Dishwasher drama

The dishwasher continues to confuse!

After dishwasher visit #1,000,000 with no answers, the dishwasher randomly started mostly working last week. By mostly working, I mean it washed and sort of dried the dishes, but after what we've gone though, I can handle some damp dishes! We turned up the heat in the water tank, so maybe that did it, but with the drying not working completely I don't believe it.

Anyways, it was working ok and we ran it a few times. Then we used it last night and......you guessed it! Back to the same old problem! This dishwasher is going to turn my hair grey and take a few years off my life!

So back to the same problem. I know I've been spoiled but I've never lived anywhere without a dishwasher, and I've had enough of this handwashing/drying business!

We were told that after you buy a new house, expect something major to go wrong within the first six months...and that was true. So remember as a new homeowner...something within your abode will stop working sooner than it should. I just hope when it happens to you, it takes less than four months to fix it!

My new obsession

Decorating the house has become my new obsession. Well, it's not really new, I've been pretty obsessed ever since we moved in, but I've gone through stages of obsession - from the first few months happy excited obsession, to months three - seven of minimal obsession to my current MUST COMPLETE ROOMS obsession.

I've gotten the advice from others so I keep telling myself that you can only find so much stuff while really looking for it, and some things you will just stumble into. But everytime I walk into our guestroom with its  empty walls and plain looking bed I feel an urge to run to Bouclair. But then I get there and nothing really speaks to me and I leave frustrated with another white candle.

Add to this that there is more than one room that needs a bit of TLC, and you can see why my head is spinning. So the question is, is it better to decorate one room at a time - first focus on the office, and then the guestroom, and then the master or should I walk into a store looking for stuff for my officeguestroommaster...leading to the aforementioned candle!

So with this post, I think I need some advice. One room at a time or everything at once? And while you're responding, if you have any ideas to freshen up a light blue guest bedroom I'm all ears!

8 months in: rainy day backyard

I was looking back at my first post here and the lovely picture of our backyard from July 2010, and thought it might be fun to do a comparison to how it looks today on a rainy March 2011...the difference really makes me yearn for the spring! We'll be making some changes to it once the weather gets nice...but I'll save that for another post!

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Blogger and appliance fail!

I've comitted the ultimate blogging sin - I know and I'm sorry for anyone who was following me - I started a blog and then stopped shortly after. The truth is this was a mixture between a lack of really exciting things happening with the house, and uncertainty whether anyone is actually reading. Both bad reasons, since something is always going on with the house no matter how small and I am guilty of reading people's blog postings and not commenting...so here I am!

Since my last post in October (hangs head in shame), we ran into the first major breakdown in the house - our dishwasher. Starting in mid December, the three year old dishwasher decided it wasn't going to work anymore, and it was going to be impossible to diagnose to force us to spend some quality time together hand washing dishes. Now you can call me spoiled, but I have never not had a dishwasher (other than the cottage).

We went through five (count em five) Sears repair people who all swore they had solved the problem - from the regular guys to the "top" dishwsher repair man, to an installer, to countless trips to Home Depot and still no dishwasher! We have a non-Sears repair man coming this weekend to look at it, but I am not feeling confident. I have a feeling we will be continuing this together time until we bite the bullet and buy a new dishwasher (which may involve more major restructring of the kitchen, but that's for another time;)

I don't know if there is a learning here for anyone thinking about buying their first house, other than it is true that things will break down in your new abode, unexpectedly and annoyingly, but you have to roll with the punches. I'd offer to post a picture, but really who wants to see a broken appliance!

Does the house fit the furniture or the furniture fit the house?

The second we heard our offer was accepted, our minds turned to our new project - buying furniture! Ok, maybe not the second after - at that point our minds turned to a bottle of wine (or at least our lips did!), but pretty soon after!

It couldn't have been more than a day or two after and we were on the hunt for some new furniture for the house. Anyone who knows Mike and I knows we like lists, and sure enough we had made a list of what furniture we needed to buy (among other things!) so off we went, list in hand.

Now, our house is not huge, not even big, it's a Beaches/Toronto home, so it's on the smaller size, I like to say cozy. We knew we wanted a king size bed, and were willing to sacrifice floor space for it, and a new light coloured couch, since I had had enough of black leather!

After a lot of searching we ended up buying our king bed from GH Johnson's, which is a warehouse-like furniture store that I really recommend - good prices and nice selection, and a couch from the Chesterfield Shop, which I also highly recommend - good prices and great selection - you can choose everything from the material to the armrests!

Fast forward a month and we went to our final walk through before the close, and we thought we should measure the rooms.

Bedroom - check to the king bed!

Living room - the couch will not fit!

The couch we had bought would leave about 10 cm walking space. Luckily we were able to call the Chesterfield Shop and since they had not started making our couch yet we were able to order us a smaller size that would give us room to walk past it!

So, my piece of advice to new homeowners may seem obvious, but in the excitement of the moment is easy to forget. Unless you are into construction, you can't change the size of your house, so make sure you know how much space you have to work with when you are buying new furniture. Take a tape measure with you when you go tour houses, or better yet once you have purchased a house, stop, breathe a minute, grab a bottle of wine, and stop again. Wait until you do your final walk through or move into the house and you have as much time as you want to measure your rooms before you go shopping, list in hand.

To theme or not to theme?

When I started to think about decorating our house, I wondered whether we should have some kind of "theme". I didn't want it to be overdone, but thought it might be nice to have some flow and pieces that tie the place together. Since we are living in The Beaches, the theme was obvious - beachy.

While having sand on the floor instead of hardwood floors or waterbeds instead of normal ones seemed a bit extreme, I thought through artwork on the walls or knick knacks on some shelves I could get the feel I wanted out of the house - bright, comfortable, and calm - just like the beach a few steps away.

Armed with this idea, I hit up some of the typical home stores, and was able to find some pieces I really liked. While Mike has requested "no more water pictures", I think I was successful in bringing the beach in. You can see a few pictures of some of my finds below.

I'd love to hear from you - what do you think about having a "theme" in houses? Do you have one?