House – Page 2 – The Beehive

June 18, 2009June 19, 2009

The Porch

It’s time for part two of our house tour. This is our porch.

porch1

The seller left us this all-weather wicker seating arrangement. My brother tells me it’s quite comfortable and a great place to sit and relax. Unfortunately, I have not been blessed with an opportunity to do so.

porch2

There’s definitely potential to make this porch more inviting. I’d like to put some outdoor cushions on the wicker seats to add color and comfort. A small side table to set a drink or a book while lounging would also be great. Add a small area rug to define the seating area, and you’ve got something.

June 15, 2009June 15, 2009

Our Productive Weekend or House Tour Part 1: The Family Room

I’m totally amazed by the amount we got done around the house this weekend. First, Steve made some amazing progress with the weeds in the back yard. I didn’t take any before and after pictures because I didn’t expect him to be outside too long, or to make too much of a dent in our forest of weeds. Boy was I wrong! He cleared a huge area along the back fence and around the patio, and the yard is actually starting to look, well, pretty. I also did a fair amount of weeding myself, and got started with a little painting project.

This is our family room. It sits just off the kitchen, and because we’re getting started with its make-over, it will be the first room on our house tour (although logically a bit out of order). We’re tackling the family room first because: (1) the family room and the kitchen are probably the two most used rooms in the house, so we want them to be comfortable places that we really enjoy being in; and (2) it’s pink. Really, really pink. And the seller left us some fabulous curtains.

We’ve got a whole plan for the family room here. This weekend, I started by painting the ceiling. Of course this involved a bit of prep work first. I removed all of the curtains and hardware, removed and/or taped off the light fixtures, and laid out drop clothes before slathering a coat of paint on the ceiling.

Just taking down the curtains made a huge difference and really lightened things up. I started with just the ceiling because we’re taking baby steps on the painting; neither one of us wants to spend a whole weekend painting, so we’re doing it one wall at a time.

June 14, 2009June 14, 2009

The Hive

This is our house.

housefront

It’s a spacious two-story house with a good sized yard. We’ll be taking you through room-by-room as we get each room camera ready. We’ll also have a page for each room documenting our progress (and hopefully keeping us honest so we don’t slack off on the work we want to do).

May 6, 2009June 10, 2009

Mortgage Mania

We made our first mortgage payment today. We have less money in our account now, but I’m still excited about it because it means we now own 25.1% of The House (as opposed to 25% based on the down payment). Woohoo!

We got our mortgage through ING, and I have to say, I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been saving with ING for at least 5 years, and I enjoy that the interest rate tends to be a bit higher than elsewhere and it is easy to set up an automatic savings plan. But the mortgage has been amazingly hassle-free. ING touts its morgages as low cost because its costs are lower: you are required to make automatic electronic payments and they don’t send you statements. Frankly, I try to pay all my bills online anyway, so there is no downside here. Our closing costs were low, and our real estate agent said ING was incredibly easy to work with and got everything on its end done super fast, so we were actually able to close early.

If you haven’t checked out ING, you might consider it. ING will give you $25 if you open an account with a minimum balance of $250 through a referral link (and the referrer will get $10). Here is a referral link, if you are interested:

Open New ING Account

Happy Saving!