First Thoughts

We just finished hosting our friends Tom, Lena and Nika from Portland. It was a great visit. Now we have the house to ourselves again and are getting more used to living in it - things like ...

• Stairs. We're used to having everything close by, all one one floor, but now, with three storeys, it's a little different. When I open my mail upstairs, I don't want to take the envelope all the way down to the garage to recycle it. We have to come up with a caching system for intra-floor delivery of rubbish, recycling, and laundry. We're getting into the habit of looking for things to grab as we go up or down.
• Dust. We keep upper windows open all the time, and have hardwoods and low-profile carpeting, yet I'm still impressed with just how much dust we've accumulated in the last week.
• First dings. I know I will die some day, and I don't feel afraid of it. But getting the first scratches and dings in our new hardwood flooring was another matter.
• Privacy. With lots of big windows and neighbours close by, I'm changing my habits a bit. I have to remember to close my curtains before getting dressed, and I wear a bathrobe coming out of the shower now.
• Dishwasher. Having one is nice. I hardly used the one we had at our rental, but I find myself using this one more.
• Garage. I'm chuffed to be taking a garage door opener with me when I go on bike trips.
• Quiet. Early this morning I took some coffee out on the patio and read newspapers online. All I heard were birds. Half our house faces a large grassy courtyard dotted with trees. I saw a crow fly past and I could hear its wings.

Pics of the new house

After almost a solid month of 12-16 hour days - either moving out of the old house, moving into the new house, packing, unpacking and fixing the new place up - we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are still a few odd jobs to complete - a few shelves to hang, making cushions for the breakfast nook bench and the window seat, organizing the garage and a few boxes still remain unpacked - but basically, the hard work is done. I am very happy with how it is all turning out and thought I'd post a few photos:

My beautiful kitchen:

A view of the living room:

Looking from the living room toward the dining room and doors to our small deck:

 

Plenty of room for my cookbooks, and a view of the wine / pantry unit

A view past the breakfast nook and into the family room;

A new bar added to the pass-through between the kitchen and the family room: (I selected and hand finished the wood for the bar.)

Plenty of room for guests - so come on up to beautiful British Columbia and see us sometime!

Cleaning Up

Our kitchen contractor (mostly) finished work today. (Mostly because he's ordered a tricky bit of ductwork for the above-stove fan, which is now a bit off centre, and he'll come once more to install it after its arrival.) What this means for us is ... we finally have our house back!

No more air compressor and miscellaneous boxes and rubbish in our front room. (I think its proper name is the family room, to distinguish it from the living room. I'm still confused.) We cleared out the room and I vacuumed it, then got to unpacking it, including my hi-fi. It's great to hear the girls again after weeks in captivity. First song: Bjork, Human Behavior. (The song was nearly over before Sarah rushed down to hit Next. She's getting slow.) The bass was boomy at first, but adding spikes between the stands and speakers helped some. Margo won't let me put the floor spikes in because of our new hardwoods. Some people have strange priorities. There's more echo in the room than I'm used to, though I'm sure I'll adapt. First album: Massive Attack, Heligoland, lossless. Still listening as I type on the pad with a bit of Merlot.

A lot got done today. Under-cabinet lighting was installed. The kitchen bench was put together. The kitchen's sliding door was restored. A new cabinet was installed above the laundry in the basement washroom. Lots of laundry was done. And Margo has just one more carload of stuff to get from the old house.

But we're pretty much done!

Stories from the Last Few Days

I'd been huffing down the stairs to the garage and back to switch the central vacuum on and off for days. When the handle switch (which I'd thought was just for turning the rotating brush on and off) turned it on by accident, it was like a game changer. I said as much. Margo tried to get my attention but I didn't look because I knew the gesture she was giving me, one involving a thumb, a forefinger, and a forehead.

I discovered that a cordless drill works way better in the forward direction.

I am so soft. A few days of lifting heavy boxes and such is giving me aches when so many guys do this all day.

Settling

I have to pick up our story from yesterday, to when we'd just finished moving.

My first task was to assemble beds. It's always harder to assemble than to disassemble. Margo's went first, then Sarah's. She was eager to settle it.

Margo gave me a tour of the kitchen - it's mostly complete. It's impressive. It was like the scene in every Bond movie where Q explains the gadgets to James. Recycling bins that slide out on rails. Corner pieces where the shelves swivel out. A magnetic knife rack. Bits on hinges and drawers that decelerate the last part of the action, making them impossible to slam closed. Though I must say I'm still getting used to granite as a countertop material - it's so hard. I'm afraid I'm going to break dishes setting them down too hard.

Soon we wore out and our bellies reminded us it was time to eat. Our first dinner in our new home was ready-made meals heated in a microwave: turkey with gravy and stuffing, and tortellini. Served on paper plates. Fortunately my wine cellar had already been transferred and we had four glasses.

While waiting for dinner I enjoyed some wine on the balcony, and met two different neighbours while there. Even before moving in, we'd met more neighbours here than we did in three years in our old house.

I was so excited for our first dinner that I wanted to play some music to share the mood. Down came an iPod and Margo's little dock speakers. I played the song that was already in my head, so jubilant: The Birds by Elbow. Sarah took a turn and played some Coldplay (her current favourite). Margo couldn't decide, but by then I had picked the perfect song for my mood: To Build A Home by the Cinematic Orchestra.

After tidying up and showering, I wanted to write, but was too tired. Sarah and I instead got into my bed and watched an episode of Sherlock on my computer.

We're In!

I'm sipping coffee at my desk on my first morning in our new home. I've taken today and tomorrow off work to help unpack and sort things out.

I've got a lot to write about. I'm not sure where to start and I'll probably forget things, that I can add in a later post.

Looking out the window, I see the sun breaking on houses opposite. Beautiful. I've been pretty elated since arriving here yesterday.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier about switches. We got the fat kind, those really wide rocker panels, instead of the standard little switches. I first saw them on a visit to Sweden in the 90s and I've wanted to have them in my house since. I never got around to putting them in our Portland house.

I think it was Wednesday night that I got serious about packing. There's that transition of state, from normalcy to no longer normal. One day everything is where it should be, and your house is fully functioning. Then you start moving things around, some into boxes and whatnot, and at some point you pass a tipping point where your house is no longer functioning, you're past normal, in that in-between place where nothing is settled.

Since then we rushed to get things ready for moving. I lost a lot of sleep Thursday as my brain would just not shut off analysing the stuff to move and where it should go and how and when it should get there. I realised that this is our first move as a family where we've not liquidated most of our belongings for a trans-Atlantic crossing, or already had been living in boxes. I came to the same conclusion as Margo had earlier: that our Sunday move would be mostly a move of furniture, that the little stuff would be moved before, during, and after. So we prioritised emptying all bookshelves and dressers. Things like closets and the kitchen could wait.

Need more coffee.

Ah, better. Actually my alarm woke me up this morning. I didn't mean for it to, but it runs on batteries as well as AC and the alarm on button must have been pressed during the move. I had to dig it out to turn it off. Margo's up. She gets direct morning sun in her room. Beautiful.

Anyway. And so the move came to pass yesterday. The girls took a carload with them to the new house. I stayed back to disassemble beds. The movers arrived at 9. They were really quick. I started to panic that they'd be done before I had all three beds ready. Especially when I found that one of Sarah's "Bucky Balls" bearings had got itself magnetically lodged in the hex key of a bolt I needed to remove, and could not be pried out. Fortunately the guys had a sweet tool set and a pair of vise grips around the hex head got me going.

My. God. The things one can find in the room of a ten-year-old whilst removing furniture. Things under the furniture. I won't go there; it's too frightening. And don't get me started on the topiary of dust and detritus from under Margo's dresser. (It goes without saying that my bedroom's carpeting was a bastion of purity.)

Most everything went into the first trip. The second took about fifteen minutes to scoop up the remainders. It was finished on my end before 2. I washed dishes and then ... I was done.

On the bus over, I texted Margo: "I am happy to be coming home."

I think I'll stop here. I have lots more to add but they'll go better with the pictures I took yesterday, which I'll transfer to computer once my hard drives come from the old house.

Worse Then Better

In the last week our new house has gone from move-in ready to being a scary mess, but it's getting back to being almost move-in ready.

I replaced all the outlets and switches upstairs. Shocking, I know. Except it wasn't. Probably because I'm so well grounded. Margo finished major painting; only trim is left here and there.

Last weekend was a low. Flooring was ripped out, and we had to wear shoes to avoid the carpet nails. Dust and sawdust was everywhere. Margo told me how far beyond budget she'd gone and I hit the roof. We were all overtired and cranky.

But it's looking better each day. The hardwoods went in over a few days and are now complete. The carpeting is mostly in now; the upstairs is about complete. It's wool, and today I felt it for the first time with bare feet, and I really like it. The kitchen is mostly installed, and now we can open drawers and cabinets.

Today I spent cleaning. I'd used the central vacuum once before. It's a new concept to me. Today I got a pleasant surprise: there's a much nicer hose and set of attachments in the front closet. I hadn't been in the front closet before.

The upstairs is just about move-in ready. The new carpet is a lower profile, so bits of wall-bottom are still visible, so Margo is painting molding strips and will install them soon.

Boxes arrived today. Instead of buying them, we're renting them - they're actually plastic. They get picked up when we're done.

Packing has commenced, and several carloads have already made their way to our new home, but the bulk of packing still remains.

In three days, it will all be over.

Some pics of the work in progress

We have been very busy getting the house in order in preparation for the move this weekend. There has been a seemingly endless list of things to do - finishing up the painting prior to the installation of the floors being the most pressing. Now that is done, and I am turning my attention to refinishing the breakfast bar and wine pantry countertops, as well as a table and chairs acquired on Craiglist. ... and of course to packing.

The kitchen cabinets are all installed, and awaiting doors and shelves, and today the marble countertop went in, along with some of the wood flooring and the pads for the carpets. It is starting to look more like a house and less like a construction site every day.

Some of the snafus have included:

Once the flooring was removed, the subfloors turned out to be very uneven, so we had to endure a couple of days of grinding, and the removal of the dining room subfloor so that the joists could be shaved down. The house is absolutely covered in dust as the result of all of the extra work.

I purchased a couple quarts of paint, matched to chips from the bathroom and living room, and blithely went about touching up dings etc in the walls, only to discover that the paint didn't actually match all that well. I fretted about it all night, worried that I would have to entirely repaint the few rooms that hadn't really needed to be repainted to begin with. Fortunately, this morning I was able to mix a bit of white in and match the colours more exactly, and repaint all of my patches.

The countertop guy made an error in measurement and had to haul the granite counter back to the factory this morning to re-cut - delaying all of the work in the house by a couple of hours.

All of it is actually not too major, and I anticipate that the floors will all be done by Wednesday - with the kitchen to be completed on Wednesday or Thursday.

Kitchen

Bar countertop

Sarah in her bedroom (carpet pad down, carpets come tomorrow)

Family room - floors almost complete here

Family room and eating area - kitchen is to the left

 

Starting to look like an actual place where a person might be able to cook!

The new countertop

 The countertop and sink - still needs to be connected!