January and February have been interesting around the house. It took several days to figure out how squirrels were managing to get into our garage. After chasing out about FIVE over the course of a few days, I finally found a small gap where we tore down a deck last year that was giving them an entry point into the garage. Seems there are none in there this morning when we’ve checked, so hopefully I’ve completely evicted them from the premises.

Well, I got my appliances and a HDTV ordered this weekend. Well not ordered really, but they are not delivering them until the 15th. I got a stainless steel fridge and stove, and since King’s had five years free financing I decided to go ahead and get a HDTV. I picked up the new Panasonic rear projection LCD. It had a nice crisp picture in the showroom, and it also has a PC monitor input which was kinda the feature that sold me on it.

Some new pics of the house have been added to the gallery software. Hopefully the floors will start being laid this week and the countertops will be installed soon as well. Basically we just have to finish the bathroom painting and touch up the bedroom paint and then do all the baseboards that I will need. I also think I’m going to wait on building the deck and attempt to build it myself in the spring. The more contractors I’ve talked to I think I have a good idea of how to do it and I think I could save quite a bit of money doing it myself. So hopefully if everything goes well I can start moving stuff in by the end of November.

Much to my suprise, and that of my mom as well, the house actually has oak hardwood floors under all the carpet. The living room we’ve pulled the entire carpet out and it looks in great shape, it just will need to be refinished. The hallway we know has a patch place in it from some work done to the furnace, but other than that we are hoping it’s in good shape and we can get the patched place fixed.

So far this is a big suprise and I hope to get them restored, they look great for the most part but just need to be refinished to be restored to their natural beauty.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet on the blog, but I am now the proud owner of a house. It used to be my grandmother’s, it was left to my mother and I, and since the people we were renting to have purchased a house and moved out, I will be living there shortly. It needs some work, and a little TLC, but it’s awesome to have a place that is mine. I’ll be painting a few rooms, laying new floors, and getting some new countertops in the kitchen. That’s what I got a contract for last night, the countertops. They will be coming early next week to get the templates made, then after that it should be about three weeks before the actual tops arrive to be installed. Below is a sample shot of the countertop I ordered from LG Hi-Macs.

By the way, pics of the house can be seen on pics.mancide.net as work progresses on the rooms.