Utility Room Wall.

We are working on finishing the basement, we needed to make some room in the family room so we could lay out the carpet.  I thought it would be a good time to finish off the wall for the utility room and build some shelving in there to store boxes while we were working in the other room.  Started on a Sunday, and got half of it up that day, and finished the rest during the week.

Stuff goes in, stuff goes out

We had our required septic pumping (every 3 years) and all went well.  Not a big deal, and it was good to have such a critical part of our home checked out with a clean bill of health.  Total cost 2 hours and $225.  We went with Schlomka Septic, for no particular reason and the guy was chatty and had some interesting stories to tell :).

Fixing the treadmill

I went for a run one morning and found that the belt of the treadmill was slipping quite a bit.  Pulled out the manual, tried tightening the walking belt, didn't help.  Put it on the back burner for a couple days (weeks).  Eventually found myself bored and took off the cover, found quite a bit of black dust.  The internet said that it could be the motor belt as well.

I marked the belt and roller to see where the belt was slipping, this confirmed that it was the motor belt.  I called up the support center to order the part.  He had me move the tension spring up to the next setting, which fixed the problem as well.  This confirmed that the motor belt was failing, so I ordered the part, $40 for the a simple belt...  Well cheaper than a new treadmill I guess.

You can see in the bottom picture where I drew a line with white out to see if the pulley was slipping on the roller.  I also made a line on the axel from the motor onto the belt and I could see that move when the walking belt would slip.

The final clearing!

As you could see we started clearing our land 2 weeks ago, when my dad brought over his new tractor.  We have come a long way in 2 weeks.  What started as clearing for a playset, turned into a destroy the lot while having fun on the tractor time.  Yesterday we had to say good bye to the orange beast, but I think it has served us very well :)

On Sunday we hooked up the tiller attachment and it cleared the area, and made a nice bed for planting.  It was pretty amazing how much we were able to get done in such a short amount of time.  Now we have to get back to manually raking and seeding.

More clearing the land

We continue to work on clearing the area for the kids playset.
I also cleared a path up to the road on the opposite side of the lot.  We might be able to use that to drive down to the bottom, while we are working on putting grass in the back yard.

Our orchard

My parent bought honeycrisp apple trees for Nick and Maddy when they were born and we have those planted along the driveway.  Last fall in October we purchased a bunch more apple trees, when they went to 75% off.  We also picked up a flowering pear and a couple of pear trees.

I was worried about the trees, because of the lack of snow cover and occational cold temperature during the winter.  But they are budding out and look to be doing just fine.

Notice of Valuation

Received our property tax statement for this year and the estimated valuation for next year...
The value of our house:

2011 - 390k
2012 - 380k
2013 - 330k (est.)

Our taxes went up a bit in 2012, even though the value when down a bit.  I am sure hoping that we see a big reduction in 2013 though.  Pretty insane what the value of our home has done.  When it was appraised for the initial loan it was worth 540k (the appraisal).  When we refinanced in October it appraised for 430k; that hurt because we had to pay 60k to stay under 80%.

Oh well, it is in our best interest for the value to go down, because we have no plans to sell it for many, many years and our taxes should go down with the value.  Only negative is that we would like to get a HELOC so that we can do some improvements.

Clearing the land

Grandma and Grandpa came over and brought Grandpa his new toy :)
We spend the day clearing and working on cleaning up the area where we are going to be erecting a play set for the kiddo's!