Moved In

I’m gonna go ahead and claim that we’re unpacked.

Technically, there are two or three boxes full of old notebooks still lingering downstairs in the throwaway room that we have jokingly named The Library; the only other things in that room are two stuffed-full bookcases, a bunch of empty suitcases, and my vacuum. But those boxes can probably stay packed up for the next ten years without us missing them, so as far as I’m concerned, we are officially done unpacking. And not a moment too soon, either, since my parents arrive on Friday! I wish we would have time to paint our living room before they come, since it is still an abysmal pepto-bismol pink (including the ceiling—gross!), but I can’t see how we’ll possibly have time to do that. If it was just a matter of painting we might be able to pull it off, but the remains of the crown molding around the ceiling still need to be chipped off, parts of the pink flowered wallpaper are still clinging desperately to the wall, and then it all needs to be patched up and spackled and whatnot before we can finally start in with the actual paint. So, yeah, more work than what I have time for right now! But maybe before Thanksgiving we’ll manage to tackle that one.

The good news is that both the furnace and the oven are now working, and we didn’t need to replace either one of them! The furnace was probably the most obnoxious—a repairman told us it would be $800 to fix, but then suggested that Craig could save a lot of money by trying to tackle the job himself (which was very kind of him, and turned out to be good advice, too). Craig pulled off the main valve, which was supposed to need replacing, and then, on a whim, decided to open up the main line to see if the gas was even turned on. When no gas started pouring into our house, Craig called the gas company and managed to argue with someone until we were finally able to get them to come and turn the gas on again. (The people here before us hadn’t been paying their bills, which is why it had been turned off. The weird thing is that the gas company kept insisting it was still on, until Craig finally had this hard proof and threatened to sue them if our children got sick from sleeping in the cold!) After the gas was turned on, it turned out the furnace worked just fine. Wonder of wonders! And nice that it didn’t cost $800 after all… And it all got sorted out not a moment too soon, as the temperature dropped about twenty degrees the next night.

Now, if you know anything about me at all, you know that normally I hate it when the weather turns chilly. But even I can admit that having a working furnace made things seem a lot less horrible (at least, until we get our first bill and probably turn it back off again). And then the really good news was that it seemed to have killed off all the crickets—several of whom were sneaking into our house each night and totally creeping me out. So with the sudden chill, my normally gloomy outlook turned to cheers of, “Die, crickets, die!!!” And although normally I like the sound they make at night, when one managed to get in the hallway just outside my room and proceeded to chirp away loudly enough to wake both me and Craig at four on the morning… Yeah, that perky little chirping starts to get a bit annoying then. So I wasn’t sad to see them go. (I have to admit, hearing Craig kill the stupid thing in mid-chirp was oddly satisfying.)

So that’s it, I suppose, for now! We’re moved in, our house really feels like “home” and life is good. One of these days we’ll start tackling some more of the items on our list of projects, but for now, I’d like to just bask in the utter lack of boxes. Thank you, thank you.

...and the Bathroom.

I think the changes in the bathroom are even more significant. This room went from being horrible to being one of my favorite rooms in the house! ;) And can I just say how impressed I was with all the stuff Craig was able to do? Who just buys a new light fixture and installs it without hiring an electrician??? (Also tons of gratitude to my father-in-law who was a huge part of the entire endeavor-- I forgot to photograph it, but he actually managed to scrape all of those icky little flower decals off of the bathtub! I know I wouldn't have had that much patience-- he's amazing!)

By the way-- to all my friends, hopefully soon I can get into a groove of actually emailing people again. For now, please accept my apologies and know that if the library stayed open later, I would definitely be writing you!

The Kitchen

So, going with the idea that the pictures will say more than I can explain with words-- here's how our kitchen as morphed since we bought the house. It's not quite done yet-- I want to paint all the grooves in the cupboards blue, too, but that's low on the list of priorities... Still, hopefully you get the idea!