Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Heat Is On


A few weeks back, our heat went out at the old house. You know, the one where we sleep, shower, brush our teeth, etc. We got it back on in a few days but OF COURSE this was the weekend where we had an open house, the dog was home alone, we were staying at a hotel, and I had to work Saturday and Sunday. I don't know that anyone was bothered by it (or at least our realtor didn't say anything about it) but we had a few couples come through and it seemed like one of them was pretty interested.

Then we had a showing with the heat actually on. Then we answered a bunch of questions about the roof, the insulation, the furnace, the next door neighbor's dogs, etc. Then they made us an offer. We countered with a few things. They countered with a few less things. We signed, they signed. Hooray!

The offer that they made us was contingent on the sale of their house. Considering that we have been on the market for seven months without an offer and still have plenty of work to do on the new house, we didn't have any problem with that. Our realtor reviewed the listing and felt that they were serious about getting it sold.

The maple tree next door
Then a day later they got an offer on their house! There was much rejoicing.

Then we heard that their buyers want to close in THREE WEEKS. That would mean that we would close in FIVE WEEKS.

Then there was much panicking.

Naturally, any of these things may fall apart or not work out or whatever. But as someone told me today, you know that it's real because it's so inconvenient. If it were convenient it wouldn't work out.

Before this all started to go down, I had to put it any requests for time off in December. I took a look at the calendar and said, I think that I will take off a day just in case we are able to move, so we have something to work towards. And if we don't move, oh well, who doesn't need a day off two weeks before Christmas?

At the time everyone was rolling their eyes at me, like, yeah, you are never going to move on that day and it's so premature of you to be taking time off work and blah blah blah. I'm not going to lie, I kind of feel like a genius right now.

A very stressed, tired genius.

So the list of things that needs to be done before we can really live in the house looks like this:

  • Finish wiring (ceiling fans/new lights have been mostly installed in two bedrooms and the landing)
  • Finish plumbing, including installing the water heater and water softener, which has to be contracted out
  • Ceilings and insulation. Ceilings need to be placed in the two upstairs bathrooms, the mudroom and the kitchen, and new pieces of the dining room ceiling are falling all the time. (Most recently due to someone dropping a hammer through the joists, I think?)
  • Drywall in the mudroom, kitchen and dining room, upstairs bathrooms and laundry room
  • Floor patching/leveling and vinyl installation in the kitchen/mudroom
  • Plaster patching after wiring is finished
  • Scrubbing wallpaper glue, priming and painting in just about the entire house
  • Sealing bedroom floors and moving quarter round down to the hardwood
  • Installing the downstairs sink and upstairs bathroom (toilet, sink, tub, tile, lights and fans)
  • Installing new appliances and rehanging all the cabinets
  • Painting the cabinets in their new configuration
  • Temporary counter tops, kitchen sink, kitchen faucet, trim around the new window
So we are in the process of figuring out what to hire out, what to keep, what to do first and how quickly we can realistically get it all done. We might end up in a situation where we move our stuff to the new house and stay somewhere else for a little bit. This list is roughly in order of priority, but some of it is also happening concurrently. I had a great day with one of my girlfriends scrubbing walls yesterday, which made the whole thing so much faster and more fun. We're hoping to get a few more volunteer days in for cleaning and painting, and then my sister will be flying in for the holidays so I'll have an experienced unpacker on site. 

In other news, the two trees in front are getting cut down next week, and we have a 'wood rack' in the garage for firewood. Firepit here we come!


The Kid selected colored Icicle lights for our first Christmas decorations. We hung them up because we do what we can to eat our pizza festively and also it's hard to eat pizza in the dark. I actually kind of like them on the inside. We will see if the weather supports our efforts to hang them outside.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Let there be light!!!

Notice anything different?


For the first time in several months, we have lights!!!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!!)
We have lights in the basement and the attic, and it only took one weekend.  ONE WEEKEND. 
We bought a ceiling fan for the playroom upstairs and are hopeful that we won't actually be threading new wiring through the plaster, just making new connections and putting new outlet boxes on. So we could be ready to paint in the bedrooms in another week or so. 

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

*That's the Kid's new-to-him bedframe in the picture above. $100 on Craigs List. Solid vintage brass. Score!


Also, I painted the exterior doors. Palladian Blue, Benjamin Moore. Apparently I suck at cutting in so I never took real pictures for you. See how the angle of the shot completely obscures my crappy edging?


Not all our internet purchases are happy ones, unfortunately. 
But I got a great deal and fast shipping on one half of a Gerber Viper toilet with elongated bowl! I'm going to order the tank tonight but apparently I need a fair amount of extra pieces and such. And a toilet seat. I'll have to consult The World's Most Meticulous Plumber before we make our weekly (or thrice weekly, depending) run to Menards.

We left the attic light on because 1) we can! and 2) you have to climb into the attic to turn it off and 3) we have the fancy ugly florescent bulbs so it's using a minuscule amount of power and 4) it's really nice to have the house look inhabited. With a broken window. Cause we keep it so classy like that. 





Monday, November 4, 2013

Outdoor Update

We've been making a lot of interior progress - pipes! Wires! Boxes! More insulation floating from the attic! - but lately the outside things have been a little more photogenic. 

The Mr. bought himself a new toy. Because he was going to cut down the branch using just the pole? In the dark? With me and the Kid to help? Or something more deceptively logical yet equally implausible.


So of course Casey came over and was dying to try it. His kid helped the Mr. hold the rope and they managed to get that branch down. It was completely hollow in the middle, of course. Unfortunately (?) the tree hasn't toppled over yet so we're still applying for permits and such to get it taken down. 


Casey really came over to work on the inside of the house. There goes the water heater. 

We don't have a lot of trees at our old house (85% of the reason we need to move) so the Kid has only experienced leaf piles at Grandpa's house. Which he LOOOOOOOVES. Total win that we could make one happen in the front yard. 

You would think with all the Pinterest research that I do, I would have realized that two doors = two wreaths. Oh well. It was a fun fall break craft project that the Kid and I whipped out in half an hour or so. I was sober when I took this picture. Seriously.

We had a bit of a challenge in that we have no porch lights (nor any lights except work lights on extension cords for that matter) and it was time for trick or treaters! Our original plan was to create tombstones for the front yard, but our expectations were a little high and there wasn't time to craft them appropriately. 
The Kid and I trawled the Target aisles for weeks trying to figure out what we could do. We ended up going with one large spider web light and a longer, three swag spider web light. The lanterns were end of summer clearance at Target ($4 each, maybe?) and have proven to be super useful in our pioneer lifestyle. We've given notice on the storage unit and the first load of tubs to come over were the Halloween decorations. The fake jack o lantern is from my parents house (I only know that because my mom wrote her name on the bottom... no idea why) but we use the little Target battery tea lights inside. 


We had between 150-200 trick or treaters, so it was well worth the effort! Such a great night, and the Kid had a fantastic time walking around the neighborhood and seeing his friends in their costumes. It was a timely reminder of why we want to live in this house and how these months of hard work and bleeding money are going to pay off. 

Eventually.