Day Two-twenty-nine: inching along

So we've managed to make progress on a range of fronts. Here's a quick survey of the week's accomplishments.


In the studio we did some good work settling in.

And this evening we even managed to start the process of installing more blinds.

The rest of the blinds, however, remain in limbo. They should be plenty aired out by now. These wood ones will go on the front of the house and the vinyl ones will be in the back.

In the library we turned a couple dozen boxes of books and an unfinished bookshelf in the back)...

Into a largely finished room. Just a few boxes left waiting for the newly stained shelf to dry.

In another part of the house, we modified a folding bookshelf to make it wider by adding new shelves.

Finally, with the return of more decent weather it was past time to cut the yard. Clippings and weeds yielded these eight bags of trash. Normally we'd leave the clippings on the yard as fertilizer but the grass was too long and would have left big clumps everywhere that would kill the grass beneath it.

Day Two-twenty-two: every little bit helps

Well we don't get nearly as much done on weekday evenings, but we did manage a couple of milestones. We hung the first of 15 blinds, appropriately in the bathroom to replace the paper we had taped up. It's been a challenge finding blinds that look nice, are made of something decent (i.e. not aluminum to make us feel as though we're in an institution) and don't smell to high heaven.

We also christened the kitchen by baking inaugural muffins. This was a nice way to end the day.

Day Two-nineteen: life amid cardboard

Validating a truism of moving that people have known since the first cave-family upgraded to a duplex higher up the mountain with access to running stream water, the move is more of a beginning than an ending. This week has been split among unpacking, moving furniture into position, and returning to some projects.


Here's what the studio looked like a few days ago...

And here it is all gussied up and nearly ready for business.

Here's an annex to the studio with at least the little "corner office" set up.

This is just a random photo that is representative of the many other things we haven't gotten to yet.

We did a series of small jobs in the main bathroom last night to get it closer to "prime time". We put up the towel rack (we've been using a coat rack), the corner shelf with the flowers, the toilet paper holder (we've been using a free-standing one), another shelf, and the toothbrush holder. As the tape-secured paper over the window suggests, we still have to install the blinds once we find a brand that we like.

Day Two-fourteen: 7 month anniversary

As promised/threatened, here are some before, during, and one after photos of our big move. As of last night there was nothing left in the old place, which is where we start.

Here's what we turned the new house into.

And here's the upgrade we made to the dining room table. As you can see, the biggest difference is that we can now seat four. ; )

One unpleasant surprise during the move was learning that our plum tree was attracting the neighborhood hornets. So despite this being the last fruit tree from the previous owners we had it cut down for safety.

But at least we had better moving help than this guy who had his worldly possessions deposited on his front lawn by the moving company! The second photo is the mound of packing paper that is left after emptying the boxes.

Day Two-thirteen: We're heeeeere

With apologies to Drew Barrymore for paraphrasing her famous line, we have successfully moved everything out of our former house into the new one. Two weeks of packing and moving included last Sunday's transfer of all the big stuff. We'll post some photos soon but for now will leave you with this moving jingle (in both senses of that term) set to the tune of "The 12 Days of Christmas". Enjoy.


Five friends with strong backs.
Four sweat-soaked t-shirts.
Three cases of water.
Two Papa John's pizzas.
And a 17-footer from U-Haul.

Day Two-oh-five: Happy Fourth!

As promised/threatened, here is the latest on what we've been doing at the new house, that is when we're not moving items over a carload at a time.


Last week we had the floor refinisher come back to put a semigloss on the floors and repair a couple of bad boards. The result is a floor that looks like new. We're quite pleased.

We thought the garden was looking a little skimpy, so a quick trip to the local garden center took care of that. We've been careful to keep everything hydrated during this unseasonably hot weather.

Here's what we've done in the bathroom to make it useable: new faucet, hung a new mirror, caulked the sink and tub, and hung a shower curtain. Now if we could only decide which of the two soap dispensers we like best we'd be in great shape.

The day after we bought the house in December we had a bunch of trees cut down to let more sunlight hit the house. Many of them were fruit trees. We left this plum tree because it was inconspicuously on the side of the driveway. Well, with plums littering the driveway--attracting squirrels and bees--and the whole thing smelling like rotten/overripe fruit, this tree may need to join its friends in the great lumber pile in the sky.

Finally, here's the real world counterpart to the New Yorker cover that we posted yesterday. Here's our bed in a room that will not be the bedroom (it's there while we wait for the refinished floors to cure a whole week).

And here's our makeshift dining room. Note the blue painters tape along the baseboards that we just painted. Life imitates art. We're using a new Sherwin Williams paint for all the white trim.

Day Two-oh-four: Let there be light

So we don't usually talk about the house we're leaving for the new place, but it seems appropriate this time. Like many on this side of the country we were caught by the short-but-potent storm on Friday that knocked power out for millions of customers. We almost never lose power here (lines are mostly buried) and never for more than a few hours. So as the lights winked out around 10pm on Friday we were confident they would return quickly, especially as the storm passed within a few hours.


A complication of losing electricity, of course, has been the unseasonably hot temperatures--a heat index well over 100 degrees on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Friday was still bearable to sleep in our old house as we hoped quick relief. The temperatures inside crept steadily up on Saturday making the third/top floor unbearable for sleeping (it eventually reached at least 92 degrees), so we sought cooler climes on lower floors. To add insult, the new house got its power back around noon on Saturday leading us to joke that we should be sleeping there. 


A second rough night made that seem less fanciful, so on Sunday evening we moved over our mattress and enough kitchen items and food to get us through Monday morning, making 1 July the first night we slept in the new place. We still thought "the power has got to come back on soon" even though we could get nothing like an estimate or news from the power company. With our old house an increasingly unlivable option, we took the decision to move over to the new, in-progress house. 


So today we moved more stuff and got a bathroom fully functioning. We'd already planned to move our furniture and some other bulky items on Saturday, so the storm just moved up our timeline and we're not looking back.


We finally got our power back at 7pm today, almost 4 full days after the storm. What could account for such a long outage, long after all the commercial and residential areas around us got their power back? We talked with someone who accosted a manager from the power company, and he said "Your power is on." When confronted with the reality that we were still lacking electricity, the employee checked and found a blown fuse somewhere and fixed it in minutes. Apparently the company had repaired the storm-damaged connections on Saturday/Sunday and, without checking, thought they had solved the problem despite continuing to get dozens of calls from residents. To quote Chico Marx, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"


Because we've been in the dark, we'll leave you with this facsimile of our life and post more in a few days about all we've been up to at the new place.