there's a few listed there but they're not the right kind.

12/21/2011 4:23:41 PM

Let's see here what's happened since we bought the house/ last posted.

1) Got a clog in the main kitchen line, called a plumber, then realized that it was covered under home owner's warranty. $150

2) Had a groupon for an Heat pump tune up, I asked the guy to take a look at the unit instead and make sure everything was operating correctly as my new installed thermostat wasn't turning the heat on. He worked on it for an hour and then realized that the instructions had in fine print at the bottom to "Initialize" the thermostat. He did that, and it worked, didn't get much of a tune-up though. $79

3) Got a letter from the Liberty Mutual stating that they were going to cancel my policy because of overhanging tree limbs unless I got them trimmed. Got them trimmed, $400.

4) Got the house painted exterior and one room inside. The wood was so dry that the ~1600 sqft house used 22 Gallons of exterior paint. But we went from this:



to this:



All told for the painting $5000.

12/22/2011 6:33:51 AM

^ Page 60 called, it wants its photos back

12/22/2011 9:13:44 AM

I have no where else to post this:

12/22/2011 12:09:56 PM

just installed the nest. as cool as anticipated.

12/22/2011 12:21:54 PM

Welp, pretty much done with the bathroom remodel I think it took close to 3 months, and a ridiculous amount of effort. Still waiting for the towel rack, soap holder, and window treatments, as well as the new door hardware (to get rid of the brass knobs), but pretty much done. Glass door needs adjustment, but that wont happen till January.

Shower is ridiculous. With the water pressure we have a 3/4 supplies, I think I was dumping close to 15 GPM when I had all the nozzles on. Of course, that isnt normal, but its nice to know I can push it. I think I'll normally be running the rain head and body sprays, which total about 7.5 GPM.

Allow me to share

http://thewolfweb.com/photos/00524518.jpg
http://thewolfweb.com/photos/00524521.jpg
http://thewolfweb.com/photos/00524520.jpg
http://thewolfweb.com/photos/00524516.jpg
http://thewolfweb.com/photos/00524519.jpg

[Edited on December 22, 2011 at 2:14 PM. Reason : .]

12/22/2011 2:11:43 PM

Like the tile combo.

12/22/2011 3:36:50 PM

finished product looks good

12/23/2011 12:56:25 PM

Thanks I need a better camera to get shots of it. The lighting is off.

12/23/2011 1:24:44 PM

Not the biggest fan of the marble around the sinks, but it definitely matches up with everything else (which I love everything else)...and I don't know what would match up better unless I took a bunch of samples in there.

Very impressive. I wish I had more space in my house to do something like that with my bathroom.

[Edited on December 23, 2011 at 1:58 PM. Reason : .]

12/23/2011 1:58:09 PM

Quote :

"Very impressive. I wish I had more space in my house to do something like that with my bathroom. "

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee too. I just need to win the lotto first

12/23/2011 5:18:19 PM

Gonna attempt to put up a ceiling fan today. Should be exciting!

12/24/2011 7:50:37 AM

I'm an expert at ceiling fan installation

12/24/2011 12:25:37 PM

Well, finally found a house that I like...new construction, listed by the builder at $194k. It's 1808 sq ft, which works out to $107/sq ft.

All the other smallish houses in the neighborhood that have sold over the last year are $90-100/sq ft. The mean is $95, and in fact the highest is $100. Being that this is one of the smallest houses in the neighborhood (range is from 1753 to ~3200), and the fact that it is a very slightly larger lot and on a cul-de-sac, I could probably stomach $100/sq ft, but that's still only $180k. The builder's rep is adamant that they won't budge an inch on the price, and that the only negotiation room is in upgrades. Well, there's nothing else that I really want except refrigerator/washer/dryer, and maybe some wall organizers in the garage. I wouldn't mind extending the driveway some for parking, but they charge $7.50/sq ft to do it, and I'll be damned if I'll pay them a 50% premium...getting a better deal on the house only to get robbed somewhere else isn't a better deal.

They seem adamant that they want it under contract by the end of the year...I guess I'll just wait until the middle of next week, then write them a fair offer. It sounds like there's no way they'll accept it, but oh well.

After 4 months in a hotel and pretty much zero progress towards finding a house, I'm getting pretty close to just buying some cheap little piece of shit house and being done with it.

12/24/2011 1:19:29 PM

^ I think you'll be surprised. If they're really that desperate to have it under contract by next week, I think they can manage to accept $100/sqft. They're just playing hard ball.

12/24/2011 3:09:15 PM

That's what I'm hoping. That's certainly the max I'll pay. Their rep seemed adamant that negotiating on price at all would be futile, and that I could get 4k, maybe 5k, in upgrades/appliances.

12/24/2011 4:13:56 PM

$107/sq ft in Pensacola?

12/24/2011 4:14:24 PM

It's actually up in Pace!

12/24/2011 4:32:34 PM

Quote :

"Their rep seemed adamant that negotiating on price at all would be futile"

It's his job to make you feel that way

12/24/2011 9:29:59 PM

(her)

but yeah, I mean I'm pretty good at price negotiation, having wheeled and dealed on a whole pile of cars/motorcycles/jet skis/guitars/etc, but if that's all she's doing, it's a poor negotiating tactic. It's her job to get people to make the best possible offers to the builder--saying essentially "the price is the price, take it or leave it" is not how you get people to make offers and buy the house (unless your price is legitimately competitive).

Of course, they just marked it down $10k about a month ago...but I don't care if they just marked it down $100k. That doesn't make it a good deal if it's still overpriced at the current price.

12/25/2011 2:08:47 AM

There's plenty of good deals in Gulf Breeze if you're willing to live there, closer to the water at least.

12/25/2011 5:29:44 AM

That's actually exactly where I wanted to live, but unfortunately, I'm tied to a specific little elementary school district up in Pace, which is why I've had such a bitch of a time finding anything.

12/25/2011 3:42:52 PM

schools in Gulf Breeze are supposedly the best in the area, at least that's what the realtor told me.

12/25/2011 5:25:04 PM

general rule of thumb is the smaller houses go for a little bit more per sqft. in my neighborhood the smaller homes(750-1250 sqft) go for $215-$240/ft and my home (1653 sqft) will sell for <$190/sqft. thats here in raleigh though.

if you are serious write them a real offer. If they want it sold by the end of the year and they have a real offer then they will make it happen.

Also, i pay $3.5/ft turn key for my best flatwork guy. $7.5/ft is crazy lol

12/25/2011 11:03:05 PM

Right:

Quote :

" Being that this is one of the smallest houses in the neighborhood (range is from 1753 to ~3200), and the fact that it is a very slightly larger lot and on a cul-de-sac, I could probably stomach $100/sq ft"

I don't know that I can get it done for $3.50/sq ft here, but $7.50 is certainly out to lunch.


^^ Well, compared to pretty much anything in Escambia County. Pace is probably right there with Gulf Breeze. Regardless, to get half custody of my daughter, I need to buy in the school district that she currently lives in with her mother. Once I have 50% custody, I'll have equal say in that sort of stuff, but to get it, I have to fall in line with the way things currently are.

12/26/2011 12:13:01 AM

Quote :

"general rule of thumb is the smaller houses go for a little bit more per sqft."

Interesting. I wonder why that is.

12/26/2011 8:51:32 PM

because a bathroom and kitchen cost pretty much the same in comparable homes (finish wise). you can add a lot of cheap sqft in a bonus room, big living room, etc.

12/26/2011 9:00:11 PM

yep...plumbing and lighting fixtures, permits, septic/sewer, cost of the lot itself, etc...there are a lot of things that are independent of square footage (to an extent...I mean, a 4500 sq ft house needs a bigger lot and more lights than a 1500 sq ft house, but you get the idea).

Say a finished house goes for $100/sq ft, just as an example. When it was being built, you probably could extend some dimensions and make some rooms bigger for, say, $35-40/sq ft. Lumber, shingles, and bricks are relatively inexpensive.

[Edited on December 26, 2011 at 10:44 PM. Reason : ]

12/26/2011 10:42:24 PM

Yeah I can see that for new construction. It seems like it all evens out in the resale market though.

12/27/2011 12:37:45 AM

Not really from what I've seen. It might even out some, but smaller houses, from what I've seen, still go for more per square foot.

12/27/2011 12:48:53 AM

Sigh, I go to replace the dimmers in the kitchen with new ones we bought yesterday.

For whatever reason I got stupid and bought a three way switch for the single pole circuit on the kitchen lights. So that doesn't work.

Then I try to install the fancy dimmer we got and can't get it to work. I think it's because it's on a 2 location circuit and the other location needs the mated remote switch to the master that we bought.


sigh, I hate wiring so much.

as an added bonus, I found out that one of the "dimmers" in the kitchen is a fan control box.

12/27/2011 9:50:11 AM

I've got a contract in to purchase this house from my dad and when the mortgage folks sent me the application for me to sign/fill out another $1800 appeared under the origination costs (a fee that was 0%/$0 on the rate quote). Paying for that should be interesting.

Regardless, I hope to be a homeowner proper in the next 6 months if this first attempt gets assed up by a line item that was left out of the original quote. House is a ~1380 ft² brick ranch on 0.5 acres, built 1976, located in east Cary.

12/28/2011 4:06:13 PM

East Cary is where it's at. Screw those West Cary folks. They'll always be Morrisville in my book

12/28/2011 4:24:11 PM

Here's a woe: Single-pane windows. I'm going to go to Lowe's this morning and get some 3-mil plastic wrap and painter's tape and try to avoid having the emergency heat kick in at night.

[Edited on December 30, 2011 at 9:03 AM. Reason : Talking about monday onward.]

12/30/2011 9:03:27 AM

I have to get a new compressor for my 3 YEAR OLD Trane. This was a high end model, so I am pretty pissed off with a failure in 3 years. Anyway, I decided to use Angie's List for this one. Used 72 degrees heating and air, as this was their top company. The tech was very good, fixed the furnace problem I have been battling for a couple of years, confirmed the bad compressor, and then proceeded to quote me $1200 to replace the compressor (this is the labor only, as the compressor is under warranty).

I pretty much laughed at his face, told him thanks, and showed him the door. Called the very next trane guy, told him the specs of my system, and quoted $625, which is what I expect for some refrigerant and 4 hours of labor.

And to think that a lot of people just say 'ok' to getting screwed. Needless to say, I posted a good review on Angie's List. While they were very nice, and know their stuff, I'm not paying twice the price to do something any HVAC guy worth half a damn can do in 4-5 hours. They arent worth $200 an hour.

12/30/2011 1:48:44 PM

^^ Get some energy efficient windows by tomorrow and you can write them off on your taxes

12/30/2011 6:37:41 PM

^ I want to replace all the contractor-grade single pane windows in my house with new, fancy-ass Andersen windows. I have a total of 8 casement windows (two groups of 4, one in the master bedroom, one in the living room) by them and they are awesome. So I'm going to lose $15k+ to windows at some point. Might buy their doors too while I'm at it if they give me a decent deal.

We regularly rent a house at the beach (didn't do it this year, no $$$ due to economic aids) that has original name brand windows (not Andersen, another big pretentious name I don't remember) from the 1980s, double-pane, and they're amazing. They work perfectly and they are in perfect condition considering the house is oceanfront. I want that on my house.

12/30/2011 8:25:27 PM

Yeah I wish we had monies right now to replace windows and take advantage of that tax credit. Makes me sad it's expiring at the end of this year. Oh well.

12/30/2011 9:22:45 PM

No worries, there will be some random new tax breaks this year to try to win votes.

They'll be for shit nobody wants or needs but they're bound to do something.

1/1/2012 12:03:03 PM

Finally found a house and got an offer accepted! Now the only woes are having to wait for closing (makes it even tougher to keep living in a hotel when the end is in sight!) and the shitpile of money I'm about to have to spend to get the new place all set up.













http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/398128_10100429317935329_11812205_49619724_893683728_n.jpg

1/1/2012 9:40:46 PM

good deal man! glad that finally worked out for you. The house looks good. Did you get one you were fairly happy with or do you feel like you had to "settle" some?

1/1/2012 9:59:18 PM

No, I more or less got what I wanted. I mean, unless you build (and maybe even then), there are always some things you'd change, but I don't feel like I "settled" (if I had done that, it would've been a 100-120k house just to get something to live in for a little while so I could keep looking without living in a hotel, then turn it into rental property when I found a house I wanted. I came very, very close to doing that.).

I feel like it was a whole lot of money for a house that size (1828 sq ft). This is the house I was talking about further up the page, and they only dropped the price by $3000, plus they're throwing in a stainless 'fridge and upgraded the rest of the kitchen to stainless. If you get the next larger floorplan in this neighborhood, it's only like $12k more or something like that, but 400 sq ft bigger! However, there weren't any available, so it would take 5-6 months to build, and it turned out the comps were there to support the price they were asking. In fact, I got the best deal of anyone so far on that floorplan (someone else a few weeks ago just paid $3k more for a variation of that plan with ~20 fewer sq ft due to no bay window, with no fridge or stainless upgrade, and no closing costs (I'm getting $7500, the excess of which can be used for mortgage points or to prepay property taxes)...so in that sense, I got a decent deal on it, too. I'm happy with it.

Also, a friend from my old fleet squadron in Cherry Point is also down here as an instructor, and happens to live on the next cul-de-sac over...and the homeowners directly behind me (backyards adjoin) is about to have a pool installed. ...so the location is nice, as suburbia hell goes, anyway.
_____________________________________________________

List to do so far, in no particular order:

1. Epoxy-paint the garage floor

2. Washer and dryer; prob will get front-loaders and stack them, then maybe put shelves or a cabinet in the other half of the laundry room

3. Gotta get some more furniture...I need a "real" kitchen/dining room table set, and a bed/sleeper sofa/etc for the guest bedroom. Once the 2012 iMac refresh comes out, I'm gonna buy one of those (my only computer right now is an older netbook)...and then I need a computer desk, too.

4. As soon as I sell my truck or trailer, file for my 2010 (haha) tax return, or file my moving expense claim, I'm going to buy a mega-badass stereo system (Martin-Logan speakers, Yamaha Aventage receiver, maybe a separate amp for the front speakers). I'll then need to run wiring for the rear speakers, or have a pro do it. I don't know how difficult that'll be.

5. Set up a home recording studio, either in the master BR or guest BR (or I guess possibly in the living room, but prob not there).

6. Paint some of the walls...I already promised my daughter I'd paint her room a very faint pink. Not sure about the rest--the walls are more of a cream color than the yellow they appear in those pics, but the color combination of the walls/carpet/tiles doesn't look quite right to me. Fortunately, paint is cheap and easy--just gotta find the right color combinations.

7. Blinds/shades on windows

8. Landscaping stuff...prob some knockout rosebushes, couple of fruit trees in the yard, etc. Yard is sodded but still needs a lot of work.


Further-down-the-road projects:

-Screen-in back porch and/or stone patio to adjoin it
-Extend driveway to slab for backyard workshop/home gym. Thinking something like 20x20', or 16x24', etc.


Ideas kicking around, currently undecided on:

-concrete driveway/sidewalk/back porch: color stain or cover with brick/stone pavers?
-remove decorative external shutters? (I just think purely decorative, non-functional shutters are stupid.) Might replace with something functional.



I know most of you don't care about any of that shit. I wouldn't either. It's partially a list for me to reference myself, and partially looking for ideas (hence all the big pictures) from others. Particularly, I'm not quite sure what walls I should paint and what colors.

[Edited on January 1, 2012 at 10:40 PM. Reason : def want to paint the master BR a more striking color to accentuate trey ceiling]

1/1/2012 10:17:04 PM

Hm, well this is the first time anywhere that I've had mice in my residence. Set out a delicious peanut butter trap for the little bastard so he stops shitting all over my house. Also went through and cleaned all of the major problem areas in the house (read: where I am most lazy). House looks a lot nicer now.

1/3/2012 1:06:06 AM

We had a ton of those bastards in my shack in Afghanistan. I guess it was a combination of warmth, our food stores, and the general lack of feral cats and cobras inside. We set about 4-5 mousetraps out in there ; it eradicated them pretty quickly. actually.

1/3/2012 2:44:48 AM

Mice happen, if you get on top of them as soon as you realize they are around they are easy to knock out and keep out.



Josh why is there a shade on the outside of one of the windows of your new house?? I am digging that purple carpet, so when you lay your woman down on the bearskin rug and she spills 190% grape drink it won't stain.

http://www.ucoatit.com for the garage floor it is by far the best I have come across.

Go ahead and have that slab extended all the way down the side of the house. I would plant something to screen the surrounding houses from view but that is more of a personal preference... Does it rain much down there? I don't see gutters? Perhaps some of the intricacies of FL homes are beyond me...

1/3/2012 11:07:59 AM

still enjoying the Nest. if there is one annoyance I have so far it's that it learns TOO well. But I'm about to begin an extended period of very regular scheduled presence and lack thereof in the house, so I will probably just program it and let it adjust itself accordingly from that. Still trying to get it to learn my Away habits mostly, since I am rarely ever home and it seems to take a bit of time to actually go into shut down mode (takes one or two weeks before it will do that).

Mostly I like being able to control it remotely. Remote Start for your house >>>>

1/3/2012 4:16:23 PM

Quote :

" http://www.ucoatit.com for the garage floor it is by far the best I have come across."

I have enough to cover a 2 car garage.

IOW, I ordered the 2 car garage size kit, and it is still unopened in my garage. Will sell it for cheap. I checked recently with the ucoatit people and it's still good but should be taken to a hardware store and shaken in the machine before being applied.

1/3/2012 9:24:58 PM

Quote :

"Josh why is there a shade on the outside of one of the windows of your new house?? I am digging that purple carpet, so when you lay your woman down on the bearskin rug and she spills 190% grape drink it won't stain. http://www.ucoatit.com for the garage floor it is by far the best I have come across. Go ahead and have that slab extended all the way down the side of the house. I would plant something to screen the surrounding houses from view but that is more of a personal preference... Does it rain much down there? I don't see gutters? Perhaps some of the intricacies of FL homes are beyond me..."

-It's not a shade, it's a hurricane screen...most newer houses down here have studs around all the windows where you attach heavy ripstop that's made to tightly fit around the window. I guess they just have one attached for display (since that's the frosted bathroom window that you wouldn't be able to see out of, anyway).

-The carpet isn't purple, and the walls aren't yellow, haha. It was just the lighting and my iPhone not making a very true representation of the colors.

-I'll check out UCoatIt. What makes it better than the stuff on the shelf at Home Depot (RustOleum or Behr)?

-Plan is to extend the concrete down to the end of the house, then have a slab foundation for a detached workshop. Prob won't do that immediately, though.

-It rains plenty down here, but oddly, most houses don't have gutters here...or if they do, it's often only on the front. I also talked to a builder (who came from the New Orleans area); he didn't include gutters on his (high-end custom) houses, and actually actively dislikes them. It's weird to me, too, coming from NC, but it's routine down here.

1/4/2012 9:07:10 PM

if they have sandy soil that is probably why. not a ton of gutters at the coast here in nc

1/4/2012 10:22:43 PM

just got a letter from my insurance company saying they're not going to renew my policy next year, due to "exposure and risk management"

1/4/2012 11:59:05 PM