One morning this week, like every morning, I moseyed up to the window in our bedroom to peer out to the street. Most of the time, I like doing that to snoop on whatever is happening in the front of the house. Other times, I just like to admire the beautiful new grass we have on our front yard.

Unfortunately, this morning, I was greeted with an unwelcome surprise. I walked up to the window and felt something bumpy under my toes. Our beautiful hardwood floors that we just refinished had bowed up a teeny tiny bit. I brought the ultimate judge (my mom) to assess the situation and she said that we caught it early and we’re lucky. Oh, and that it’s really not as bad as we think. That was a huge relief!

Now, we had this problem when we first moved into our house which is why we chose to refinish the floors and replace those boards. Many dollars and weeks later, we had what seemed to be brand new floors. It took much longer to refinish the floors than we initially expected because it was really hard to get all the moisture out of the wood. Several times, the wood started bowing up before they could coat the floors. So they had to replace a few boards, pump up the heat in the house, and cross their fingers that the wood was in a condition to refinish. The fact that it happened after they were refinished wasn’t a huge surprise but we still didn’t expect this to happen.

After some investigation, we concluded that this water damage is from our new sprinklers. The water was hitting the side of the house and, since the sprinklers went off twice a day, the soil didn’t have time to dry up. The water somehow got in under the house or through the side of the house and caused this damage. So, we immediately turned off the sprinklers, called up our local garden store, and ordered the plants that were in our landscaping plans to line the front of the house. We noticed a crack in the siding under the window and on the side of the house so CJ caulked it to seal the opening. We suspect that’s how the water got in to the floors.

We kept the sprinklers off to let it all dry out and are hoping that the plants will soak up some of the water and block the sprinklers going forward. Our gardener came over the next morning to reposition the sprinklers so they didn’t hit the front of the house. Hopefully, that should fix the problem but as an added precaution, we might have some professionals come over next week to give us an estimate for lining the underside of our house with plastic to prevent any further damage. Stay tuned.

One of our favorite discoveries when moving into our new home was temporary blinds. Not only did they cover up the windows so snoops couldn’t peer into our house, they also cost $5 each. For someone who cannot decide quickly on something so permanent, they were the ideal solution.

However, over the past few months, we were reminded why they are called temporary blinds. They’re not meant to be hung up for extended periods of time which we learned pretty quickly when they kept falling down over and over…and over again. We decided to use our handy dandy Frog Tape to keep them attached to the windows which made for a very stylish window. I mean, who doesn’t want some temporary paper blinds hung up by some bright green tape? I know, you’re jealous already.

Back to the newest development, we did some research on different blind companies, looked in a few catalogs, and visited our second home (The Home Depot, of course) to find the best deal**. We weren’t surprised to find that our second home had the best price and exactly what we needed.

So, we finally purchased some beautiful white faux-wood blinds to hang in our house. We wanted to see how they looked first before buying enough for the whole house so we started with the office and guest room. They were so easy to hang up! They take about 20-30 minutes each and look so good! Once we knew we liked them, we bought enough for the family room.

Helpful hint: When you buy your blinds from Home Depot, they take the size of your window and subtract a 1/2″ from the width before cutting. They make them a 1/2″ thinner because the blinds need that much space on each side for the mounting brackets. Because of that, when you’re measuring, I wouldn’t round down. The last thing you want is for the blinds to be too thin and have them crash down when you first hang them in the brackets (that happened to us). You also don’t want them to be too wide because then they won’t fit in your window. So trust the experts and let them remove 1/2″ from the width. 🙂

**As an aside, something else we discovered while being homeowners is the price difference that you’ll find between different stores. I HIGHLY recommend doing research on items before you buy them because I bet you’ll find it cheaper somewhere else. I’m an anti-BB&B (Bed, Bath & Beyond) shopper because they are WAY overpriced. You’ll find items there that are the same price as Pottery Barn but 1/4 the level of quality. For example, we bought a curtain rod there and, when screwing it into the wall, the screw literally broke in half. CJ is pretty strong but I wouldn’t say he’s the incredible hulk. When we went to our favorite store, The Home Depot, we found a curtain rod for 1/3 of the price and it is way higher quality than the BB&B rod.