Nope, we're still here. Still in process. I've been waiting until there was something new to show everyone, or at least something interesting to talk about. So let's see, where are we? Here's the latest:
Flooring is in. It looks great.
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We're still cleaning bits of tracked adhesive we're finding, and cleaning the cracks between boards, but as each little bit is cleaned, the floors look better and better. This hickory flooring is just beautiful.
With the potential termite issues resolved, we felt it was safe to move forward with installation. We now have full inside, top to bottom, and perimeter treatment around and under the foundation, so should be safe from any invasion. In addition, we now have a regular insect spraying plan in place, to take care of any crawling critters who may want to move in.
Electrical has been updated, and has done much to calm my "What the heck were they thinking?" questions. A lot of the electrical work was cosmetic, so is more for "livability," but all of it was totally necessary, to my mind.
We added six LED can lights on a dimmer to the living room ceiling, which helps to brighten a room that needed a bit of help. (Two of those new lights are visible in the picture above.)
We added a directional spotlight on a dimmer to a living room niche wall where a large piece of artwork will hang. (This light will be adjusted once the art is hung up.)
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We added lights over the two sinks in the master bathroom vanity. The only lighting in there was can lights in the ceiling - which are nearly ten feet high. How could anyone use a bathroom mirror without better lighting? Ridiculous. But it's great now.
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In the process of installing that sort of thing, we moved some light switches around, removing some, adding others, and changing which switches controlled what. We wanted to put the right switches where the right switches should have been. It amazes me that the previous owners lived in this house twelve years without addressing these issues. I couldn't have done that. But maybe it's just me.
One example: We had replaced the three old carriage lights in the courtyard with something we liked much better, as shown in post #236 above. But the only switch to turn on those lights was in the kitchen, in a "blind" corner behind where a kitchen table would sit. One of those three lights is the light next to the front door! So if someone comes to the front door, they'd stand there in the dark until somebody walked all the way from the foyer round into the kitchen and climbed around behind the table to turn on the switch that controlled that light. So, so stupid.
To make it worse, there were two light switches at the front door - one was for the lights on the front of the garage, out at the street. Ok, fine. The other switch was for the foyer entry light, which we've also replaced (as shown in post #252 above.) But just five feet away, on the other side of the foyer, was
another switch that controlled the same entry light. But no light to turn on the carriage light right outside the front door. Just crazy!
So now, when the switch by the door is flipped, it turns on the three courtyard lights, as it always should have been. When someone enters the home and wants to turn on the foyer light, they can flip the one-and-only switch right in front of them. Easy peasy. It's now the way it should have been all along.
Plumbing work has been done. Both bathroom toilets have been replaced with new Kohler fixtures that are more efficient and look much nicer. The old, worn out faucet at the kitchen sink was shiny "chrome" made mostly of plastic. Cheap, ugly, and barely functional. It has now been replaced with a nice brushed nickel finish metal faucet with better controls. The old three-stage Reverse Osmosis system under the kitchen sink has been replaced with a new five-stage RO system. This RO system also feeds the ice maker and fresh water on the refrigerator, which will make ice and ice water taste as good as possible.
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Major PITA: Kitchen appliances are still not here. They were ordered more than eight weeks ago. I've been working with the freight company to get things scheduled. The latest plan is they will be delivered this coming Wednesday. We'll work to get them installed over the next few days after that. Laundry appliances is another story, and I'm not sure when they will show up. They were ordered the same day as the kitchen appliances, but as of yesterday, I'm being told they may show up sometime in November. <sigh>
Through this entire process, these appliances have been the biggest roadblock to our move. Because of Covid, everything is on backorder, everywhere. All local inventories are depleted. Mail order appliance inventories are depleted. So everything has to be ordered. But even then, once it shows up, there is no guarantee the order will be complete. (That was the issue with the laundry appliances. They arrived at the vendor's warehouse last week, but the dryer had mysteriously been "shorted" on the order, even though it was previously showing as being there. Somebody likely took it to add to another order. So now my dryer has to be reordered, unless they can magically "find" one. Which likely means shorting someone else's order. It's nuts, and makes me very angry, because I can't do anything about it. Extremely frustrating.
While most everything has been received, there are a few furniture items still on order. We received a couple of pieces last week, but one, a big TV console for the living room, was seriously damaged in shipment, and had to be reordered. It isn't scheduled to arrive for another month. Arrggh. In the meantime, we have a number of boxes to open and assemble, with things like patio furniture. We've been waiting to do that until it seemed we were getting closer to moving in. I put together one set of patio furniture last week, and it looks pretty good.
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So, where are we as of today? We're moving in, even though things aren't totally ready. We'll make it work, and stop the financial drain of paying for two homes.
This coming week is the final week in the rental. We're moving smaller things from the rental house to our new home, slowly but surely. I have a rented va I've been using to move things the last few weeks, but need to turn that in on Friday. Kitchen appliances arrive Wednesday. A moving company is coming Friday afternoon to move the big stuff from the rental to our new house. By the time they show up, those few larger items will be all that's left in the rental. After we're done with that on Friday, we'll clean the rental over the weekend and turn in the keys. The owners have rented the house to another tenant as of November 1st. So ready or not, it's "go" time for us.
As we get moved in, unpacked, and settled, there will be more images, and more to discuss. Then we'll have the big reveal. We're getting there, one bit at a time. It feels great.
Dave
