This is the third night in a row that I haven’t slept all that good—or to be specific, barely slept at all until it really counted—namely just hours before I am supposed to get up in the morning.

With all the preparations that we’re undertaking to get our house ready for the market, I’ve been watching a bit too much HGTV, planning wall colors, scoping out the big laminate flooring job I’m taking on in a few weeks, and all the other “little” projects around the house—all in the name of getting this home to sell; and quickly.

I’ve got a checklist that covers a full sheet of paper, listing all the things that need to be done before we even think about contacting a realtor. They’re things the realtor would tell us to do anyway, so why bother start up a realtor’s contract if we’re not even ready to sell yet. But back to my list, I can’t help but to think of all the money we’re sinking into this. It’s probably not nearly as bad as it is in my head; it just has its way of causing just enough anxiety to keep me up at night.

So here I am at 2:11 a.m., wasting time that would be better spent sleeping. Unfortunately my mind has already made itself up—it wants to pour over and over my list of things to do, how much money it’s going to cost, and worry about how little our how may or may not go for. And when it’s done worrying about that, it’ll start to worry about our next home and how much money we need to sink into that place, the furniture we “need” to buy, and the bigger mortgage that we’re going to be responsible for.

Houses are just so much fun. I wish I could shut off the worry machine in my head. Unfortunately, I think that’s genetic and I inherited every ounce of it from my dad.

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With the most recent events surrounding the results of Natalie’s application for the PA program—that is, the result that she won’t be attending—we’ve switched gears and have begun the process of getting our house ready for market. Part of that process involves me getting the rooms painted up and doing any necessary remodeling to make things look GREAT.

I took this past Friday off from work to start our bedroom—to paint it, install our new bed frame, replace an old outlet and put in some new switch/outlet covers. It wasn’t an easy task to say the least. I spent 13 hours alone on Friday just painting (two to three coats on all walls and the base board) as well as attempting to install the cool bed frame we bought at IKEA.

This is the first time we’ve bought anything substantial from them. Up until now, I’ve only purchased a few lights and smaller things for around the house. But this is the first time I’ve bought something from them that was substantial and required a heavy amount of installation.

I got the frame and got all the way to the point where you install the mid-beam and begin attaching these small steel bars (pretty flimsy…so don’t think they’re too sturdy) from the center beam to the side beams. It was pretty hit or miss if the screws would actually FIT into the holes and when all was said and done, I just wasn’t convinced that they offered any structural support whatsoever.

It was at about 11:00 last night that I realized (and in the midst of a great deal of frustration with this bed frame) that our box springs would NOT fit in our frame. No, they just wanted to fall through and offered no hope of being able to use them. I also realized that I must be missing something important here…namely some sort of cross-section support. Sure enough, after hopping on IKEA’s website, I saw that I was missing the slatted bed bases, which offer true support to your mattress, effectively eliminating your need for a box spring.

So Saturday morning I picked up one of those and a few things for around the house and that ended up working just fine. I just have to put our box springs into storage [we'll probably set up a guest room or something and use them for such a purpose].

I also got some clothing storage containers that slide under the bed and that effectively eliminated our need for dressers and saved us a TON of real estate in our already-tiny bedroom. So now we can walk through our bedroom without tripping on anything or having to squeeze past a piece of furniture.

I don’t have a true wide-angle lens, but here’s a pic of the new colors and our new bed frame:

I still have a little touch-up work to do on the ceiling, the wall, and the baseboard and we have to get some new carpet installed (the current stuff looks pretty ratty) and then our bedroom will look quite nice and ready to show.

Paul and I also braved the blustery conditions of Downtown Saint Paul and did a photo shoot to update our marketing materials (and website) with the changes that have gone down with Crash Effect as of late. I don’t think I’ve blogged about it or really talked about it much beyond my immediate friends and family, but both Kris (bass player) and James (guitarist) left the band because of “musical differences.” I expected Kris to pack up and leave the band, but certainly not James. Admittedly I’m disappointed, but Paul and I have a renewed vision for what Crash Effect is and think that it’ll be much better this way.

So in the coming months, watch crasheffect.com for information about this metamorphosis that is taking place within the band.

(from the photo shoot this afternoon)

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Man, great day today. Last night I finished the basement project (I just need to figure out where I’m going to put stuff) and I also received “Mystique” today. Crap sandwhiches, it’s a Hallefallujah!

Anyway, I threw together a cheap-n-dirty flash pseudo-panoramic view of the basement from two different angles. I was displeased with how the floor trim turned out….that isn’t exactly one of my strong suits. So that aspect of it isn’t that awesome. But the basement looks much better than it did before though.

(more…)

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As soon as I got home from work I started working on laying down the tiles. It took a lot longer than I was hoping to and only got a little over half way done. I still have the west side of the basement to finish yet and have to pick up different floor trim. The rolls that I picked up did have an adhesive back, but it might as well have been left without it. That stuff didn’t stay stuck on the wall for anything. So I have to take the crappy trim back and get something else instead.

Hopefully I’ll have the basement finished by Thursday or Friday and will pick up some stuff to help make the basement a bit more inviting and cancel out some of the live noise in the room.

It’s looking pretty good though.

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I’ve really come a long way with the basement — but it’s also taken a long time to get there, relatively speaking.

I’ve put in about five hours on Thursday evening, close to eight hours on Friday and at least ten to twelve hours today. Today’s accomplishments included getting all of the walls painted and touched up, patched up some bad knicks in the walls, patched up the top edging as you walk downstairs, and even painted the legs on my beer brewing shelf to help it not look so out of place. Looks a little better now.

I still have a bit of work ahead of me. I have to lay all the tiles yet and then have to go on a quest for some curtains and cheap curtain rods for the laundry rooms and the water meter area. I decided not to put the doors back up because they’re pretty ugly and very clumsy to deal with. I saw some nice heavy full-length curtains on Bed Bath & Beyond’s website that I may pick up. That should also help reduce the overall liveness of the room, too…since there’ll be no carpeting down there.

I might also pick up a cool area rug or two to make it a bit more homey.

It’s getting there. Time for a beer and some TV. Enjoy the photos:

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Slight detour on the basement refurbishing this evening. I decided to patch up some dents in the walls and fix the edging on the ceiling as you go down the stairs — it was quite deteriorated and an eye-sore. So I’ve gotta wait for the drywall compound to dry before I can sand it down and wipe down the walls.

I also picked up a different style of vinyl tiling, something that would go better with the colors I’ve chosen. One thing’s for sure, it’s going to look really cool down there.

I hope to have pictures tonight.

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Well, with the storms that we had Tuesday night and into Wednesday, our basement flooded and only caused some damage to the base of the walls and the carpet. Well the carpet sucked to begin with. It was this nasty, skanky blue-gray color and was anything but inspiring. That may have been one factor why I just don’t enjoy spending a lot of time down there unless I’m glued to my monitor.

After moving important gear out of the way, we began ripping up the wet carpet and throwing it outside. Later I went over to Home Depot to buy some subflooring and some cool vinyl tiles—totaling almost $470 in materials.

Well this evening I went gang busters on the floor and have much of the subflooring installed, save for area by the stairs and along that wall. But all of those pieces that I have to put in require some custom cutting…and it was getting a little too late to keep at it.

I’ve also picked up some cool paint…adding to the overall bill of course. But it’s pretty cool. Two of the walls will be a nice rich, milk chocolate color, two of the walls a nice light tea green, and the ceiling a nice light khaki-green. Of course, because our house is so small, I have to do things in the basement in stages.

I had to do part of the floor, move things over, do more of the floor, shift things over, etc.—kinda like one of those puzzle things that has nine spaces, but eight picture objects and you have to shift things around in order to get the puzzle solved. Kinda challenging.

But this will also be a cool opportunity to make the basement cool and an enjoyable place to play, write songs, brew beer, etc.

Anyway, it’s going to be a busy weekend filled with things that I didn’t really intend to do…like remodel the basement.

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Well our heros at Apollo Heating & Venting came today and installed our brand new Lennox furnace today. This morning we woke up to a house temperature of around 55 degrees. Yes, it was quite cold. I think tonight we’ll be setting the thermostat to like, 75… just because we CAN.

Oh, and I’m going to take this moment to tell you how EVIL and TERRIBLE the company First American Home Buyers Protection Corporation REALLY is. When you buy their home warranty you really aren’t buying a whole lot in terms of protection; if you don’t read the fine print you’ll most certainly find out when you try to make a claim. So with our whole furnace fiasco, the previous residents didn’t follow through with the recall set out by the manufacturer — the previous owners were contacted but no one ever followed through. So the furnace breaks down essentially because of their neglegence and the warranty WON’T cover it. I thought the warranty was to protect us?

I guess not. So if you’re considering First American Home Buyers Protection Corp for the home warranty, think again. If you want a bad home owners warranty, you could try them. But I’d look elsewhere, someplace that does cover some of the prior owners’ neglegence.

Anyway. So we got the new furnace installed and everything’s running GREAT. It’s so nice to have a warm home again.

(more…)

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Looks like the prognosis on our furance is a bit worse — I didn’t realize that our furnace was as old as it was, originally bought in 1986 and due for replacement in about four to five years. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to just throw away $1,000 into something I have to replace for $3,000 in a few years.

So now begins the process of finding the right furnace, the right installer for the right price.

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With the coming of Fall, we’re typically greeted with the picking out of pumpkins, doing the fall colors drive, and the winterizing of the home. Well, I guess it wouldn’t be life if we didn’t throw in a few curve balls.

We’ve got a big driveway (long anyway) and were pretty decided on the fact that we’d need a snow-thrower and that a shovel just wouldn’t cut it. So we ended up dropping $800 on one that would sufficiently get the job done and not break on us in the middle of February. So… that went on the Home Depot card.

Lovely.

Last tuition payment coming up soon for Natalie — that’s gonna hurt a little. Another $500 sucked from the marrow of our bank account.

And as if these things weren’t enough our FURNACE broke down last Saturday. I came home to the smell of burnt circuitry (a familiar smell from the days when Jamison blew up his bass amp in my basement) and a cold house. Lovely. I thought it would be something simple like the ignitor going out.

Nope.

Apparently there’s this metal overflow container that rusted out and spilled water all over some circuit board, the transformer, and a few other items creating a veritable fiesta of burnt circuitry smell throughout the house. This job is going to cost us over $900 to get our furnace back in working order again. Here’s the kicker.

Three years ago, the previous owners of our house were notified about a recall for this metal overflow container on their furnace, to spend $300 and replace the item with a plastic container instead. THEY NEVER ACTED ON THE RECALL whereby sticking us with the bill.

AAAARRRGGGHH!!!

Now I understand money may have been tight for them… but $300 as opposed to $950??? Let’s see… which one might be the cheaper of options? I’m going to try and work something out with Bryant (the manufacturer) and see if they can’t get involved in the game.

Anyway, kinda feelin’ the crunch. I was going to get new tires on my car, but that’s gonna have to get put off even further. :-/

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