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Happy Anniversary to Us

March 30, 2009 By Jesse Petersen

My wife just reminded me that it was one year ago today that we took a giant leap to come back to some unfinished townhomes we took a tour of the day before. We saw a couple of models we liked, but it was hard to envision how the one we’d be buying would look when it was done. All in all, we decided it was a good decision, went back to the leasing office to see what our numbers generated with their mortgage lender rather than ours, and we left $1,000 lighter and a whole lot happier to have a contract on a brand new house!

So, one year later, it’s amazing to think about what has changed through small projects, gifts, and super sales deals that we had our eyes out for:

  • our screened-in lanai
  • a more size-appropriate entertainment center and coffee table
  • wall to wall shelving in the garage
  • a guest bed in our 3rd bedroom
  • a new bedroom suite from an overstock warehouse
  • beautifully re-painted the downstairs
  • a new grill for my 30th birthday

All of those little (and big) things made things feel more like home and less like a dream vacation that we were pinching ourselves to be sure things were actually this way. I never thought we’d have that much to do to our brand new place, but I guess the “make it your home” bug bites everyone pretty hard. Life is good, and so is our home, no longer a house.

Filed Under: Townhome

Neighbor Troubles

October 30, 2008 By Jesse Petersen

Endless Beauty got a knock on the door last night while I was at school. It was our adjacent neighbor… again. She came over about 2-3 weeks after we all closed on our building and asked if we play bass music all night long. She said she hears it all day, but quieter, and that it’s keeping her awake all night. She used to hear me open the garage door at 6:00 every morning and that was her alarm clock for whenever she did fall asleep, so I knew she must be a light sleeper because there is a 15-foot entryway between her master bedroom and our garage.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Relationships, Townhome Tagged With: complaint, disturbing the peace, neighbor, noise

Only Good Things About our HOA

October 28, 2008 By Jesse Petersen

Neighbor's patioWe’ve all heard about the nightmare stories of out of control homeowner’s associations, so I was expecting the worst when we bought our house. A few years ago, someone drove by our house when I was living at home and they said we didn’t have enough grass, so Dad either needed to lay down sod (to die a quick death) or install a sprinkler system. We hadn’t had grass in the 10 years previous in the front yard because of the acid in the oak leaves.

I was ready for my own nightmare in preparing for approval for screening in our porch opening. I hemmed and hawed for weeks until our contractor was ready to come over, and I still wasn’t ready. I got on the ball yesterday and filled out the form, described the screening, gave them the insurance and contractor license #, and took a photo of our neighbor’s screen and our open porch, saying, “we want it to look like that.” I scanned our form, attached the photos from my iPhone, and e-mailed it last night from campus, knowing that they said approval takes a minimum of two weeks. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Townhome Tagged With: approval, HOA, homeowner's association, lanai, patio

Another Home Improvement Weekend

June 15, 2008 By Jesse Petersen

Garage with a huge pileThe big pile of stuff in the garage corner has been driving me crazy for, like… a whole week now. Yeah. It was time to do something about that. Gorgeous and I went out in the stifling 90-degree, 95% humidity weather yesterday and stood there and looked at the walls, the water heater, garage door railing, and measured all of our boxes to come up with a plan.

So much for a plan when you hit the isles at Lowes or Home Depot, right? That is when you realize what you have to work with and how much it’s going to cost. At least we had the measurements for the boxes, so we could figure out the linear feet we had to accommodate. After about 90 minutes of hemming and hawing and going back and forth between opposite ends of the store and picking up about 20 different types of screws and drill bits, we had our loot. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Townhome Tagged With: garage, home improvement, organization, shelves
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