Another panoramic of my street after an un-real amount of snow was dumped in NJ.

I’m really a little tired of sharing panoramic shots of my street buried in feet of snow. :P

Here is a panoramic photo of my street on Monday late morning after the Blizzard that wrecked the Northeast USA blew through here. Click the image to see a bigger version of the photo.

My house during the recent blizzard that hit the East Coast of the US.

I also created a panoramic view of my street, taken from my front porch, during the blizzard.

This summer we finally purchased a new Barbecue grill for the backyard. Its a Weber and we were able to use it a few times before the weather got a bit too cool and cold. Looking forward to using in more actively next summer!

I can’t believe its taken me this long to post these photos. Early in the summer, we had a patio installed in the back yard. Its a wonderful addition to the house!

Some updated photos of my basement, with my mini “shrine” to the Red Sox.

The old one is below. We really liked the old vintage table below, but unfortunately too much pressure on one of its “wings” caused it to break. Its a 65 year old table, yet 3 years in the Clark house and we manage to bring it too its knees. Makes me proud! :)

So the painters finished up painting the house. And here is the big “reveal”. Its a nice grey with black shutters and a deep red door. Combine this with the grass that is growing and the house is now almost presentable :) To see a before photo, scroll down to the previous post.

Here is the first view of our house getting painted. This is just the primer coat, but none the less, it loos pretty good. They worked filling in and cleaning up the trim today, and will probably paint the trim tomorrow, with the main coats going on later in the weekend. This is going to transform how the house looks!!! Just for kicks, above is a before picture of the house.

This is grass. This is grass on my property. I never thought I would see the day.

So during the July 4th week, I stayed home and we had some landscapers come to our house, rip up the top layer of dirt across the whole property. They then dropped down a new layer of topsoil, they put down 45 lbs of grass seed, and then dropped hay all over the place.

We are now seeing real, actual grass growing on our property. Photos to be shared shortly.

The transformation of our TV room is almost complete. Today we had some new couches from Crate & Barrel delivered to replace the old ones that we had taken away yesterday.

The next thing we need is a new coffee table to replace Lisa’s Conran’s table that has been with us since New York City and may never leave the house.

If you live in New Jersey, I have a sofabed couch and loveseat set posted on craigslist that I need to get rid of. All details are on the craigslist posting. Respond to the email on the craigslist posting if you are interested. Need to get rid of them by next weekend (May 3, 2008)

In addition to drywalling the basement, we are going to get new carpeting to replace the funky, dirty old carpet that is currently there.

So more pictures are to come when the basement is more complete.

This week, we replaced the 1970′s style white tiles in the main hallway with hardwood flooring,. So now, the hardwood floor flows seamlessly from the main hallway into the TV room. We do still need to put in baseboards and just clean up the hall walls, as they are a mess with all the work done this past weekend. Replacing the tiles is something we’ve wanted to do since we moved in, and based on the difficulty in removing the said tiles, we probably should have done this before we moved in. Ah, hindsight. If you ever see a house that you like, and it has some ugly tiles that need to be removed, remove them before you move in. Trust me.

Its been a long while since I’ve updated this area of the site about the progress we’ve made on the house.

In the early summer, we had some trees cut down from the property outside. It really cleaned up the outside and let more sun hit the house and yard, but as the summer has moved on, sometimes I look around and it does not feel like we did a thing. I am already eyeing several other trees that I want to remove. We are really going to try to focus on the outside of the house to get that straightened out. It’s a mess.

As for the inside, we’ve been doing little things here and there, but no big projects to speak of. I’ve been trying to clear out the basement to get that renovated from its 1970′s dark wood paneling, and I made some great progress during the July 4th week. My big project downstairs is to clean the masonry walls in the unfinished part of the basement, paint them with a sealent, and then install lots of shelves so that all our stuff can be stored there. Not an easy task.

We really want to update the hallway and install hardwood floors, and update the 1/2 bathroom in the hallway, but that’s a bigger project than we think. But apart from the basement, its the last fairly big project inside the house (the kitchen does not count, because that’s a project that is off the charts).

So this week marks our first year living in our house. I suppose we can’t call it “our new house” anymore…its just our plain old house. So what did mother nature do to help us celebrate? She dumped 2 feet of snow on February 13th. Below are some photos of our cars buried in snow in our driveway.

On the whole, our first year has been great. We have made an immense amount of progress in updating and renovating the house. We have really transformed the interior rooms from the state they were in when we purchased. The kitchen is the one space we would like to really overhaul, however as we all know, renovating that room requires a huge chunk of cash. The one space that still needs a great deal of work is the basement and we are still working on that.

So, happy birthday house. Its been a great first year. Here’s to 29 more good years here (at least!).

We have begun to venture outside to address the mess that is our front and back yards. We are seeing some accumulation of dampness and water on the ground at the back of the house and that is definitely a problem. We think that a lot of that problem simply has to do with poor drainage from the gutters on the house, so hopefully that will not be a big project. Lisa cleared out a ton of leaves that were near the house and that should help a great deal.

More photos to come.

Apart from that, I continued in my quest to rid the house of wallpaper and made significant progress towards that goal. I completed the kitchen and abut 98% of the laundry room. The next task is the downstairs half bathroom which is very small and should not take too long.

The first of what I am sure will be numerous “gotchas” surfaced when I discovered that the geniuses who lived there previously painted over wallpaper on the 2nd floor of the main hallway. The challenge is that this wall is located at the base of the stairs on the 1st floor and extends all the way to the 2nd floor ceiling. Removing this wallpaper will not be fun. Oh, the joy.

This is the staircase down to the basement. Pretty groovy, huh? Definitely needs a disco ball at the bottom of the stairs. We’re actually going to keep this wallpaper on the walls.

In addition, we rented a Wallpaper Steamer and I cranked out some serious wallpaper removal. I stripped the entire foyer and half of the kitchen of all their wallpaper. Again, photos to come. I’m taking a few days off next week so hopefully I will be able to finish up the kitchen.

Once we returned to the house, Steve spent the majority of the afternoon taking wallpaper borders off the walls of Rebecca and Ian’s rooms. The wallpaper in Rebecca’s room came off the walls fairly easily, however the wallpaper in Ian’s room has proven quite a challenge.

To close out the day, we had a prospective painter give us an estimate for him to paint a few rooms. Then, another contractor stopped by to give us an estimate on the vanity for the kids’ bathroom and to re-do the whole bathroom. Overall, a pretty productive first day!!

The house was on the market since May, it had been seen by over 80 people and received a grand total of zero bids. The price was reduced around the time we saw it. The bid we put in was a little low, but we thought it was still very fair based on the condition of the house. We did our research and knew that other houses in the area in similar condition were sold at that similar prices to what we bid. The owner obviously wanted more and in a move that is easily one of the most outrageous and un-professional moves I have ever heard of in the real estate wars, he called up all the different realtors that had shown the house (without his listing agent knowing) and informed these people that the price was reduced. He also said that the minimum bid he would entertain would be $5K more than what we bid. We initially resisted, but eventually re-submitted the higher bid and were the first people to do so. But that seemingly did not matter as the owner informed us through the listing agent that he had accepted a bid for the exact same amount as what we bid, but that it was a “cash bid” or a non-contingency bid for the house.

Needless to say, we were dissapointed by how the owner had handled the situation. But I guess it means that there is another place out there that is far better.