In the House

So there's been a bit of a break since I last wrote but with good reason. I don't know where my camera is and I hate that I can't put up pictures to show what I'm talking about. But more than that, this weekend we finally moved into the house. The work was right to the wire. We were packing the van with help from two of Patrick's friends in the morning and in the afternoon had all but about three boxes worth of stuff in the house. But come evening, late evening, we still had carpenters and a plumber at the house.

There were quite a few repairs and updates that we were trying to squeeze in before we moved in - mostly for convenience and safety sake. We got the floors refinished - and here is were I'm loathe to describe it because it's nothing without pictures. I saw the finished product on moving day, just finished the night before, and it is gorgeous. A wonderful light mocha brown with a great variety of dark brown grains. It really does assure me of how beautiful the place will be.

So luckily, as we had a lot of boxes and furniture to move, the floor was nice and dry on Saturday. The reason that the carpenters were there was the back door. We didn't have one until Saturday. We arranged when work was started for a little reconfiguring on the backside of the house. I've already mentioned that the three small rooms were combined into one big kitchen and that was part of the original bid but then there was the problem of the laundry area and water heater. The three pieces had originally been hooked up to plumbing in the wall in the middle of what is now the kitchen so they had to be reinstalled and we decided to spend a little extra to make the area really work. We arranged with Abel to have the back door, on the extreme left of the back wall, moved over about 3 feet to accommodate a closet for the water heater that would be accessible from the outside. Next to that in the nook created by the closet and the original kitchen built-ins, the washer and dryer would sit. Well, the washer, because, I forget if I mentioned but the dryer was stolen (I still believe it was the brother who didn't want to sell the house). Anyway, the majority of the work for that project was finished well before Saturday but the back door still needed to be hung and a new functioning security door needed to be installed (the old one didn't function very well, bent in the robbery).

So that's the reason why the carpenters were there but the plumber had even more work to do. He was at the house working until nearly 10PM and the amazing thing to me is that he was still talking that late. He really likes to chat. All I was thinking was God, I want to go inside and fall onto the bed and he wouldn't stop talking. Then, I didn't want to be rude because he'd worked so long that day. Anyway, he had the most work to do. Saturday morning, he still had to install the vanity, the toilet, the washer, and the water heater. Fortunately, he'd already done all the below floor and in wall prep work for those things so it was just the final installation to be done. So he was working all day, right up to 10pm and we ended up with a functioning and hot water for a nice bath in the clawfoot tub.

Next, I'll find my camera and get some pictures in here to illustrate everything.