Day 144: House of the Return to Bloggery

Four months back when I said I'd do weekly updates? Yeah.. I lied. The blog really helped me get through the trauma of getting the house ready, but after we moved in I've been doing everything possible to minimize thinking about it.

But we've done a lot! I'll try and arrange it into a narrative that makes sense.

House of PIG OUT!

First order of business was to break out the cookware that had been in storage for a year and a half. Lea made cheesecake and foccacia:



And I assembled a stand for the microwave, since we ripped the house's old one off the wall.



House of UNPACK!!

We can't tell you how great it feels to spread out through a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath house with a garage and a huge-ass basement after squeezing into a tiny tiny apartment.

Lea's stuff exploded all over her hobby room...



...and her rocks finally came out of hiding.



As for me, the comics are out of storage...



...the books are out of boxes...



...and the DVDs are, well, everywhere.



Incidentally, if you ever come stay with us, here are your (finished) rooms:

Guest Room


Guest Bath


House of BUY BUY BUY!!!

At this point we stopped thinking about our credit rating and just said 'to hell with it'. We got (drum roll please):

A new bedroom set:



A new dining room set:



New wooden bookcases:



And a Christmas tree!



That's the first one we've had since we've been together. It took our four furry sharks two full weeks to realize that all the dangly things on it were potential cat toys. They must be getting senile.

House of SEW SEW SEW!!!!

Lea intends to custom make all the curtains for the new house. Here's what she's got so far:

Dining Room (Center Panel)



Living Room (Valence)



Hobby Room (Roman Shade)



Look, it works!



Basement Curtains



That tall curtain hides the entrance to the 'cat room'.

We've been told the basement smells like a pet supply store.



To be fair, there's a lot of this going on down there:



House of (grumble mutter gripe) GET BACK TO PAINTING!!!!!

Just after New Years, after the nightmares had mostly gone away, we started painting the last few things. We finished the fireplace first:



Saturday and today we did the first coat of the white and the black in the downstairs bathroom.





House of Relax

Now is the time to do lots of this:



Lea's scrapbooking at the moment...



...and I'm about to bury myself in a pile of these:



Cheers!

Day 24: House of the Finish Line

Well, that's it. We're not done with everything we thought we'd get accomplished, but the movers are showing up tomorrow morning. We still need to:

1. Put the last coat of paint on the baseboards in the foyer.


2. Put another coat on three interior doors.


3. Paint the living room windowsill (we completely forgot it was there.


4. Paint a second coat and 'drag' the top of the guest bathroom.


5. Put up shelves in the master closet.


6. Paint and tile the half-bath downstairs.


7. Tile the 'kitty room'.


8. Finish painting the fireplace

And that's just the stuff we'd thought we'd have time to do before moving in. There's also many more projects we'll take on in the future when we have money again. We have improved the house about 10,000%. Check out the special House of Blog Before-And-After

Kitchen
Before

After


Dining Room
Before

After


Living Room
Before

After


Guest Room
Before

After


Hobby Room
Before

After


Master Bedroom
Before

After


Basement
Before

After


The hardest thing this last week has been the overall feeling that for all our work we were getting nowhere. When we were painting the walls, there was definite visible progress to reassure us. This last week, we kept having to paint coat after coat after coat on the baseboards and doorframes and they always needed more paint. And we're still not through. AUGH!

Our first project this morning was to fix the lousy sheetrock and baseboard in the laundry room. Here's our jury-rigged solution:



Then we proceeded to take the remaining unpainted doors off their hinges so we could paint them outside without fear of getting anything on the floors. Lea did lots of clean-up while I was at work, then we started packing stuff up to bring over early. We know it's for real now that The Landlords Have Arrived

Toe

Zoe

Mercury

Tegan


A move never seems for real until the cats show up.

Well, that's all for the pre-move show. From here on I'll try to keep this blog up with weekly progress reports. And remember, if you want to show up and help, there's still plenty to do!!

Day 23: House of the Final Countdown

This is Jonathan.



Jonathan is young and full of energy. He also has not yet had his soul crushed by three weeks of continual home improvement. Jonathan and Mom did this:



If you remember from yesterday, we'd set down all those self-adhesive tiles in the middle of laundry room and left the edges for today. Jonathan and Mom did them for us, and did a much better job than we would have, actually paying attention and filling in every nook and cranny along the bottom of the wall. Thanks!!!

That just left mostly painting for us. We started off by painting the kitchen.



Then throughout the day Lea and I put paint on the baseboards and doorframes in the kitchen and the dining room.



When I die, Hell will be full of baseboards, handrails, and doorframes, and we will be made to paint them over and over and over and over.

Oh, and we've got about 34 hours before the movers show up. Tick tock.

Day 22: House of Flooring, Flooring, Flooring

This morning, completely out of the blue, three guys showed up and put new carpet in the bedrooms.



I had enough self-control to wait for them to leave before rolling around on it.



Oh. My. God. This carpet feels soooo good. Especially compared to the original crap that we're still stuck with in the hallway and living room. Take a look: the old stuff is on the left, the new stuff is on the right -->



To make the day even better, another guy came by and cleaned the carpet in the basement.



I did do a little actual work, such as putting a second coat on the baseboards in the living room and taping off the kitchen for its paint job. It was Mom's birthday today (Happy Birthday, Mom!) so we didn't work much this evening, but the roofing guy finally came out to work up an estimate on replacing the roof and adding a cover over our patio.

After we got back from dinner, we started putting down self-adhesive tile in the laundry room. We were frightened by how easy it was. The miracles of modern science!



We put down all the pieces we could without cutting any to fit. That will come tomorrow.

Just to prove that every silver lining has a cloud - one of the baseboards in the laundry room is messed up.



We were going to get another piece of baseboard to replace it with, but I think we might actually use some of the leftover chair rail from the hobby room. It doesn't match, but it'll be behind the washer and dryer anyway, so who cares?