LOFT-y Goals!

So, OOPSIE!
It's been over three months since I've updated the blog with all of our home happenings!  And boy, are there lots!

We are coming up on our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of being homeowners!  I seriously can't believe how quickly a year goes by!  And, we've been busy!  Naturally right now, we have Reds baseball happening so that pretty much consumes our time. But, we try to keep busy with house projects and such.  And, we have several going on right now, and more that are finished.

And one of those finished projects is the loft!

We ADORE our loft.  We love the gigantic space we have up there!  The plan has always been to make that into a "travel" themed area, as we LOVE LOVE LOVE to travel and have quite a few mementos from our travels so far.

A few blog posts ago, A Pop Of Color, I showed off some of the painting that we had done in the house.  That was the morning room, the "mud room", the foyer wall, the loft wall, and the basement {red}.

Here's a refresher of what the loft wall DID look like:

And now for the travel theme!

All of my internet/Pinterest browsing landed me on this super amazing and GIGANTIC world map {click it}!  The measurements were perfect for this super huge wall.  I asked for it for Christmas, and Santa thought I deserved it!

I'll tell you this:  I'll never ever ever do wallpaper again, hahaha! That's what this was.  4 HUGE panels of wallpaper.  I love the finished product, but nope. No more wallpaper.

Our wall is like 14-something feet long, and 8 feet high.

I never measured the HEIGHT of the wall and assumed it was larger than that.

The map measures 12 feet long and 98 inches (or 8.2 feet) high.  OOPSIE!

I also didn't take the baseboards into account.

So, when we put this gigantic world map up, we had to trim several inches to make it fit the wall.  It's by no means perfect, but hey.  I love it.

Check out some of the photos!

An idea of how big the panels were.  There were 4 total! 

All put together!  Tape holding some spots up just so it could dry.

All finished! Looking at the finished product from our bedroom door.

Finished product!  Looking from the loft windows towards the map/wall

Looking straight on (standing at the opposite wall)

It's amazing, right?!?

So my thought with this space:  I want some kind of display shelves to go up against this map to display all of our mementos and such (monument statues, shot glasses, books, etc).  I got SUPER lucky that IKEA had just what I wanted, and they put it on sale! Stack that with a coupon they had for $25 off of a purchase of $150 or more, and we struck gold!!

I wanted the Kallax shelves to go in front of the map.  I knew I'd need 2 of these based on measurements.  This is the one I wanted: IKEA Kallax Shelf

But, on one of our last trips to IKEA, we both agreed that we loved this particular shelf, also a Kallax, just a bit different:  http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60294622/

We have one of these in the kitchen area that holds cook books, some kitchen stuff (crock pot, misc. plates and wine) as well as a few other odds and ends.  So when we saw that they made this one in white, we knew this was the shelf we'd want in the loft!

So they were on sale for $20 off each! And we had the coupon for $25 off!  We got two of these for just a little over the price of one regular one :-)

And here's what it looks like up against the map!

Sorry for the weird angle!  It's hard to get the WHOLE wall in a photo!

And here's some photos of the decorations we have so far.  We THOUGHT we had tons, which we really do, but we just need to go on more trips and get more goodies!!!

And no blog post is complete without a Crosley appearance!  Cody doesn't like being in front of the camera.  And while I was building the shelves, Crosley was "helping" {along with his hedgehog, haha}.

So, that wall is finished for now!  My daddy is sending up some of his furniture in the next month or so that will go on the opposite wall of this.  We also have some stuff to hang up, and walls to paint in the rest of the loft.  We are going with a lighter gray for the rest of this area, as well as the house.

But seriously. I just LOVE LOVE LOVE how this space has turned out!  Our full bath at the top of the stairs is also travel themed.  We'll be painting that room soon as well, so I will be able to show that off!

I'll be posting more later! We have a few other completed projects that I can't wait to show off! I know most of y'all follow me on Facebook or Instagram, so this is nothing new.... but I had to document it!

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!!!

30 Day Post Settlement Follow Up!

So I just checked the countdown on our blog, and we've been in our home for 42 days now!! 42!!!!!

It seems like it's been a week.  Seriously.  Time is flying.

We've been able to get a couple of fun projects done around the house and I'll be posting those another day.  Today I wanted to update y'all on our 30 day post settlement follow up.

Basically, when we closed we were given a carbon-copy form to fill out with anything that we wanted to be looked at for our 30 day inspection.  I left this paper sitting on our cluttered kitchen island so that any time we had something to bring up, we could write it down.

I filled it up pretty quickly, but it was really nothing major.  Around 2 weeks in, our PM stopped by and asked for the paper so he could start scheduling guys to come out to work on whatever we need fixed or looked at.  From the time he scheduled them until they actually came out, I just emailed the PM with other issues that we had so that they could be addressed.

On Friday, August 26th our PM was scheduled to come out for our 30 day stuff.  He came with a plumber and a handy-man kind of guy to knock out the stuff on our list.

What exactly was on our list?? Let me tell you:

1. Water Pressure-- the water pressure in our master shower isn't all that great.  I think hubby noticed it more than I did at first. PM said he'd have this looked at.  He mentioned that a lot of the times it could be something as small as a grain of sand, as the hole the water comes through is super small. So he'd have the plumber check it out and clean it out if needed.
2. Door sticking in the laundry room.  It's the only door in the house that does it... but it sticks upon opening and closing and we really have to force it opened.
3. Deck post-- our deck is SUPER high.  There's already some settling, especially around one post in particular.  PM assured me that the posts are cemented in, but he'd check it out.  He also mentioned that settling issues in the yard are better dealt with closer to the year-mark, as they only fix settlement issues once... So I pretty much didn't expect anything to be done with this.
4. Metal Stakes at the Walk-out.  The metal stakes and wooden framing weren't removed when they poured the 3x3 concrete slab.  Hubby actually scraped his foot on one of them while doing yard work.  They definitely need to be removed.
5. Grout in Master Bath.  There's a couple spots in the master bath where the grout wasn't applied properly.  Little air holes, or even a spot or two where the grout looked like it was separating.  We also have several spots where the grout always looks wet.  Even when drying it for 4 days to seal it, it appeared darker than the majority of the grout.
6. Hot water in Hall Bath.  The hall bath has nothing but scalding HOT water.  Kind of funny if you remember that we had issues when we first moved in with NO hot water.  But, we are trying to use the hall bath as well as the master bath just to make sure everything is working properly.  Well, it's unbearable to even shower in the hall bath because it's so stinkin hot.
7. Cold Water Knob on Master Tub.  It pulls right off.  Like, doesn't stay on.  PM said it should be a simple fix with an Allen wrench to tighten it up.
8. Garage Outlet.  When we painted the garage, we had to move the deep freezer and such.  This meant unplugging it.  Well, after we unplugged the freezer and then went to plug it back in, the plug wouldn't fit.  
9. Loft window.  We had an issue with this window when we first moved in.  It's the round window in the loft.  The first time, it was cracked and needed replaced.  Well, the replacement happened.  The seal or something is bad on this new window though.  You can see condensation between the two panes after it rains, and it's also leaking.
10. Master Shower Door Sticking.  It is super hard to open and close the shower door.  I know the magnet is super strong, but it doesn't seem like it should be this hard to open and close that door.
11. Delay on Switched Outlets and Fan Rough-Ins.  When we use the switched outlets as well as the ceiling fans, there's always a delay between the turning on of the light and the light actually turning on.
12. Morning Room Outlets Not Working-- The switched light works, but none of the outlets do.  This also extends into the kitchen and the outlets that run alongside the morning room, which is basically all of the kitchen outlets that we regularly use.  They WERE working when we first moved in but aren't working now.
13. Window latches are a PAIN to latch and un-latch.  When we had our pre-settlement walk through, our PM made it look SUPER easy to un-latch the windows to open them inward to clean them.  Well, I must be incredibly weak because I can't get half of them to work.
14. Locks on small window in bedroom #2 don't work.  We can't get this window to latch closed.  I noticed it one night when I saw a gigantic spider outside the window.  I had to triple check to make sure the spider couldn't get in the house.  Well, if she wanted to she could because that window didn't latch.
15. Electrical Outlet on Guardian Box isn't connected.  This is creating problems for us as Guardian had to connect their power supply on one of our regular basement outlets.  Their power supply is huge and ugly and is taking up valuable outlet space.

Whew!  So that's it.  It's nothing MAJOR but it all needs addressed.  On August 26th, they all came out to work on getting things fixed for us.  And here's how that went:

1. Water Pressure-- the water pressure in our master shower isn't all that great. The plumber fixed this.  Not sure what he found, but the water pressure is uh-may-zing now.  So, y'all all read this:  hubby was right.
2. Door sticking in the laundry room.  Easy fix.  The handyman adjusted the hinges on the door and it opens and closes with ease now.
3. Deck post-- The handyman filled the settling post hole with more dirt!  I was surprised they did it for us after the schpeal about settlement issues only being resolved once.
4. Metal Stakes at the Walk-out.  Handyman took the stakes and the wooden frames off of the slab.  Now no one can get hurt. Yay!
5. Grout in Master Bath.  Handyman filled the holes that I had seen.  He also tried out a section of the grout that looked "wet" by putting some new grout on top of it.  It held the color of the rest of the grout, so he needs to come back to fill in the rest of the grout that is off-colored.
6. Hot water in Hall Bath.  This was an "easy" fix too.  If you're a plumber.  Apparently there's something that be adjusted behind the shower knob.  So he just had to adjust that and, voila!  We now have hot and cold water!!!
7. Cold Water Knob on Master Tub.  This one was fun.  Plumber guy is working on it and I'm walking the house with our PM going over other things on the list.  All of the sudden we hear a "TURN OFF THE MAIN WATER!! TURN OFF THE MAIN WATER!!"  I run into the master bath and there is a swimming pool in my bathroom! Water shooting everywhere and water all over the floor, all over the plumber and just ugh!  Main water was shut off and he worked on the knob.  I guess when it was installed it was installed either too long or too short, I'm not sure which.  So, the plumber has to order a kit to make the necessary adjustments to get that knob back on.  
8. Garage Outlet.  This one is user error.  The outlet in question is our GFI outlet in the garage.  Apparently when you put the plug into the outlet you have to go STRAIGHT in.  Not at an angle.  
9. Loft window.  We had a guy come out to assess the window and he said it needed to be replaced again {um, duh}. So as of now, they've supposedly ordered the window and talked with the window company and they should be in touch with me to replace the window. Again.
10. Master Shower Door Sticking.  When doing the walk through to go through stuff, they looked at the door and made the assessment that the shower door company needed to come out and adjust the door.  It definitely shouldn't be sticking like it is.
11. Delay on Switched Outlets and Fan Rough-Ins. Because the delay seems to be more so in JUST the fans and not the outlet switches, it's probably something with the way the fans were installed, or the brand of fans, yada yada yada.  This isn't a HUGE issue, just a slight annoyance as they don't automatically switch on when you flip the switch.
12. Morning Room Outlets Not Working-- Still not answer to this.  PM tried getting an electrician out on the day everyone else was out, but no one was available.  He then called the Ryan line to make an appointment and put a service ticket in for someone to come out.  Well.  No one has contacted me yet about this.  So we sit with no working outlets in the morning room, but more annoyingly, no working outlets on the kitchen outlets that run alongside the morning room.  And those are the outlets we use the most.
13. Window latches are a PAIN to latch and un-latch.  This could be because little pieces of dirt and such get into the latches and cause them to be harder to open.  The handyman went around and checked all of them, replaced one, and then worked on all the others and we can now get them all open a heck of a lot easier than we could before he worked on them.  I think he "shaved" them down some so they'd latch and unlatch a bit easier.
14. Locks on small window in bedroom #2 don't work.  User error again.  There's a small lip on each window that should attach easily to the window.  This particular window just wasn't aligned properly.  So it was just a little big of fenagle-ing and it's better now.  And even better news?  The spider never had a chance to get inside, haha!  It was seriously a gigantic spider!
15. Electrical Outlet on Guardian Box isn't connected.  Not fixed yet.  This is part of the service ticket put in for the morning room outlets, since it's all electrician related.

So lots of our stuff was fixed, but we still need to have some things fixed.  I'm a little irritated that service tickets have been put in, but I still haven't been contacted about anything.  Not. One. Thing.  Our second PM contacted me last week about getting the paperwork filled out and back to him so it could be filed.  I talked to him again today about things that weren't done yet.  He wasn't aware of the emailed stuff, as I hadn't included him on it {and to be fair, he hasn't really had a ton to do with our house or building, so I didn't include him on my emails}.  So I emailed him a list of what still wasn't fixed.  He was going to make sure service tickets were put in for each of them and then get back to me.  So still needing to be fixed:

1. Grout fill in:  The parts that are darker than the main grout color... we need someone to come back out and fill that in for us.
2. Cold water knob on master tub:  The plumber took my number and said he was ordering a kit. I haven't heard back for this at all. 
3. Loft Window:  replacement window apparently ordered.  Once window comes in, installation company will be in touch with me to schedule installation.
4. Master Shower Door sticking:  PM said that he would need to contact shower door people to come out.  Not sure this was ever done, so second PM was notified of this one today.
5. Morning Room Outlets not working.  STILL haven't heard anything on this.  I am a little irritated at this one as our PM called this one in while standing IN MY KITCHEN.  So nearly 2 weeks later and they haven't reached out to me yet.

Nothing major, like I said.  Just little things.  Big thing is is that it's all documented so if we have issues later, it's all on paper.  

One surprise that we DID have was that they installed a little 3x3 concrete slab at the end of the deck stairs, along with some solar LED lights.  We noticed that 2 new builds around us had these neat little slabs, and were kind of upset that we didn't have them.  I wasn't going to make a huge deal out of it, because it's just a little slab.  Well, the handyman put on in while he did all of our other fixes outside. I was super excited to get one, haha!

That's the only picture y'all get for now! I have lots more from all of our projects around the house... but I'm saving those photos for those posts, haha!!

I'm gonna try to get some more posts in soon with all of our projects!! We are LOVING this house and love being in it!  The dogs love all the space they have to run, their yard, and all their new friends.  Our neighborhood is awesome and we have met so many awesome people already!