So many things have happened over the past few months and it’s been exhausting! I really want to take the time to use this space here to reflect on the goings on at our new house outside of Austin, TX. Every now and then I’m completely in awe that we did this move and how far we’ve come! I fall in love with this house more and more every day!!! However, it has had its challenges.
By the way, first thing for me to mention, is the house has two sides to it. The first house you enter is the older side and it has three beds, two baths, the bigger kitchen which is also open to the large living room/dining room. This original house was built in 1993. Then there is a hallway with windows and glass doors to let light in that lead you to the newer side of the house. This newer side was built in 2017 and has a galley kitchen, open dining/living room area, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s a one-floor, ranch house, which I never thought I would like, but this one is perfect! The house forms an L shape and the pool is in the middle of the opening in the L. I’ll write and show more about how we’re using this space in future posts.
Now let’s move on to the things we’ve been learning as we get to know this house…
Lack of Maintenance
One of our big things to learn about this house is what maintenance the previous owners didn’t do. It all started the first day we moved in, and we had to find the random smoke detectors that were beeping for us to replace the batteries. There are new models, there are older models, they are all over the place without rhyme or reason, and we had to take most of them down and put them in the garage before we figured out which ones were beeping. The first week we didn’t get into it and the beeping would drive me insane!!!
Next up is the pool. Having a pool was one of our non-negotiables. It was a hard requirement as we were looking for a house here. The in-ground pool here is five years old and it is really time for the water to be drained, power-washed and filled back up again, due to build up of chemical in the water. This is something you should do with an in-ground pool every 4-5 years. Unfortunately, we found this out when at the end of May when we were already having really hot 90+ days. You cannot fully drain a pool when the weather is this hot. It’s not good for the pool structurally. Following instructions from the local pool company, we drained it a lot and added new water and chemicals and it seems pretty clean and stable for now. When the weather gets cooler in November, we’ll be doing the full draining and power washing.
Next up, still with the pool, the pump would sometimes have a hard time starting to prime, as the one filter lid needed to be replaced. It took a few orders and then finally doing some research to get the right lid. Apparently our model of pool filter can have two different types of lids. The one good thing we did do, was have a pool maintenance guy come out and show us some of the ropes of our pool, which was super helpful!
Next up on maintenance, comes the HVAC on the newer side of the house. It stopped working a month or so after we first moved in, then a week later started working again, then stopped again. The second time it stopped working, we had to get it fixed. I work from home and my office is on the newer side of the house, in the back bedroom. We replaced the thermostat with a new Nest unit, as we originally thought that was the problem, but it wasn’t. My husband did some troubleshooting and found the HVAC unit wasn’t sending any power to the thermostat, but we couldn’t figure out why. I asked one of our new neighbors if they had an HVAC company they liked to work with and they got me the number for a great company!!! The HVAC company we called told me they thought they already knew what the issue was, a blocked condensation line, and they were right. They showed me where the the condensation line goes to in a bathroom sink drain right below it and cleared it all out. They also replaced the HVAC filter for me and it was a mess! We have no idea how long ago the prior owners changed out the HVAC filters!!! All that and they didn’t charge us at all! I have their phone number saved and will definitely use them if we have any issues in the future. We did change the HVAC filters later that same week on the old side of the house. They were pretty dirty as well!
Electric Issues
The next biggest issue was some electric on the newer side of the house was completely not working. We could not turn on the light in our master bedroom closet! My husband would go outside and flip the breaker (we’re getting used to the fact that our breaker boxes are outside!), come in and turn on the master bathroom lights and it would trip immediately! We’d go through that with every item that was on that breaker and the same thing. Thank goodness my husband is a very handy electrician (it was what he was doing during COVID times). Eventually, he took a half a day on a weekend and disconnected every item on that switch and reconnected it carefully looking for issues. We’re not quite sure what about that fixed it, but it did! He did find a few issues, and he didn’t have to rerun any wire!
We are still having a problem with the breaker for the disposal on the kitchen sink on the new side keeps tripping, and not sure what is causing that. However, we don’t use that very often, so we’ll save that troubleshooting for another day.
Scorpions
I have a very strong dislike for these bad boys! Our new neighbors have informed us they are the worst they’ve ever seen them. I’m OK if it’s just keeping an eye on them outside, but they have come into our house. We’ve done a combination of having the pest people come out a few times already to spray the house, but then I’ve also found that spraying cedar wood oil in water also helps keep them away. I spray all the doorways, baseboards and around the pool. We still find a couple of small dead ones in the pool every morning, but as long as we don’t have them inside the house, I’m OK. Our daughter’s cat was killing one last week in the house, but we haven’t seen anymore after that night (knocking on wood furiously!!!)
Did I mention we’re about to go through the house and caulk all the cracks at the bottom of the baseboards and shore up any issues with the weather stripping on the base of the doors? Hopefully, that will all help as well and future years we’ll see even less or none!
Brown Texas Tarantulas
These guys are cute! And they kill scorpions. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any recently. We were seeing the in the pool area during the spring and only twice in the house. I think they are too big to get into the cracks of the house (again knocking on wood furiously!!!) Both times in the house, they were in our daughter’s room, which is the big bedroom in the old side of the house. The first one her cat killed and she felt so bad! The second (and last one) was in May and she got him in a box and took him out of the house.
As one would expect, every house is different and has it’s quirks. These are the ones we’ve found here so far. Looking forward to learning so much more and really making this house our new home.
When you moved to a new house, what surprised you to learn about your new place? How long did it take for you to really feel you figured things out?
