Updates

Finally got our taxes done last night. I had kind of been putting it off (well, because I'm lazy) because we sold some stock last year and put that money into a savings account. Luckily for us, we are actually getting money back this year. Enough to buy our new king-size bed!

I have been applying for jobs in the Jacksonville area for the last 6-8 weeks and had only heard back from one place that apparently didn't pan out. I applied for an Executive Assistant position last week and heard back from them today. They were even willing to interview me on Saturday! I told the person that e-mailed me that I would be in town Friday so I will be interviewing with them at 10AM on Friday. I was even told not to worry about being late or early since I was having to drive in from out of town. Hopefully it pans out. Wish me luck!

House Plans: 4/11 - 4/13

I'm planning to go down to Jacksonville with my mom on Friday and stay all weekend. (Matthew has to work all weekend doing inventory). We are going to try to get started on some of the bigger projects, like painting, and I'm going to get the water turned on since I have to go down in person to do that.

Right now, the living room is painted a butter yellow and has a wallpaper border around the top (beige with yellow and green ivy). This is the room with the white brick fireplace. Let me tell you, white brick + butter yellow is a bad combination, indeed (I'll post before and after pictures next weekend). I'm going to paint it a bright sky blue that seems like it will offset the fireplace quite well. Neither my mom nor I have ever painted a room before, but I'm confident we can figure it out.

I think we are going to paint the master bedroom a darker, more electric blue of this same color group to go with the red wallpaper in the master bathroom. The guest room that used to be my bedroom will be an emerald green and the third bedroom is going to be a bright lavender. I'm not sure what color to paint the hallway as it has to go into all our brightly colored rooms as well as the brown bathroom and the orange, gold and green kitchen wallpaper. Maybe I'll just leave it off-white. I don't think we'll get to these next weekend but they'll have to be painted soon because of the spackling on the walls.

We'll probably also paint the trim on the vanities in the two bathrooms next weekend. They are white with copper trim but the copper has started to wear away and needs to be redone.

Beyond those two painting jobs, we'll probably just try to clean what still needs to be cleaned. We have to get the mildew off the ceiling in the hall bathroom and off the shower in the master bathroom. Plus, we need to try to remove cigarette burns from the sinks in both bathrooms and some tarnish from the sinks in the kitchen.

First Weekend in the "New" House

I spent my first weekend in our "new" house. (Well, I drove there and back to Clayton on both Saturday and Sunday because Matthew was not able to go Saturday.) We didn't do a whole lot of work, mostly just inspected and planned.

There is a bit of damage in the house from the most recent renters and from renters past.

• There were some scuff marks and scratches on the wooden cabinets and doors but we oiled those and used some scratch remover where necessary.
• The kitchen floor was not laid correctly and it is now torn. That will have to be replaced. Hopefully this is something we can do ourselves to save a bit of money.
  
• There were lots of nail holes (in weird patterns and places...we were dumbfounded) and bumps in the wall that I spackled yesterday.
  
• There are cigarette burns on both bathroom sinks (I think the sinks are fiberglass or plastic -- not porcelain) and I'm trying to find some information on how to fix that without replacing the sink.
  
• The door frames and baseboards all need to be repainted as do most of the walls (lots of scuff marks plus all the spots I had to spackle).
  
• For the most part, the wallpaper looks pretty good in the kitchen and the master bathroom. The hall bathroom is in kind of rough shape but it's serviceable for a year or two until I can get to it.
• The master bedroom doors appears to have been kicked in and hidden in the outbuilding. That will be replaced by the realtor at the charge of the renter because Matthew didn't think he could fix it.
• The fan cover(s) in the bathroom(s) will have to be spraypainted white because they are discolored from cigarette smoke.
• The hall bathroom ceiling is covered in mildew. I think we are going to try cleaning it with a diluted Clorox solution.
  

There are some other things that have to be repaired due to old age such as the roof of the out building, the ceilings will need to be painted, some metal light fixtures and the fireplace insert need to be painted because they are rusted and some trim on the bathroom cabinets needs to be repainted from wear. Also, there's a lot of cleaning to be done even though the renters and the realtor has been in to clean.

Overall, I think it was worse than I expected since my parents had a realtor handling the renting process and the cleaning but it's not as bad as it has been in the past. We are planning to repair the damage and make changes a little bit at a time as we move in.

A little bit at a time.

This is the part I'm having a hard time with because I'm excited to have this project and keep coming up with new things to do...

Update!

Work

We interviewed three candidates for my position. None of them are what we were looking for, sadly. From what my boss told me on Wednesday, it looks like they are going to do some shuffling within the department and have the current temp do most of the data entry and reporting that I do and then spread out the other duties like uniforms and salary administration to other people. I am supposed to start training people ASAP.

I still haven't found a job in Jacksonville. I applied for a few more things last night that looked somewhat promising. I am trying to get Friday, April 11 off so that I can go down and get the water turned on (not being able to do things over the phone FTL!) and I'll probably hit some of the "apply in person" places.

The House

The house is open as of this past Tuesday. The people left mostly everything in good condition and the realtor had the house cleaned per his contract. My mom and I are going down Saturday (Matthew has the defensive driving class for his "passing the bus" incident -- court date 4/10) to start seeing what needs to be done and start taking measurements. Then, Matthew and I are planning to go down Sunday because I'm not sure he has ever seen the house.

If I do get next Friday off, I will probably be spending the weekend down there working in the house since Matthew has to work to do inventory (boo!). I figure I can spend some time with my grandmother and I can most likely do the painting of the living room myself. I have a nice beachy theme forming in my head to go with the blue I've decided to paint the room. I'll be sure to post lots of pics.

Matthew

Matthew has been having some pain in his lower back that he thinks is in his kidneys. He went to urgent care last week and they found no sign of infection and sent him to a urologist who is having him take an Iodine Contrast X-Ray to pinpoint what is wrong. Matthew said the doctor mentioned it may just be a pulled muscle...so, we'll hope for that.

Crystal Coast Pagans

I've decided that when we move, I'd like to get involved in a group and make some friends and do somethings outside of home and WoW. So, I've been looking at groups that were available around Jacksonville, on Witchvox, and it looks like the one I was most interested in has disbanded and moved to Ohio. *sigh*

So, in an effort to get things rolling, I created a Yahoo group called Crystal Coast Pagans (for those that don't know, the Crystal Coast is Emerald Isle up to Atlantic Beach which is really close to where we are moving). And, I've started to advertise that on Witchvox.

If you build it, they will come, right?