Well, we’ve been in our new house for a bit over a month.  How it goes by so quickly, I don’t know.  But it did.  Today, we overcame the last bottleneck on the way to prepping the house to live in.  The bottlenecks have been:

1.  Organizing things by floor - Took awhile to make decisions about where things would go.  Our old home had 8 rooms and the new one has 7.  That changes things a bit.  Basically, we lost our workout room and plan to use the family room in the basement as the workout room.  Meanwhile, we’ve turned one of the bedrooms into our family room/office where that took two rooms in the old house.

2.  Infrastructure - Where to store things.  Since much of the house wasn’t ready for art/knick knacks, we had to find place to put those things.  The best idea, of course, is to leave them in boxes.  To that end, I built a series of shelves in the garage and a big closet upstairs.  And added a few to the master suite’s closet.  Once that was done, we could make some things disappear and just use the extra bedroom for staging on the top floor.

3.  Organize the kitchen - Is there much more important than getting the foodstuffs arranged?

4.  Painting the living room/dining room.  Now that that is done, we can start pulling art and knick-knacks out of the closets.  This will allow us to free up that space for the final bits still in the spare room.

Here’s a breakdown of what has been done since we moved in, by room:

Garage - Built some 2′ x 4′ x 8′ shelves to go against the side walls.  In the closet, I build some 1′ x 2′ x 3′ shelves to store boxes and an overhead shelf to add an extra location under the stairs for better use of the vertical space.  Still some org to do, but it is about 90% finished at this point.

Workout room - Still in progress, but I had to cut some wall out to run cable up to the kitchen.  That room will be one of the next to be primed, but the last to be painted.  This week I’ll be building some bookshelves and a TV shelf for the room.

Dining room/living room - Painted.  That was enough right there.  Later today (after the football game is over) we’ll be unwrapping the furniture and putting everything back in place.  Can’t wait (except for the game).

Kitchen - Other than running the cable and starting to prime, I only had two other projects.  There wasn’t a good place for a trash can of any size.  So, I took a single-width cabinet space which already had slide-out shelves and converted it.  I bought as large a trash can as I could and removed all but one shelf.  I tried to make a lever which would slide the shelf out, but it seemed more complex than I could work out.  So I removed the hinges and simple made it so the door slides straight out and the trash can is exposed.  So far, working great.  Though I am considering buying a telescoping slide so we can get the can in and out a bit easier.  But that will go on the back-burner for awhile.

The additional project was reversing the sliding glass doors.  As they were, you had to go to the extreme corner to open it.  I though it would be better if you could just open the closer section.  It took some work, but now it is how we want.  Not too difficult, but it took a few hours to get it all worked out and swap the rollers to the bottom of each.  That also included swapping the security sensors, which took a bit of time.

Master suite - Added two shelves in the closet and a few towel hooks in the bathroom.  Still need to find a better power solution for the bath and maybe a few minor changes.  And I need to put some vents into the master closet.  It doesn’t smell, but the air isn’t very fresh.  I think a few vents will help it to circulate some air and keep the air a bit better.

Family room/office - Put up the cherry shelves Dad and I made.  Still have a few to add to the mix this week and that will finish designing the office space.  I also changed the closet in that room so we could organize our computer peripherals.  Wireless printing allows me to put our little printer in the closet.  You don’t even hear it print now.  Just open the door and there it is.

Laundry room - Put in the washer/dryer set we brought from the States.  Had to cap the gas line.  Sounds easy, but when you can’t get any real help at Home Depot, it takes hours.  Really, the Home Depot near here is the worst place I’ve shopped for home supplies.  I’m hoping my trip yesterday was my last for awhile.  All that is left is the option of putting up a shelf for easy access to detergent and such.

Spare bedroom - nothing.  Thank goodness.  

Extras

Put up the compression shelves in the stairwell on the 2nd floor.  Didn’t take up much space and gave that landing some extra character.  

Moved the central vac accessories to the downstairs stairwell.  Not a final solution, but one which works better for us at this time.

Replaced the doorbell.

Okay, that’s enough of that.  The game is under 5 minutes and I want to chill before we restart the work.

 

The house isn’t 100% yet, but it is 100% of what it needs to be.  What a long, long process this has been.  I’ve taken injuries and psychological stress and lost many pounds (not such a bad thing, but I really wasn’t trying).  And tonight was the first night we actually relaxed.  A bike ride, a visit to Ten Ren’s Tea Time, we put up a chandelier, some exercise (part of my physical rehab) and now some TV.  Not, “We will watch TV while doing other things we must do” TV, but “Wow, we can actually relax and just watch TV” TV.  What a difference.

And, really, we only need to finish painting the downstairs, which will happen this weekend, and we’re good to go.  Nothing more we “have to do” though we have plenty of “we want to do” to keep us busy for awhile.

But, while watching TV, a commercial came on for Home Hardware.  A Canadian store with home stuff.  I looked it up online and their store located showed they have a location I could easily walk to from my house.  The Web really is a wonder.  Without the ability to search, it might have been years until I knew it existed.  It really isn’t in a place I would go by on the way to any place I might go.  It does make me wonder how much commercial marketing has changed the success of smaller shops by adding a simple URL into the video feed.

It certainly helped me locate the closest hardware store to us.

Well, my first post from our new home.  We’ve been living here for a bit over 2.5 weeks, but we were also gone for most of a week for travel.  Gave me an opportunity to go home and visit friends and family for a short while.  Something which was good for me.  Physically, because it gave me time to heal from all of the effort.  Psychologically, because it was good to be social and comfortable for awhile.

Then back to work on the house.  My first task was a trip (and a follow-up trip) to Home Depot to get some materials.  I was able to build shelves in the garage (three sets actually) and made a set of super-shelves in the big closet on the top floor.  Like anything, a successful move requires some good infrastructure and this allowed us to free up floor space to work.

As a result, we were able to get a bunch of boxes unpacked and some packed boxes arranged in a bedroom closet.  Those boxes of books won’t get unpacked until I get some shelves up.  A job I’m dreading at this point…
As of today, we have a garage, kitchen, laundry and bath rooms all completed.   Set up and ready to go.  The family room and office/guest room are up and running.  Not fully prepared yet, but getting close.  Functional.  And having an office with an ergonomic keyboard space is a must-have.  Hate to say it, but it feels like home now that this is in place.

The master bedroom is livable, but empty.  We don’t have much furniture, so it is a big empty room.  Still have more to do to the master bath as well, though it is an hour from completion.  And we start painting the kitchen, living room and dining room tomorrow.

Throw down a layer of primer, over the pink walls (yes, the walls are pink and part of why we’re painting) and then one of paint.  I’ve spackled and prepped for tomorrow and looking forward to getting started.  Pink isn’t a horrible color, but I don’t find it relaxing and the paint will certainly change the feel of the house.