MIA because we moved into the house...

Hi guys,

Sorry you haven't heard from me. We moved into the house in town last week and have been very busy with cleaning and unpacking ever since. I have not been able to leave the house much because I have had tradespeople coming through too...


We moved in on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, I took a bath, then walked over to the brewery to find hot water to make coffee with. Dan came back with me an hour later to find this in the hallway, a puddle below. Not only that, Sam was missing.

Just before they came over to rip open the ceiling to find the leak, we saw cute kitty footprints near the site of the puddle on the floor, so I knew she had to be somewhere in the house. We found her in the cupboard in the dining room, but later when I put her in the upstairs bedroom to keep her safe from the tradespeople in the house, she headed straight for the chimney.
 OH great. That explains why she was so dirty! She was covered in soot, my little cinderkitty. This house has six coal fireplaces (not in use) that haven't been cleaned in forever and oh by the way also aren't sealed. Perfect.
A pool noodle comes in handy! 
 
  My black and white kitty, temporarily black and grey.

Meanwhile, the upstairs bathtub has been torn apart. The plumber has been by every day this week working on this, trying to figure out the problem, replaced all kinds of things. In the end, it was the taps themselves that were malfunctioning so when we redo this bathroom (more below), new taps will be put in. Until then, we will use the downstairs bathroom.

So that was one thing. On Sunday night the toilets were backing up and when the draining of the bathtub made the toilets burble, well, let's just say there were some expletives projected. This was not acceptable. What is going on? First thing Monday morning the guy with the augur came and cleared out the sewer pipe - turns out there were tree roots growing through this old iron pipe. So that was fixed.

We also were still without appliances. Since we have been eating out for a month, we are anxious to get a proper kitchen together so we can prepare healthy meals.

 I can't remember which day the appliances came. Monday? Tuesday? The delivery guys from Lowe's were fantastic. Friendly, quick competent. They set up the fridge right away, but they aren't licensed to install the gas range, so we'd need the plumber to do that. Since the plumber was coming and going anyway, we had him hook it up but then we discovered the spigot that the hose attached to in the kitchen was not actually connected to where the gas comes from. Frustration. That was two days ago. We're still waiting for the gas guys to come and connect that so we can use the range.

 We also still don't have a washer or dryer. I'm not sure what's happening there, if one will be provided to us or if we are to get our own. Last night we took four loads of laundry to a laundromat. So romantic!

  On the weekend we drove to Charlotte, which is 230 miles away from here. We stopped at a glass store in Durham along the way (we'll be replacing some of the windows that are currently broken or plexiglass with stained glass) to buy a sheet of red glass. Dan downloaded two books about how to do stained glass on his Kindle, read them, and now knows how to do it. No really, I'm sure he'll have it figured out in no time. (He did go to glass school, after all). In Charlotte, we went to the biggest and busiest IKEA I have ever seen. There must have been a full square mile of cars in the parking lot. We were on a mission: to buy a bed! We've been sleeping on a 4" foamie for far too long, and it was a longtime promise to ourselves to get a bed when we were reunited. I've been sleeping much better ever since!

   In other random news, it has actually been too cold and I have been too busy to go outside and get busy gardening, but we have at least plotted out where we're going to put our first keyhole bed. Dan is going to build an octagonal frame with a south-facing entrance. I have already planted seeds indoors and can't wait to get this bed going!

On Monday night I hosted my first Stitch Night. My first night here I met two new friends who were interested in getting together, and met a third friend via Twitter who had just moved back to the area. Hopefully in the subsequent weeks the knitting/crocheting space will get noticeably more comfortable!

  Today I decided to tackle this room. It's a sun room on the southeast side of the house. It has 6x2x6 panels of windows, a handful of which are plexiglass, and I washed whatever interior window I could. This house was build in 1901 but I think this room was later closed in from what used to be an outdoor porch. The windows are old but the latches have been painted over, rendering them immovable.

 Somewhere along the way someone also painted the rope that rests on the pulley that lifts these windows, also producing immobility. Thanks, guys.

 There was a lot of dust. I took all the door hardware and put it in a box (I guess we'll attach them to the doors later?), brushed the shelves, then wiped them with a dry cloth and then a wet cloth.

 When these windows were last painted they didn't tape off the trim so I took a razor blade scraper to get the paint off the windows.

I am happy with the state of this room now. Well, happy for now. I'll have to be careful with what I put in these shelves, since yarn and book spines are likely to fade in this sunny location. I'll need lots of plants.

 Ok this is a view of the house from the back, across the street. Because we are on a street corner and there are no trees in front of the windows, it feels very exposed. Eventually we'll plant tall things and hang window coverings, but it's not like we have any furniture at the moment...

I haven't taken any photos but the drywall guys came today and closed up the hall ceiling. So that's good. What I forgot to tell you above is that, since the upstairs bathroom is ripped up now, we've decided that that will be the first room we renovate completely.

One more thing:

My tiny seedling collection! In February I ordered seeds from Sow True Seeds and have used every available container to plant in. I cut up the carton from the milk and soy milk, a tofu container, used the mini-cinnamon bun tray from the grocery store, used fast food cups and plastic salad containers. When the plumber saw that I had seedlings going, he offered to bring me some planting trays, so they got used right away! I have planted tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers, lettuces and sunflowers. I NEED MORE SPACE. As I mentioned above, it's been cold here, so it's almost good that I haven't been able to go outside to play in the garden (I've been busy organizing the house) because I don't have compost, manure, topsoil or even really a place to plant seeds out there just yet.


Sorry for the slapdash formatting of this post. I'm trying to get it up in a hurry so you all know what I've been up to! Now that I can actually leave the house I'm hoping to post more, and we should be getting the Internet hooked up at home soon too. I haven't had much luck looking for jobs just yet - I simply haven't had time.