Finished! 0 Hours To Go!!

Today we completed our 500 sweat equity hours!!

Yesterday, Andrew and I worked in the morning and filled all the Post-Tension holes in our foundation.
Our foundation is a Post-Tension slab with steel rods running through the concrete to make it stronger and less likely to crack. When the foundation was poured, the holes where the rods run through, were left open and we had to fill them with high pressure concrete.

When we arrived this morning, we only had 10 hours to complete. Andrew could only stay for the morning and I was going to stay the whole day. We started together by finishing our fence. There were 4 or 5 boards that were missing and needing to be installed to finish the fence so we nailed all those into place and I painted it in the afternoon.

Completed Fence....Looks Good!

After we finished the fence, we installed our mini blinds. We had to install two sets in the living room and one set in the dining room. 

My studdly man getting the window ready for blinds

Dining Room installed (bad lighting)

Living Room (large window)

Living Room (small window)

Andrew had to leave after these were done and I went to lunch and took a break. When I came back, I painted the fence and then got to work installing the final set of blinds in our stairwell. It was a little tricky doing it by myself and being up on a ladder in the stairwell, but I got it done.

Stairwell blinds

I spent the last 45 minutes or so, cleaning up. 

Over the last month and a half of working on our sweat equity, we had accumulated a lot of tools and things in that house and I wanted to put everything back and leave the house empty and clean for the inspectors tomorrow. The building inspection happens tomorrow and it is the final inspection. If the house passes, the house will earn the Certificate of Occupancy and we can give our 30 day notice and begin the escrow process. I hear we will have LOTS of paperwork to sign. 

We should find out tomorrow or Friday if the house passed and if we can give our 30 day notice. 

I pray everything goes smoothly and that we would even be able to begin to move in before our 30 days is up in this apartment!

Final Countdown

Seventeen more hours to go!!

Watch the countdown this week!!!

We should be opening Escrow at the end of this week too!!!!

Whoo Hoo!!!!!

Update

Yesterday we received word that we should be able to move into our house in the next 40 days or so. Our house should pass inspections and be given a Certificate of Occupancy next Friday, the 16th (Bobbie's 9 month birthday) and then we can give our 30 day notice here at our apartment and begin the escrow process. We are hoping that we can move into our house before our 30 days is up in the apartment, just so we can have time to move over a few days, or weeks, rather than all in one day or weekend.
If not, we will still be able to move into our house in the middle of October, which is GREAT news!! We're so excited, and so ready!!

Today, we met with an interior designer who helped us choose paint colors for the house. We are excited to paint our walls and get the house ready for move in!
Bobbie's room will have one wall painted a soft pink color.
Our bedroom will have one wall a plum color and the rest a light silver/grey.
The kitchen will be a golden tuscan yellow.
The living room will stay the vanilla color it is, but we're painting the wall that the stairs are on a dark greyish earth-toney brown.
I got some good advice about the laundry area and pantry too. Inside closet areas like that, you should paint the walls a dark color. It makes the walls recede and then you can see your food in the pantry or the clothes in the laundry area better. If you keep the walls white or whatever light color they are, especially if the area has a light in it, all the stuff (like your cans and food) get all lost and look like a big chaotic mess. So, I'm going to use whatever left over paint there is that is darker than the walls to paint inside my pantry and inside the laundry closet. I'll post pictures after the fact so you can see if you agree with the interior designer. :)

Delay in completing our hours

Bobbie got sick on Labor day and had a fever all night and all day on Tuesday. I wanted to stay home with her since she was just so clingy and she had a hard time sleeping. She's much better today, no more fever and she's got her personality back, but I thought it best to stay home one more day just to make sure.
So, because of that, we haven't completed our 17 hours we wanted to finish this week. I may go and work on Friday morning and get some hours in.
Andrew and I are required to take a Home Buyers Education Class that will be held on Saturday. Its a real snoozer class, I hear, and we have to pay for it, but we're getting 16 sweat equity hours for it.
I think if Bobbie's all better, we should be done with our hours next week.
I'll keep my hours updated on the sidebar of the blog.

We are still waiting to hear if Habitat will open escrow for us. I should hear back today, since they were supposed to have a meeting today to decide when they would be able to do that. If they are able to open escrow, we should be able to move in in at least 30 days.....that's what we are praying for! You can pray too!! and I'll let you know what they decided today in the meeting.

Cabinet Trim and Painting

Last Saturday, Andrew and I took the day off. We had intended to work the whole day, but Andrew hadn't had a day off since before the Blitz and we all needed to spend some time together as a family. We slept in and then actually did go over to the construction site because it was the construction supervisor's last day and we had a little gift for him. Mike had been filling in for Joe for the last two weeks while Joe was on vacation and we had gotten to know Mike pretty well over those two weeks. We made him a little framed picture of our family that said Thank You. Even though we didn't work that day, we wanted to go over and give him that gift. He was very touched by the gift and we were glad we gave it to him.

The next work day was Tuesday, and Joe was back. When I arrived, I saw what had been accomplished on Saturday, the day we took off. Volunteers had built our gate and fence so our yard is now enclosed! Its feeling more and more done!

I worked all day with a volunteer named Rob, who's a handy man. He helped me trim my cabinets. There was a lot of unfinished wood showing around the edges and we added corner trim, toe kick and scribe moulding to make everything look finished. Here is a before and after picture.

Before...you can see the raw wood underneath

After....no more raw wood, and there is scribe moulding around the wall to make it look finished

I also put in a tiny bit of base board that was missing in a small corner near the kitchen pantry. I didn't take a picture, but figuring out the angle to cut that was a challenge. Rob helped me figure it out though.

Today, I was going to work in the morning with Andrew, but he woke up with a migraine, so I went to the construction site by myself. I spent the whole day painting my kitchen/dining room ceiling. I noticed a line between the kitchen and the dining room and I thought that the dining room just needed another coat of paint, but I found out that the line was just the difference between the semi-gloss they used in the kitchen and a flat paint they used in the dining room. Several people told me that that was standard....really? Do people really have lines down the middle of their ceiling like that? I couldn't live with it, so I painted the whole thing all the same paint. I actually used white instead of the off white that it was and that the walls are. I think it will look nice once I take down the plastic and the blue painters tape. I left it up in case I need to do another coat on Friday.

All done

I'm glad tomorrow is a day off. I'm tired. We are getting closer with our hours. Only 51 left. We have to take a home buyers education class on September 10th and we'll get credit for 16 hours that day, so we really only have 35 hours left. We'll be done by next week! Now we're just waiting to hear if they'll start escrow for us so we can hurry up and move in! We are so ready!!

Ephesians 3:20 List

Throughout my life, the Lord has spoken to my heart through Ephesians 3:20, "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us". In all the big turning points in my life, my Lord has done exceedingly abundantly above all I could have asked or even thought of for myself. He brought me my husband, who is so wonderful and perfect for me, from a place I never would have been looking, nor would I have thought to look. He gave us a perfect baby girl and fulfilled my deep desire to be a mommy, and He has given me the blessing of getting to stay home with her and enjoy her to the fullest. Now, He has given us a house. We've been living in my 720 sq. ft. apartment that I leased before Andrew and I were even engaged. We've struggled financially since we were married and we haven't been able to move out of this small apartment. When Bobbie was born, we got even more cramped in the space and just didn't know how we would get out of here into something big enough for us, that we could afford. We didn't dream very much bigger than a 2 bedroom apartment in Escondido (since Esco seems to have the cheapest rent around here) and I spent weeks calling around and putting our name on many low income housing waiting lists, only to hear over and over again, that their lists were all at least 2 years long. All we could do was put our name on the list in faith and pray we would be called soon. We have a little dog, Coda, who we love and as we were searching for subsidized housing, we realized that a lot of the properties don't allow pets in the low income apartments. We considered giving our dog away, but we just felt like that wasn't the right move and we just needed to wait. Also, when I was looking at apartments, Andrew really wanted us to find one that had washers and dryers in the units. I've been carrying all of our laundry down to the laundry room in our complex 2 or 3 times a week spending at least $20 a week in quarters and its just hard. Its heavy and annoying, and also expensive, but finding an apartment with washers and dryers isn't easy around here and even when I did find one, the rent was too expensive for us.

So my wish list for a home was 2 bedroom apartment, downstairs (so maybe there would be a bigger patio area the dog could go out and enjoy) with a washer and dryer in the unit, and not more than $1000 per month. We were taking a step of faith to even pay that if we would have found something at that price. I searched Craigslist weekly and prayed the Lord would have our name come up on some list. We had found an apartment complex with all of our wish list items in San Marcos very close to Andrew's work. We were on their waiting list and I called them every month to see if they had a unit available. I always got the same answer, no.

Finding out about the house possibility through Habitat for Humanity was the first of a very long list of "exceeding abundant" parts of God's blessing on our family. As we have gone through this process over the last 2 months or so, we have seen so many of those "exceeding abundant" details and feel continuously blessed and know that our God is doing so much more than we could have asked or even thought.

I am going to start a list of these blessings. I'm going to call it my Ephesians 3:20 list. I'll make it on the left side of my blog. Every once in a while glance at it and see if there are any new ones. :) I know the Lord will never finish pouring out blessings.

To God be the glory!

Nearing the end

Tuesday

We've been working every day that we possibly can for the last couple of weeks. Last week I put in about 35 hours just myself. This week should be the same. We hope to finish by next week and then begin escrow. I found out today that our house still needs to pass a few final inspections....landscape, plans, and even roads....I guess someone has to come out and make sure the road to our house is fine. I was hoping we'd be able to move in around Labor Day weekend....but I doubt everything can move that quickly. We can pray though! There is a process and a sequence to things so I just need to have patience :)

Yesterday, Andrew and I put in 10 hours together. When we got there in the morning, we started to build a lattice privacy panel over the back ledge of our large, upstairs balcony. Its very easy to see right into our next door neighbor's windows from our balcony, so we built these beautiful panels that I plan on growing some viney flowery plant. It took 2 or 3 hours to build them and we didn't have time to install them before Andrew had to leave for work.

Andrew using the nail gun to make the frame

Cutting the lattice with a jig saw

I got to use the hack saw

These are the completed panels ready for install tomorrow

After Andrew left, I did a couple of different jobs. I had to change the gas pipe from behind the range from a long, straight piece to an elbow shaped piece so that the range would fit better in its little space. I learned about sealing the pipes with yellow tape and also with a special jelly substance. I probably didn't have to use both, but its good measure so there won't be a gas leak. Once I got the pipe done, we (the superintendent and I) slid the range back into place and there was still a 2 or more inch gap from the wall. We figured out that the anti-tip bracket that Andrew had spent so much time installing was too far away from the wall. It wasn't Andrew's fault. He followed the directions correctly, they were just written so the range is that far from the wall, which I didn't like. 

I felt so badly, though, that Andrew would have to move that thing again....it took him a few hours to put it in because he already had to move it once.....

So I decided to move it myself. I started by unscrewing it and then the superintendent brought me the hammer drill. Its a drill that hammers while its drilling....its used for drilling into concrete or cement. He got me all set up with the right sized drill bit and everything and I tried my hand at using the hammer drill. Well, its basically like a jack hammer. Totally shook my whole body while I was trying to aim and drill the hole in the right spot. After using all my body weight on the drill and seeing that the drill bit wasn't even penetrating the tile, I went back to the super to see what I was doing wrong. It turns out the drill bit was cheap and had dulled. That explains why, when Andrew installed it in the first place, it took him so long. Sometimes it pays to spend more money on quality equipment.....

Anyway, once the better quality drill bit was on the drill, the super asked me if I wanted to try again. I told him, I actually would rather if he just did it for me.....it was so hard to do myself.....anyway, he started drilling and it was as if the tile and concrete foundation were butter! It was so easy for him! It was probably because of the new drill bit though :)

Once the holes were drilled, it was easy to install the bracket and once it was in place, we slid the range back into place and it fit so much better! I love it!! 

But, we had to pull the range out one more time, because I decided I wanted to grout the seams around the cabinets behind the range. I know it will never show, but its just one more little crack that critters can get it.

This is what the seam looked like before I grouted

mixing the grout in a plastic cup

Another before picture...with the anti-tip bracket in place :)

My first grout job!

All done!

At the end of the day, we'd completed 10 more hours, bringing our grand total to 416.25.

Wednesday

Today, we started the day by installing the lattice panels. It took awhile, but we got them in and they are beautiful!!!

You can still kind of see into the neighboring house, but I plan of planting some kind of climbing flowery plant. It should end up being beautiful.

After that was done, we started hanging our vertical blinds. We started with the blinds for the downstairs slider. Andrew got the brackets in place before he had to leave for work. After he left, I clipped the railing into place and hung the slats. I also had to trim them all so they wouldn't drag on the ground.

You can hardly see them in the picture, but they're there

After those were in place, I finished the grout behind the range area and in another little place near the pantry. Both of those places were very hard to get to and to push grout into the space. I got it all grouted, but it isn't very pretty. Thankfully, neither one of those places will show :) its just meant to keep critters out.

This picture should be the other direction....I just can't figure out how to rotate pictures on my blog....

Once the grout was done, I finished one more job and that was clamping the plumbing lines (water and drain) from the dishwasher. The hoses run through one of the cabinets to get to the other wall where the water and drain is, and I wanted to screw them into the side of the inside cabinet wall so they would be more out of the way. It was kind of hard, just because of the awkwardness of being inside the cabinet on my side, reaching at an odd angle. It was also super hot in there. I was sweating on my face....but the hoses are clamped in place now.

At the end of today, we had worked another 10.5 hours bringing our total to 426.75. We are very close!! 

Tomorrow is a day off which I'm glad of because I need to get caught up on my chores at home and pack some more boxes!