Today, is the day!!! We have been in the US for exactly 7 months (we arrived on September 16th 2011) and we are already living the american dream...a new home, our home!!!
It has really been a marathon since January both with the bank, the insurances, the second relocation, the renovations and making sure that everything is done by the time we move in.
Denise, our agent did a great job organizing everything and making sure that all will be 100% ok for the closing day! Thanks to her and husband Tom for helping us buying this house!!
Our new address:
10803 Cedar Brook Ln, Highlands Ranch, CO, 80126, USA
(39° 31' 11'' N, 104° 56' 47'' W)
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| Look at the blue dot ;-) |
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| View form the open space by a beautiful day! |
We first visited it on January 27th and we both liked it very much (Mila too). Yet, there was a few things that made us hesitate a little bit:
(1) The small and ugly, rocky garden
(2) The partial carpet on the ground floor, which made the living room really tiny
I managed to retrieve some of the pictures that were used to advertise the house, see by yourself:
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| The beautiful gas-operated two sided fire place (wooden fireplace are forbidden in the Colorado) |
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| The living room with the nice windows bay |
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| The huge kitchen where Wai Leng can prepare lots a nice meals ;-) |
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| The backyard is made of 4m^2 of grass and the rest are rocks + there are too many trees / bushes |
So before moving in, between April 17th and April 26th (our moving date), we had to organize the following:
(1) Remove the carpet, add new hardwood floor, have the entire ground floor sanded and stained.
(2) As the house had been on sales for more than a year (380 days), we had to deep clean the carpets on the first floor, clean the ducts (air conditioning + heaters air pipes), have the entire house cleaned up (kitchen, bathrooms, etc...)
(3) Instal new well covers to ensure Mila is safe running around the house
(4) Instal a radon mitigation system has it has been measured some -above the recommended limit- in the house.
(5) and finally, we had to buy a new fridge, a washing machine and a dryer.
It is very challenging to find good contractors in the US and you have to be careful. Not all companies will do a great job and you have to select one with your guts...the alternative is to get references from neighbors or friends but at the end, you have to make the choice!!
We got really lucky with the hard wooden floor company has everything went perfectly well, it only took 3 days and the result is really gorgeous. Look by yourself:
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| First, the carpet got removed (yeah!!) |
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| Then the wood (red Oak) got delivered (same as the actual one) |
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| Fixing the last pieces of wood in the living room...nice isn't it??? |
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| Here how it looked like during the sanding |
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| ...and here it is, our new hard wood floor. The color is great too: "Provincial" |
The entire ground floor has been done and now the living room / dinning room "look" much bigger...nothing to compare with before!
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| Welcome Home!! |
I found an amazing company for the well covers. They have a few patent pending on their product and deliver custom-cut covers MADE IN AMERICA!!
Similarly, no issues with the company that installed our Radon mitigation system. Before, we had 17.2 pCi/L with an EPA guidelines of 4 pCi/L. Once installed, we did the analysis again, and the entire house went down to 0.4 pCi/L.
The house being super clean, I set up my new thermostat which turned my house into a "smart" house:
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| My new NEST thermostat...design, connected, efficient!! |
...see you on April 26th!!!
