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

Projects, projects

I’m not sure if it’s the new year’s resolutions wearing off on me or if it’s because I caught up on sleep but I’ve had a huge itch to get some home improvement projects done. And some decorating projects. And given the fact that I don’t have to work an extra two hours  everyday anymore, I’ll actually be able to be home while there is still daylight outside. I see some spray painting projects coming on!

I have a few places in my house that have been bugging me (decorating wise) for awhile.

1) The big wall in the living room (which is painted but needs something on the wall). I’m contemplating mounting my LCD TV on this wall.

This is by far the largest wall in my house that I have to decorate and I think that is why it's been so daunting.

I also like these pieces of wall art from Target. I’d prefer to find something a bit more frugal though and I’m still hoping to find a Goodwill steal one of these days.

2) The other wall behind the couch. I think I’ve decided that I want to get a verse to put on the wall there. Problem is, ordering the wall stencil for a verse will not fit in with my frugal decorating ways. I did find a cheaper stencil place the other day and will probably end up just splurging on that item.

3) The guest bath. I actually painted this bath with stripes. I love the stripes. I hate the colors. Long story short, Lowe’s paint department failed me. What was supposed to be nice light green and gray stripes turned into green and purplish gray stripes. Not quite what I was going for. So now I have the task of repainting that bathroom.

Right now I really want to paint a room gray and decorate it with yellow accents since I love yellow so much. I think I might save this color scheme for my bedroom though.
I did some Googling and found some good inspiration:
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=620&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=gray+and+yellow+bedroom&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

4) My bedroom (the master). This involves painting, possibly finding a new bedspread and painting or staining the dressers/nightstand/trunk that I got last year. All of the furniture pieces are unfinished wood just waiting to have something done to them.

I also have two curtains that I'm in the process of hanging up as well as a shelf in the laundry room that needs to be finished. I ran into an issue with the shelf that I'll have to get help with in order to fix. The curtains I'm just moving slowly on.

Question is, which project will actually get completed first?