The new house and I am a DIY'er

We have been in the new house for two weeks now and our stuff has been here for the last week. We have made huge progress on unpacking boxes and settling in with our new routines. Adjusting to a full time telecommuter hasn't been the easiest but as my routine gets settled it gets better each day.
I am learning that I am a DIY'er (Do It Yourself) but it is a skill that needs to be honed and learned. I am building up my confidence after removing one of the extra doors in the master bathroom, chaning out the plug on our dryer to fit the outlet in the house and putting together the lawnmower and successfully cutting the grass for the first time. I have spent a lot of time (and money) at Lowes with all the projects going on but it feels great that it is all for our house that we own and not to fix up a rental place that has no return value to it. Made the first mortgage payment the other day, only 359 more to go ;-)
My brother in law is good at the DIY stuff and he has been patient with me when I ask lots of questions while we are doing work around the place. Yesterday he replaced our rotted patio doors for us and I wanted to help out more with the project but work called and I had to take part in a migration project. Next week we are going to swap out the kitchen light fixtures and finish off the patio door trim.

Recital Weekend and Packing

This weekend was a long one filled with performances as it was the end of the year dance recital for my daughter. My Mother-in-law was down from TN for the show and we had a good visit with her. The performance was very good and Morgan did a great job. She was named most improved dancer in her class and I think that was a great suprise to her. She has really come a long way from the beginning of the dance year back in September and she worked really hard (almost giving up a few times) before getting the routine down. I can't put into words just how proud of her I am.
Today I was going nuts being idle and my not so nice side came out. We are down to six days before the movers get here and we still have a lot of boxes left to pack. I drove up to Home Depot for some more bubble wrap and picked up my first home improvement book: Home Depot's Home Improvement 1-2-3. I hope that I can learn how to do the simple things around the house as well as I have taught myself other things on the computer. I want to be handy in other things than just computers. We ended up getting four more boxes packed, I got the pile of things on my desk filed in the filing cabinet and finally browsed my way through the stack of magazines that has been waiting for me to get through them so they can be recyled. Progress is good and I can't wait for it all to be done.

Return to the blogging world

I have been absent from the blogging world for a while as life has been going through it's ups and downs. Eight days ago, my wife and I purchased our first house and in eight more days we will be leaving the Tampa area to move into our place in Tennesee. The whole process of figuring out if it was time to buy, getting approved, finding houses we liked and then making offers on them was a lot harder than I had expected it to be. It's a very big decision to try and purchase your first home. We decided that in order to stretch our housing dollar in a time of over-inflated housing prices, the time had come to find an affordable place that we would be comfortable in for years to come. We also enjoy the fact that our families will be closer to us in Tennesee. I will be able to work in my home office and keep my current job thanks to my gracious employer and management team who have made this whole thing possible.
We had our downside to the process. The first couple of places that we had our hearts set on were manufactured and the banks are starting to have trouble covering those types of places. Of course when we got excited about a place and started getting the kids involved it became a double edged sword that hurt us twice when the deal fell through and we had to explain that this particular house wouldn't be ours to the kids. Finally we have found a wonderful place that was meant to be ours. Our agent found it the first day it was on the market and we had a contract on it by the end of the first week. Everything else seemed to fall into place after that. The bank covered the loan, the seller didn't counter on our offer and the appraisal came in higher than the amount we bought it for.
Now we have the hard part, packing up the apartment and getting ready to move. With two kids, a cat, a bunny and a lot of belongings we have been paring down our clutter as much as possible. There is a lot of motivation when you are paying someone to move it based on total weight so the tough decisions haven't been too bad to make. If it hasn't been used in a long time and has no future purpose besides taking up space, it found the way to the dumpster. I think once the stress of everything is done, we will be very happy in our new home.