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Published: January 27th 2016
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For those of you that are connected with us through Facebook as well as the blog will already know the answer to the question: Did we move into the house before New Year’s? Just as when leaving to go cruising, you just need to set a date and “go for it”. We knew the house would not be done, but as long as we had a working bathroom, a kitchen sink and a few counters, kitchen appliances and a bedroom we knew we could move in. Another push for us was the fact that we didn’t want to keep paying rent for an apartment when we had a house (with house payments of course) we could move into.
Now the date was set – December 30
th. Lining up a U-Haul truck was next - a little tricky to find at the end of the month but got that booked. The last week before moving in Bob continued to go to the “job site” and get as much done as he could. The kitchen sink was hooked up, the electricity was wired in the kitchen, lights installed, “temporary” countertops were put into the kitchen, and the shower became functional. Janice continued
to work on packing up the apartment as well as taking care of the details of getting a phone and internet hooked up at the house and fuel oil delivered.
We figured as it was just moving the items we had at the apartment we would do the move ourselves, but my niece and her two kids came over to visit from Connecticut. Linda offered her son’s help and we decided that might be helpful after all. On moving day we thought we’d only have the help of Peter, but my sister Barbara told us she planned on helping as well. We were concerned about her doing that as she had broken her wrist recently and she still had the cast on, but she was determined to help. We really were happy to have both of them as it made the move that much quicker. We were amazed at how much we did have at the apartment, but by noon time we had it all packed in the U-Haul and we were ready to go to the house. With the 4 of us working we made short order of the unpacking and were done by 3:30PM. Next step was
Our "First Island"
was a cupboard we had & the dishwasher still in its box! to go back to drop off the U-Haul and clean the apartment. By the time all of that was done and we were both back at the house we left most things packed and got our bedroom set up so we could sleep. Mission accomplished – in by the new year with a day to spare!
That evening we had a very pleasant surprise from Jeremy (the student that worked with us this past summer). He was home for the holidays from Princeton and came over to visit. He very thoughtfully brought us a lovely calla lily as a housewarming gift. It was great getting a chance to catch up with him and show him all of the changes that had occurred since he left us this summer.
As the tag said “Santa” (our contractor) surprised us with a gift of popcorn, hot chocolate mix, a bottle of Mimosa and 2 wine glasses we had our New Year’s Eve planned. We decided to add a bottle of champagne for New Year’s Eve and save the mimosas for breakfast the next day – it worked out nicely!
Prior to the move we did take some time to spend
Bob building the temporary kitchen
Bob keeps makes improvements since moving in with family for the holidays. December 24
th we spent a wonderful evening at our niece’s house celebrating the holiday with family. It was a wonderful get together and dinner and got us into the holiday spirit! As we were also taking another day off from working on the house on Dec. 27
th we decided to get some more done on the house. On the 25
th after our stockings and presents were opened we decided to lay the floor in our office space. For now it will also be our sitting room as the living room will not be completed for a while. Having the floor done before moving in sounded like a good idea. It will definitely make it a Christmas that we will remember! On the 27
th we celebrated the holidays with Janice’s side of the family. We had another enjoyable meal and fun socializing with family.
So what have we been doing since moving into the house? We continue to work on projects, but we found that by living here some of the priorities changed. An outside door light all of a sudden seemed more important and now the 1
st floor bathroom has moved up higher in
Lucky for Us on Moving Day
Our grand-nephew Peter and my sister Barb pitched in to help (even with a broken wrist!) priority. Bob has also been doing a great job of improving the kitchen. We already had in mind what we wanted as an island so Bob made a temporary one to size. This has been great as it has really refined the location, what kind of storage space we want, and in fact did we really want this design for the island. Fortunately now that we have lived with it for a few weeks we really like it. Bob has also been adding shelving making the kitchen very workable. As a result I’ve told him that we will keep the “temporary” kitchen for a longer period of time so our efforts can be turned to installing more of the radiant heat system. I know Bob would enjoy building the kitchen cabinets more, but getting the heating system will have to take priority.
One big success recently was getting the first zone of the radiant heating system working - Bob had lots of work to do on the distribution and control panel for the heating system before we could “fire it up”. Fortunately when he did it worked perfectly! This now provides the heat to the master bedroom and the
upstairs bathroom. We are heating the rest of the house by using the fuel oil and duct work that had existed in the house. We definitely want to get rid of that system and the need to buy fuel oil so now we need to move on installing the rest of the radiant heating tubes. For this we have to now work in the basement and the crawl space – not fun working over our heads so it will be much slower going unfortunately. At least having a backup heating system helps!
More rooms have been painted, we are almost ready to lay the tile floor in the downstairs bathroom, all of the electrical circuits in the house have been sorted out and we still have a list a mile long. Guess that comes with fixing up an old house. The nice thing now is that we don’t have to commute each day, we aren’t paying rent and we are sorting out what needs to be done before we leave for the boat and what projects can we save til the next time we are back in the US.
Time seems to be flying by – it is
Yes, Need to Get Bigger Propane Tanks
as will be heating with it as well as cooking hard to believe it is already near the end of January. With the new year we realize we need to start planning for our return to the boat as well. Now we not only look at things for the house, but we are checking out things for the boat as well. We also want to fit in a couple of trips to see family and friends before we return to the Netherlands.
Guess our main goal for now is to stay focused on a few of the house projects and hopefully everything else will fall into place. Stay tuned…
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