The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[WRXtranceformed]

A few updates to the land of homeownership. We pulled the trigger this past weekend on (7) 15-gallon Leland Cyprus (+/- 7-9 feet tall) for our backyard. They will be arranged in a hook shape 7 feet apart with 3' pine straw rings which should allow them to grow about 50' and with how fast they grow we should have first floor privacy by year 1. It was not cheap to buy the bigger trees vs. smaller ones but in this case I was paying for time; the way our backyard slopes down toward a wetland area means that small 2-3' trees would take a number of years to get to where we need them to be for privacy. This particular vendor also has a no questions asked lifetime replacement warranty on their trees and they are installing them for me because I had no desire to transport or dig holes for 9 foot tall trees. I picked up a few more of the solar spotlights so I have one for each tree, and I'll figure out a hardwired solution for the front eventually.

I guess you don't have to be a homeowner to talk about furniture buying, but one thing you learn when buying your first home (or upsizing as in our case and have to buy more) is that furniture is laughably expensive. The days of Craigslist bargain beater couch don't work anymore when you get past the bachelor stage. I don't mind spending money on quality things but I cannot bring myself to spend $10-15k like some people around here do just for a damn bedroom set. My wife being the thrifty buyer she is has been a huge help in helping us add things we need here and there (and selling what we don't need on the local bargain Facebook sites).

We're fortunate here because we live in the land of furniture manufacturers, but stuff still ain't cheap for quality. There's a large warehouse here that buys up extras / overstock from a lot of local stores (Ashley, Rooms To Go, etc.) that has really good deals and we've found some great bargains, but you have to go the day after their delivery trucks arrive or it gets picked through quickly. The aforementioned bargain sites are massively helpful too; rich housewives get bored of their Pottery Barn couch and sell stuff for stupid cheap to each other just to get it out of the house.

My wife had been looking for a replacement table for the junker we got as part of a CL package deal for some nice counter height chairs we wanted (yeah you can still find good deals on CL!) and someone posted this up in our community's Facebook page. $200 for the table and $400 for table + chairs, and it was a mile up the road in our neighborhood. Talking to the prior owner, the chairs were $150 each from BB&B hock: Table has leaves that fold down and inside the table, cool! I don't know how much the original table was (it was a gift from her children) but couldn't have been less than $500.

Yea we're working on getting drapes up





So yeah, you don't have to spend a fortune to furnish your home with nice things you just have to be thrifty and quick on the draw when good deals come up! Believe it or not we have also had great luck with Rooms To Go for new stuff, most of their stuff is decent quality and very reasonably priced when they have sales.