Living in a Fish Bowl

Not much has happened with the house since last I wrote, although a lot has happened in it.  My parents spent the weekend-- our first guests! --and helped us put a whole bunch of stuff away, emptying a lot of boxes and creating actual open space in the great room, rather than the huge pile anchored by our two enormous armoires and covered with plastic sheeting.  We put Lola's bed together, and decided to buy a new version from IKEA rather than putting together the identical one we bought from a couple off of Craigslist what seems like ages ago; it worked out, too, because my parents took the used one back to their place so the kids can use it when they sleep over.  Slowly but surely, the place is becoming livable.

Living in the house is definitely going to be interesting.  We have chosen to be in a fish bowl by buying the house that's pretty much at the center of the community-- and don't forget the 49 windows-- but at the same time, it'd be nice to, oh, I don't know, be able to change my pants in my own bedroom!  For the first four workdays this week, I would go downstairs to take a shower in the morning (the upstairs shower is still doorless), then come back up and grab clothes from my closet, then head to the upstairs bathroom to change.  One day I picked a shirt that was too wrinkled, so I came back into my bedroom only wearing pants, and a neighbor walked right by.  I'm sure all she saw was me standing there with no shirt on, but I'm also pretty sure by the look on her face that she was pretty sure I was naked.  Oh well-- that's what they get for letting exhibitionists into their fishbowl, right?  (Um, right?)  However, as of the weekend, all of that has changed, as we have had our cellular shades installed.  We got the kind that can be pulled up or down, so we can still have daylight in, say, the top two windows without putting on a show for the neighborhood.  The shades are in the three bedrooms, and should assuage my sister's fears of people watching the kids while they sleep.

The kids, by the way, are sleeping just fine.  The first night they slept with each other in Isaac's room, but ever since they've used their own bed. Lola's tickled pink about her new bed, and I'm sure she'll be even more so once Abby gets her built-in completed.  Isaac's still in his old bed, which will eventually be given over to the guest room once we get a new mattress and give him our current one, but his room's all decked out with the solar system on the ceiling, his toys already strewn all over the place, and his aquarium humming in the corner.  Ah yes, the aquarium.  Abby tried her darnedest to get that thing to stay in DC, but it's made its way over, which I'm happy about.  Having had one all through growing up, I really liked staring at mine as I was falling asleep, and I know I was much healthier for having had a giant humidifier in the room.  That said, we'll take much better care of it in the new place than we did in the basement; when I emptied the water there, it looked more like iced tea than something fish would want to live in.  Driving the six miles with the aquarium in my passenger seat was a lesson in how smoothly I don't drive; even when I tried the most babyish of rolling stops and starts, the couple inches of water I had left in there (with all 30-some fish wondering what the heck was going on) sloshed in a great example of what a tsunami might look like if the earth was placed in a car and driven up 16th Street...

The commute's not nearly as bad as I feared, although it's much better in the morning than in the evening.  In the morning, I'm getting up at 6 instead of 6:10, and I'm not making the kids' lunches-- at least not yet.  If I get out the door before 6:45, I can catch a Montgomery County Ride On bus right outside, take that to Silver Spring Metro station, and I get to work in Rosslyn by 7:40.  If I miss the bus, it's a one-mile walk to Forest Glen Metro station, which takes about 17 minutes.  Of the seven morning commutes I've had so far, I've missed the bus twice, but only once have I gotten to work late, and even then by only about ten minutes.  On the walk to Forest Glen, I see practically no one, which is weird.  That's not the same on the way home, though. Twice I've been timing myself to see which way walking from Forest Glen is the fastest, and each time I've been thwarted by pesky neighbors wanting to --gasp!-- talk to me!  Actually, it's great, because I'm making an effort to learn people's names, and there's no better way to do that than to actually meet them on a regular basis.  I'll admit that after living in our house in DC, there was one household on our block that knew everything about us, but we knew the names of exactly two people in their large family.  Yeah, after nearly a decade on the block.  Now you can imagine how embarrassing this was for me, since I grew up as the paperboy who at least knew the name of the head of every household on my block.  So this time around, I mean business, and started by going to the Homeowners' Association meeting on Thursday, and taking detailed notes not on the issues at hand (which are mostly about money), but about people's names and where they live.

So Susan and Ron, who moved here from Pennsylvania, I was very happy to talk to you two on the way home from work the other day.  And Amy, who just had a baby with her husband Tony, I'm sorry if I freaked you out by knowing your name (and saying it) twice as I walked by over the last couple of days.  And Bobby, who works as a wine specialist at Dean + Deluca, I hope you did well on your test, and will refer you to the winos that are my mother-in-law and her husband when they come by this weekend; and I'm definitely intrigued by your wife, because I can honestly say I've never met a woman named Lady Stacey. And Paula and Richard and Peg with the Easter egg tree and Minh and Janice from Australia and Miss Sally and her daughter Shelly and Jim and Susan and Carol and Lou (whose dogs are Diva and Pierre) and Brian and Laura (hey! I know two Brian-and-Lauras now!) and... well... you get the picture.  We may live in a fishbowl, but those things are made of glass and the fish can see out just as well as we see inside.  Abby and I want to live here for a long time, so it makes no sense not to know our neighbors.  So, neighbors?  Please don't get freaked out when I call you by name, because if I don't do it now, it'll be 2023 and I'll be asking my kids to find out the names of the people we've known since before we moved in.

So moving back inside the house, I guess there have been some small things going on.  All four new windows are supposedly in now.  One has been installed-- in the kitchen-- which is good, since any time the wind blew, the insulation that was there made a crinkly sound that reverberated throughout the whole level. I see one other one ready to go in up on the balcony, but have no idea where the others are.  The cabinets are not complete yet, but the last one has finally been delivered, so we are in the process of scheduling the final install.  Once that's done, they'll take back all the mistake cabinets, which will free up another huge corner of the great room.  The countertop is done, except we realized we needed them to drill four holes instead of two, based on our choice of faucets.  So I emailed them last night and am still waiting for a response.  As a result, the kitchen sink is still out of commission, so tonight I had to wash the dishes in the bathroom. It's gross to wash the dishes in the bathroom, but it's also very nerve-wracking to have to do it on a brand-new porcelain sink that is ridiculously shallow.  I was treating each dish as if it were bone china, not because of the preciousness of the dish, but because I didn't want the sink to get another chip.  Yeah, I said "another;" no idea how/when/why, but there's a tiny chip right on the inside corner of our upstairs vanity.  Already.  I guess it just follows us, since there's one in our upstairs sink from DC that's been there ever since I mistakenly dropped one of Abby's mysterious glass bottles from the medicine cabinet way back when. (Who'd'a thunk that the porcelain would break and the glass bottle would come out the victor in that contest?)

Tomorrow we're having the measure for the upstairs shower door.  If you'll recall, we turned down the $3000 custom door our contractor suggested, but Abby also turned down the perfectly good $700 one I found online because it had an edge on the side, and she wanted a perfectly frameless one.  So we're going to inch up a bit, and go for the Home Depot custom ones that are about $1500, after which we can take a shower in our own bathroom instead of running up and down the stairs to do it.  After that, hopefully the cabinets will be installed within the next few days, which will include the hookup of the dishwasher and range, and the ability of our contractors to install the range hood.  Next Monday we're scheduled for a Comcast install for Internet, cable, and a security system, although we're pretty sure none of it is going to work.  You see, we've been going back and forth with both Comcast and Verizon for weeks, trying to see if they actually provide service to us.  At first neither recognized our addresses, but then they did.  Now they want to just come out and do an appointment, even though Lee told us the windmill next-door was told they can't get service because no wires have been pulled for our side of the street.  If you can imagine, I'm trying to get Comcast to put my house on the same work order as theirs, to save us time as well as to save the Comcast guy from having to come out for no reason.  Comcast refuses to give me any information on an account that's not mine, even when I assure them I in fact want absolutely no information.  "Just look at their account, don't say a word, and see if they can physically get cable; if they can, great! Schedule the appointment for us; but if they can't, wouldn't it save us all the trouble?"  "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't give information out on anyone else's account."  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.   So Comcast is coming out on Monday, but the smart money's on us not having cable on Tuesday.

So that's the update for now.  Again, due to that whole not-having-cable thing, I can't upload pictures.  So I promise a buttload of pictures once everything's hooked up.  In the meantime, I've gotta run home and pack for my three-day Buffalo adventure that starts tomorrow and will hopefully include Duff's chicken wings, Anderson's lemon ice, and Alex Trebek. :)

First Post Post-Move

It's been a week since I last posted, but don't be too mad, because I have an excuse: we don't have Internet access at home.  Yet.  

Didja get that?  Home.  Yet.  Yep: we've moved in.  HALLE-FREAKIN'-LUJAH!

Late last week we said it was time to cut the cord, so we pulled up stakes from our DC house and moved almost all the rest of our stuff into the new place.  By Saturday evening a very good chunk of our belongings had made the six-mile trip north across the state line in three car trips, and by Sunday evening there were only a few things left.  (Actually, just as we've been living in the state of perpetual "just another few weeks" since last summer, it seems as if this week has been a state of perpetual "just another carload or two.")  By today, though, we officially have one carload left, which we'll pick up tomorrow: our tv and the aquarium.  And that's it.  We'll be moved.

What that doesn't mean is that we're living in something that would resemble a normal living situation.  We've got boxes everywhere, piled strategically so as not to block access to things the contractors will still need to get around.  And believe me, there are still a lot of things, which I'll enumerate at the end of this post.  But I want to focus on the positive, because, at least as concerns the house, this has been a great week.

So where to begin?  I'll go room by room and give updates.  In the kitchen, the countertop has been completed, including adding the extra hole at the sink for my beloved hot-water tap.  The sink is in, too, but no plumbing has been hooked up.  I believe that's the last step before livability, but since we have water in the bathrooms, we're making do.  (This very much resembles the "fancy camping" we lived through for such a long time with the old house, only this will not last nearly as long.)  The fridge is turned on and mostly stocked.  The missing cabinets still haven't been delivered, and Home Depot is going to let us know when they are.  We have a few extra cabinets that were mismade, and they keep calling to have them picked up and returned to the store.  But the timing on this is getting out of hand, and I'm going to insist to them that they put us out and we deserve to keep at least some of the misfits-- especially since a couple of them will fit really well elsewhere in the house.  The range is in but not on; the range hood is not in, but the hole for it has been cut; the microwave is in but not framed, and Isaac inaugurated it by reheating leftover pasta.  The dishwasher looks too small for the hole it's supposed to fit in, but we're going to wait until the cabinet guys come back for the final install because, who knows, maybe it will magically fit in.  I think, though, that we might have to get a new dishwasher and do something with this one... although I can't imagine what.  And all the lights are in, including the two pretty ones with the incredibly wasteful Edison bulbs.  Abby always turns those on, and I turn them off, because they cost a fortune to light.

Our bedroom is the room that's probably the most complete.  The closet had already been installed, and over the course of a few nights almost all the shelves and hangers and drawers were filled up with clothes.  I had to reinvent how I folded my tee shirts, because the old way was only filling the front half of each shelf; by folding shirts in thirds, I now get 50% more shirt per shelf.  I bought one of those tie hangers that holds like 40 ties, but it's hard to use and only gets about two-thirds of my collection onto it; similarly, I bought four of those five-pants hangers from IKEA and I don't like the work it takes to take a pair off without disturbing the others.  Both save space, but I'm going back to my regular tie rack and one-pair-per-hanger style.  Abby put the new bed together-- which is the same as our old bed, except a new frame, since West Elm gave it to us for free.  The bed fits right up to the windows, with both side tables in the room, with only a few inches to spare-- perfect fit.  The first couple nights in there, we switched sides of the bed to see which would work: on night one, I was on the closet side and she was on the window side; on night two, we switched.  Night two was incredibly awkward for both of us-- it's so weird, but after two nights, I believe we have decided what side of the bed we'll be sleeping on for the next couple of decades. (And it's neither the same as we had it in the old house or the way I had expected it to be, since Abby's usually freaked out being next to windows.)

The windows do freak us out a bit, but I think we'll survive!  We ordered custom-made cellular blinds, which arrived at the house on Saturday; just waiting for them to be installed.  Once installed, they'll not only help with shielding from onlookers, which seem to be everywhere, since the house is located pretty much in a giant fish bowl, but will also help with efficiency.  They're made to be pulled up from the bottom, so we'll be able to block off the bottom half or two-thirds of the window, but still let in natural light from the top part.  It'll be nice to be able to change my clothes in my own room, or to sleep without knowing everyone can watch me from the street.  This morning, for instance, I had my pants on but decided to change shirts, so I was standing there looking into my closet when a neighbor walked by.  I'm sure it looked like I was standing there naked, but, well, I wasn't, so there.  Next week at this time, hopefully the blinds will shield the neighbors from the less-than-flattering exhibitionist that is my pasty self.

The great room is pretty much the same, since it had been painted way back.  The up-lighting along the sides looks great, and even the workers agree-- I think they thought Abby was a bit weird for her choices in there.  Instead of spot lights or track lighting, she chose these little linked LED lights that were plug-ins, and had them hard-wired in so each light lighted the area between two of the rafters.  It looks really cool-- the only problem being that they were wired in a weird way, so if we want all of them to be on we have to flip four different switches, one in each corner of the room.  We put Anyu's dining-room table together and have actually been eating at an honest-to-goodness table, rather than on a trunk disguised as a coffee table in front of the TV in the basement with the kids sitting on the floor.  We don't have chairs yet, but since they're going to be a major purchase, we're going to wait with them until the construction is done-- don't want them to get scratched right away if we can help it.  Oh, and the fireplace is in and turned on.  Actually, it was so turned on that when we got back from Florida it was about 80 degrees inside, even though it was in the 50s outside.  We still have to learn how to make it work, because it's a little trickier than we had hoped, but I think we'll get it.

The front door has the wrong hardware on it, but other than that it's the same.  And the front foyer has been painted really nicely in the same gray color we used in the downstairs bathroom.  And what do you know: our wedding lily made it through our vacation and is still alive, so I rewarded it with a good dusting and a move into the bay window.

Downstairs, the kids' rooms are both moving along.  Their beds are semi-set-up, in that they're sleeping in them but the frames are not done altogether.  My sister came by this weekend and helped put together some of their furniture, so now they each have a desk and a book case.  Once all my clothes made it out of my old dresser, Isaac inherited it, we stuck it in his closet, and his clothes are also all put away; only Lola's remain sorted in a laundry basket and suitcase.  Both sets of closet doors have been delivered, but aren't up yet.  Abby even helped Isaac decorate his ceiling with a solar system set he got for Christmas (or was it Valentine's Day?  I don't know... Abby gets them presents for everything, which is a point of contention...)  Anyhow, it's coming along great, and more importantly they love their rooms.  There have already been more than a handful of times when they've disappeared into their respective rooms to play.  Alone.  Quietly.  (I know!)  However, one of those times?  Yeah, not so good.  I got back from picking a load up from the old house on Saturday and Abby was fuming, and Lola was pouting.  I guess the kids found their spin-art toy that takes paint and splatters it all around on a piece of paper that spins around... and started playing with it on their own-- and more importantly, on the new floor.  They had paint all over their hands, and got it all over Lola's floor, and we hadn't even slept there one night.  Abby was furious, and the toy has been banished.  Luckily, the mess cleaned up because it was caught early enough.  Phew!

The family room actually has a seating arrangement, and once the TV arrives tomorrow (we need to bring it when there are no kids in the car but two adults handy, since it's heavy and requires the seats to be dropped down) it'll go in.  We won't have cable yet, but that's only days away.  Last week I called Comcast again, and they again insisted they don't cover our house.  9610 and 9615 and 9620 Dewitt Drive?  Sure.  But 9618?  Yeah, no.  I insisted they were wrong, and implored them to come out to check.  36 hours later I get a call: "Mr. Wahl, we'd actually be happy to charge you $200 a month to watch ten channels and check your Facebook status."  Actually, that's not exactly what they said, but it's what they meant.  They're coming by on Tuesday to install cable, Internet, and potentially a security system.  We don't know yet whether we'll do that, since it's such a good neighborhood.  But Abby's freaked out by the windows-- understandably-- and the fact that the kids are on the ground floor, so my money's on us having it installed.

The laundry room?  Well, apart from being able to move the washer and dryer back from where they were perched so close to the door, nothing looks different.  But it's so incredibly nice to have in-house laundry back.  Those nearly five months of begging others to allow us to wash in their place, or going to a laundromat even though we own two washers and two dryers, was definitely wearing on our patience.  I have a load of laundry going as I type this, and no one's paying attention to it, and that's how it should be.  It's nice and quiet, too, and plays a silly little electronic song when it's done, just like my parents' does.  On the other side of the floor, though, things are not so quiet.

That's where the water heater is.  What, you didn't hear me?  I said, "THAT'S WHERE THE WATER HEATER IS!!!"  Yeah, this thing is crazy loud, and I'm not happy about it.  I'm wondering if it's the difference between having a gas water heater and an electric one-- our electric one in DC never made a peep, but this one sounds like an espresso machine gone berserk.  We don't have it enclosed-- yet-- but believe me you, that will happen.

The bathroom is great, and taking a shower down there (since we don't have a shower door upstairs yet) is really nice.  The water heater is directly behind the shower, so it's instantly hot.  The window fogs over in about 30 seconds, so there's no putting on a show.  (We're going to frost the window, so sorry potential peepers.)  And I managed to cajole Abby into letting me put fluorescent bulbs into a couple of the fixtures.  The toilets flush beautifully, and ridiculously fast.  And the door locks.  Did you hear that?  For the first time, we have locking interior doors.  It's magical, really.

So that's where we stand. In the morning, I've been getting up ten minutes earlier than in DC, and getting to work right on time.  The way home I can't judge yet, because this week I've had to stay later than usual, and the Metro at 5:00 is way different than it will be at 4:30.  One day I got home in under an hour, and the next it took me nearly 80 minutes because of a delay on the Blue Line.  (I couldn't get mad, though, because the delay would've affected my old commute as well.)  I'm definitely gonna get a bike to park at Forest Glen station on nice days, but for now, especially since I've got room on my SmarTrip card, I've been taking the Ride On bus to and from Silver Spring station, since its schedule lines up perfectly with mine, especially in the mornings.

Once we get settled, I'll be able to write with more frequency again, and will post pictures.  But for now, I leave you with an email we sent to Mark this evening, of things we need to discuss tomorrow.  (My more frequent readers will see the tone has changed a lot since the last letter of demands... for the better, that is.)  It seems like the closer we are to the finish line, the more things there are to do.  But we're moved in, and that's all that matters.  At least this week :)

Mark: here are the current issues with the house. We would like to discuss them with you on Friday, but wanted you to be aware of them as soon as possible. Thanks, and talk to you soon. -G

1.      Flooring issues: There’s a really weak spot in the great room just in front of the kitchen doorway.  Every time you walk by, your heel depresses the spot a lot; also, in the same spot ther's a nail sticking up.   Also, in our bedroom, just at the entrance on the right, one of the boards is split lengthwise, and will catch on your socks as you walk by,  Definitely just waiting to pull right up and out.‬
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2.  After the inspection, your guys can come in and cut down that backsplash, which is still ridiculously high.  The electrician installed the outlets vertically on the backsplash, even though we requested (and he said he could do) horizontal.  The height of the backsplash is unacceptable as is.‬
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3.      We’ve purchased a chandelier for the dining room and are waiting for delivery.
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4.      We need to switch a couple pieces of the door hardware that were installed in the incorrect place.  We need the knob currently on the back door switched to the front door.  (I labeled all of the knob  boxes… don’t know why this one was put in where it was.)  Also, the deadbolt in the back door was installed improperly; it locks from the inside, but there’s no way to lock or unlock it from the outside—the knob doesn’t catch for some reason.‬
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5.      I bought the lighting timer that I wanted to have installed for the switch beside the front door, to use for the front porch lights.  It requires a neutral wire, which is why I called you from Home Depot on Sunday.  Let me know if this is not possible, because then I’ll exchange it for the one one step down, which does not require a neutral wire… I just like this one better.‬
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6.      We have an old-fashioned doorbell that we’d like to have installed on the front door.  It’s sitting on a box on the piano (which itself can be moved downstairs if you guys can do it) and the directions and hardware are all in the box.  Abby can show the guys where it goes; it actually gets mounted right to the door, I believe.‬
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7.      Also, Abby will show the guys where we’d like the address numbers to go.  Apparently, not having them up is very confusing to a lot of people (FedEx, mailmen, etc.) so putting them up would be a good idea.  We’ve given up on finding the mailbox, so we’re just going to buy a new one to have mounted on the wall.  Both the mailbox and the address numbers will go on the wall to the right of the front door, as you look at it from outside.‬
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8.    The water heater is crazy loud!  We will definitely want to have it encased once all is said and done.  I have never heard our water heater in DC make the noises this one makes—we can hear it in the kitchen! 
9. You can hear everything between the kids’ bedrooms. Abby installed her secret passageway and discovered there was no insulation in the wall. I'm very disappointed with this, since we paid more than $1000 to have this done throughout the house.‪
10. The light fixture in the mudroom is too low and needs to be raised.

11. The spigot outside is dripping.

12. The issue with the front door opening outward has not been resolved.

13. The paint on the stair risers still needs to be scraped.

14. The doors for the bathroom and upstairs closet can be installed.

15. What is going on with the PVC pipe looping out of the left side of the roof (as you look at the house)? Also, there's a pipe of some sort sticking out of the ground by the back door.

16. One of the great room ceiling lights (the one all the way to the left above the kitchen door) keeps going out.

17. What is the switch on the countertop for? There will be no garbage disposal, and the hot-water heater stays on all the time with a plug.

Moved, Just Not Moved In

The ZippyShell storage unit
that caused more than a few of our neighbors
to walk their dogs by our place this weekend :)

So it's official: Almost all of our stuff is now in the house.  We are currently still living in the basement, but our confines have suddenly become much more spacious.  Basically, we've got two mattresses, the cushions from our couches, our electronics, clothes for a week, toiletries, and foodstuffs here.  Everything else?  In Maryland.  I know, right?!

This weekend was really productive, thanks to my father-in-law and brother-in-law schlepping themselves up here for the weekend with their pick-up truck.  Between that tiny Tacoma and our Prius, we managed to get everything up, and didn't even have to cancel on two different birthday parties the kids had been invited to.  In fact, the parties really helped things, because they took the kids out of our hair for hours at a time on both Saturday and Sunday.  By the end of Saturday, we had put a huge dent in the basement, and by the end of Sunday there was so much stuff in the family room of the bungalow that we were having trouble moving around.  We basically put everything on the floor it needed to go on, and left it at that.  Once Monday rolled around, Abby spent the day dividing things up.  For instance, she put all the seasonal stuff (like Christmas ornaments and Easter baskets) in one of the storage spaces under the stairs, and all of the home improvement stuff (like paint cans and extra shingles) in the other.  She says that after having done that, it's clear we're not going to have a storage issue after all, which I still suspect we will.  

When looking at this photograph,
please imagine a high-pitched scream
going off at random intervals.

Getting the stuff out of the storage container was fun for us, because it meant progress on the house.  But for the kids, that was the most important thing we could have done-- screw moving, they wanted their toys back!  The squeal let out by Lola when she saw the giant garbage bag full of stuffed animals way back behind most of the stuff in there was likely audible across the Beltway. She insisted on carrying the bag out herself, even though it was bigger than she is.  And forget anything about not unpacking because of dust; by the time we left to come back to DC Saturday night, those toys were strewn around her room like nobody's business.  Surprisingly, she chose not to bring her Abby Cadabby (a Sesame Street fairy character, for those of you without small kids) back to DC with her, favoring a couple of small cat toys.  Guess quantity ruled over quality in that decision.  Meanwhile, Isaac was absorbed with his synthesizer (which I fully expect him to forget within a week, since that's what he did after we got it for him) and his BeyBlade spinny things-- they're tops, but with enough styling on them that saying they're tops just makes you a party pooper.  Whatever-- the kids were left to their own devices once the toys popped out of the storage container, which helped us get everything else out without  breaking anything!  (And yes, Abby's grandpa's enormous armoire got in, in one piece, without breaking anything else.)

We even managed to do an IKEA run midday on Sunday, although after all was said and done, I think it wasn't the best use of our time.  It ended up being no sweat to find the stuff Abby wanted, but we spent at least a half an hour in line, and since everything we got ended up being in long, flat boxes, I think we could have easily fit it all in the Prius with the seats folded down.  No matter: I am likely to have more than a few days of putting Scandinavian furniture together in my future, and I'm okay with that.  (We got each of the kids a new desk and a new bookcase, got flush-mount light fixtures for all the closets, and the same hanging fixture we've had in our DC kitchen for 9 years for our mudroom; hey, you stick with what you like!)

On Saturday, Abby met with the countertop measurer guy, and by the end of the weekend we got the plans for the project.  They told us it'll all be done within ten days, which means it should be installed before we get back from Florida.  That magic return trip will probably be when we physically move into the house ourselves, which should give the contractor and all the subs plenty of time (famous last words!) to finish what they've got left.  We had four doors delivered today, and the plumber "had free range" (Mark's words, not mine) of his stuff today, so a lot of that final stuff is being, well, finalized, even before we leave for the beach.

Can you tell there's a wood block mounted behind
this sconce?  I can't...

And the upstairs bathroom is also lighted now.

Other stuff has been done as well.  I bought this snazzy and probably overpriced thermostat called "Nest" that supposedly learns your habits and adjusts the temperature accordingly all by itself.  We had the bathroom sconces installed and the downstairs ones had to have wood blocks placed behind them because they didn't clear the mirror (that same damn mirror!) without them; amazed to see the guys actually painted the wood the same gray color as the walls to make it blend in.  Honestly, if Abby had not pointed it out, I wouldn't have looked twice at the way they were mounted-- see for yourself!

On the financial front, I did decide to go with the local lender and forget about having another place beat the rate.  I felt a bit slimy about it, and the fact that the guy's local makes it better.  I do have to dredge up all of our paperwork over at the house tomorrow, to make sure we have everything we need to allow the refi to proceed, but that shouldn't be a huge issue.  I also was pretty psyched when I remembered I could transfer our construction insurance policy into regular homeowners' insurance; doing that should cut our rate in half.  I checked for cable providers, and unless we go for a dish-- which is pretty much a non-starter-- it looks like we're stuck with Comcast.  Yuck.  I also put out feelers for a security system.  For our DC house, with three doors and only five windows on the first floor, the free promotional systems worked just fine.  This time, with only two doors but crazy numbers of first-floor windows, I think we're gonna have to pay a bunch up front to make sure we get all the windows tied in.  Plus, that'll ensure our kids won't be able to sneak out of their windows undetected once they're teenagers... right?  Right?

Speaking of the kids, I finally got in touch with a legal mind who helped us out with our schooling dilemma, and it seems I was right: our kids can keep going to their school in DC, even after we move.  According to this firm, the fact that we'll be paying property and income taxes in DC allows us to choose our residency, just like snowbirds in New York choose to be Florida residents for tax purposes, even if they spend more time in Buffalo than in Sarasota.  Abby had been freaked out, because even though I was telling her that was the way I thought it would be, without having talked to a lawyer, she was worried about things like inviting people over for play dates or having birthday parties at home.  Now that we have someone in the know that told us we're cool, we can relax and renew our DC driver's licenses, register the kids for their same school next year, and bring out those mothballed plans for Abby's-- er-- Isaac's Halloween birthday party extravaganza down in the Glen.  But that's October, and this is still March, at least for one more week.

We've definitely got our work cut out for us this week, but now it's almost all squarely on us.  Once the plumbing is done, I'm going to consider the house unofficially livable.  Sure, we've got no doors on the bathrooms, and a giant hole under our back door-- although I just got an email from Home Depot about two hours ago saying the new door has been shipped-- but it's really now our job to make sure the accoutrements of living in a house are in order.  By the time we get back from the beach, we will be able to live in this house, and I'll be damned if something I did (or didn't do) is gonna hold me up from that!  (That said, we probably do have to get an official Certificate of Occupancy from the county, but that's Mark's job, not mine...)

Closer and Closer

For the last, oh, six months, Abby and I have believed (on and off) that we were no more than two or three weeks from moving into our house; okay, maybe a month, but you know what I mean.  From the time we were in England and knew we just had to order our appliances right then and there, from the confines of our hotel room, to any number of times when if only one thing wouldn't hold us up, we've been living under that illusion for what seems like forever.  Well, we've reached that precipice again, folks: on Friday, I have taken the day off from work so that I can meet the guy from Zippy Shell at the house and unload all of our stuff that we had in storage.  Into the house.  We won't be moving into the house this Friday, but our stuff will be.  Or about 50% of our stuff.  But that's for sure.  And so far, it seems that most everything is cooperating with us. Mark even rearranged the schedule of what the crew is going to be doing to accommodate the move; he was going to stain the porch last week, but that would have meant postponing some other things that involving using the front door, so I think he's going to wait until we're in Florida in a couple of weeks.  So we arrived at the house on Saturday morning, fully prepared for a letdown, and were more than pleasantly surprised.  How surprised?  Well, when I walk around the Bungalow now, I tend to take out my BlackBerry before I go in, open up the notebook app, and take note of all the things I need to tell Mark he needs to fix or to change or to just do.  This time?  Only four things, plus a compliment.  I've never written a compliment in my BlackBerry notes app for Mark before.  A corner has been turned.  The last corner.  I hope.

Going back a few months, do you remember when the crew diligently was working on restoring the 49 windows in the house?  45 of them were salvageable, and the crew spent weeks making sure each of the looked perfect, and was painted the exact color of black Abby wanted.  It might sound like nothing, but remember each window has latticework on it, is more than 115 years old, and yeah, there are 45 of them.  They looked gorgeous.  The only problem was that once they went in, the drywall followed, and all this white glop got all over them.  And sure, white drywall glop can be washed off, but they had been perfect!  And then, there was the problem of the windows being way too far forward, in front of the drywall, because of the difference in thickness between the new drywall and the old wallboard on lathe.  There were jagged edges and steep cliffs and big ol' holes with insulation popping out around every window.  Things were not pretty.  On Saturday?  Things were pretty: white glop gone; insulation tucked; edges sanded; windows beautiful.  And even the window ledges, which were oddly populated with boards from the old kitchen cabinetry (which had been in what is now Lola's room, if you can remember that far back), were halfway done; they're taking the extra wood flooring and installing it on the window sills.  The problems have been fixed, and what little problems are left are easily fixable.

Can you tell which part is brushed nickel and which part is chrome?
Yeah, I thought you could...

Next up are the bathroom mistakes from a week ago, when the upstairs vanity was set to a height where a little person would have to stoop to brush his teeth, and both bathroom mirrors blocked any possible use of the electric outlets.  Well, the vanity has been reset to the highest point possible while still retaining use of the faucet, and not only have the outlets been moved away from the mirrors, but the walls have been filled in, sanded, and repainted.  The toilets still aren't set, and for some reason they didn't notice that they mixed up the bathtub controls by putting half of the chrome set with the other half of the brushed nickel set in one bathroom and vice versa in the other... but the problems have been fixed, and what little problems are left are easily fixable.

Our kitchen, with cabinets about 80% installed

The professional closet has gone in in my bedroom, and Abby painted the walls (a surprise while I was on my business trip) the same blue as Isaac's stripes; I love it.  (The closet disappoints a bit, because I thought it would be a bit more hotel-like than it is, but I'm assured I'll appreciate the modifiable shelving once I actually have to put clothes into it.)  The fireplace has come in, and is waiting patiently next to the hearth to be installed; I'm hoping we don't have to do too much to the chimney before it can go into use, but even if so, it won't be until fall when we'd really want to start using it in earnest.  The kitchen cabinets have once again caught a snag-- measurements of one cabinet that touches the back of the fireplace are off by a half an inch or so, so the whole thing has to wait a few more days to be completed; but the bottom cabinets are all in, which means we can go ahead with the countertop measure.  And the space looks terrific.  I had been worried about the kitchen feeling cramped once everything was in, but it doesn't feel that way, and it'll actually open up more than it is now, once the backsplash gets cut down following countertop installation.  

We've bought a ton of things.  Abby bought all of the doors: four used doors for the upstairs doorways, so the older look of that area will stay intact; 13 new doors for the downstairs doorways, so everything down there will match.  All the downstairs doors match, with what are called "five-lite" designs-- five squares cut into the door going vertically; the bedroom and guest room doors have beveled glass in those squares, while everything else is just solid wood. That way, the family room won't lose all of the natural light from the southern side (kids' rooms) of the house, and so that (hopefully) the guest room won't feel like too much of a cave.  We haven't bought doorknobs yet-- we have to buy 20 sets!-- but we have a design picked out, and we just have to make sure we're buying the right number of ones that lock, ones that don't lock, and ones that are "dummy knobs" just for show.  We also have to find out whether the second door of the french doors into the guest room will open-- Abby says they won't, but I'm not so sure, and I want them to because I want to be able to open the doors together to air out the room when nobody's in there.  We'll have to ask Mark.

My twist doorbell

And I bought a doorbell.  For $60.  Okay, I know it's dumb to spend $60 on a doorbell, but I am the doorbell guy-- probably a result of five years worth of ringing doorbells on my paper route as a kid-- and I want to have a cool doorbell on my house.  Well, I found one: a twist doorbell with a design from the 1890s, which is when the house was built.  Instead of pushing a button and hearing a ding or a bing-bong, you grab a knob, twist, and hear a brrrrring!  I fully admit I'm a dork, but I think the thing is so cool looking, and I used my parents' birthday money to get it, so sue me.  Hopefully the historical folks won't have too much of a fit over it, since although it's from the right decade, it's from a style of house that's a bit more upscale, and was more popular on the west coast than the east coast.  But I want it, so there.

Our kitchen sink

Last night we sat down and, amazingly, agreed on and purchased both a kitchen sink and a kitchen faucet in about 45 minutes.  Shocking, seriously.  Abby wanted a squared-off sink, with actual corners at the bottom rather than rounded edges.  I wanted one basin, and I wanted it to be mounted underneath the countertop rather than with a ridge on top.  We found two we liked, one was too big to fit on the cabinet, decision made.  Next was the faucet.  Abby wanted a "bridge faucet," which has the spigot and the two handles coming up out of the counter independently, but with a connecting piece between the three.  I wanted modern, clean lines.  And neither of us wanted to spend an arm and a leg.  We found it, along with the sink, on build.com, and the decision was made.  She went to take a shower, and before I ordered them both, I Googled both of their serial numbers, and found both identical things on other websites cheaper.  So when she got out of the shower, not only did we have our sink and our faucet, but we saved almost $100 on the pair.

Sconce for the upstairs bathroom

Lighting.  Lighting has been the bane of our existence.  It has been weeks since we've gotten anything done with lighting.  We already chose sconces for the kitchen and the front porch, and hanging fixtures for the foyer and the dining room.  But the damn bathroom sconces have been eluding my poor, dear wife, who has probably spent about 48 hours (no lie) of her life in front of a computer screen poring over bathroom sconces of every shape, size, texture, color, make, model, and flavor.  But this weekend-- a breakthrough.  We have our bathroom sconces, and I am really happy, because everything she had been leaning toward was just a bit too farmy for my taste-- kind of like when we had to choose a girl's name when she was pregnant with Lola.  And no, folks, we didn't end up with a Regan on our bathroom walls.  (For those of you who don't understand the reference, you will eventually hear the story of how we literally changed the name of our daughter when she was already three months old at some point...)  I'll post the pics here, and you decide for yourself, but let me just say I'm very happy with the choices.

Sconce for the downstairs bathroom

Everything else?  It's going in.  Fireplace I already mentioned.  Light fixtures as they are delivered.  Doors too.  Water heater is big and bulky, and takes up way more space than we had hoped, especially since we originally were told we could have one of those teeny tiny ones, but we can build an enclosure for it in the mudroom, continue the wall across, and have built-in storage where we were originally thinking of getting something funky like lockers or something.  The glass doors for the showers will be measured this week.  And come Friday, that Zippy Shell will be emptied into the house.  Granted, the stuff will all go into the storage room and the guest room, but we will have stuff in the house, and it it will be good.  Soon thereafter?  We're currently appealing to Abby's dad and brother to come up for a few days from North Carolina with their pickup truck to help us with moving stuff from our DC attic up to the house, as well as helping with some IKEA runs-- we have at least three desks and some other lovely Swedish stuff picked out that'd complete a bunch of the rooms, and the truck would do it a lot easier than the Prius... although our car is certainly up to the task if necessary.

The water heater is inside, but the box we build
will likely have to be about the same size as the
box it's in.  :(

Cars are another thing we'll have to work on.  People are continually parking in our spaces.  Usually it's just sedans from the nearest neighbors who actually live in their places already, but yesterday it was an actual trailer that was parked in one of our spaces, and I was not having it.  I wrote a pleasant-enough note (with crayon on contractor paper) and put it on the car's windshield asking them to stop parking in our space, but I  wrote a big sign that read "Please move this from our parking space immediately" in big letters and taped it to the front of the trailer.  I understand these people may have gotten used to parking in the unused spaces while no one lived in the house, but they've got my address on them, and they're mine.  I don't want to be the jerk who has to call the tow truck, but c'mon now, read the sign!  Luckily, after a long, drawn-out listserve-based debate on parking spaces elsewhere in the community, one of the leaders of the homeowners' association mentioned (without me asking) that people should stop parking in our spaces as well, since we were so close to moving in.  So I've got some backup...

Anyhow, that's where we stand right now.  In four days, we will hopefully have belongings other than my grandmother's piano and some pants hangers I bought at IKEA in the house. In five days, we'll have a countertop measure.  In twelve days we'll jump on a plane for Florida.  And in fewer than twelve days, I hope, we may actually get to a spend our first night ever in the State of Maryland.  We're that close.

Exterior lighting on our front porch.  And it turns on, too!

The newly-raised upstairs bathroom vanity

Our downstairs bathroom vanity outlets.
Now with more space to, you know, plug stuff in!

...With Flooring and Frustration For All

Two weeks ago, we spoke to our contractor and told him to order the flooring so it could be installed.  Our flooring is engineered bamboo from Lowe's.  It's not a big deal.  You go to Lowes.com and you order it.  Case closed.  So anyhow, two weeks ago, Abby told me the flooring would come in on Tuesday, January 22, although there was a possibility it could be earlier "because Mark says he knows somebody."  On Friday  I spoke with Mark and asked whether flooring had come in; he said no.  So today is Tuesday, January 22.  I spoke with Mark and asked whether flooring had come in; he said he hadn't ordered it yet, because he wasn't sure about whether he was ever going to get paid by the loan company.  Mind you, the only reason the loan has closed is because Mark failed for weeks (months?) to get them a timeline.  I thought nothing of his comment-- other than "jeez, this guy!"-- until I hung up and told Abby.  She went ballistic.  Apparently the flooring was not something that was just out of stock with a replenishment date of January 22.  Rather, it's a special order, and it takes two weeks to come in once it's ordered, and two weeks ago was when we had the conversation.  So now, even if we go online ourselves and buy it, it won't come in until February 5.

This means a lot.  You see, if you've never been in a house before, you may not know that FLOORS GO ON THE FLOOR.  And anything else that goes higher than the floor, WHICH IS EVERYTHING, pretty much needs to wait until the floor goes in.  Doors?  Measured by the floors.  Moulding?  Sits pretty much on the floor-- no, wait-- sits ON THE FLOOR.  You know, stuff like that.  No floors?  No other stuff.  

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the conversation I had with Mark, I had noted that, while the loan issue was getting back up and running-- which it is-- Abby and I had no problem buying materials ourselves, as long as he understood that we would be the ones getting reimbursed for them from the loan fund.  He actually said "no, it's not that we don't have money for the materials," so I dropped the offer.  The offer will not only be on the table tomorrow, but it will be a requirement.  Because FLOORS are a requirement.

Last Friday, after weeks of back and forth, Patty and the lovely schmucks over at Freedom Mortgage (aka "the bank we'll drop like a hot sack of shit the moment we move in and are able to refinance) decided that we could re-open the loan.  They gave us a drop-dead date of Friday, February 15 for all funds to be used. Inspections had to be completed by that date, and any money unallocated by that date would be "spent down," or basically subtracted from our loan.  That means we won't lose any of the money, but we won't have access to the credit line either.  It makes sense, because they thought they were only in this for a year, whereas it's been 19 1/2 months now.  However, they required that inspections actually be scheduled before they reopened the loan, and inspections don't work like that-- according to Mark.  He says when you're ready for an inspection, you go to the county's website, say you need an inspection, and they give you the next available time.  You can't just say "I want an inspection some time in February" and have them approve it.  So we have an impasse.  This morning I finally told Mark that if he wanted his money, he'd have to call them himself, because it made no sense for me to keep being the middleman.  Wouldn't you know, Patty wasn't in the office today.

In our phone call this evening-- the one where he mentioned he hadn't ordered the floor-- Mark agreed to call both Patty and Sheyy tomorrow morning and work everything out.  Patty because he needs money; Sheyy, our FHA inspector, because apparently there were some hiccups in filling out the form to get the loan reopened and money withdrawn last week and we all are getting frustrated over that too, not the least of which because we would like to be reimbursed for some of the thousands of dollars we've spent out of our bank account in addition to that sitting in the as-of-yet-un-re-opened loan.  $2400 for appliances are all that we're waiting on right now, but soon enough it'll be $14,000 for cabinetry and $10,000 for countertops.

In happier news, cabinets and countertops!  Abby put about $15,000 on our credit card last Friday at the Home Depot in Aspen Hill to finalize our kitchen.  I contacted John at Home Depot yesterday to ask him about timing, and he wrote back that the manufacturer says they were completed today.  Completed!  Did you hear that?  Something we paid for has been completed!  (Okay, so they're still in the factory, but, y'know.)  They are set for delivery by the middle of next week, and should be installable by that aforementioned February 5 date.  The moment I got that email I called Abby with the good news, then turned around and emailed the installation people-- who, if you remember, are NOT our contractors, but another company associated with Home Depot.  So basically, as soon as we get a date for deliver, installation can be scheduled and we can at least have a kitchen.  Heck, a few weeks ago it was looking like the kitchen would be the only thing in the house not ready by the new deadline; now, we may have a kitchen and nothing else.

So back to the frustration.  It's just all so frustrating, and I'm sure it's frustrating to you as the reader just to have to read the word "frustrating" so many times.  Frustrating!  But seriously, we got a contractor so he could do this all, yet we're at the point that we're going to go to our contractor tomorrow with a list of demands, one of which will be for us to go and buy everything.  We're pretty much sure he hasn't bought anything that's special order.  That means not only no flooring, but no tiling, and no bathroom vanities.  Those toilets we made decisions about pretty much a year ago?  My guess is not only have they not been bought, but they may have been discontinued by this point.  When we started this process, the contractors said they'd have days where they'd want us to go with them to stores to pick stuff out, where they'd make recommendations and we'd make decisions.  No such thing has ever happened.  In fact, the one time they did approach us with a choice was last week: Rory emailed to ask what kind of light switches we wanted.  Light switches!  I mean, if they're that far along, great!  So we chose the basic ones-- you know, the ones you can flip up with your finger when you walk in a room.  Imagine our surprise when, as we walk into the house this weekend, the special light switches that are flush with the wall and have to be tapped instead of flipped are installed.  Each one costs exactly twice as much as the ones we chose, which tip the scales at a whopping buck-and-a-quarter each.  But more importantly, YOU ASKED US WHAT WE WANTED THEN WENT WITH WHAT WE TOLD YOU WE DIDN'T WANT!  I was like "whatever, light switches are in, and I don't care."  Abby actually did care, and said she really didn't want tappable light switches.  So now, when we are fighting about flooring and tiling, do we have to go back and fight about $1.25 light switches that have already been installed?  And who pays for them to be uninstalled, repurchased, reinstalled?  I'm sure we will, even though it's not our fault.  

*Sigh.* We're living in the basement.  We're paying more than $4000 a month in mortgages.  We've just bought a kitchen that cost more than our car, and paid for it in two swipes of plastic.  But we are debating over whether we should argue for the light switches that, all together, my kids could pay for with the money they got from relatives for Xmas.  

Oh, and we need fourteen interior doors.

We have two space heaters that we bought for the winter of 2004-- our first of two with no heat in this house-- that have been sitting in the attic since the central heating went on in January 2006.  One has just come downstairs with us into the basement.  Maybe we should just move both into the Bungalow along with our stuff and call it a day.

The Six-Thousand-Dollar Question

Lately, I feel Abby and I have not exactly been celebrating the time we've been having with the bungalow.  Sure, we've run long, and we're living in the basement with our kids.  But you know, it's a huge project, and running three or four months over isn't exactly the most uncommon thing in the world.  Looking back, maybe we had an unrealistic expectation of things going well.  Maybe we were fooling ourselves that, having hired a general contractor this time around, all the projects would just fall into place, and the giant Rube Goldberg Device that is our bungalow construction project would make that little bird tip over and drink out of the cup exactly when we had planned.  But you know what?  We put ourselves in that situation.  We were the ones who said our renters could move into the house in October, we were the ones who trusted things to get done while we spent a month in London, or two weeks in Florida, or various weekends here or there, or every day not on the job site.  Heck, we were the ones who bought a house that hadn't been lived in since the Reagan Administration.

All that can be seen as our fault, although no, I'm not saying all of it was.  But it was stuff we could have been more realistic about.  However, there is a whole other echelon of stuff that just isn't happening the way we wanted it to happen.  If you're even a casual reader of this blog, you'll be able to enumerate these things on your fingers: the toilets, the bathroom door, the kitchen ceiling, the ductwork, the radiators, the water connection, the bollards.  And, of course, my shower.  Just this week, we've had to deal with the contractor telling us we couldn't have the stain color we wanted on the porch floor, and I'm sure we've got fights ahead for the exterior of the house when it comes to landscaping and the big ol' American flag on a pole I've always wanted for my house in my head.

So when we once again were faced with two different projects that we felt had defeated us once again this week, it was time to take a stand.  No.  This is our house.  We are paying a half a million dollars for this frickin' place, and I want a gosh darned granite countertop.  Or rather, I want my wife to have the gosh darned granite countertop she had decided on months ago.  And I want to treat myself to a closet that isn't going to crack and bow and warp and turn yellow after six months.  If I can't luxuriate in my hotel-quality shower, why the heck can't I go back to my hotel-quality bedroom, dag nabbit?  Let me explain.

We've ordered the kitchen cabinets through Home Depot, and we were shopping elsewhere for the countertop, since Abby didn't see anything she liked there.  You may remember we spent Columbus Day (THREE MONTHS AGO) verifying that I did indeed like the Virginia Mist matte countertop way the heck up in Jessup, Maryland.  Well, Abby was finalizing cabinet plans and mentioned this fact to John at Home Depot.  He said, well, we carry that too; would you like us to price it for you?  Excellent.  Only once the price came back, it was more than $9,000.  Yes, you read that correctly: nine thousand dollars for a countertop.  Now, I have only purchased one countertop in my life, and it was a wood-slab countertop from IKEA that we have had in our kitchen here since we renovated back in 2004.  I like it a lot.  But we can't have a wood countertop at the bungalow, because we have wood floors in the kitchen.  So I put Abby in charge of searching for materials.  First she wanted concrete, because it was supposedly really cool looking and fit her plan perfectly; after a bit of study, however, she found out that it discolored and scratched or something much more easily than other materials.  Of course things like corian and laminate are out of the question, so we're really only left with materials priced mid-range and higher.  Granted, we are going to have a very, very long countertop; we need nearly sixty square feet of the stuff.  We went to IKEA this weekend with my parents and looked at their stuff.  There are some perfectly nice countertops there-- in fact, the granite they have, which is their most expensive stuff, is actually not nice at all.  We liked this stuff called Caesarstone, and it came in "Raven," which is basically a rich, dark gray.  This really was fine, Abby assured me; she did like it, and $9,000 is a lot for countertops.  The Raven would cost us $6,500.

The real reason we had gone to IKEA (apart from meeting my parents for the afternoon and partaking of the ir awesome meatballs and cheesy mac) was to look at closet doors.  Not your average closet doors, mind you, but the IKEA PAX armoire.  (Sorry for the ALLCAPS on this, but that's what it's called.)  You see, on Friday night we had someone from Closet America come to the house to design our bedroom closet.  It's an extravagance, I know, but it's such a small space, and I wanted to see if there was anything they could do to it.  They came up with some really interesting ideas I wouldn't have thought of before, then showed us the product.  Their stuff is guaranteed for as long as you own the home-- anything goes wrong, and they'll fix it for free, forever-- as well as for the people who own your home after you.  It's furniture, just attached to your walls, and it is really, really nice.  It's like a nice hotel.  It's what I wanted in my bathroom, but probably won't get.  My boss from my previous job has a huge California Closets closet that I remember drooling over years ago at a cocktail party; why can't I have one too?  Only problem is the price.  Sure, I talked the guy down about 35%, but at the end of the day it's going to cost me $3,000.  For a closet.  I looked up the do-it-yourself closets-- the Martha Stewart ones, EasyCloset.com, Elfa at Container Store-- all of which come highly touted by friends and random reviewers on the interwebs.  We found that IKEA PAX seemed like the best bet, and had three business days to rescind our contract with Closet America, so we headed Stockholm-in-Greenbelt.  Only problem was, we have low ceilings.  Sure, PAX comes in a 78-inch height that would fit just fine.  But only with swing-out doors, which would not.  If we wanted sliding doors, we would need the 96-inch PAX, and our ceilings are only 90 inches in the bedroom.  (No jokes, please, about being several inches short of ideal in the bedroom, okay folks?) ;)  PAX was out.  But honestly, we had Closet America plan the configuration; we could mimic it with EasyCloset.com for about $1300, and could probably do it a bit more upmarket with Container Store for a couple hundred more.  Honestly, it was fine; after all, it's only a closet.

So here we stood: second-choice in countertop, second-choice in closets.  Everything was fine.  But I felt cheated.  I keep going back to that mantra: "I'm spending half a million dollars on this."  Why the heck can't I have my closet?  Why the heck can't Abby have her countertop?  I posed this question to her: A countertop is a countertop to me, but I understand it might not be to you or to others.  If we get the Raven, will it be just fine, or will people notice it above everything else we did, point to it, and whisper how we cut corners?  If we get the Virginia Mist, will it be what people expect of a kitchen renovation in 2013 (2013!), or will they point to it and whisper that, damn!, Gregory and Abby actually got a really nice countertop, despite how notoriously Scroogelike we all know he is?  No answer.  I knew the answer.  For less than $3,000, we can get a really nice countertop that Abby will love, that will make our kitchen look great, and will not be yet one more second choice for the house.  Similarly, for $3,000 more, we can get an awesome closet that we will literally never have to replace as long as we own the house, that will give me that little bit of luxury I was attempting to capture elsewhere.  Abby warns me that if we have a nice closet she'll want nice closet doors, but I don't care.  After all, "I'm spending half a million dollars on this house," right?

So as we head to the midpoint of the 19th month of homeownership, our 7th week of living in a basement, and the umpteenth already-finalized decision we have to revisit because our first choice just didn't pan out, at least we each get our own little luxuries this time around.  It may be the only ones we get, but at least we didn't give in to the monster that is this process, and I think that's worth celebrating.