Photos of the house
 

Now that we're pretty much settled in and the upgrades for our house are done (other than painting the outside which we're in the process of) I'm sharing some photos of our house.

It's a 3,000 square foot home built in 1986. We put on a new roof, ripped up the old carpeting and replaced it with Spanish tile floors throughout the house other than the bedrooms and Garage. The bedrooms have wood laminate that I picked out. We painted the interior (I picked the colors). We took out the old cabinets and counter tops and replaced them with new oak cabinets and marble counter tops. (My wife picked the counter top and I picked the cabinets). We put up new blinds and valances. We got some serious home theater equipment (I pick out all electronics).

The cabinets in our laundry room are an example of the old cabinets that were throughout the house...including the bright yellow Formica counter tops.

I haven't included photos of the garage yet, but it's spotless and has drawers, cabinets and workbenches on all the walls. Very organized and nice. The former owner was a bit of a craftsman, but didn't have very good taste.

There are 3 bathrooms and one of them is in the laundry room. You can access it either through the kitchen, the garage, or the side door of the house. It has handicapped handles. The former owners were elderly and needed these.

We got the house for $70k and we put about $30k into upgrades...minus the home theater stuff.


If you're interested you can see them on myspace

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/inde...lbumId=3050051

or facebook

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...&id=1546955747

Ahhhh...nice! Your house is very clean too. :) Out of curiosity, is your wife Asian?

Yes. She is Vietnamese.

Looks good, does the dog cart go in the garage?

Ahhhh....her outfit sure looks comfortable. Hmmm...wonder where I can get some those? :p

The dog cart is in the Garage for now. I have run into a funding issue for starting up the dog business though. Right now I'm trying to find an IT job to help us get buy until I can save enough to open the dog business the right way.

One step at a time.

We really love having hard floors in our house instead of carpet.

I like that pass-thru window in the kitchen.

Nice looking place, Radar. It's huge!

Looks great Radar, good job.

Glatt: There's a lot more too it, but I haven't taken all the photos yet. You get a lot of house for the money here.

How much does it need to do it the right way? I though you had it all mapped out -have you changed the game plan?

Awesome job on the house, man. Looks very, very homey and comfortable. Nice little fambly you've got going there.

Well, I got the cart and I found a place I think will work.

What I need is money to get all the business licenses, permits, etc. and I need to make some repairs on the cart. I'll also need some money for inventory and stuff. I want to buy an ice machine and a few other things. I need to get a commissary partner, health permits, signs, napkins, propane, etc.

I'm prolly about $5,000 away from opening up seriously. We spent our savings making the house nice and I'm collecting unemployment right now so we really don't have the funds to do it right now.

OMG - hasn't Nina grown!
She's a proper little girl now - and I still think she's a baby.

What a beauty.
And lovely house.
TBH, a little sterile for me - but I've never lived in such a hot climate.
And you do have acres of room - congrats.

I feel you on the sterile thing. I like carpet. I think it's warmer and it dampens sound. But my wife is from a hot and humid climate like Florida. It's easier to clean than carpet. I wanted to make her happy.

Nina is soooooo smart and she's growing up so quickly. She just turned 2. She knows her alphabet, and can count to 10. She LOVES to sing and dance and loves music in general.

She's a lot closer with me than her mother, but I think that will change as she gets older. I know she'll hate my guts by the time she's 13.

My favorite is when she hugs me and kisses me and tells me she loves me....and then asks for candy. ;) Or asks me to pick her up and hold her....so she can reach the candy. :)

Yep. You are one lucky guy, Radar. Congrats from the humble Howdy home.

Thanks Cap'n.

We finished painting yesterday so I added photos of the exterior parts of the house. The thing that looks like a shed is actually a pump house. We have our own well to supply our water, so no water bill.

That light on the pump house looks big enough to light up the whole yard.

Yeah, it'll spin the meter.

My power bill last month was $353!!! There is no natural gas in my town. I think it has something to do with the power company paying off officials. The power company charges me $170+ for the power, and then charges me nearly the exact same amount for FUEL. They are charging me on both sides of their generator. I'm paying for electricity so they can buy the generators, and I'm paying for the fuel to put into the generator. It's insane.

These guys shut down the power for a lot of poor and elderly people and were also incredibly rude to them so one day when someone's family member on life support at home died because they cut off the power of them went to their offices and shot up a bunch of people.

Their answer wasn't to provide discounts for needy people and it wasn't to improve their customer service skills or to treat people with respect. Their answer was to close down all of their offices so they don't have to deal with customers in person. Instead you have to go to a check cashing place if you want to pay your bill in person.

I have a brand new front loading gas dryer I bought a year ago for $750 and I can't even use it because we have no gas here. It's crazy. My wife made me spend another $750 to buy the electric version of the same dryer to match our washer. Now I'm trying to sell the other dryer and I'm having no luck because other people don't have gas either.

I hate cooking with electricity. I prefer gas. Everything in the house runs on electricity including the pump to bring in water.

It's a good thing I don't have any house payments.

Can you get LP gas? It means you have to have a tank out back, though.

We could set the house up for propane, but propane is a lot more expensive than natural gas, and we'd lose a big part of our backyard for the tank.

I think we should be able to pick our power company the same way we pick our long distance carrier. This way, the power companies would have to remain competitive. Right now they have a monopoly within each neighborhood.

I guarantee, customer service would improve, and there would be no outages, and the price would certainly drop unless their was some sort of collusion between the power companies.

My God, Paul, last I heard, your wife was still pregnant with the little one. 2 years!! It seems like such a long time, but yet, just yesterday.

Regardless, the house looks great (I got that same sterile feeling)! I'm happy that you're doing well.

You still in SoCal?

No. I'm in Florida. I got the house for what a down payment would cost me in L.A.

The only problem is I'm having a tough time finding work out here. They have a HUGE retirement community here called "The Villages". It spans 3 counties.

If I can't find work soon, I"m going to have to be a gigalo for old ladies. ;)

For those of you without facebook or myspace accounts. I've posted the photos on photobucket.

http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z...use/?start=all