House Year

It was a year ago yesterday that we got the keys to our house.  After a two-month wait to close, we didn't know if we were going to get it.  And then it was ours, and Jared and his parents did a shocking amount of work on it in the month before we moved in.  What a whirlwind!  Good thing we didn't have a new baby at that same time, too.  The work has continued over the year and is far from done.

To recap, here is what has happened so far:

Chimney demoed
Flooring replaced underneath
Wood floors sanded and refinished
70s mirror demoed
Sheetrock on living room wall
Sheetrock on several ceilings
All of that floated, taped, and painted
Both bedrooms painted
Five doors demoed and replaced and painted
Two outdoor sets of step demoed and replaced and water sealed
Baseboards and interior door trim demoed, painted, and replaced
New heating vents
Insulation of heating ducts under the house
Foundation stabilized
Kitchen cabinets painted
Gutters and downspouts on garage replaced
Storage room painted and furnished to resemble teaching studio
Sand box dug
Plants put into yard
Planter box built
Curtains made for kitchen and laundry and three closet openings
Curtains put in eight windows
Random screws and junk taken out of the walls and trim
Moved in
Offloaded lots of stuff
Got rugs and furniture from Craigslist and elsewhere (six rugs, rug pads, sleeper sofa, baby tub, bathroom shelving, five sound panels, wooden table and three chairs, kids outdoor plastic table and four chairs, chest of drawers...)
Built pot rack
Fixed the floor of the bathroom closet
Put sliders or felt or tennis balls on the feet of all the furniture
Some exterior window frames painted
Back sidewalk dug out

I probably missed a few things there.  LOTS more to do.  It was a fixer.  And we bought it for its potential, not its current usefulness.  Onward!

More projects

Last weekend Jared's parents came to us in honor of Lazarus' birthday, and Jared's dad came with a specific mission to get the gutters on the garage and mini-studio organized so that they are not pouring rain water on the heads of people trying to enter.  Here they are tearing down the old gutters and the crooked wood on Friday...

And on a rainy Sunday you can see the newly installed gutters.  They were trenching to put drains from the downspouts into a neutral area.  While they were at it, they also moved the huge dumpster pile from leaning against the garage across the yard to the fence, so that when it is time for siding work, the building is accessible.  Junk pile moving was 95% complete in this photo...

We talked about next steps with the garage, and as far as the building goes, it sounds like next they need to put venting in what will become the attic.  Following that they need to put some more blocks in the rafters so that there is sufficient strength to accept insulation and sheetrock.  And in order to do that, the garage needs to be cleaned out quite a bit more.  So this may involve: 1) Putting up near-ceiling shelving in various parts of the house so we can unpack all the book boxes without having to take up floor space with standing book shelves; and 2) Getting some sort of garden shed for the growing bike collection, snow gear, camping gear, lawnmower, tools, and such.

Afterward the trenching was complete and the drains were in and re-covered, they started "power washing" with our garden hose to begin the process of uncovering the sidewalks which actually do exists between buildings in our back yard.

Since then I have also been out back in my low energy state digging out the rest of the sidewalk, which it turns out is something I can do sitting down. There is more to go, but I will tell you I thought it was only three bricks wide, and it turns out it is five bricks wide.  Nice surprise!

Here's a photo from Saturday afternoon when Grampa was helping the kids make paper airplanes...

...And one from Sunday where the kids tucked themselves into the sleeper sofa in the front bedroom, which is normally our teaching room, but can quickly be transformed into a guest room.  Anne wanted to do some reading practice with Grandma.

I finished the sweater for the baby, which I started making in July.  It was supposed to be 0-3 month size, but it turned out a bit larger than the 6-9 month sweater I made for Lazarus a while back.  He may have to wear it first and let the baby wear the 6-9 month sweater for a while...

Wednesday afternoon, my sandbox digger family finished using up the extra bricks to make me this planter.  I am encouraging the kids to do all the digging they want in there, because I need to get the grass roots dug up before I put the dirt in.  This also means that the brick pile is out from in front of the sandbox the family finished two weeks ago, which means that there is space for a sand delivery.  So now I just have to order the sand...

Also, in the mini studio, I added a hook cannibalized from one of our ex-interior doors for hanging my backpack of teaching material.  And I added two shelving brackets to get my instrument up off the floor.  Both of these strategies create more floor space in our tiny 5'6" x 9'10", and also if Lazarus visits while I am teaching, it keeps his fingers out of my stuff safely...

Tying up loose ends

During the summer, of course, I have been trying to tie up loose ends to get ready for the baby, who is now slated to arrive in four to five weeks....  This past week and a half I have had far less teaching so I've been working hard on getting ready for the fall teaching which is starting on Tuesday.  

Got this incredible, durable bunk bed on Craigslist a month or so ago.  The bedroom is officially full now, and I sent a bookshelf back to the garage to fit this in.  The plan is that Anne will be on the top and the remaining four of us will distribute across the queen and the bottom bunk as needed.

We needed more drawer space for the kids, as the double chest of drawers was already filled with Anne's and Lazarus' clothes.  A neighbor was giving this away, so we picked it up, cleaned it, fixed the knobs, and put it in the closet of the teaching room (one day to be the kids' room) under the hanging clothes.  Anne transferred her things to it, and we went through all their drawers and switched out sizes with the bins in the garage and brought in all the NB and 0-3 clothes and diapers to put in Anne's former drawers.  This chest is in the spot where we had all of our instruments stacked, so I redistributed them amongst the top shelves in both closets.  This involves the 1/16 violin, the 1/10 violin, the 1/8 cello, the practice cello, the 3/4 cello, the two violas, the 3/4 violin, and the bow case.  Still have to find the infant insert for the Ergo, the Boba, and the sling...  There in an unknown box in the garage.

I ordered the narrowest infant carseat on the market, and it arrived Wednesday.  I tried side-by-side installation in the back of our little Civic with our other two car seats, and if we put Anne's seat in the middle and keep the handle on the new baby bucket up, we can close the doors!  I then uninstalled it and returned it to the box in the garage for the next few weeks so that we have space to put all four of us current seat users plus a cello in until we need it for sure.

It turns out that we are going to be having group classes including Dalcroze in our little living room/dining room, and that involves quite a few things, which will be detailed further down, but it included Jared buying a piano tuning kit and improving the intonation of our little free spinet.  The strings are quite old, which makes it a tricky job.

I got the black monstrosity at Ikea this week, and it ain't pretty, but it is part of taking care of the horrible litter box situation.  As detailed a few months ago, water splashed on the floor (which happens quite frequently with my kids!) all runs down into the corner of the bathroom where the little box has no choice but to stand.  And litter kicked out by the cats combines with it to form the most horrid paste.  This shelving is meant for damp areas, and it holds the litter box off the floor.  I am ordering a large tray with a lip on it to sit on the shelf under the box to even better contain the litter.  And it also gives us an "official" stowaway spot for the baby tub and the changing pad.  I had given away our baby tub, but I got an identical one at a garage sale across the street this summer for $2.  Along the line of cats, since we now have interior doors, we can go back to the deal where Black Bean gets the run of the house and eats canned food at night, and the two girls get to spend the night in the other bedroom with their dry food.  This way, everyone is back on their proper diets, and I hope we see some good weight loss.  The one issue is that we have been keeping one water dish, and that in the tub, as Nutmeg is a splasher/spiller.  So I got a 99c plastic tray at Goodwill this week to put the bedroom water dish in so that Nutmeg is not totally trashing the room in the night.  It is working well.

Biggest project of the week.  After we completed our fall lesson scheduling recently, we discovered that we would have to have group and lessons happening in our house simultaneously.  May I remind you that we have all of 840 square feet, and that is going to be a true sound issue.  So Jared realized we were going to have to convert our teeny, tiny storage room attached to the garage into a teaching space for next week.  Jared did all the heavy lifting of hauling the boxes and camping equipment and such (which was nearly floor to ceiling and not organized in any fashion) into the garage and removing the heavy, iron jail bars from the window.  Anne and I patched most of the holes in the walls.  Lazarus "helped" while I painted the ceiling and the walls and some of the floor.  I found curtains and chairs and mirrors and art among our furnishings in the house and garage and installed them, although I did have to go out to get drywall anchors to hang the curtain rod and a clearance clock at Target to track the time.  Also, I got the rug from someone on Craigslist way out in Sammamish.  We still need to get a walk-off mat from Costco, which might be happening later today.  Also, I painted some of the exterior of the door frame, cut the grass around the building, moved our trash, recycle, and compost bins out from their previous home right under the window, moved our ex-back-door from leaning against the entryway to the growing rent-a-dumpster pile, ripped of the nasty, moldy carpet from the entry steps, and found some wood pieces to stabilize the steps with temporarily.  We have also ordered some sound panels so it's not so horribly boomy, and I don't know when they will arrive.  This is likely a temporary fix, as the room is only 5'6'' by 9'10" with a low ceiling, making it not ideal for teenage violinists, or cellists in general.  And the floor is not insulated.  And we'll just have to run a space heater in here when it is cooler weather.  So tearing it out and putting in something more sustainable in the same place is on the docket for some day.

As we will be having to move furniture around rather extensively on group days, we needed to get the laundry room better prepped to accept some of it.  There is more that should be done, but Friday I bought eight four-gallon storage buckets from a gentleman on Craiglist, cleaned them out thoroughly, and transferred most of our bulk foods from their gimpy, fall-over bags on our gimpy shelves stuffed between the water heater and fridge to the buckets, which stack quite nicely.  And I also finally made our two curtains hiding the laundry machines/printer/laundry basket/food storage/litter box/water heater more permanent with the use of the sewing machine rather than pokey, old straight pins.

Additionally, Jared got us a pencil sharpener, so we don't have 100 unusable pencils when students show up.  I organized my red teaching notebook with the new student list for the fall.  Jared and I selected and arranged chamber music for our collective four groups.  We are working on planning for our other group classes:  We have a book 1-2 violin/cello class on Tuesdays, a pre-Twinkle group on Thursdays, a violin book 2-5 class on Thursdays, and a cello class on Thursdays.  Also next Sunday we have a welcome back snack time/orientation/family social hour/parent Dalcroze class that needs to be fully organized, which will be happening offsite at a church space donated for the afternoon.  Also, when I was out on errands this week (which happened literally every day), I got another ball of yarn to finish the baby's sweater and a little balance bike off of Craigslist for Lazarus' birthday next week which I need to get new inner tubes for.  Yet another errand...  Also, at Jared's wise recommendation, I found a new doctor this week for the kids, who is only one mile from us rather than 30 minutes away in Covington.  Meaning that with the new baby we will not be having to drive so far all the time for appointments.  We will miss the amazing Dr. Byrd who has been seeing them for almost five and a half years, but I presume Dr. Moore will be lovely, too.  Also, it involved calls to their health insurance to get them new cards with their new PCP listed.  Got Lazarus scheduled for his two-year checkup with said new provider.  Oh, and did I mention sleeping at night is not going well for me?  Too much on my mind, and my hips are uncomfortable.  I think I might be going out to get some melatonin today, in the hopes that I can be functional before 10:30 am in the next few weeks.  Also, I finally cleaned off our window sills and the hutch of doom, which have been the "junk drawer" of my house, along with any other convenient horizontal surface.  Yuck!  Lots of paper went to the recycle bin.  Jared has been caulking the baseboards and trim little by little, and he also uninstalled our back door the other day and reinstalled it at a better angle, so now it closes and locks easily!  AND... he got us signed up with an awesome accountant, and we are now incorporated as a legal business.  Ballance Talent Education, Inc.

Re: group class in the house, I also got a couple more sheets from Value Village this week and made another set of curtains for our mini-kitchen.  I don't love it, but it is quite practical...

Now you see it.

Now you don't.

Tomorrow morning we are going to do a dry run on the group class configuration.  As of Thursday, all of our furniture which can be somewhat easily moved is on sliders, so we are going to practice reconfiguring the living/dining/laundry room to maximize Dalcroze space.  Wish us luck!

Desert vacation

Thanks to my dear friend of twenty (!) years Leah, Lazarus and I actually had a three day vacation this summer.  In Arizona.  It was beyond lovely and restful and rejuvenating just to hang out and chat and watch the kids, but I took a lot of landscape pictures on our few little outings.

A few from the Coronado National Memorial...

Looking toward the US side

Looking toward the Mexico side

A visit to Smith Ranch Canyon (I think I got the name right...)

Historic homestead

Arizona sunset... no filter.

Early Sunday morning I took L for a stroller ride around the historic part of Ft. Huachuca.

A brief visit to Ramsey Canyon...

Playground, loved by all the constituents ages one to eight...

And plenty of fun playtime in the house.  L loved having THREE big doting siblings, since he was missing his Annie something fierce.

We flew home on my birthday and found this gorgeous sight...  Jared and his parents (with the help of Anne) installed our new interior doors in the house!  It had been nine months without them.  Happy birthday to me!!!

And I took the kids to their favorite playground for half an hour where they played while ashes rained down on us from the forrest fires in BC.  So grosssssssssss!  You can see the unnatural sky color.

Also Anne and our neighbor girl helped make me a birthday cake, and it turned out QUITE tasty, although not beautiful enough for Pinterest.  Still working on that.