Aww Hail...

Has it really been so long since I last posted? Wow!! At any rate...

So here in our area of Northeast Ohio, we had some really bad hail the night of July 4th. Luckily(I think), we were gone when the storm blew through, but came home for the aftermath. Things looked bad at night, but were even worse in the light.
The backs and left sides of the houses on our side of the street absorbed hits, while the fronts of the houses across the street took hits. Of course for the last three days we have had a litany of storm chasing contractors ringing our doorbell and hanging literature on our door.
We have a contractor coming out Monday to look things over. It's one who does 90% of Ryan Homes in this area(but didn't do our community). They have all the spec materials on hand...siding, gutters/downspouts, and roofing.
So once he looks things over, he will be back on Wednesday when the field adjuster shows up so they can go over the house together. It's an adjustor from the company we got through the buying process, so I guess we will see how good they are. To me it looks like the entire rear will need resided, some of the left side, gutters and downspouts, but I'm not sure on the roof.
A lot of our A/C unit fins got smashed, so I'm not sure how that will work.
Above all else, I wonder how these repairs will affect our Ryan Home warranty?

Family Room

Up next is the family room.  As you can see from the pictures, aside from the accent wall the walls themselves are pretty bare.  Seems like over the years at our other house, while we did hang pictures, they were put in a hodge-podge of frames, and we would like to have some continuity now so we are holding off putting some up until we have frames that match.

We would also like to get some sort of something to put over the sofa, but we are not sure which direction to go. Any hints or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

The color we chose for this accent wall is SW Mocha, and once again the furniture is Ashley.

Let the .50 cent tour begin.

Okay, as promised I am going to post some pictures of our house room-by-room.

Up today is the Dining Room/Living Room as its called on the floor plan.  We decided to use it as more of a Living/Sitting Room.  If we have a large number of guests over and if the hubbub in the main living area gets too loud, this will be a little away from all that, without being too secluded.  Or when its just us and we want some alone time without being alone...this is the place.

The paint we used on the Accent Wall is SW Lively Yellow, and Loveseat, Chairs, and Ottoman are from Ashley.

Post-Settlement Review...ALREADY??!!

Where has the time gone?  Our PM was over tonight going over the punch list we have been making since we moved in.  It started out as a piece of paper on a legal pad, and each time we saw something we would jot it down.  My wife took it to work today to type it up and put it in some sort of coherent order.

Our PM was very happy to have the list, as opposed to walking the house and us trying to remember what we saw.  Overall it was just a lot of "finishing" type things, the only major item was the handle on our coat closet in the foyer stopped working one day(of course when it was closed), and I had to take the hinge pins out to open it, and we have had a shoe stopping it from closing again.  They set up a time to come back out on Wednesday to correct everything.

I seems like it has been one big blur since we moved in.  We have gotten alot done, but there still seems like alot to do.  We hope to keep painting, maybe one room a weekend until we are done, guest bedroom and extra bedroom aside.  But all the other areas we want to get done.  We have hung very little on our walls...with the exception of our daughters room.  She has made that quite her little fortress of solitude.  And my area downstairs is pretty much the way I want it.  With the exception of the stand-up Defender arcade game I want to get...and the requisite Dogs Playing Poker print.

I will leave you with some shots of the basement, and will post some from the other rooms in the house in the coming days.

My "office".  I think the Las Vegas print hides the electrical panel quite nicely.

Screaming for paint.

Opus from the Bloom County comic strip keeps an eye on things.

All our old living room furniture has been moved downstairs. Really need a CD/DVD rack. 

The floor lamp is serving as a placeholder for that Defender machine.

Final Prep Before Furniture and Move-In

Well, its been 11 days since we closed, and we have been busy putting things in the new house, painting and moving some things from the old house to the new one.

Tomorrow starts the arrival of some furniture, then on Wednesday the movers come here to move all our current possessions. Thursday is blinds from Lowe's and AT&T for cable, phone, and internet.  Friday is activating Guardian.  So Wednesday will be the first night in the house.

Aside from hanging all the ceiling fans, we have been painting alot.  Our daughters room is done, an accent wall in our bedroom, along with accent walls in the front living room, fireplace wall, opposite wall in the kitchen, back of the morning room, under the bar and the mudroom.

Two pieces of furniture we have put in so far are a hall tree/storage bench for the mudroom, and a 3 piece entertainment center for the family room.  Pictures of those will be forthcoming, but for now here are some painting pictures.

One thing I forgot to mention, and I don't know if anyone else has ran into this...But coming from a home that is about 92 years old, it is almost impossible to go anywhere in this house without someone hearing you coming. These past few days, my wife and I have scared each other so many times at the new house, since there are no floor squeaks to announce your arrival!! I think we are going to start wearing bells until we get used to it.

It's Fandemonium

I started to tackle the ceiling fan installations at our house, and figured since the painting was still going on in our daughters room, I would start there.

With the ceiling fan rough-ins already there, it was a rather straightforward job wiring-wise.  The assembly of the fan itself could have been a little easier.  Either instructions are getting harder to decipher for me, or they are not written as clearly as they used to be.

Either way, I got the fan and light installed and wired in fairly short order.  The only glitch, and I think this was on me was putting the slide control on the wall plate.  I though the fan switch was the one closest to the door, but its actually the one furthest away from the door.  So I will have to switch them around tomorrow, as its the start of the New Year we have to go to a family get-together for the obligatory pork and sauerkraut.

Before

After

Pendants

I also swapped out two of our can lights over the island with some ceiling-to-pendant light kits from Lowe's.  These were simplicity itself to install, just have to shorten the cords to your desired length, and buy your globes of choice.