The Start of a New Era

As of right now, I am finishing up polishing off the inspection contingencies on what will soon be our new house! 

The state of my desk is quite messy!

With this starts a new era in our lives, a shift from renting to owning! From dumping money down the drain to rental companies to dumping money down the drain to home improvement companies!

My wife and I are both very excited about this opportunity, and can't wait to get moved in. I'm so excited I set up a blog! 

I'm a scatterbrained, random type of guy, so staying focused on one thing is impossible for me. Therefore this isn't strictly going to be a DIY home improvement documentation type blog. I'm also going to toss in tons of information about how we saved money on the home improvements, and on our frugality in general. I may also spread out an talk about other stuff on occasion, so I in no way guarantee that there won't be some mission creep.


As of now, we are planning what we want to do to the house between closing and when we're going to move in (2 months). After receiving the inspection report, I have an idea of some of the small tasks which will happen, along with a few of the "must have" changes that we absolutely won't move in without. We have also negotiated with the seller to do our own repairs of some safety issues, so that's going to happen prior to moving in.

We are going to try to tackle all of this before moving in:

• Replace the A/C Circuit breaker with the proper one
• Put in GFCI protection in the kitchen and both bathrooms
• Fix the improperly grounded outlets in one of the bedrooms
• Replace the existing chain-link fence with a wooden privacy fence, including a chain-link dog run
• Fix/rewire one zone of the sprinkler system so it runs properly
• Fix  the two sprinkler heads that water the fence and the neighbor's driveway
• Tear down all wood panelling
• Repaint
• Buy a new refrigerator (and possibly a new oven)
• Start a garden and orchard in the backyard
• Replace the bamboo and plastic flooring with hand-scraped hardwood.

We probably won't get to everything, but if we get 60-75% done, that would be success! I'm sure I'll be referring to this list many times in the future, as we tackle some of these projects!