http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com What I have learned after buying my first house Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:15:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last year, we did not get very many trick or treaters. We didn't this year, either. In an effort to give away candy, and because this thought had occurred to me two or three months ago and I really wanted to do it, I decided to create a ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/124/a-halloween-ghost.html From the moment my husband and I first visited the home that we bought a little over a year ago, we knew we’d need to change the colors of the walls inside our house. The hallway, living room and master bedroom were a mint green color that appears to ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/122/painting-our-interior-part-i-choosing-the-colors.html It's been over a year since we bought the house, and thoughts of refinancing have been swimming through my head. I started shopping around to see if it made sense to refinance after Nickel was trying to decide when to refinance a mortgage. He had an opportunity to ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/121/refinancing-thoughts.html When we bought our house, our buyer's agent gave us a number of house warming gifts from his company. One of them was a 75 gallon coupon to the local oil company, provided that you signed on with their automatic delivery program for a minimum of one year. ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/120/accounting-and-oil-bills.html Over the past few weeks, we determined that we were going to get Behr paint from Home Depot. The idea is that we will paint most of the interior walls the week after my wife finishes her finals and before she starts working this summer, so that we can ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/118/buying-paint.html I ran the Boston Marathon on Monday, and was happy that the weather was not all doom and gloom as had been forecasted for the past couple of weeks. The doom and gloom managed to blow over the day before the race, and started clearing up in the hours ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/117/state-of-emergency.html The last time that I stopped in at Freihofer's bakery outlet, I did not have the best experience. However, every other time that I am there I have had an average experience, and they have great prices on english muffins and bagels that I eat on a daily basis. ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/116/freihofers-bakery-outlet.html For those that haven't heard, there has been a massive recall on wet cat and dog food. Symptoms range from the animal throwing up excessively to your pet dropping dead. Menu Foods, which manufactures about 80% of the pet food in the country, switched to a new supplier for gluten which ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/115/pet-food-recall.html Coming just in time to spoil our plans to leave the state for the weekend, Winter wanted to show everybody that while Spring weather has begun to peek through every few days, it is not quite here yet. I am not sure exactly how much snow we got, since ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/114/winter-wont-go-without-a-fight-it-seems.html Having a metal roof is nice, because the snow doesn't have to be brushed off of your roof. This is the first time that I have actually been home when it came down, though. It starts out sounding a little like thunder, but then it doesn't stop for ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/113/crash-comes-the-snow-off-of-the-roof.html Shoveling snow can be hard work. Shoveling 8 inches of snow is most likely hard work. Shoveling 8 inches of snow while it is still a blizzard condition is definately hard work. So what are the two best ways to make shoveling that snow easier? Other ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/112/the-two-most-important-snow-shoveling-tips.html A few weeks ago, we somehow put a pinhole in the top of our old faucet. I was out of town last weekend, so for the past two weeks we have gotten by with a faucet that was swaddled in duct tape in order to keep water from getting ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/110/how-to-replace-an-old-faucet.html I have no idea how she managed to do it, but my wife put a hole in our faucet. She was washing a spaghetti pot, which has no sharp angles or protuberances. The next time that I went to use the faucet, I got sprayed! The pin hole is ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/108/how-did-my-faucet-get-a-hole-in-it.html We got our new Propane Tank delivered, installed, and filled very easily. Our energy company within a few days of our having called them when we ran out of propane, and they not only arrived right when they said that they would but even called ahead to make sure ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/106/getting-a-new-propane-tank-was-very-easy.html It has been a few weeks since we were broken into, and I have long since cleaned up most of the broken glass from the door. A friend of mine then came over and measured the door for me to make sure that I got the correct size, and ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/104/brand-new-doors-to-replace-the-broken-one.html A couple of days ago, our clothes dryer stopped doing its job. I knew that it would at some point in the near future; it was only a matter of time. We ran out of propane. Since the dryer is the only appliance that we have using ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/102/running-out-of-propane.html Last weekend, the former owner of our house stopped by to let us know about a burglar alarm we had installed in the house. We were completely unaware of it, and he let us in on a few other tips as long as he was here. One of the tips ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/101/covering-the-shrubs.html I wrote about how to install a soffit extender in your attic, but I did not include a picture. One of our visitors, Fred, left the following comment: Can you describe (or do you have a photo) of soffit extenders? A quick web search doesn’t show up much - maybe ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/97/what-does-a-soffit-extender-look-like.html Not homeowner news, but a service that I use is Performancing Metrics. They recently came out with an ad network to go along with the metrics package and their firefox plugin, and were getting bogged down with the cost of running the web tracking tool. http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/99/ppp-bought-performancing.html The true meaning of Christmas is always much more evident on trash day than on Christmas day. This morning I put out twice as much trash as I usually do, and I normally only put trash out every other week. It is amazing how much more trash gets ... http://www.thefirsttimehomeowner.com/95/the-true-meaning-of-christmas.html