Landscaping

We have a landscape design for our backyard!

Thanks to the landscape designer at a local nursery, we have a plan for our backyard landscaping.  It consists of a rain garden on the side of the house (the top part of the drawing), and a privacy garden in the back of the house (the right side of the drawing) to screen us from the neighbor's house behind us.

It was really interesting having someone who is so knowledgeable about plants come and look at the yard.  We now know the variety of every existing plant in our yard, whether it's healthy, and we have many suggestions for specific plants that will grow well in our yard, taking into account how much sun and rain each area gets.

Speaking of the yard, J mowed it for the first time last week.  In my unbiased opinion, he did an excellent job.

We hope to have the backyard landscaped in the next couple of months, so photos to come!

Spring is Officially Here

For the first time since winter, the albino chipmunk that lives outside my office was out and about:

I'm told by co-workers this is the sign that it's officially spring.  Forget Punxsutawney Phil - this chipmunk is the real weather expert!

10 Day Rewind

Let's rewind to 10 days ago... (insert foggy dream sequence here).

We spent the morning signing 83,457 documents promising to pay our mortgage.

Recovering from writer's cramp once the house was officially ours -
also pictured is our wonderful real estate agent Rob.

It was snowing as we walked into our house for the first time as owners. (to contrast, today's high is 80 degrees!)

Rob took this picture of us unlocking the door for the first time.

We ate the first meal in our new house.

Very fancy and grown-up: leftover ciabatta sandwiches from a work lunch,
cheddar bunny crackers, and aqua pods.

Since then there's been a lot of this... 

Deadbolt installation and hardware updates.

  

Roof tune-up.

And this...

Evening trips to Lowe's and Home Depot.

And even this...

Late-night plumbing work.

But we've gotten a lot done in just 10 days... and I'm excited to see what we're able to accomplish in the next 10 days!

Blinds

We've hit a major milestone... we have blinds installed!

Saturday Update

We have blinds!  They aren't installed (that's happening Monday), but after driving to another Lowe's an hour away, we now have enough blinds for all our windows.

In other news, here is a photo of the fans in the second and third bedrooms:

And here is one of the two flush mount lights that J installed today to replace the super ugly lights:

Our next project is sanding a few places where the walls were patched (non-code height bathroom outlet installation FAIL by previous owner) and then we'll be painting over the patches.

Progress

It's been 4 days since we closed on our house... and it's amazing how much we've been able to accomplish.  Between us working in the evenings after work and one day with an electrician's help, here's what we've done:
- fixed 3 broken outlets
- replaced a broken air vent
- installed new closet door pulls
- installed 3 ceiling fans

- installed light and fan dimmer switches in the bedrooms
- installed a bathroom exhaust fan
- installed 5 GFI outlets
- added two ceiling lights and a switch in the garage

- removed 2 ugly light fixtures
(will be replaced with something else soon)
- pounded down popped roofing nails
- installed garbage disposal and drain plumbing

- repaired range hood
- installed digital thermostat
- installed new exterior door knobs and deadbolts
- discovered that the a/c didn't work because the fuses weren't attached properly (props to J for discovering this!)

Let the weekend work begin!

J + A Manor

We bought a house!