Category: House & Home

Day 1

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Spent the first day of our four day weekend sleeping until 8:30. Then we went back to the store we visited a few weeks ago and bought this tile for our foyer/guest bath renovation.

Tile

I got a coupon earlier in the week for 10% off the entire purchase so it was perfect timing. I’m really looking forward to updating our place.

We also hit the produce market, library, Sears Optical, and Petsmart.

Sears Optical is on my list at the moment. I really like the doctor but his staff, while nice, leave something to be desired. First they weren’t able to order my lenses while I was there on Monday and told me they’d call me back the next day. I never heard from them so finally I called them yesterday and was told they needed Joe’s SS#. I don’t know it by heart and he was unavailable, so I told them I’d call them back. Instead, we just headed over there today and proceeded to wait around fifteen minutes because there was one person working there who told us she’d be with us after the person who was in front of us in line. In the meantime, another worker came in and instead of asking her colleague who was next, proceeded to take care of everyone else who had come in AFTER us until I approached the counter again to make her pay attention to us (and this was the second time she pulled this crap as she did the same thing earlier in the week when Joe was picking up his contacts).

We were so aggravated at this point that we just asked for the prescription. I’m going to order my lenses from 1-800-Contacts and just get reimbursed from the insurance. My contacts will be delivered to my home so I don’t have to go back to Sears and wait forever for them to take care of me once more.

And these brick and mortar stores wonder why their business is suffering?

Bath Remodel

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Yesterday we spent some time at Hobo, Menards, and Home Depot looking at bathroom vanities and tile because we plan on remodeling our guest & master baths this year. Nothing too fancy since we’d like to sell and upgrade to a house, but with the economy the way it is, that might not happen this year.

In any case, I think we’re close to a decision. We (and by we, I really mean Joe) will tackle the guest bath first since it’s smaller. The biggest challenge we’ve had is deciding on the tile since it extends to the foyer so it needs to look good in both spots and provide a nice contrast to the living room carpeting.

Here’s what we’re leaning towards so far:

# 1 –

Tile choice # 1

# 2 –

Tile choice # 2

We both prefer the first one, but it also costs nearly twice as much as the second one.

We’re also thinking of getting matching vanities for both bathrooms, just in different sizes. The one we like at Hobo is so much cheaper than anything we liked at Home Deport or Menards.

Hobo bathroom vanity

Not so sure about the sink and black counter, though. It’s not included in the price of vanity anyway, so we could always get something from Menards. They had a nice variety of colors for a decent price. Their vanities were just too pricey.

There’s too many choices and therein lies the problem. It’s daunting, and the main reason why we haven’t actually remodeled anything yet.

Leakage

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Last night, as we were getting ready to go to bed, Joe was making sure all the doors were locked like he always does when he discovered water all over the laundry room floor. It was like our own mini flood. Apparently something in the water heater burst. It wasn’t that way when I got home from work – I pass through the laundry room coming in from the garage – so it happened sometime while we were home but we didn’t hear anything.

Luckily my boss is laid back and didn’t have a problem with me working from home today while waiting for a plumber since Joe had important things to cover at work.

$1100 to replace the water heater (it was 11 years old so it was due). Can you believe it? The equipment itself is worth $400 – it’s the labor that costs so much. At least the plumber was a good one – very courteous and knowledgeable. It’s always my fear when hiring someone that they are going to be incompetent, rude, or both. He was neither.

If we were living in our “forever home”, I’d totally get one of those tankless water heaters. They are more expensive initially, but they are more energy efficient and have a much longer warranty. Plus if you get a higher capacity model, two people can take a nice hot shower simultaneously. That would be nice on the weekends we have the kids and four people are trying to get ready to go on an outing.

I’m just happy to be able to take a shower again! One morning without one and I already felt disgusting.

Pack Rat

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We took on a fairly big project this morning – cleaning our master bedroom’s walk-in closet. I am happy to say it looks much better, and even has space for more stuff now.

I am exhausted and plan on doing nothing more the rest of the day except laundry. It snowed last night and was still snowing earlier, so it’s a stay in and hibernate kind of day. Maybe play video games too. I also have quite a few episodes (thank you, marathons) of What I Like About You (a recent discovery) and Forensic Files on the DVR. Party time at Nicole’s! ;)

One of the things I came across in the closet was my old Yamaha keyboard (anyone having thoughts of Ross from Friends here?).

My old keyboard

It’s still in great condition and it’s a good 15+ years old. I took a photo to remember it by as I plan to give it to E and since he’s a boy, I’m not sure it will survive.

Here’s a photo of the box it came in. The price tag says $80. I’m pretty sure I got it at Service Merchandise. Wow. Memories.

The box to my old keyboard

Another thing I saved for some ungodly reason is every single pay stub I’ve gotten since I started working at the age of fifteen, including those from Burger King when I was making $4.25/hour. I’m going to keep a few for posterity and shred the rest.

I also have all my old cassette tapes (see photos @ Flickr – #1, #2, and Singles). I don’t think people collect those anymore, so other than my Cure ones that I can’t bear to part with, I’m either going to trash them or donate them to Goodwill.

We’re also going to donate our old Sony MiniDisc players. They are in perfect condition, just not in use now that everyone has an iPod. I have no illusions that anyone will want to buy them, seeing as how you can get a no-name MP3 player for next to nothing these days, but I just can’t throw out something that isn’t broken.

Package Debacle Solved

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Joe ran into the next door neighbor at the mailboxes today and found out that our mail carrier did indeed put them in our neighbor’s box by mistake. The neighbor explained he ran into the mail carrier on Tuesday and the mail carrier asked him whether he had our packages, so the neighbor ran home and sure enough, he did. He gets a lot of packages so he hadn’t even noticed.

Isn’t that exactly what I thought probably happened? And that explains why our packages didn’t turn up Monday night. I guess I should be thankful the mail carrier bothered to ask, otherwise who knows when our neighbor might have discovered the mistake. I’m still miffed about how rude the carrier was, though. Not to mention the fact that he showed up at the mail boxes just as Joe and the neighbor had finished their conversation and didn’t say a word to Joe. He could have apologized, but he didn’t.

In other news, we got a huge 30 gallon storage tote for our Christmas decorations at Target today. This is our fifth one for Christmas. Gotta stop buying stuff I guess. I finally wised up and used a permanent marker to assign a number to each tote and then recorded what I put inside in a nifty Excel spreadsheet. No more guessing games come next year. I can tell Joe, “Go get me tote # 1” with confidence.