Welcome to the Neighborhood

Scene of the Crime

Before I start today's installment, I just wanted to send a big, hearty FU to the jerk that stole my bike this weekend.  You see, I did go to Wal-Mart and buy a cheap bike because I didn't want to be upset if a more expensive one were to have been stolen, but I also figured any loss would be because I did something like leaving it out on my porch overnight-- as I've done several times-- or forgotten my lock or something.  But no, it was stolen over the weekend while it was locked to the bike rack at Forest Glen Metro Station.  You know-- the station in the suburbs to where I moved, as opposed to the one in the iffy neighborhood back in the District from where I moved.  But hey, in the interim, before I re-buy that $94.94 basic blue bike again, maybe my face will clear up, because it's just exploded since I started sweating in the morning on the bike-ride in.  Back when we lived in Petworth, we had a bunch of stuff stolen; in fact, both my dad's and my mom's bikes were stolen from our front porch last fall, but that was my own stupidity for leaving them out on the front porch.  Isaac's winter jacket was stolen from inside his pediatrician's office one winter-- now that's desperate-- and some jerk stole all of my CDs, my stereo, and a whole bunch of expensive tools from a friend's uncle who was helping us renovate, which totally sucked.  But for some reason, this one hits me different.  I had thought I had moved away from all of that shit.  But here I was again yesterday, filing a police report and calling pawn shops.  Argh.

Our four newly-planted Arborvitae, that hopefully
will grow in nice, straight, narrow columns into
the spaces between our windows.

The lovely incident came in the middle of what was an otherwise productive weekend on our part.  Abby and I decided to go ahead and start planting in the one area in which we have the power to do so at this point-- the tiny strip of "yard" on the south side of the house, along the kids' windows.  We drove up to Johnson's, a huge local nursery way up in Olney, and out of all of the amazing stuff they had, we ended up buying four Arborvitae.  Yep, Arborvitae, the generic, everyone-has-three tree-bush.  But we arrived at the purchase after consulting with a nursery employee who knew everything they had to offer.  Our need was for four thin, narrow, tall evergreens that are good in full sun.  Arborvitae.  In fact, we have a sad, little Arborvitae in front of the Petworth house that we bought from Johnson's in Tenleytown; his name is Johnson.  (And yes, we name our plants, for those of you who aren't aware.)  We made our purchase on Saturday, then kept them out in the yard overnight, since we had tickets to see Daniel Tosh that night.  (Good thing no one stole them!  Grumble grumble grumble...)  Sunday came around and it was pouring out, so I waited for the rain to subside, then went out to dig holes.  By the time I was done, the sun was blazing, and it was about 340% humidity, but we had four new Arborvitae planted outside.  And two of them are already named: the woman at Johnson's was named Irene, so of course the two are "Irene to the Left" and "Irene to the Right."  (The ones in the middle remain unnamed for the time being.)  The bushes or shrubbery (another shrubbery!) are coming next-- maybe even this weekend.  But for now, it's the two Irenes, the two no-names, the brand-new sidewalk, and a colony of wasps on that side of the house.

New sidewalk, new plantings, more to come.

Inside, some work has been done since the infamous list of 13 items was unveiled.  Most of it, unfortunately, was not done by our contractor.  He insists that the only major thing left to do is to show the evil inspector the retaining wall, which will require digging up our front yard again to show him underground.  He had better not kill my hosta,  I'll tell you that!  He supposedly needs three consecutive dry days to do this, and it's true that it's been raining non-stop the past few weeks.  He claims the rest of the things that need to be done can be done in about two hours, and he has all the materials in his truck, and they'll all be done on Wednesday at the earliest, if there's no rain forecast.  Hopefully, the things that need to be done will be done a bit less haphazardly, unlike the way he "fixed" the problem with the poorly labeled fuse box.  (Abby was furious when she saw it, and wrote him a pretty nasty email about it; he claims it was a temporary fix.)

Our new upstairs shower, and the new gray wall at left.

But other stuff that has been done include our shower door, which was finally installed last week.  I took the first shower upstairs, and was really happy with the size of the enclosure, which is a relief, since I had thought it would be really tight.  I guess standing naked in the space gives you a bit better idea of how it feels than when you are clothed...  Abby's still concerned about the window, since she showers at night, but she's got this totally ghetto wood block she puts up over the glass (which you can't see through, because it's pitted, but you can still see shadows) when she uses it.  Hopefully that'll all be moot once our front landscaping's done.  Also in the upstairs bathroom, we decided the walls looked too boring, and unfinished.  I complained to her that I wanted a bathroom that felt like one in a nice hotel, and got one-- downstairs-- while the upstairs one, which was mine, felt like a Days Inn.  A simple coat of gray paint on one wall may just have done the trick, and although they're not in yet, the towel bars should finish things off nicely.

Our newly-painted black-on-black family room walls

Elsewhere, Abby painted the white trim in the family room downstairs black to match the black walls, and immediately doubted herself because it cast a shadow.  She claims she wanted the black-on-black look to blend in with itself, rather than to stand out.  I don't quite understand, and told her-- likely to her frustration-- that I liked it both ways, but that it'd be awfully hard to re-white the stuff she already painted black.  So she finished it up, doors and all, and turns out we both really like it.  It may not be what she had envisioned, but those of us who know Abby also know her imagination sometimes leads her to magical lands filled with perfectly done, affordable, clean, timely homes-with-character, and, well, that's just a fiction as far as I'm concerned.  But I like the walls.

"Magnetite" is pretty much the same color Magneto wears.

I also painted one wall in the computer room the same gray as the front foyer-- so yes, now we have three different colors of gray in the house, in addition to all the white.  This one is called "Magnetite," but I think I'd just call it "Dark Gray."  Back when we had the floor finishers in the house, they were laughing at Abby for painting the walls so delicately, claiming that if she used more paint on the first coat, she wouldn't need a second coat.  So I tried that, but I think it still might need a second, which sucks, because I really just want to watch TV tonight...

Other than that, not much else is going on.  Just waiting for the damn inspection.  Mark stood Abby up twice last week, after she had called him demanding a meeting to talk about the snail's pace he's been on.  My parents were here for the weekend, and offered to help us do stuff, but there wasn't that much to do; my Dad helped us put doors on the cabinet in the mud room, but their biggest help was watching the kids when we went out on our Tosh Date.  Oh, and we were picked by Montgomery County as one of ten historic homes to get a free energy audit this Wednesday.  A few years ago, our friends Siobhan and Perry in New Jersey got an audit sponsored by their electric company that ended with a plan for how to make their home more energy-efficient, and the ability to pay for the work over time as an add-on to their electric bill; that was an amazing idea.  We had the same thing in DC a year or so ago, but it ended with an email showing us where we could do things ourselves.  We did like two of the things, but got sidetracked by this place.  This time around, I'm hoping the audit's a lot more like New Jersey's than the District's, because I'm totally willing to pay for the upgrades, but I have no patience to go out and get someone to do the work; tell me what's wrong, fix it yourself, and take my Master Card, or fuhgettaboutit.  In the meantime, I'll be sitting here, waiting for my inspection, ducking wasps, and getting to know my local pawn shops with the hope some idiot will come in with my month-old 26-inch blue and gray Roadmaster Granite Peak 18-speed bike from Wal-Mart.  Welcome to the neighborhood.

DIY Because They Certainly Won't

Our newly-painted stair risers

Last Monday, I wrote to our contractor, asking when four specific items would be completed. He picked one-- sanding and painting the risers on the stairway-- and said that'd actually been planned to be done the next day. (What a coincidence!) It was, but here we are a week later and nothing else has been done--on the list or otherwise. By Wednesday, we knew we'd be in this situation, so we started brainstorming everything that was left. Lots of little things, for sure, but "lots" is the important word here, not "little!"

Maybe the mailman
can find us now...

One of those things was an issue with the fireplace. (We did the gas fireplace ourselves, and just had his guys install it.) There is no way to close the flue to the fireplace, which means when we turn it on, we lose almost all of the heat up the chimney. Granted, we're more worried about getting rid of heat right now, but hey, I'm nothing if not a box checker. The good thing about this whole situation is that, of all the contractors we have worked with in both house projects, there is one who has come through on multiple occasions with flying colors: American Professional Chimney Services. I would recommend these guys without reservation. In fact, I called them for an estimate, didn't even bother calling around, just hired them to do the work, and expect that they'll be done before I get home from work tomorrow.  By the end of the week, we'll have all the pointing done, the flue will be capped, we'll have paid the bill, and we won't have to think about our chimney again for a long time. Over the weekend, Abby and I thought maybe we could incorporate a whole-house fan into the project, and the owner actually emailed back and forth with me several times (on a weekend evening!) to discuss the issue. Ultimately, we just went with the original plan, but why the heck can't all of this job be this way?

They say if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Or, at least micromanagers say that. But when my parents asked us what we would have done differently with this project, my answer in all seriousness was that we should have hired Abby as our general contractor. Sure, we tried to do that with the first house, but that was also while we were both working, and eventually, while she was pregnant with and then nursing Isaac. This time? She's not planning to go back to work until the fall, the kids are in school, and she did so much anyhow; it just seems like such a waste to have gone the route we did.

One of six Hostas, originally from Tonawanda, via
Grand Island and Petworth.

But at this point, I'm not whining. I'm happy living in the house-- even if we're still technically squatters. And it's not just because it's not the basement, although that's definitely part of it! It's nice to be able to get home from work, do normal family stuff, then maybe do something on the house after the kids go to bed. Last week I spent a half-hour hanging hooks in my closet. Tiny stuff for sure, but now my belts and backpack and shirts in need of laundering are up off the floor, and the closet can actually look clean. This weekend we were able to make IKEA runs to pick up some As-Is cabinetry Abby found (that is identical to the stuff we already had, but already put together and 30% off) while the kids took naps. I was able to go to the old house and dig up a couple of my Buffalo Hostas, then transplant them into the front yard, while Abby was in the shower. Heck: we can grill out now that we've replaced our sad old wedding-gift grill with a snazzy new one, just a couple weeks shy of our tenth wedding anniversary.  If you want to get something done, just do it yourself, right?

My dad helped me move the
perfectly-sized extra cabinet
into the laundry room yesterday.

But we can't do everything. We were able to keep a couple of the cabinets Home Depot brought that had been mismeasured, and put them downstairs: one fits perfectly in the laundry room with not even an inch to spare, (thanks Dad!) while the other will serve as our coat closet in the mudroom. But we had to wait an agonizing two weeks for a plumbing inspection; the inspector's coming "Wednesday or Thursday," but the hot and cold are still reversed on the kitchen faucet, Abby says the spigot on the yard side of the house is leaking, and there's still the possible issue of the pipe behind the laundry room that my dad strenuously objects to due to the fact that it may overflow and spread poop all over the area under the stairs. The inspection for the Certificate of Occupancy can come only when the plumbing's been certified, and our refinance, which is set for Thursday night, can only be finalized once our current bank sees the occupancy permit. Dominoes have to fall, and we're not in charge of finger-flicking; no matter how hard we try, they're not being blown over with our breath alone.

Our new doorbell

So where we stand is in the middle of a construction-zone-that-isn't. It is a construction zone, because, you know, the thing's not finished. It looks like a construction zone, because we have piles of boxes and cardboard on the floors, just in case we need to make like we're not actually living in it for the sake of the occupancy permit. It feels like a construction zone because on the way back from taking a shower in the gorgeous bathroom, your feet get gritty from stepping on dust left by prior projects on those cardboard panels, and your family and friends are constantly referencing the fact that you live in an unfinished project. But it isn't a construction zone because, well, no construction is actually going on. Little projects, sure. But nothing ongoing, and nothing integral.  In the spirit of DIY, I guess the next thing we've gotta do is have the kids drywall the rest of the storage room.  But in the meantime, Abby and I will be enjoying the burgers I just made on our grill, eating under the new dining-room chandelier that we commissioned, and watching So You Think You Can Dance on the DirecTV we ordered.  Oh, and stuffing food down the disposal we think we're gonna keep (thanks to commentary on my last post), because that's just a crazy novelty at this point...

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. :)

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!

The Heat is On

Apparently, Glenn Frey
is the love child of
Randy Travis and
Chris Isaak.

Who would have thought that , 20 months after buying this house, I'd be praising the lyrical genius of none other than Glenn Frey.  Yes, Glenn Frey, that guy from the '80s that can't even be classified as a one-hit wonder, but really just the guy that happens to sing that song that goes "the heat is on."  Because, really, do you know any of the other words?  Well, I looked it up, and they are uncannily appropriate:

The heat is on, the heat is on, the heat is on

Oh it's on the street, the heat is on

It's on the street

The heat is on, the heat is on, the heat is on

Yeah it's on the street

The heat is on

I mean, can you get any more spot-on to describe what's been going on with our house these last few days?  First off, I should mention, the heat is on!  Yes, we managed to get Washington Gas out finally to install the gas meter.  That was important because none of the woodwork stuff can happen without at least some semblance of a controlled temperature.  Now, for instance, Mark can go tomorrow to pick up our wood floors; they need to be acclimated to the house for three days before installation, which basically means they'll be going in around the weekend.  And upstairs, the floors have also begun to change.  No need to show you what they looked like before, other than to remind you they are the original 1890s floors that have been on the ground in a house that's been pretty much derelict since the 1980s.  But this morning when we pulled up, we found Miguel and his three floor-doing machines (that's the technical term), each of which, we are told, cost more than $2500.  (Having been robbed back in 2008, and having most of what was taken be contractors' machinery, we told him not to store them in our house overnight.)  And Miguel (with his lovely and cold wife watching) did this to the floors on our upper level:

Yeah, I didn't recognize the floors either.

The schedule for the floors as we move through the week includes fixing any boards that need to be fixed (tomorrow), stripping the stairs (Wednesday), and then applying various ointments and salves as necessary.  Once the stairs are being touched, we won't be able to down them for a few days, so we've been getting as much use out of them as possible, having spent about 27 man-hours painting the lower level over the three-day weekend.  (Is "man-hours" a sexist term?  Well, Abby  painted for more than half of them, so deal with it.)  And, more than Miguel and his lovely and cold wife, we felt the brunt of this weekend's drop in temperatures.  Sure, Glenn Frey says the heat is on, and every once in a while we hear the heat going on, and if you're standing directly beneath a vent you can feel the heat being on, but overall we are very worried about the efficacy of our heating system.  Granted, the heat is currently set to about 55, just so we can have that semblance of environmental control necessary for flooring operations, but there is what Bostonians might call a wicked temperature gradient between the upper and lower floors going on, and it can't all be the fault of the fact that none of the doors or windows have an actual tight seal to them.  (Remember, as Glenn Frey said, "the heat is on, it's on the street."  He wasn't kidding.  We are, as every suburban dad likes to remind his kids, heating the neighborhood.  I happened to get a flyer from a home-efficiency company in the mail the other day, and I will be contacting them shortly to see if there's anything they can do about our windows.  Because we all know that ain't gonna get done with our contractor.

Our contractor.  Yep, the one who pulled all the radiators out of the house, then claims not to have realized there were so many holes in the floor so as to warrant a higher cost of replacing wood during the flooring process.  The one who seems to have alienated all of his subcontractors along the way, many of whom are quite candid in letting Abby know just how they feel about him.  One thing we have learned, however, is that however unsavory the contractor is, apparently everyone's smitten with the workmanship.  So hey, it may take two years to get this thing done, and we may have to send our kids to work in Kathie Lee Gifford's sweatshop, but by golly the work's great!

While talking to Abby about the house while driving to my parents' out in crazy-far Virginia on Friday (they have a "540" area code! "540!" Have you ever heard of that?) I was mentioning that while I really like a lot of what's happening with the house, I don't feel as personally invested in it as I did our DC house, because we did so much of the work ourselves last time.  I mean, I can remember my bloody fingers after applying muriatic acid on the brick, and I can still see the mummified pigeon fall on my coworker Billy's head as he stood on the ladder in Isaac's bedroom.  Yet prior to this weekend, the only things I actually did to this house, besides that very first day of knocking down drywall back on Christmas Day 2011 (2011? 2011!) was pick stuff out and pay for it.  And a lot of that stuff that I picked out never even came to fruition.  However, three days later, I can safely say that those 27 man-hours of painting have taken a big bite out of my worries.  (I can also verify that we listened to DC101 the whole time on the radio, and heard exactly one song featuring a female singer.)  We did some painting, and some more painting, and some more painting.  And now, that downstairs is painted like a mofo, and Abby and I had everything to do with that.

Abby had been going to paint for a week or so beforehand, and I had posted a pic last time with her in Isaac's room, but this is serious stuff.  Since that last posting, she ripped down the carefully placed painter's tape she had put up in his room, re-sanded the wall because she was unhappy with the alignment of the stripes, borrowed a laser-level from Lee, and painstakingly created a masterpiece of stripe-itude that can be marveled at from hundreds of feet away, since it faces out the window.  Seriously, it's impeccable-- judge for yourselves:

Abby's creation on Isaac's wall.
Notice the perfect alignment with the window panes.

Besides Abby's magnum opus in Isaac's room, which eventually will be a Buffalo Bills room, with red accents, she also managed to paint Lola's walls a lovely shade of what we're calling "Cinderella's Dress" blue, based on the sheets and pillows she bought for Lola in what could have been 2011, and have been sitting in storage now since Thanksgiving.  I thought this was going to be more teal than it is, but it's so bright and happy that who cares?

My job on Saturday and Sunday was white.  Abby had done a whole bunch of white prior to this weekend, so anything colorful was her bailiwick.  So I managed to get one coat on every white surface (walls and ceilings) in the family room, the laundry room, the storage room, the guest room, and the guest-room closet.  Abby was at once excited by my progress, appalled by the lack of attention I had while making several only-noticeable-to-her drips, and confused at how I could get so much more square footage done than her during the same timeframe.  Well, one of my wise commenters noted last time that while you want painting done fast, cheap, and well, you can only get two of those at a time, so there's that...  No, just kidding, I think I did a stand-up job.  (And for that, both Abby and I will be completely stiff for the first half of this week.)  

Isaac next to the newly-painted wall in his bedroom.
We let them draw on the floors, since they're just sub-flooring
and will be covered over within the week.

Can you see the white I painted in the family room?
Just nod your head and be nice, will ya?

While Isaac's striped wall may be the most technically difficult paint job we completed this weekend, definitely the boldest, and possibly the most likely to provoke ire, is in the family room.  The picture I posted directly above this one is purposely taken from this angle so as not to show you the wall to your right-- the one that you see when you come down the stairs.  It was Abby's opinion that this needed to be a "statement wall," because otherwise the room was apt to become a boring giant box.  Therefore, I give you Behr "Poppy Seed."  If you think Abby was proud when the stripes were done, you should have heard her giggling like a little girl when this color was going up.  And as for me?  I'm Mr. Color when it comes to walls, so it makes me very happy as well.

"Poppy Seed" going up on the family room "statement wall"

The completed "statement wall"

The wall's actually a smidge lighter than the black on the windows.
Lola's "Cinderella's Dress" Blue is in the doorway.

The downstairs shower, with the
floor tiles doubling on the ledges

I mentioned earlier that we were en route to my parents', because they were awesome and took the kids for the weekend so we could get all of this done.  We drove out to Sterling last night to have dinner and grab the kids from them, since they didn't have the day off today like I did.  That meant we couldn't tag team the paint job today, so I took the kids to Jump Zone in Columbia while Abby painted from 10-5.  On the way, we ran two errands: one was just a normal Target run; the other was a drop-in at Home Depot to buy our second five-gallon white eggshell container, but also to return three boxes of tile we had over-ordered.  And how did we know we had over-ordered, you ask?  Why, because the tiling in the bathrooms not only has begun, but is almost complete!  So besides our paint-stravaganza this weekend, there was a tile-fest going on in the bathrooms.  The first-floor bathroom is complete, with three different kinds of tile up and done.  Abby decided a couple weeks ago to use the flooring tiles on two different ledges in the shower, and that turned out to be a great decision.  (See for yourself below.)  Unfortunately, the tiles that went up on the vanity wall, while all coming from the same boxes, had a slight color variation that wasn't caught right away.  It won't matter once the vanity is up, because it'll block those either in shadow or altogether, but I mention it here because when you look at it below, you might think "ugh."  Yeah, we know, but it's okay, unless you plan on laying on the floor in our guest bathroom.  So just don't do that.  The floor tiles in the upstairs bathroom have also been laid, but I don't have a good picture to show, since the lighting was really poor when I took it.

The vanity wall.  (Don't) notice the four mismatched squares of tile.

So what we have here is a very, very positive week, workwise.  I apologize for not getting more information up during the week, since some of these pictures were taken on Wednesday when we came by for the draw inspection, but we've just been so busy lately.  You know, with the house.  I mention the draw inspection, and some of you may be wondering what's up with the loan and our "drop-dead date" of February 15.  Well, we had the draw inspection on Wednesday, and the paperwork went through, but I have a feeling there may be a bit of consternation upcoming between us and the bank.  Because our idea is that, since we have spent the amount of money the loan had designated, they should give us the remaining balance and close it all out.  But I have more than a sneaking suspicion that they're not happy we decided to go above and beyond the amount of the loan on our own-- which was our only recourse, given the state of the house, and was the plan from the start.  So I don't know that we'll ever see the money from that last draw-- which'd be fine, because it'd just get deducted from the total on which we're paying our mortgage.  But we'll see.  However, what is definite is that we no longer have a mythical "drop-dead date" for a loan, and we're looking at a matter of weeks for the finish.  Yeah, I know I said that before, and no, we're definitely not going to be living in the house come March 1, but it's coming, and it's coming soon.  The floors will all be done by the end of next week, the cabinets will be completed by February 28, my closet can go in once the floors are done, and the plumbing fixtures can probably go in next week as well.  I'm going on another short business trip next week, and I am 100% certain that the house will look livable, even if it may not be 100% livable, by the time I get back.  At dinner last night, my parents asked me where I wanted to go for my birthday, which is the Saturday after next.  I would really love to have it at my house, but I know that's not going to happen.  But you can bet your ass that we'll be eating dinner at  Anyu's dining-room table, in our house, on Abby's birthday, 20 days later.  And those aren't famous last words.  Glenn Frey?  You'd better start writing a song about it.

A Dozen Days and Who Cares

Here we are, twelve days before the expiration of our loan.  Our lender's hot and bothered, I'm freaked out, and our contractors seem not to bat an eye.  These guys are really nice, but either they know something I really, REALLY don't, or they're just assuming once the shit hits the fan, we'll just all be wearing Teflon slickers.  Twelve days.

So where do we stand?  Well, we went to the house yesterday and, yes, there was slight progress.  The HVAC system has been delivered and placed on its perch, although I don't know whether it's been connected, because it hangs decisively over the overhang that was supposedly purpose-built for its bulk.  And bulk is the right word-- this thing's enormous.  But it's in, and so is all of the wiring.  While we were there, the electrician stopped by to do some final tweaks.  Never met the guy before, and his lack of a front tooth immediately put me on edge.  I don't know whether he sensed this, but he explained without being asked that he had cracked it last week, and was freaking out about how much money he was about to plunk down for a new one.  Okay, so that can happen to anyone.  Other than that, he seemed like a cool guy, and had no qualms about making a couple of slight modifications we asked for.  First off, he said if we had no problem with the light switch in the downstairs bathroom being a bit higher than code required, he'd have no problem moving it over so we could have that door moved like we wanted.  Check!  Then he said he had no problem going back and installing the wiring for the light fixture that'll hang over the dining-room table, which involves getting way the heck up to the top of the great room's ceiling and tacking a wire that matches the ceiling to the back of one of the rafters.  Check!  Finally, he said he had no problem adding a second switch so that we could turn that fixture on independently of the track lighting that'll otherwise light up the great room ceiling.  Check!  This shouldn't be a big deal, but these are things we have asked our contractors about, only to receive reticent "I'll sees" in response.  (To the contractors' defense, it's not them doing the work, just them passing the request on to the subcontractors, but still, the electrician took it all in stride.  Let's just hope that stride isn't the same stride that the plumber took when, months ago, he said it wouldn't be a problem to move the upstairs toilet by six inches and then followed up by doing nothing, causing our shower to be six inches shallower than I wanted.  But who's counting?)

Our HVAC system as it sits ponderously over the upstairs bathroom.

The electric wiring is done, so that means our final inspection before the walls can be closed is scheduled.  Don't know when it will be, but hopefully before the end of this week so everything can get going in earnest.  First comes insulation, then drywall, then EVERYTHING ELSE.  Waiting waiting waiting...

The electric transformer box outside is still in the same state it was last week, and the bollards haven't yet gone up.  We met our neighbor, Paula, who owns the Windmill with her husband, Richard.  She has definitely had a time with a lot of her rehab as well, and it's interesting that while her stories are so different from ours, they still cause the same headaches.  In her case, it's that she had to remove an enormous tree from her property because it was growing into the house, but the law required her to plant six trees at least two inches in diameter to replace it.  Several of those trees died, so they themselves had to be replaced, which is what was happening on Tuesday.  Not to mention, the little ring of Yews the community had planted around the transformer were too close in proximity for the electric company's taste, so she was having them moved.  She's annoyed that the community property between our houses is pretty much barren, and that there are ridiculous numbers of utility pulls around our houses, and that massive branches are hanging down from the 100-foot-tall oak trees and hovering above her new roof; you know, things I'm going to think about only once I'm in my house.  This woman means business; it'll be nice to have her as a neighbor, because she'll definitely keep our asses in gear and our eyes on the prize... seeing as we do have a proclivity towards slackerdom.

Paula invited us to look inside the Windmill, and it's really neat.  Especially awesome is the view from the top and, if I may say so myself, the specific view in the direction of the Alpha Bungalow.  Couldn't help but take some snapshots.  The house itself is pretty small, and there really wouldn't be room for more than one bedroom for a couple without being severely cramped-- at least for my taste.  It would make an awesome second home / cabin / beach house, though.

The Bungalow as seen from the Windmill's balcony.
Might be my favorite pic I've taken of our place.

Back to our house, though.  Our contractor told me the reason we had failed the gas inspection last week (which we passed soon thereafter) was not for any problems related to the work, but because the gas pressure was not turned up high enough for the inspector's taste.  Now that we have passed, we don't need to be in as much of a rush to get the fireplace decisions made.  I still would like to finish everything-- don't get me wrong!-- but I want to make sure we get the fireplace right, as with all other decisions, and that's something that's not do-or-die in terms of finishing the house.  What I do know is we have the gas hookup and we're going to get those fake logs that "burn" with real fire from natural gas.  What I don't know is what's going to happen all around it, because Abby really likes the look of the stone fireplace without edging around the mouth, and is averse at this point to any sort of conventional finishing that comes with a normal gas-insert fireplace.  I, on the other hand, couldn't care less.  So it's going to be a case of "whatever Abby wants, as long as I get my gas fireplace."  Those are the kinds of decisions that can be fantastic because of ease, or terrible because of procrastination; only time will tell...

We did go to look for fireplace stuff and more this weekend when my wonderful parents agreed to watch the kids and allow Abby and me to go on a date.  Maybe I should put "date" in quotes, because it involved a trip to Lowe's and to the mall, with the only food being a stop for an Iced Mocha and McDonald's and some Wetzel's Pretzels courtesy of an expiring Entertainment Book coupon, before going to a 10pm movie... but it was definitely a date for us!  We looked at washers and dryers, and were basically told that we shouldn't buy anything until the pre-Thanksgiving sales start.  We looked at door hardware, and realized that everything is either incredibly flouncy or incredibly traditional, in the bad sense of the word.  We looked at outdoor lighting, and although we didn't find anything in the store, we did find stuff online that we both agreed on.  And on the way out of the store, we saw this wacky thermostat called Nest that learns what you like, when you're home, and what your habits are, and somehow becomes this nearly sentient being you don't have to fuss with ever.  It's only a couple hundred dollars, and since we haven't bought our thermostat yet, it could definitely be worth a shot.  

What Abby does NOT want our fireplace to resemble.
(Are these those newfangled anti-gravity "logs" or something?)

Finally, as an aside, we voted for the first time as Maryland voters.  Yeah, we're keeping all of our official residency stuff in the District, but we did switch our voter registration because I need to have me some congressional representation.  Our new polling place is Temple Emanuel in Kensington, which is a 5-minute drive, and compared to the two-hour waits in the cold experienced throughout this region, I am very happy with my 15-minute indoor line, complete with dollar fundraising donuts and ten-year-old volunteers offering large-print versions of the nine ballot referenda for people waiting to vote.  Because we had budgeted a lot of time to vote and used nearly none of it, we headed over to a lighting store in the District that had been recommended by the front-toothless electrician.  Holy moly, who does he think we are?  This store had not one normal fixture.  Everything was crazy expensive, and looked freakishly '80s modern.  We asked ourselves whether maybe our contractors think because we're spending a heck of a lot of money on a crazy house in the suburbs, maybe we're some crazy yuppies with zany Julia-Louis-Dreyfus-in-Christmas-Vacation taste.  I dunno, but I drive a Prius with 102,000 miles on it, and just bought my first new pairs of shoes in more than two years.  We're not looking for a $400 rhinestone mini-sconce for our bathroom...

Then there's this.  Left on our family room windowsill.
Come on, folks!  It's our job to defile OTHER people's homes, not the other way around!
(Honestly, good on someone... because it's COLD and DIRTY up in there...)

One Month to Go

A month from today, our loan closes out.  That means everything meaningful that has to be done to our house must not only be finished, but inspected, approved, and signed off on, with appropriate paperwork sent to Delaware, approvals made there, and, presumably, a check cut, signed, and sent.  A month.  One month.  

Luckily, October has 31 days.

So obviously we will not be done in a month.  But at least there's progress being made, right?  Oh, but wait:

Three reds trumps a green and a white in this game.

So what we have here is an approval for work done back in June, a certificate of participation for work done thereafter, and three-- count 'em!-- three failed inspection stickers for work done since.  Oh, and we got one more red one this week, which makes four.  I don't understand.  The reason we hire people is because they know what they're doing, right?  These failures are for things like having a pipe that's the wrong circumference; that's not a requirement that changes by jurisdiction, is it?

We have been waiting for WEEKS now solely because of this.  We cannot close the walls until we get another green sticker.  And, like I wrote in my last post, we can't do pretty much anything until the walls get closed in.  Abby and I are just this side of panic mode, to tell you the truth.  Honestly, it's not a huge wait, if you actually think about it.  My amazingly optimistic hope was that we would get in by Labor Day, but Abby never believed that one.  It then became October 1, then by Isaac's birthday or Halloween.  Now we're pushing up against the loan deadline of November 18.  It's only an extra 75 days after my original optimistic date, which is probably par for the course for a project this big.  But with a renter waiting patiently (and undeservedly) for us to move out, and Patty the Delawarean loan officer looking at her watch and tapping her foot impatiently, this is painful.  

So here's our current plan.  We're already culling, and have made a give-away pile and a yard-sale pile in the attic.  We've been rather brutal with the kids' toys, as well as their clothes.  Isaac's birthday is October 26.  We are having the party at home.  On October 27, we start to pack, moving everything towards the front door.  We hope against hope that we have a place to put things at that point in the bungalow, but it's not going to happen.  Rather, we'll be handing out Halloween candy from among boxes.  That's fine, because it'll at least be progress on our end.  The moment-- the very moment-- we get the go-ahead to start moving things into the house, it'll happen.  It won't mean we will be living there, but it will mean our attic will start shifting into our new attic (in the basement), and we can start emptying.  Jamie will move into the basement-- for free-- that week, and will stay-- for free-- until we're gone.  And we will go the moment the bungalow is livable   It won't be done when we move in, and the work can definitely continue past November 18, but all the major work has to be done.  This won't be another case of Abby and me living for two winters in a house with no heat.  We're not going to get our electricity from one solitary working outlet again, and we're not going to use the end of an extension cord to alternate between a microwave, a toaster-oven, and a tv, and we're not going to light the house with the help of Christmas lights we grabbed from Siobhan and Perry's wedding-- like we did when we were hardy, childless newlyweds.  But we may not have a front porch, we may not have every room painted, and who knows what'll become of the Thanksgiving we thought we were going to host for Abby's side of the family?  But it's gotta happen.

And-- not that I wish them anything but the best-- but my parents, in the span of about two weeks, have found a new house, put a bid on it, had it accepted, and past an inspection.  And they're likely to close and move in by the end of October.  All in one calendar month.  It's a great little house, way the heck out in the twelfth circle of hell-- a.k.a. a town that actually touches the West Virginia border-- but it'll be theirs and done and livable and...  hey!  Maybe we can move all of our stuff in with them!  Now there's an idea.  (Actually, when they first made the decision to move, I promised them I'd help them drive the moving van down from Buffalo.  So now it looks like I'll be helping two different households move in the same month, but the only one that's sure to happen is not my own.  My favorite word lately comes to mind: Argh.)

My parents' new house in Round Hill, VA.

Things are not all frustrating.  Okay, so they're mostly frustrating, but I'm going to end on a positive: our Great Room ceiling is done.  The beams still need to be cleaned up, but the ceiling looks beautiful.  So maybe, when we kick ourselves out of Petworth and move into an unfinished Forest Glen bungalow, we can do a bit of fancy camping-- that's what we called it when we lived with the conditions I wrote about above -- and look up at our own kind of star: the ceiling of the room that sold us on the house in the first place.  Sigh...

This ceiling is awesome.
But is it worth all the pain?
Only time will tell...