Catching up and settling in

Wow… it's been six weeks since my last post… how'd that happen? Clearly I've been slacking off on the blogging — time to fix that!

So, what's happened lately? Nothing much… and by nothing much, I mean a lot!

The biggest thing is that we're really, truly moved in and settled in now. Everything's unpacked except for stuff that's staying in storage, the furniture is arranged in pleasing and practical ways, pictures and artwork are all in place on the walls… it's a wonderful feeling! We put in a major push over the last couple weeks to get everything ready for the housewarming party and it was worth it. It's amazing how motivational a deadline can be, isn't it?

I think we actually surprised people with how settled in we are now — we got more than one comment about how “it looks like you've been living here for years.” (I think they meant that positively — “you've got it all figured out and made comfortable” — rather than the opposite — “jeez, you've been here for two months and already trashed the place!”…)

Anyway, I've really been struck lately by how everything in this house already has meaning for us and memories associated with it. It's a really good feeling. I'm going to post some examples now — please bear with my ramblings, or ignore them and just see some of the house pictures you've been asking for (though now that we've had the open house, a lot of you have already seen this stuff by now!):

Of course the pictures on the wall themselves have a lot of meaning — our wedding, the places we've traveled together — but the stairway itself also makes me think of how Heather spotted the opportunity that this big blank wall presented, and how we worked together to get the pictures arranged and hung aesthetically. A real team effort!

Our office/guest room/craft room is full of thoughts and memories. The bookcases from our eight-hour IKEA shopping spree. My D&D books and miniatures, both old and new. Even the successful room layout itself, which came from Heather saying thoughtfully, about a week after we moved in, “This room just isn't working! What if we switched all of the furniture around the opposite of how we have it right now?” This is a really cozy, comfortable room, exactly as it should be.

Our “Mickey's Shadow” walls make the bedroom a wonderfully tranquil place. The bed frame was a spontaneous purchase when we found a deal too good to refuse, a pleasant change from our usual modus operandi (see also, 8 hours at IKEA). The comforter on the bed was made for us by my mother from the tablecloths at our wedding rehearsal dinner.

See what I mean? Memories and good feelings everywhere I look!

Hardwood floors are hard

Weew its been a crazy couple of weeks! Glenn and I enjoyed our long 3 day weekend just catching our breath after the whirlwind of activity since we closed on the house. Even though we're both still having trouble remembering to drive to the house and NOT the apartment, it's already feeling more like home than our previous apartments :-)

So since the last post.. after we had the carpets removed we began the leveling process. That was tricky involving lots of roofing felt and "high-tech" analysis with a long straight edge. Luckily, I had my husband, the expert leveler around to do the job.

Humm this is definitely taking longer than the ripping-out-carpet part...

Then we brought in friends to help with putting down the bamboo. This went pretty well and only took the majority of 2 days...

Looking good!

Awww so pretty! (Other 2 rooms not shown but just as pretty)

So that was that. Well not really. We ended up taking half the boards back up the following weekend to recut them around the door molding (with help from my parents who came into town to help us settle thinking that we had already completed the floors. Ha, tricked um!) due to some oversight on our part the first time around. And we've had to redo the quarter round twice, redo the caulking job, and repaint the molding. But you know, it was all part of the plan! Here we are 3 weekends later and we're almost done (with that).

Thanks everyone for all of your help with this. We'd have many many many more weeks left of working to get this done otherwise!

Adapting to a change of scene

As we were getting ready to make our move, one area of concern for us was how the animals would adapt to the change of environment. We expected that Pasha would adapt fairly quickly but Zeta would take quite a while to get used to a different household, but so far, it seems to be exactly the opposite.

We brought Zeta to the house the night before we moved, and she was seriously unhappy - she climbed inside her litterbox and hid there, and when we came over the next morning she gave no indication of having budged even an inch overnight. However, ever since we moved all of our stuff in (even with most of it still in boxes) she has warmed up and seems now to feel right at home - perhaps the familiar smells were all she needed? She's even more obsessed about getting to go outside than she was at the apartment (we actually lost her under the back deck for a few hours when she sneaked out once, but she came back out of her own accord) but other than that, seems to be the same silly cat as always.

Pasha, on the other hand, seems to still be out of sorts. She had some major stress-induced digestive upsets (vomiting, diarrhea, bloody stool) during the first week after the move, although with some veterinary help that now seems to be under control. Furthermore, although she loves the fenced back yard, and generally is content wandering around the house, she's become very skittish - any unexpected noise we make causes her to jump, and she seems to have developed a phobia of holes in the ground (such as the AC vents in our floor, and the storm drains about our neighborhood). There must be some use to this behavior - instead of a drug-sniffing dog, we have a hole-avoiding dog. If you're not sure where the holes in the ground might be, just take Pasha for a walk and see where she flees from in terror. Problem solved!

But seriously, it's sad to see her like this - hopefully she'll get over the skittishness once she gets more acclimated to her new home. Poor dog!

Moving Day

This morning the movers are supposed to come and pick up all of our stuff and move it to our house. It's definitely been a long time coming.. and yet, of course, we still had a ton to get done last night. It was a LATE night and EARLY morning today. We are so glad we decided to pay someone to move our stuff! We have more than 2 people's fair share of stuff!!

We're off to take Pasha to Camp Bow Wow so she doesn't have to deal with the stress of the move, and Zeta is already tucked away at the new house.

Goodbye internet, it may be a while before I see you again!

Our last few days in photos

(Note: due to a Blogger/Picasa glitch, the links to the full-size images got broken after we posted this - sorry!)

It's been pretty busy in our world the last few days as you know. I thought I would show you a few of the moments through pictures:

oh yeah, there are even more boxes now!

Gourmet first dinner at home..

The living room, before and after taking out the carpet!

Guys working oh so hard on removing the hard-wood entry way.

Thinking I'm a fan of "Mickey's Shadow" What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by.. more to come!

Homeownership, week one

We've been homeowners for half a week now, but it already feels like much longer, and the house already feels like home to me. I think that's a good sign!

Late last week we had a minor scare when our lender contacted us to inform us that she'd just learned that our mortgage had some additional documentation requirements that hadn't been communicated to us earlier. Fortunately, it was nothing too difficult to obtain, and we were able to provide it quickly enough that things could proceed on schedule nevertheless.

Closing was Monday morning, and it went smoothly. After being warned by our family and friends about how much paperwork we'd have to sign, we were actually pleasantly surprised by the number of signatures and initials required — yes it was a lot, but not some crazy mountain of papers. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that the sellers were already on the road to California, and only their agent was present at closing - it would have been nice to actually meet these people whose house we now own! (We did cross paths with them momentarily when we were first looking at the house, but that really doesn't count.) Also, their agent insisted that we not get the keys to the house until after the transfer of deed had been recorded downtown, which meant we had to wait more than two hours after closing before getting the keys. What's with that? It's not like there was anything more that needed to be done from our end — we'd already handed over our money and signed our lives away! In the grand scheme of things a couple of hours wasn't a big deal; it was just rather odd to us that she was such a stickler about it.

As soon as we got the keys to our new home, we sprang into action. We transferred our gathered tools and supplies in one load, picked up our new (used) trundle bed (for the office/guest room) and delivered it as a second load, then transferred all of the bamboo flooring (680 square feet of it!) as a third load. That's a lot of moving, and it was a great reminder of why we're having professional movers do the work of getting everything else from the apartment to the house - whew!

Since then, in the last four nights we've:

• Taken up all of the carpet in the three rooms we're reflooring (this was surprisingly fast and easy!)
  
• Taken up all of the carpet padding in the aforementioned rooms (this was surprisingly gross)
• With help from our friends Eric and Leandra, torn up all of the tack strips and carpet staples left behind (this was surprisingly tedious)
• Pried up the 3'x3' area of oak tongue-and-groove flooring at the front door (this was surprisingly fun)
• Begun leveling the plywood subflooring - pounding down nails, sanding raised edges, etc. (this was surprisingly... ah who am I kidding, nothing surprising about it, really!)
• Tested four different shades of paint for the upstairs bedroom, and started applying the one we decided on (with help from Heather's friend Krista)
  
• Made approximately four hundred trips to Home Depot (actually, only three counting last weekend, but it feels like more!)
  

I think we're still on schedule to get the floors all installed this weekend... we just need to finish leveling the subfloor (roofing felt in the low spots, belt sander on the high spots), put down the underlayment (big rolls of the stuff - should go quickly), and lay the floorboards. Easy as 1-2-3 (hopefully)!

By the way, the color we decided on for our master bedroom? Disney "Mickey's Shadow". Why yes, we're grown-ups... can't you tell?