome idea!

We also did a lot of raking and general clean up around the yard, and spread grass seed in a lot of bare spots. I didn't take pictures of this because it was not exciting (as opposed to all the really exciting pictures that I take).

One of my house plants died. We gave up on each other.

So I replaced it with a lovely fern. Hopefully we will have a more fruitful relationship.

And last but certainly not least, we got a new toilet! All this came about because the toilet in our downstairs bathroom was SO AWFUL! It was always having problems flushing and nearly overflowing and I was so fed up with it. After a run in with the toilet today, I just about lost it and decided it was time for the thing to go. Next week we have a bulky trash pick up which is great for us because we have LOTS to get rid of. Bulky pickups are a perfect opportunity to get rid of large items (like a toilet) because what else do you do with an old toilet?? With the bulky pickup looming and more company coming to town in three days, I decided this was the time for a new toilet. If we didn't do it now, we'd have no way to get rid of the old one until the next pickup in 6 months. So did I ever mention that I love the City of Austin?!? A while back I talked about the free toilet program that they have, but today I realized its even better than I thought. Previously, we submitted an application for a free toilet and about a week and a half later received a voucher in the mail. You would then take the voucher to a designated retailer who gives you a free High Efficiency Toilet (HET) for you to install. Today after doing some online investigating, I realized they also have a HET Rebate Program which allows you to pick our your model and retailer. All we had to do is go to Home Depot, pick out a HET model from an approved list, pay for it, and now mail in our reciept and application, and in a few weeks we will get a rebate check for the full amount. This cuts out the wait time for the voucher, although you do still have to wait for the rebate check. Anyway, I figured we could install the new toilet some time in the next few days. I went out for a little while to run some errands and when I came back, Andrew was already half way done with the installation! He is so great! I LOVE THE NEW TOILET! This is another dorky homeowner moment, but seriously, who knew it could be so exciting! Other than the fact that it will save us money on our water bill, and is ultimately free, my favorite part is that it doesn't have the nasty tacky wooden seat! YAY!!!