New Roof

20 of the 28 houses on my street have gotten new roofs since the hail storm in October. I know at least a couple more are scheduled for new roofs soon. If you're having a hard time picking out a shingle color for a new roof you can find a showcase of all the options just by driving through my neighborhood.

In fact, my roofer told me to drive around and pick a house with a shingle color that I liked since that method of picking would be easier than looking at little sample pieces. I debated for a couple of days between gray and brown and eventually settled on a gray. The same day I picked and ordered my color I came home to see that my neighbor across the street had a new roof. I immediately fell in love with how it looked. It has a mix of grays in it and looks awesome. I called my poor roofer (on a Friday night no less) and asked if it would be possible to switch my order. I felt like such a girl at that moment. =D

Long story short, they were able to get me one that they thought was the same style as my neighbor's, but in the end it actually turned out to be different. The one they ended up getting has brown mixed in as well. At first I was a bit irked since it wasn't what I had asked for, but then I quickly realized it was the perfect marriage of the two colors I originally couldn't choose between.



Before



During



After

Now I just have painting, two windows and this eyesore to complete before I can wrap up my claim.

In case any of you were wondering, it cost $7,340 to do the roof on my 2k square foot house. The bid came in well below what my claim allowed and I didn't have to wrestle with the insurance company at all.

 This weekend was the first bit of rain that the new roof has ever seen and so far all is well!

House Fixes To Date

When you buy a foreclosure you know that you're taking on something unknown. You also know that there will be plenty of little things to you're going to have to fix right after you move in. With my situation I was lucky that the bank fixed a couple of immediate issues (like two leaky sinks) as well as painting the entire interior of the house. And while the tan color they picked isn't the shade I would've gone with nor is the choice of flat paint and off-white trim, I'm still happy I didn't have to paint over any crazy colors that existed here previously. I know the bank also spruced up the front yard (poor grass, I let it die) and put in a watering system. Most people aren't as lucky as I was in regards to the kind of bank I ended up working with.

However, I still ended up doing quite a few things after I moved in. Some out of necessity and some less so.
-Replaced a shower head (Water was barely coming out)
-Replaced the kitchen faucet (Was leaking a little into the sink and it was ugly)
-Fixed the seal around exterior door off master (you could easily slide things under the door, no seal whatsoever)
-Fixed the master toilet (The toilet was not properly sealed or screwed down)
-Replaced the washer valves and added the dryer vent (the dryer used to just feed out an open hole in the outside wall)
-Got the AC tuned up and the flow to a couple of vents adjusted
-Reset all the locks (Not required but essential for my peace of mind especially given the foreclosure situation)

Other things I did:
-Added a ceiling fan to the master bedroom (I'm used to having a ceiling fan plus it allows me to use the AC less at night. Odd thing though, the master bedroom was the ONLY room in the house that didn't have a fan in it not counting the dining room...weirdness)
-Replaced the garage door (Biggest single expense so far. Another odd thing was that the old door was a commercial garage door, not a residential one)
-Added a garage door opener
-Removed Tiki Man

-Fixed the kitchen light situation (Someone who lived here before me decided that it would be a good idea to put recessed lights directly above a ceiling fan and wire everything to the same switch. If you wanted to have the fan on you had to have an obnoxious flickering from the fans moving under the recessed lights. I had them wired to be on separate switches)

-Replaced two sets of blinds in the “extra room” (I did this for aesthetics mainly)

I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting right now. I'm trying to get keep a detailed log of all projects I do to the house. Things like changing out the blinds probably won't make it on the list but I want to be able to have a history of all the major changes that happen to the house. I'm guessing after a year or two that I'm going to start forgetting things and it'll be good to have the list to refer to.

I also have a long list of things I want to do to the house. But that list is far, far longer than the list above. =D