Leaks Resolved...... JUST KIDDING!

I literally was writing a post last Monday to tell y'all that our leaks have been resolved!  That they finally patched up the tiny hole in our ceiling and it looked like new.

And then I got home from work on Monday night, and we had this:

Yep.  That would be wet ceiling.  Again.  Same general area, but a little farther over than the last two times.
I'm upset.  So very upset.
So, I fill out the service request.  Wait nearly a full day to hear from the service manager, Jared.  I send him a couple of text photos of the leak.

I hear from him the next day (Wednesday) and he has pulled our plans and has an idea of where it is potentially coming from.   I have MORE news for him, as we have another wet spot that has shown up.  This spot is VERY close in proximity to where to hole was just patched up from the first/second leak....  See:

He tells me that he's escalating the issue to critical (or whatever the proper word is here. I don't really remember), and the plumbing company should DIRECTLY contact me to set up a time to come out.  That was Wednesday around 330pm.

By Thursday around 1, I hadn't heard from the plumber.  So, I called Jared (service manager) and left a voicemail.  I need to know WHEN we need to take time off so that they can resolve this.  This is the so-very-frustrating part.  We have to take time off.  We both work 9-5 jobs.  Circumstances at MY job right now don't allow me to take immediate time off with something like this.  It must be planned.  Hubby works as a contractor.  That means that he DOESN'T get paid if he doesn't work.  Anyone that needs to come out to our home for repairs and such (with this leak and other service requests) works the same fricken hours that we do.  So one of us must take off to be home with people coming for repairs.  It sucks.

So yeah, not long after my voicemail, I get a phone call from the plumber wanting to set up a time to be out to the house.  He can be out as early as 730 in the morning.  So, hubby gets things situated with his work so that he can have the morning off.

Friday morning.  It takes nearly FIVE hours for the plumber to finish and fix the leak. So that's FIVE hours that he hasn't gotten paid because he's at home dealing with this.

Check out the text message photos I get along the way:

Go ahead.  You can laugh at the ridiculousness of this whole thing.  It's okay.  I did.

This plumber was pretty thorough in his work.  He was measuring before he cut... he found a leak.  A small one.  He had to cut into our subfloor to get to the cause of the problem to fix it.  It was a very slow drip, which is why we aren't getting a waterfall of water every time we use the tub in the master bath.  And that's also why we keep on getting wet spots on the ceiling.  Slow drip means it can travel up and down the pipe and start dripping at different places.  That's why it's showing up on different places in the ceiling.
And that's why it hasn't been caught until now.

Leak #1 was "caught" at the shower.  Fixed after 3 holes were cut into our drywall in the bedroom, leak soldered and everything was fixed.

Leak #2 was "caught" at the cold water knob on the master tub.  Fixed and now we just have to wait for us to have time off to repair the drywall with the drywall guy.

Leak #3 is this one.  I am HOPING it's the culprit and has been the entire time.  It's fixed.  We now just have to deal with a nearly 2 foot square of ceiling missing in the kitchen.

Wanna guess for how long?!?!  OVER TWO WEEKS! The service manager wants to use a particular company that he knows does great work on textured ceilings.  Their EARLIEST appointment is Nov. 15 and Nov 16.  I was told it's going to take two days to do the repairs.

Cute, right?

So now for my irritation:  Why listen to me when I originally say it's the shower that's leaking.  Just to appease me?  I had a hunch that it might have been the shower because of the changing colors of grout we had right behind the shower.  Weird part is, they DID find a leak (I was told) and they even soldered something together so it wouldn't leak.
And then the day before they're supposed to fix the drywall in our kitchen, it starts leaking again.  It took a small amount of investigating, but they determined it was the cold water knob on the bath tub.  Now, that thing was broken, was replaced, and now it's leaking.  So yet another resolution.  A couple days AFTER we get the drywall in the kitchen F-I-N-A-L-L-Y replaced and patched up, and we have ANOTHER leak.
Like I said, this plumber sounded like he was pretty thorough.  He found a couple of spots that we should have checked out.  One of them is the grout at the bath tub.  It's on the outside of the bathtub, and logistically, I am not quite sure how it would leak from there, but we are going to have it taken care of.  I think.

You can see how it's cracked and pretty much looks like it's not attached to the tile at all.
It looks like shit.
I really hate how half-assed half of our bathroom looks.  We paid a ton of money to have it look like it does, and it's just not good.

The second thing that the plumber found concerning... The grout in the master shower.  This one bothers me and not long ago I noticed it.  I'm worried water could be seeping through this as we use this shower EVERY day.

At this point, I really just want them to pull it all up and re-do it.  There are so many shoddy pieces of tile, wavy parts of tile and terrible grout application.

It's so frustrating.

And I have so many questions still.  Are they replacing the ceiling where the drywall-strip is wet?  It's also cracked about 6 feet along that strip (assuming it's where that piece of drywall ends).  Or are they just going to patch up that hole?

The grout debacle:  that was originally on our 30 day.  So our service manager has given that back to the PM to handle.  I haven't heard anything yet.  I don't even know where to start and what to do about that.  Communication is such a big deal to me.

And then, I feel like this whole thing needs to be escalated and talked about with Ryan Homes.  I want them to know my frustrations and what we are dealing with.  The money we are losing out on because we have to be home because their sub-contracted companies don't do the hours we are home.  And the frustrations we have dealt with.  And the amount of water we have used just to ensure we don't have leaks anymore.

So I'm working on figuring out how to go "higher up" with all of this.

I don't want y'all to think we hate this whole thing.  The leak.  Yes.  Hate that part.  But our home?  We love it.  It's our space, we adore the house and all the memories we are making. It just stinks that those memories include all of this headache with the leak.

Keep your fingers crossed that this doesn't become "leak- apart 4".  That's not going to bode well for anyone.

We DO have lots of projects in process!  Door painting, deck staining... and we are hopefully gonna start painting the inside of the house soon too!!

Our "Leaky" Situation....

So it's been nearly two weeks since we noticed our leak.  And the drama from that leak continues.

Some of my last post was out of anger and not knowing ALL the details of what had happened from the leak discovery.  I'm a bit better educated now that I've seen it and gotten all the details... but still- I'm not exactly "happy" about any of it.

Backing up a bit-- they came out on the 15th, a Thursday, to check out our leak and get things taken care of.  We actually ended up with THREE holes in our drywall in the master bedroom so that it could dry out and then they'd come back out to patch it up.

Also, the different color grout has nothing to do with the leak that was discovered with the shower.  That leak was dripping DOWN and would have found it's way to the spot where it was leaking through the ceiling.  So what's causing the grout to be a different color- I have NO idea... They were supposed to fix it as a part of our 30 day stuff, but it hasn't been addressed.  So, I'll be putting a ticket in along with other things once it gets a bit closer to me having my next available day off.

So, we think it's all well and good with the leak in the shower being fixed.  On Wednesday last week (the 21st), I'm getting ready to head to work and I notice that our ceiling is leaking AGAIN.

Yep. Again.

We are now thinking the leak MIGHT be from the master bathtub.  Our PM mentioned it when this whole leak thing started, but we hadn't used the tub in nearly two weeks at that point.  So it seemed odd that a leak would just show up out of nowhere.  Well, this new leak- we had used the tub that Sunday prior to this new drip.  So maybe the tub was the culprit all along??

I snap some photos and send them to hubby, and then I call one of our PM's that's been in contact with me since they were supposed to be coming out THE VERY NEXT DAY to patch everything up.  I wanted to make sure they knew that we had a new leak and to bring a plumber with them.

Well, I hear nothing.  So, after several hours I email our second PM just to make sure they're aware of the situation and we NEED a plumber out tomorrow.  I had a pretty high sense of urgency because that Thursday was literally my ONLY day off for a month at a time when they could come out and check things out, and I wanted this taken care of.  The email to our PM produced a response that said they had the plumber coming out at 8 am the following morning.

Thanks for the communication on that.  A text, a call, an email..... ANYTHING would suffice so that I was aware someone was coming out that next day.  Is that really that much to ask?!?!

So, Thursday the 22nd was my day off.  Literally the only day off that I've had during the week in a while.  And, seeing as how these contractors and Ryan only like to work Monday through Friday during business hours, I had to use my ONLY day off to sit at home ALL day and wait for things to be done {we had a couple of other service things that were being taken care of on this day as well as our leak}.

Plumber shows up promptly at 8.  His name was Jay.  I explained to him the situation, and mentioned that we think this new leak could have something to do with the master tub. Upstairs he goes, starts tinkering with things.  PM shows up with the drywall guy.  His name was Jay also.  Takes him upstairs so he can start patching up our drywall in our bedroom since the leak from the shower hasn't leaked and is okay.

While he's at the house, our PM investigates with the plumber and they come to the conclusion that the leak is coming from the COLD WATER KNOB on the master tub.  The same one that just pulled right up one day while I was taking a bath, and the same one that the first plumber tried to fix and basically flooded our bathroom because he forgot to turn off the main water.  The same one that we have been *patiently* waiting to be fixed because they had to order a special kit to get the knob to stay on.

Yep, that would be the one.

So, the plumber has to run to his shop to see if he has stuff to fix it. When he was looking in the drain with the water running, he noticed that the cold water knob was leaking water.

In the meantime, our PM tells me that they're going to cut a hole in my master closet and put an air register grate over it.  That way it can dry out and they can keep an eye on it.  I was so clueless as he fed this information to me, and now I have to ask questions. haha!  The grate looks okay in the closet and I'm alright if it has to stay that way... but why wouldn't they just patch up that hole too once it's "dried" out??  Are they anticipating this being an issue?

Drywall Jay is in and out pretty much all day long.  Patched things up, it had to dry.  Come back for touch ups, let it dry some more.  Finally paint over everything and he's done.

Plumber Jay came back and fixed the knob.  Hopefully for good this time.  We've taken a couple of baths up to this point and are hoping for the best.

Our PM has reached out to set a date to come out to patch up the hole in the kitchen and drywall on the beam between the kitchen and morning room.  I let him know my next available day off, which is LITERALLY a month away from now.  I had asked how long it would take, and he said up to about 5 hours.  With that being the case, hubby and I really can't take a FULL day off of work {hubs doesn't get paid for time he's not at work, and we are short staffed where I work so I can't just ask for a random day off so close to it being that time}.  Still waiting to hear if they'll be out that day or not. I have several other "things" I will be putting service requests in for so they get taken care of on that day as well.

So- at this point, our leak leaked again and they've hopefully fixed it.  We still have exposed drywall in the kitchen and a hole in our ceiling where they cut it to air it out.

And a couple of things about all of that-- I asked our PM what they planned on doing with the drywall that has water spots on it.  Are they replacing it?  I don't want it just painted over.  I worry that it might still lead to mold or mildew in the future. There's also a water spot on the ceiling.  What are their plans for that?

I feel the same about the exposed drywall.  I really want it all just cut down and replaced so it doesn't look like it does.  You'll see what I mean in my photos.

And, for thought..... Drywall Jay did a really great job patching up our drywall.  You seriously would NEVER know that we had three holes there if I hadn't told you.  The paint on our walls is the "builder whatever" that comes with the house.  It isn't white though.  It's like an off-white creamy kind of color.  And when he painted over the spots that he had to repair, it looks great.

So my thought-- I'm not going to wait to paint.  We had originally decided that we were going to wait until our drywall fixes and such around 12 months from when we moved in.  If they patch things up and their paint doesn't show anything, then I'm just going to paint to my little heart's desire.  I also read that painting over the builder grade paint will help reveal drywall imperfections and stuff that need to be fixed, so I figured that's a good idea too!  We shall see.  We have a couple projects we need to finish (and start) first before we start slapping paint on our walls.

Our other service stuff that was fixed on the 22nd included replacing our loft window for a third time.  Hopefully it's for good this time.  That guy spent a lot of time replacing the trim around the window, as well as molding and such.

And then the electric in the morning room.  It's been out for a good bit of time now.  Well, that guy showed up nearly three hours late (his window was between 1-3 and he showed up at 545).  He had an electric outlet to hook up for us for our Guardian stuff, and then he fixed those outlets.
Wanna know how he did it?  He flipped the breaker.  Uh huh.  The fricken breaker.

Now, we did flip it.  All of them.  We even hunted for GFI outlets to reset stuff.  We know where one is for the garage, and one for upstairs. But not for the first floor.  But we know now.  The electrician told us that we have to first reset the GFI outlet, and then flip the breaker off and back on to get it working again.  And voila!  The only issue I have is that I plugged my stuff in and within a couple of hours, all of the outlets in the morning room weren't working again! So I'm going to have to get the electrician BACK out to check things out.  This shouldn't be happening!

And now photos! Fun, leaky photos.  HA!

This is the "beam" between the morning room and the kitchen.  If you look closely on the right of the black mark, and down a bit, you can see the newly formed water droplet. 

Tilt your head side ways! This is the beam again, and the hole in our ceiling in the kitchen.

And a pretty "good" photo of the new leak. Same spot. 

Crosley demonstrating the cold water knob.

part 1 of the drywall repair.

part 2 of the drywall repair

and final product of the drywall repair.

the new "vent" in our master closet off the bathroom.  It's just a hole with a grate over it so air can flow in.

Our third loft window, waiting to be hung. The first one had a crack, the second wasn't sealed properly. This one better be perfect.

No window!

New Window!

And then a follow up to that leak that we originally found pre-drywall.  It was explained to us that it very well could have been a problem from the shower/bath tub and we just weren't able to fully SEE that as it had rained and they contributed that leak to all the rain we had gotten.

This is the photo of the "leak" from the beginning....

So hopefully the leak saga is over with, and we will get these holes patched up and the house looking back to normal!

I'll keep y'all updated :-) Hope everyone else is enjoying their gorgeous new homes, or loving the progress that is being made on your homes!!!!!

Leaks.

I think there should be a witty title for this post.

But there's not.

We have a leak.  Noticed it yesterday as we were leaving for work.  It's in between the morning room and the kitchen.  It leaked some yucky brown water onto our granite counters which caused it to stain. And- THERES A LEAK.  In a house we have been in for less than two month.

A leak.

So, we unfortunately had to go to work and couldn't stress right then and there about this leak in our house.  Luckily it wasn't leaking heavily.  As soon as I got to work and a computer, I got on the Ryan Homes site and filled out the service request thingy to have it documented and get someone out to look at it.  Also, because it was a leak, I emailed our PMs so they were aware of it.  I want this thing fixed as soon as possible.

Here's the link to the service request in case any of y'all need it: Ryan Homes Service Request

Now, before I get into this whole process, I want to explain a couple of things, and refresh y'all on a couple of things.

First, way back before we had drywall go up, we went to visit the house one day and noticed a pretty big leak from the kitchen to the morning room on the beam that pretty much connects the two rooms together.  We took photos and were going to address it with the PM when we had our pre-drywall meeting.

Here's the post from Week 5 where we were getting HVAC and such put in... we have a photo that I'll post below of the beam between the morning room and kitchen. It was leaking REALLY bad.

You can see the beam where it's broken... The water was dripping heavily right there.

Well, that's exactly where our leak was coming from yesterday.  So at this point I'm thinking it could have been from that area.

The other potential culprit-- something that I brought up at our 30 day follow up.... The grout in our master shower has spots that are way darker than other spots. The handyman just put some grout over the top of the spots that looked darker.  I was concerned that it looked "wet" even after it had dried to begin with.  I noticed it a lot when I was sealing our grout.  I asked our PM at the 30 day if it could be a leak.  He said that if it were a leak we would see it through the walls or elsewhere causing issues.

So, I thought that seemed logical.  Made sense.  Didn't really make sense why our grout would be two different colors.. but hey, I'm not the expert.

Here's my post from our 30 day that talks about all this stuff:  30 Day Post Settlement Follow Up!

Okay, so now back to the service request online.  It was super easy.  I entered our zip code, then our address and BOOM! Filled out the request and hit submit.  A few hours later some guy called me.  He left me a voicemail as I was at work and couldn't get to the phone.  In his voicemail, he wanted clarification as to whether or not it was a "beam" like what I described, or if it was part of the HVAC system.  I clearly knew it was a wooden beam as I had the pre-drywall photos and knew in the back of my head that one day we'd have a leak here.

So, I called back.  It's a general number and I talked to a gal named Morgan.  I explained the situation, and when she pulled up the request, the guy that left the voicemail had switched the ticket from an "other" ticket {I chose "other" because they didn't have anything for leaks inside} to an HVAC issue.  Without me calling or saying anything.

That rubbed me the wrong way.  You know what they say when you assume things, right?!

So,she fixed everything and said that the info would be forwarded to a guy named Jared, who apparently takes over service requests past the 30 day follow ups.  I mentioned that our PMs already knew about it, and she said that they would also be notified of the service request.

Our PM responded to my email pretty quickly, saying he'd try to get the plumber out.  He also asked if we had used the master bath recently.

We mentioned that we both work 8-4:30, so we need some kind of notice if the plumber can come out, so we can get off of work early, if it was even possible.  Also told him we hadn't used the master bath in at least a week (but I promise we use the shower every day).

It took several hours for a response, but he let me know that the plumber could be out the next morning at 7:30, and asked if that would work.  I immediately text hubby and he was able to ask his boss for the morning off so he could be home.

When we got home from work yesterday afternoon, it didn't seem bad.  The leak had dried up and was just a small blotch of yuck on the roof, and the spot on the granite had dried and wasn't visible anymore, and the granite looked good.  I was happy about the granite.  I was so ready to be demanding and require they replace that piece of granite if it was stained.  So they can consider themselves lucky about that one, haha!

So hubby stayed home this morning and waited for the plumbers.  I made my way to work and got text message updates the entire time.  They showed up around 7:45.  It was one of our PMs and 2 plumbers.

The first text I got said that he heard one of them say "ut oh".

Well that's fantastic.

And the verdict?  It's the master shower.

When hubby told me that, he got a string of angry face emojis. I fricken CALLED it.  I asked about it and it was brushed off.  Y'all have NO idea how upset I am over this.

So, now they must cut holes in our drywall to fix the leak.

One giant hole is cut in the drywall.  Guess what?!  NO LEAK.

Seriously.

So a second hole is cut.  Luckily they find the cause of the leak here and get their tools out to solder it back together so it no longer leaks.  And we now have two gaping holes in our drywall in the master bedroom.

And then the downstairs.  They had to cut a hole in the ceiling and then take apart the drywall where the beam is between the kitchen and morning room.  All of that has to "dry out" for a week and then they'll replace the drywall and patch everything up.

Have  I mentioned to you guys how stressful this has all been and how many tears I have shed?

Wanna see photos?  Cuz I have them!

I'll caption each one with what it is.  There's a few tile photos from our master bath showing the different colors of the grout, followed by the photos of the work they did to make holes in our walls.  All of these photos were taken with my phone so they won't be the best quality.. haha!

This is the leak.  the top of this is the ceiling and the other is the "beam" that separates the morning room from the kitchen. The leak is on the kitchen side.

A bit of a better photo of the leak.  When we "found" it, it was actively leaking, although not a waterfall, just a drip.

This is the beam between the kitchen (left side) and morning room (right side).  you can see the damage it's already caused.

Another angle of the beam and the damage.

Another closer angle of the beam and the damage.  You can see water spots and cracked drywall here.

A bit better lighting of the photo above.

This is in the master bath.  This tile is OUTSIDE the shower, but it's a new bit of one of two things... Either bad tile work or it's cracked because of the water leaking from behind this wall.

Another shot of the tile outside the shower that I noticed this morning while snapping photos.

This is inside the shower, right below the shower knob.  Notice the two different colors of grout.  One is lighter while the second is darker.  We haven't used the shower for a full day since this shot, but this is how it has looked since we first moved in and started using the shower.

More dark grout.

A wider angle.  Below the knob you can see how it's a darker color grout than all of the rest of the grout surrounding the shower.

This is the area of granite that was "stained" when we initially noticed the leak.  Thankfully it all looks okay and there's no damage to the granite.  For a funny-- that outlet (and all the morning room outlets) don't work.  Sigh.  I swear home ownership is fun.

The first cut.  I lost it when hubby sent me this photo.  Full on tears.  They're cutting the walls in our brand new house.
Also note the Happy Hooker shirt.  At least that made me laugh for a brief second.

First cut.  After this was cut, they made the revelation that it wasn't leaking from this area and still had to find the source of the leak.

So now we have TWO holes in the drywall.  That second hole did find the leak and at this point they soldered it to fix it.
Hopefully.

And now back down to the kitchen.  Prepping the area to cut out damaged areas.

Hole in the ceiling and pulled off the stuff on the beam so everything can dry out.

And Crosley.  Because he's smiling and looks like a grown adult dog here {He's not even 7 months old yet!!!!}

Sigh.

We have holes in our walls.
And a leak (well, hopefully a fixed leak now).

I haven't been home to survey all of this yet, as I've worked all day.  Luckily it's been a slow day so I have been able to stew over this all day long and look at these photos.  (Sarcasm there if you didn't catch that).

I'm exhausted from this day of stress.  I'm upset that our brand new house has issues like this.  I'm even more upset that I specifically ASKED if the different color grout could mean there was a leak and was told no.
And now I get to worry for the next forever about mold and mildew right there.

I'll update all of you guys once it gets fixed, but this is our current hell.

A Pretty Garage and Some Decor!

So I know y'all have all asked for pictures!
I snapped a few and have some saved on my phone for writing blogs in the "future".  I am trying to save some of them for the different projects we are working on, as I don't really want to show them off til we are finished!

We have a long list of "to do" things in this house, and we are slowly tackling them as we have the time.

I wanna show off our blinds. I have seen a lot of posts recently about window coverings and such.  We chose to do faux wood blinds in our house, and we bought them from Home Depot.  Seriously SUPER easy to install.  We still have a few to buy and put up in the house, but those are coming as budget allows.

If you're curious to see what we bought, check em out here.

And a few photos of what they look like!  With 18 windows in the house, it's kind of overwhelming to think about putting coverings on ALL of them.  We still need to get them for our morning room, and bedroom 2 (closest to the master bedroom).


So this is while I sit here and blog.  We are watching the Buckeye game.  Don't mind the TV stand. It's two different heights.  LOL.  I am still working up the courage to actually hang the cabinets across the top.  We had planned on doing that this weekend but have since changed plans and have other things going on.  So, it's a bit of a dark photo, but these are the blinds in the living room.

And then I got up and went into the "dining room" and snapped some up close photos of the blinds in there so y'all can see them up close with bright lights.

These were super easy to install and I love the detail with the valance across the top.  There are cords on both sides.  One to tilt and one to move the blinds up and down.  They do great at keeping the light out and look perfect in all of our windows!

The majority of our windows are 35-inches.  We have a couple that are 39 and one that is a little ole 23-inch one.

Now let's check out our garage!  One of our first house projects was painting the walls grey, which you can check out in this post if you don't know what we did or what it looks like.  Well.  Our next project was to epoxy the garage floor.  I pretty much knew from the beginning that I wanted some sparkly red floors in our garage.  And, we have some red sparkly floors now!

The epoxy process only took a couple of hours to complete.  It took 5 kits to completely cover our garage.  The kit says that it covers up to 125 square feet.  Our garage measures just over 400 square feet.  We were lucky that our neighbor across the street has also epoxy'd his garage floor, so he had some tips.  And one of those was that the kits cover closer to 100 square feet rather than the advertised 125.

We did have a hiccup at the beginning.  I started to mix the first kit together with my paint mixer, and panicked when I saw there was BLACK in the epoxy.  It's sparkly red.  Black didn't seem right.  I had used the paint mixer in some black paint prior to our epoxy adventure, so I was worried I had mixed paint with it.  So, I sent hubby to Lowe's to get a new paint mixer, and I used that first kit that I thought was "bad" on the edges of the garage floor.

Well, when he got back, the epoxy in the container I had was almost all hardened (I am guessing due to the heat and length of time I was using it, as it's only good for about 45 minutes), so we mixed our next container.  New paint mixer yielded the same black color in the epoxy as we mixed.  So, I sighed, gave a big womp womp and realized that it was probably just the epoxy and NOT black paint mixing in with the epoxy mix.

Anyways.  I'm sure y'all don't want to hear any more about our epoxy experience, and you'd rather just see the photos!  If you DO want to know more about our epoxy-ing, just ask!!  And, for those wondering, this is the kit that we used.  It was Rustoleum's Rock Solid "Cherry Bomb".

Here are a few photos!  First, the "before" photo:

All nice and power washed and ready to be epoxy'd

The exposed concrete on the top of the epoxy now drives me NUTS! I want to get some concrete paint and paint it black.  The stairs to the door we will probably stain white with leftover stain from our deck staining, which is a later project!

Details.

That last photo, the "details" one, really shows the color of what it looks like.  All of these photos are from my phone, which isn't the best, and lighting sometimes makes it look funny.  But, we LOVE LOVE LOVE it!  It's swirly and sparkly, and once it was done, we really wanted to find some roller skates and skate on it, it was so smooth!  It's fun and gives a great "personality" to our garage.  Who knew I'd love painting and dressing up a garage!

We've got all of our stuff back in the garage, and can still fit our cars EASILY!  I want to get some pegboard for the walls to hang things, and probably one set of shelves. I found some super fun red pegboard at Home Depot, and that will probably be a fun future purchase.  I also have great aspirations to maybe one day paint a Cincinnati Reds logo on the garage wall that's next to the door!  If there's ever a "best garage" award, it'll be ours, haha!!


And now a bit more decor!  Our plans for our loft are to make it "travel" themed.  We LOVE to travel!  Our honeymoon was to Ireland, followed by a few days in New York City.  A couple of years ago we took a two week trip to London, Paris and Rome.  Last year, our trip took us out to the West Coast as we followed the Reds.  We started in Phoenix and ended in Seattle.  Saw 12 baseball games, 7 new ballparks, and made a TON of memories along the way.  No trip this year as we saved for this gorgeous house we are now living in!  Not sure what next year's trip will be.  That all depends on the Reds schedule!

So anyways.  Travel.  That's gonna be our theme in the loft.  I want to get a big giant map of the world to put on one wall in the loft, and put shelving on the opposite wall.  The shelving will display all of our goodies and such that we collect when we travel.  Shot glasses, sand from different beaches and oceans around the world..... I also want to get a little bench for the nook under the loft window.

With the loft being travel themed, I found some great stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond that would allow me to extend that travel theme into the hall bathroom that is upstairs!  It's called the Passport Collection and is perfect in our bathroom!

Check out some photos I snapped of the travel decor in that bathroom!!  Y'all can just ignore that damn ugly vinyl on the floors.  We won't even talk about it.

These are NOT from BBB, and rather I got them off EBAY.  But aren't they PERFECT!?!?!

Shower Curtain (it's super soft!)

Towels.

The accessories are all monuments from around the world!

Even a cute rug to match.  And my floating hands in the mirror, haha!

The goal is to eventually stain these cabinets to match the maple espresso cabinets in the master bath as well as our kitchen cabinets.  We WILL paint, but we aren't going to do that til after our drywall stuff nearing a year.  We just don't want to paint "more than once", haha!  As of right now, I am thinking a shade of purple (not a pastel, but more of a darker purple.. just not too dark as I don't want the bathroom TOO dark).  Purple might bring out some colors in the vinyl too to maybe make me like it.  I also want to get some metal prints of some of the photos I took from our travels around the world to hang in here.  I'm thinking square ones, probably about 6x6 in size.  Just not sure if I want color or black and white.  Being that the decor is black and white, that's what I am leaning towards.  But maybe if I do black and white, I can do that color pop on certain parts of the photo.  Believe me, I have TONS of photos to choose from.  I tend to be pretty snap-happy on vacation.

Besides that, we bought a couple more cabinets from IKEA for our bobbleheads in the basement.  WE are S-L-O-W-L-Y getting everything unpacked in the basement, and even slower getting it organized and ready for display.

That big black blob on the right is actually a gigantic vinyl poster thing from the All Star Game when it was in Cincinnati.  We found one and bought it and will be hanging it on the wall opposite our mural.  We love it and can't wait to hang it.  And, the purpose of this photo:  another cabinet built.  Two more are still waiting to be put together.

And a "motivation" photo for some of you guys that are just getting in your houses, or even have been in your houses.  We still have boxes.  They're scattered throughout the house, but we still have boxes full of stuff.  We are just taking our time and unpacking and finding homes for stuff when we have the chance.

This is all in our dining room.  You can see some fun projects we are working on... The "living room" has bookcases that we are putting in, and that little black table has our paint supplies on it as we work on painting our interior doors :-)

And then a few more photos for you, just for fun.

We see some gorgeous sunsets and sunrises from this house.  Don't know what it is, but the colors most nights are just amazing.

And it's so nice and peaceful in our little cul-de-sac.

And our boys!  If y'all have any pointers on getting dogs to NOT chew on walls and trim, feel free to share them!  Our puppy, Crosley, is in the crate when we aren't home... and the main reason for that is because he was chewing on some trim at the stairs (which I am still trying to figure out how to fix..... sigh).
But, he also chewed some of the wall WHILE in his cage the other day.  I really do think it's stress from all the noises he hears, seeing we live in a construction zone.  He's naturally nervous and everything scares him... but any advice for chewers is appreciated!!

Cody, sitting at the top of the stairs (closed door is the laundry door)

Crosley practicing his mug shots a couple nights ago.  He has a great smile.

So, just a few pictures for now!  Our projects continue as we have the time, and I think once baseball season is over we will have lots of projects done!  We are slowly getting our interior doors painted (which I LOVE the pop of color), and our next big project is going to be staining the deck!

We also have our first *official* house guests scheduled to come up!  My sister in law was up right when we moved in, but that was to help unpack and organize so I don't consider that a guest since she was working, haha!  But, my mom and stepdad will be coming from Florida, and at that same time, my sister and her family (4 kiddos and hubby and dog) will be coming from North Carolina!  They'll be traveling from NC to ALASKA and are stopping to see us along the way!  So, we will have a house full and can't wait to utilize this big ole house with everyone in it!!!