Done buying stuff

We are done buying stuff. Today we finally bought everything that we need. A lot of it was bought online so that will be trickling in over the following weeks. Some of the furniture might take a big longer. We also got a new TV and BBQ from Costco and have made two big trips to Home Depot and I have enough projects to keep me busy for a long time. We got a new dining table and chairs big enough for us to have guests over. A new loveseat for near the kitchen/dining area so we can watch TV and play games while still talking to T. if she's cookin'. I'm excited about the TV lift we got, a box that the TV hides in until we want to watch it, then we press a button and up pops the TV, pimpin'! I didn't want the TV to be out all the time since we don't watch it that much. We also got heated towel rails for all the bathrooms, a luxury that's been on the wanted list ever since we got married.

Ceiling Fans

Not long after we moved in, we noticed there were no ceiling lights in any of the bedrooms, this is most obvious when you realize you didn't pack a single lamp in the stuff that you have been trucking in every night. It was a bummer but something that could be fixed. I knew it could be fixed because I've installed ceiling fans in the old house. I also knew, after that experience, that it wasn't something I wanted to do. Luckily I know a general contractor and I've even ridden bikes with him. He gave us a quote to put in ceiling fan boxes in each bedroom and today he started and finished the work. I am delighted with the work done, everything looks great and now I just need to install the fans, something I've done before and don't mind doing.

Here's the first fan in our bedroom. We're still waiting on our bed before sleeping in there. We did get the back wall painted a lighter color as an accent wall.

Here's my daughter's room. It's the most complete of all the rooms so far. She loves it! whenever anyone asks her what her favorite room in the new house is, it's always 'my bedroom'.

I think we should get a copy of Cinderella ate my daughter before it's too late!

We splashed out on switches like this. They allow us to control the fan and the light from the wall with only one wire (and no need to punch holes in the wall). They also allow us to get little remotes off ebay and we can control the fans from our bedside, awesome!

One week in our new house

Today marks one week since we moved into our house. Finally all our junk is here with us and we're starting to settle in. We've also had a lot done on the house already although we really didn't plan to, everything is even better now. It's amazing how much you can get done in a week if you farm out all the work and plan it carefully. Ideally I'd like the garage to be done by now, or even within two weeks, but it might take a bit longer than that with the new doors being the big bottleneck there, but it'll be worth the wait, it's going to be better than planned I think.

We still have a ton of boxes all over the house but we're slowly working through them and getting furniture settled and ordering some new furniture to fill the gaps. E's sleeping in her room. We're still waiting on our new bed so still sleeping on a futon in the living room. The washer/drier and dishwasher are great. The fridge is a little annoying, for something so big it feels like it should fit more in it. Also the fridge has an all metal front and magnets don't stick to it! I should have known, but I've never experienced fancy pants appliances before. It also has a small dent in the door which we weren't worried about because we were going to cover it in magnets, sigh. E's artwork taped over it is good enough for now, there are also other options.

Also I forgot to tell this story from the moving big furniture weekend. At our old house we could never get pizza delivered, but here we can. We chose that day to be the first day we ordered pizza and when the doorbell rang T. was so excited she ran around the yelling, The Pizza's Here! and promptly forgot how to get to the front door and ran down the hallway to the bedrooms.

Kitchen

The plan was for us to put a bay window in place of a small window in a bit of a dead space in the kitchen. We were also going to put a pay window in where we were going to put the TV close by to the kitchen so we could all hang out while T was cookin'. Since we were getting some window stuff done we were going to also throw in another window in the apartment and also maybe in the storage unit and make it a possible office. Well that all fell apart last Friday when Terry came over and told us he couldn't put bay windows in where we wanted due to shear walls and 4ft from the corner and other such rules, no bay windows, no other window work, see ya later Terry. The cats don't know it but they're bummed to not have two new cat-cookers like at the old house.

However, we were waiting on the new windows before getting the kitchen painted. No new windows, no holdup so we called the painters to see when they'd be available and tomorrow was the answer. So as well as having to clear out the garage for the floor treatment we also had to clean out the kitchen. But hey presto the very next evening we had a newly painted kitchen and we all think it looks a whole lot better than it did (not that it looked bad before!).

Day after moving bike ride

O.K. this isn't really house related but it kind of is.

Since J was in town and we don't get to see him as much as we used to before he moved away, Sunday was dedicated to going to ride bikes just like we used to.

However, this time I could get ready for my ride at home and just roll out of the garage into town to meet everyone and then we went on a sweet 30 mile bike ride going far and wide.

We even ended up at a brewery where I could have a beer because I didn't have to worry about driving on a super twisty highway. Then I rode up to the house, I will admit it was more of a climb than I wanted after all that but I could roll into the house and shower. So awesome. Riding with my friends made it all even better especially since I got to ride with some people who can't make it to the regular morning rides and I really like riding with them, hope I get to do more weekend rides from my house soon!

Moving Day!

We had a move-in day and also a moving day scheduled for months. I had been packing for 4 weeks before we were even supposed to move in, much to T's chagrin because the usual answer to "Where is X" is "in a box!". Here's all the boxes piled up in the old den, kinda looks like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Ever since move-in day we've been bringing truckloads of boxes (pickup truck) and dumping them in the garage but there was some furniture and boxes that were too big for the old truck-truck so we rented a box truck and recruited my very bestest friends to come help out.

After about an hour we had the truck pretty much full of our junk. Some great packing by J. and heavy lifting by C. and N.

Poor J. he's so allergic to cats it's not even funny and there we were moving our furball infested stuff all over the place, finding huge dust bunnies of cat fur as we went. What a trooper!

And then the mother-in-law shows up with her truck! full of her crazy stuff and some pieces of furniture for us too. We unloaded her stuff, packed in more of our stuff and headed down to our new house to unpack.

Our old house driveway is crazy steep but ends up in a nice flat area. Our new house driveway is short and steep with very little flat bit at the top. We could have the truck on the rampy bit and have a flat area to unload onto, but that meant getting the stuff up a huge incline IN the truck before unloading, or park flat but have very little room behind the truck. Option 2 was the best of two bad choices. Option 3 was unload on the street and carry everything UP the hill and you know we weren't about to do that!

Eventually it all worked out, E's bed was the biggest deal and I even stayed up late to put it together so she could have her own room back. Mission Accomplished!

Garage and Storage

I love the garage in the old house, it's something we spent a lot of time getting right and it's wonderful to work on my bikes there. This new garage (here's the before picture) had some good cabinets at the end and a big double garage door with an opener. Since T would be riding bikes to swimming every day, she needed another way to get out without running the garage door opener which is right below our bedroom. And that was how we came up with this crazy plan.

First the garage floor is being coated with a green stain/sealant that's like epoxy, but not quite. Then I'm also getting the same cabinets that we have in the old place which I've been very happy with. I spent a lot of time thinking about the arrangement of the cabinets and how I might use them and how they'll fit in the the various wiggles and panels on the walls. I'm also going to put in some Plugmold power strips, Wall Control pegboard and Akro Mils drawers. Thanks to my buddy at the local bike store, we're getting a great deal on a commercial 8 bike rack which should have enough room to keep us going for quite some time.

For the garage door, we're taking out the double and replacing it with a single and a wide 36" entry door that we'll likely mostly use all the time. I'm going to try hard to get the garage door and the entry door to match the other doors and windows around the house, they have a 3 pane motif going on I'd like to maintain.

There is also a storage room which you get to from the outside, I was trying to work out how to get to it by staying in the house, but it would jack up the apartment too much so it's staying as an outside access only thing. I had also thought about turning it into an office, but we really don't need the space and with what we learned about windows needing to be 4ft from a corner of the building it would be hard to get some good windows in it. So it's staying as a storage unit. But since we're getting things done properly, I'm getting short commercial carpet installed and then a wall of the same cabinets as we are getting in the garage. It's going to be lovely.

It's not a trivial project, but it's all coming together nicely. I'll post pictures when it's done.