We'll leave the light on for you...

John and I are at the downtown Hampton Inn, luxuriating in our neat, clean, comfortable room. We are exhausted! From start to finish, the movers took 8 hours and the last hour of unloading seemed to take forever.

With the plaster work incomplete in the bathroom at our Hillsboro house (read: bathroom filled with ladders, plaster, trays, putty knives, no space to move), we decided to camp on the floor of the Hickory Oak house using a big down comforter, pillows and linens, only we could not find the pillows and linens. They have gone missing among the many boxes in the garage, or maybe the POD. We didn't have to try too hard to convince each other that staying in a motel was a good idea. A transition of sorts from one house to the other. We have many days ahead with no kitchen and boxes that we can't unpack cause the house is still under renovation.

Tomorrow brings a day of moving those "small" items that one tends not to pack for a cross town move but decides to just move in the car. Based on what's left in the house, it will be a long day!

Move day...

I am holing up in the garage, trying to stay out of the way of the movers. I am amazed at just how fast one's home can go from a safe, cozy environment to an empty shell. The guys have been working for less than an hour and the truck is half full. Still a lot of stuff to be loaded...which leads me to the concern that all of my stuff will not fit.

John's house is not ready for the move. The cabinets are still stacked in the garage, and we don't expect installation until next week. We won't have counter tops and a sink for at least two weeks. Based on extensive plaster repair, we still have painting to do in every room. Here's hoping we find room to stuff my stuff until we can figure out a permanent place for everything.

5 days and counting...

The house has sold and move day is Friday, May 29th. Life as I have known it is rapidly changing.

I have been silent on the house because we have been holding our breath. The "For Sale" sign went up on April 9th and by April 24th we had a serious offer. After a weekend of phone calls back and forth between agents, we settled on a favorable price. A few days later the required home inspection occurred and we agreed on a few "must fix" items. Things appeared to be moving smoothly until a period of non-communication on the part of the buyer began. Some expected paperwork did not come through and my agent would not list the house as sold.

Meanwhile John's house had become unlivable so he moved in with me. We spent several unsettled weeks, uncertain as to whether to pack or panic. We had a couple of short notice showings and some hours of scrambling to clean things up. While we had the potential for some backup offers, our hearts just weren't into the showings. We were ready to be done with this process and move on.

As it turns out, the buyer is paying cash for the house so the usual loan paperwork did not materialize. The silence was due to the buyer researching options to put the house in his son's name so he could take advantage of the O'bama first time home buyer tax credit of $8,500. Oh, and the son just graduated from high school, will enter UT this fall and own the house.

We are frantically packing now, 4 more days to complete the deed. Move day is Friday, closing is Monday week and John's house is running behind schedule. The kitchen will not have a sink or stove, or counter tops for that matter. We will be on a steady diet of sandwiches and whatever we can muster up on the Coleman camp stove (our backpack stove is just too small). Anxiety levels have been high around here but we have stepped up our exercise and acceptance of the situation seems to be settling in.

Boxes are stacked up everywhere. While we have had some discussions regarding combining our stuff and have dumped a lot of stuff, we know that more stuff is going to have to go. We are combining two houses with the same square footage.

My once restful den. The brown down couches have been sold to my real estate agent and we are using folding chairs for furniture. I have lost 2 pair of reading glasses in boxes. I expect they will surface one day when I am unpacking. Things keep disappearing and reappearing.

This is our "new" kitchen as of today (the cabinets are in the basement ready for installation). We had hoped the floors would be honey color (like the rest of the house) but right now they appear really red. This is a misstep on the part of our contractor. A floor finish and paint need to be applied before the cabinets can be installed.

While the houses are all consuming for us, we have been doing other things. I am re-establishing a run routine and John is becoming good friends with his bike again. Yesterday John rode laps around Cherokee Blvd while I got out for a nice run. When I completed my run, I hopped on my bike for a lap or two with John. It turned out to be only a lap...my legs were on fire! The early heat and humidity is challenging for me.

And finally, we booked our plane tickets for a trip to Iceland!! We leave mid-July and will be traveling with our good friends Will and Kim. We consider this our honeymoon trip although I am not sure we will be married at the time we depart. We are renting a car to drive the ring road around the island. We will overnight at farm lodges along the way. I have wanted to do this trip for some 9 years now! It is going to be a lot of fun!!

Rain, rain go away...

We have been under a rain cloud for many days now. While it is challenging to get outside to play, the lawns and gardens are greening up beautifully. There is a purpose for everything!

This old house...

Good things are going on with my house but I am not quite ready to divulge the details just yet. Meantime, work continues on John's house. It is an exhausting project even if we are not doing the physical labor.

The rewiring is complete except for the kitchen and bathroom. We expect the electricians to be done on Friday and can't wait. No major offense intended toward Mutt and Jeff (actually Patrick and Jeff) but guys, you are REALLY messy!! I guess handling a broom isn't in the contract. We plan to hire a "disaster " cleaning company to clean out the plaster board from the hardwood floors and whisk away the rest of the fine white dust that is in every nook and cranny. If we had this to do over, we might not!!

Along with the rewiring, we are having the kitchen gutted and rebuilt. Among the many issues uncovered when the walls were stripped down to the support is that a load bearing wall was removed sometime before John moved in (20 years ago), A little creative carpentry has shored up the ceiling and will hopefully support the sagging back of the house for many years to come.

Here we are, smiling in our wreck of a kitchen. Behind us is a wall that is being rebuilt. The brown wall section was once a separate room. The white wall section sits forward more than the brown. New sheet rock will be nailed up to even everything up.

The sink and refrig will go on the left side. Look up and you can see the new joist supports. When the ceiling was pulled down, the joists that are now supported were just hanging there, not connected.

The oak flooring strips designate the old room. The floor, under layers of linoleum and tar paper, is wood (currently stripped down to the tar paper). The wood will be refinished to match the rest of the house.

This was once a very narrow door opening into the dining room. Our contractor has moved some plumbing and enlarged the opening. We hope this will result in an open feeling between the kitchen and dining room.

We always assumed John's floors were oak. Jason, our contractor, picked up one of the floor boards in the kitchen and discovered the floors are beech. Cool! We may have to replace missing or damaged floor boards with oak cause beech is not as easily accessible.

Here is John on our side porch (off the living room). We have added two ceiling fans. The missing fixture is the light fixture. Did I mention that we had to replace almost every fixture in the house? The old service was 100 amp, the new service is 200 amp...the old fixtures don't work. Most fixtures are the oiled bronze look and are mostly modern. It's a fun look with the 1940's house.