So I had time to finally write a blog. It has been nearly two months since I have written, a sad record to have set.
As alluded to in the second-to-last post, we bought a house. "A gem in the rough" as the sellers' agent described it.
Can I just tell you that between October 27th and December 2nd, we were pretty much hanging by threads?
In list format, here is everything that went down in those five weeks and one day...
- Closed on house
- Reinspected it on our own to determine attack list for making it livable in the one month between closing and last possible move date and determine what furniture we would have to offload ahead of time
- Two week-long work visits from Jared's parents in which incredible amounts of work was done. I don't know how we could have done this without their help. They have lots of experience with house-fixing, and they have an incredible amount of energy. What can I say? Hire them if you every need help.
- Jared working on the house every morning and coming home to teach while I managed packing and cleaning and children pretty much solo on the home front and taught full time
- Packing the apartment into boxes
- Cleaning out the apartment (how can stuff get SO dirty???)
- Tore out chimney from former fireplace and '70's wall-to-wall mirrors
- Took out baseboards, interior doors, and door frames/trim
- Temporarily removed gas living room stove and its base
- Temporarily removed three ceiling-mount light fixtures
- Re-sheetrocked the ex-chimney wall
- Re-sheetrocked the ceilings in the living room/dining room/hall/two bedrooms
- Taped and floated such
- Sanded
- Taped and floated again
- Sanded again
- Taped and floated again
- Sanded again
- Applied primer
- Applied texture
- Applied primer
- Painted kitchen cabinets (took three coats)
- Tried for days to strip paint off of five interior doors before giving up
- Pried up random parquet floor on top of older wood floor by the front door
- Removed hardware from no-longer-in-use window treatments around the house
- Rebuilt floor and frame of bathroom closet
- Cut down new wood flooring to 1942 size and covered hole in floor left by chimney demolition
- Rented huge randomized orbital sander
- Sanded living room/dining room/hall/two bedroom floors within an inch of their lives with medium grit
- Sanded living room/dining room/hall/two bedroom floors within an inch of their lives with heavy grit
- Sanded living room/dining room/hall/two bedroom floors within an inch of their lives with medium grit
- Sanded living room/dining room/hall/two bedroom floors within an inch of their lives with fine grit
- Sanded living room/dining room/hall/two bedroom floors within an inch of their lives with very fine grit
- Cleaned stripped floors with vacuum, tack cloth, and then floor cleaner. And then cleaned them some more.
- Rolled and painted on sealer
- Rolled and painted on first finish coat
- Rolled and painted on second finish coat
- Rolled and painted on third finish coat
- Approximately 5,000,000 trips to the hardware store (I may have exaggerated, but for the record a trip to the hardware store with a 1-year-old and a 4-year old counts the same as three solo trips. So you can do your own math.)
- Called to get the electricity switched over
- Called to get the gas turned on - had to wait for water to get turned on first.
- Called to get water turned on.
- Called again to get gas turned on - and wait for a visit from a technician
- Waited for behind-schedule sewer repair so we could use toilet and sinks...
- When it was finally done, more negotiating with realtor and plumbers to get new sewer line attached to house drain pipe so we could use toilet and sinks...
- Measured the size of the hole under the house.
- Got bids on and ordered seven cubic feet of coarse gravel to fill it in
- Had the gravel delivered and built a chute to get the gravel from the driveway into the hole under the house
- Worked a lot of man hours to actually move the gravel from point A to point B in cramped conditions
- Fixed the post which held up the front corner of the roof overhang
- Copious amounts of cleaning in the new house, especially after all the sanding
- Attached address numbers to the front of the house
- Change of address with the post office
- Attempted to get the internet switched over the day of the move so that we could have our Skype lessons on Day 1. It failed, but the Skype students were sick that day anyway...
- Scoured Craigslist for rugs to put on the wood floors and drove around the Eastside to look at them.
- Bought moving boxes and tape
- Picked up some more from Linda
- Rented a truck for the right day (which was hard to predict until about four days out)
- Order floor finishing stuff via Linda's Amazon Prime account
- Ran out of checks so spent time running to the bank for cash for a variety of needs
- One day I left the apartment for literally eleven minutes (to put a flower on the baby's burial spot) while the kids were asleep and Jared was teaching, and Jared ended up getting sick and his student found our neighbor and when I got back the ambulance was on its way, and we ended up with what turned out to be an unnecessary long evening in the ER where I drove back and forth with the kids three times and had to schedule make-up lessons... (He was fine. If I had only been home during those few minutes!)
- I was the primary organizer of two big group concerts (one in Federal Way and one in Tacoma) which involved lots of emails between the venue and myself, all the different students and myself, and my co-teacher and myself. Involved getting attendance numbers, rehearsing all the music, figuring out part divisions and program order, chairs and music stands, call time, driving directions, and costume....
- I was the primary organizer of three solo recitals (two in Auburn and one on Fox Island) which involved determining repertoire, working out accompanists, setting program order, sending order off to my typist, contacting venues again, and communicating with students about attire, call times, rehearsals, and reception food, and showing up with the printed programs, paper goods, accompaniment parts, and instruments. The Fox Island venue ran into a problem the night of the recital when we had fifteen minivans parked out front and families standing around in the dark in long coats waiting to go in, so we had to be quick about our wits and move our recital spontaneously back to the house where we teach in Gig Harbor.
- On the same day as one of the Auburn recitals, I also had a student present his Book 1 recital at his home in Gig Harbor, so I drove there to accompany him with the kids in tow and get back in time to manage the solo recital.
- Our studio joined forces with some other studios for a big double-header Christmas concert in Maple Valley, and I rehearsed our group class for it, helped my students learn new music for it, and passed on communications from the organizing teacher.
- Anne broke her cello in half at our group class on Halloween, so she had to switch over to violin performing for three solo recitals, the second group concert, and the Christmas concert.
- Everyone in our family had a cold, except Jared had two.
- There was teething.
- Panicked trying to find babysitters for random bits of my days off so I could help Jared with the house prepping. It was intense, and thankfully several people came through for me.
- Oh, and the day of our move... it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We finished refinishing the floor around 4:15 on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, after lunch at Linda's, which meant we could start putting furniture down at 4:15 on Sunday. So the Thanksgiving week, we taught Monday at the apartment, and then went crazy the rest of the week. Sunday morning we got the truck and loaded in most of the boxes and little stuff. Jared took it up to the house and one of my work study families helped unload it into the garage. Meanwhile my dear Afghan neighbor took the kids for the day, and her husband and another Afghan friend helped Jared load. I'm telling you, if you ever need strong, helpful guys, meet some Afghans! Before we got the furniture loaded, it turned out my brother had a few more furniture items he needed to move so Jared went and helped him with that while we had the truck. Then the amazing Afghans then got our furniture loaded after dark. Jeffrey and Linda came to the house and helped unload (which we desparately needed) and brought dinner from our favorite Indian place. (Have you ever tried to move a piano? Ours is only a spinnet that we got from Freecycle, but that thing weigh at least 400 lbs. Quite a physical and engineering challenge.) We had the furniture in the house by 10:30 pm and then we brought the cats in (who had been sitting in cages in the moving truck for a couple of hours), had dinner, and went to bed. And we were up and ready to teach by 10:00 am the following morning in our new location. During my first lesson, Jared put up curtains in place of three absent room doors by using a power drill to screw in eyelets, tying in picture wire, and then using cafe curtain clips to hang up queen size sheets from our collection. So we have "privacy" on the bedroom, bathroom, and teaching room for now...
- In the few days following the move Lazarus was a bit out of sorts and acquired the nastiest looking bruise I've ever seen on an ear. And then another nasty bump on the forehead. And also threw his one paci that we could find down one of the vent holes in the floor prompting another trip to Lowe's to find new vent covers. And then the final day of our lease Jared was trying madly to clean out our apartment and one of our cars wouldn't start so he had to take the one with the carseats in it, and I was home alone at the new place with the kids teaching some make-up lessons when Lazarus pulled the modem off a shelf and sliced his toe open and there was blood EVERYWHERE, and I had to cancel the rest of the evening of teaching, and the amazing Big Anne came with a loaner car and took my Anne home with her and I sat at urgent care with Lazarus for a couple of hours until the doctor was ready to glue his toe back together.
- So anyway, the following day we had to have the battery and alternator replaced on the car.
- And also then the modem broke due to its fall, and my phone charger broke just because, and Jared had to go out and get replacements.
- And also the disc drive on our computer broke, due to Lazarus throwing the computer off the table. But Merry Christmas to us, it suddenly started working again yesterday...
I'm sure I missed a few things there, but anyway, life has calmed down a lot, and we no longer feel like we are hanging by threads. We still have quite a bit of work to do on the actual house, and lots of unpacking. But there has been a lot more work done in the last few weeks (work on insulated the ducts under the house, more painting on walls and ceilings, putting in our washer and dryer, more curtains here and there, fixing an electrical problem with the dining room light, reinstalling the gas stove in the living room, acquiring pads for the rugs...) and we are getting settled in. And we got a rare white Christmas here, as we didn't get organized to visit Texas in time, although we will be there for New Year's. Eventually... we'll have enough stuff done on the house that we can start on converting the garage to teaching studios, and believe me, that is going to be a HUGE project. Not ready to think about that yet! I am enjoying my two weeks off work immensely. Doing house stuff, fighting with our former rental company about bogus charges (I tell you, that apartment is the gift that never quits giving), PLAYING with my kids, and sleeping.
Anyway, in case you wondered what we've been up to, that is the summary version. Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Joyous New Year to you, and I hope to be back on the blogging bandwagon a bit more in the coming months.
