Shutter Story

When we were looking at buying this house, we knew that there were a few things we would have to buy right away, while most everything else would have to wait for a while. The three necessities were:
1. A refrigerator
2. A washer and dryer
3. Window coverings

We solved the first two problems by shopping at the clearance centers in town and getting some good deals there. The window coverings was a bit trickier of a problem to tackle. We had noticed that the house had at one time had plantation shutters installed, but they had all been removed when the couple had been evicted. We were bummed, because we knew that was a big expense, and also knew that we didn't have the funds to put shutters back in every window they had been in. We started watching the KSL classifieds (much more popular site here in Utah County than Craigslist) to see if, by chance, they would be listed there, but had no luck.

That's when I did some detective work. On the public records page, I found the name of the owners of the house (meaning, the ones who SHOULD have been paying taxes for the past 2 years). I also found out that the woman has a blog. By reading through her old posts, I found out that her newly married son and his wife were the ones who were living in the house. And the daughter in law also has a blog. So, though a little bit of stalking, I found out more than I ever wanted to know about the previous owners of the house (including how their little dogs chewed on the cabinets in the laundry room one Sunday). We passed some of this information on to our realtor, and she contacted the owners (mom and dad) to see if they still had the shutters.

They did. Apparently, they hadn't yet paid them off, and they had been taken out of the home by The Blindman. After some great negotiating on the part of our realtor, they agreed to sell them back to us for 40% of the price they paid just a year ago, which included reinstallation by The Blindman. What a sweet deal for us! Within two hours, they were back up in the house (every window, including bathrooms and the garage) and making the house look so much better. Who needs decorating? We have shutters!

One cute pic I forgot I had. We went fishing at Pine Valley when we were in St. George last month with Tara's family. Kyla loved Kenya. Here she is wiping her mouth with her own shirt.


One funny story from Allie. I told her she was going to be going to a new primary class and meeting new friends. She said, "Good! I hate Noel (a boy in her primary class in Springville)." I had never heard her say anything bad about Noel before, so I asked her, "Why do you hate him?" Her answer? "Because he has cavities." Cavity snob.