Wednesday, November 30, 2011

All Moved In...

We're pretty much all moved into the new house now.  While there's still a lot of thing to do for unpacking and getting everything sorted out, we are officially living at the new house.  The first week in the house was very "interesting" though.

When we did our walk-through on the 18th, we found out that the plumber moved the fridge to put the water line in, but wasn't careful and ended up scratching the hardwood floors.  The builder found that unacceptable, so he wanted it fixed.  The only problem was that you couldn't just blend that area...they had to re-sand and re-stain the entire kitchen AND dining room wood floors.  Then they had to re-apply all 3 coats of poly.  So on Saturday the 19th, we were able to move boxes into the basement, but we couldn't get to the kitchen, dining room or family rooms.  They were also staining the handrails upstairs, so we couldn't go upstairs either....very frustrating.

However, by Monday morning, they had the floors re-stained and covered them with protective paper so the movers could put furniture into the family room.  The movers were wonderful and did a great job with the furniture and with making sure they didn't damage anything in the house.  It was really nice staying our first night in the house.  The only problem was that the hardwood floor guy was supposed to show up Monday evening to do the 1st coat of poly....but he never showed.  We finally went to bed around 9:30pm and were exhausted.

Unfortunately, we were woken up at 5:45am the next morning because the hardwood floor guy showed up.  Even though the builder told him we were moving in, he didn't quite grasp the fact that we were actually going to be staying there.  So by 6am Tuesday morning, we didn't have access to our kitchen again.  Grrr!  I was hoping to at least get some tea or coffee made that morning before people started showing up.

We ended up spending Tuesday night at Rich's parents because the smell of the poly was getting to us and its hard to stay in a house when you don't have access to food.  The hardwood floor guy put all the final coats of poly down on Tuesday and Wednesday morning and we were finally able to get to the kitchen on Wednesday evening (around 9pm).

Since then, we've really enjoyed being in the house.  There's a lot of work to do to get things unpacked, but its good to be in the house.  There's still a few things left that the builder has to finish, but it isn't preventing us from being able to live in the house.

As soon as things are cleaned up a bit, I'll share some pictures. :-)

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Almost there!!

Tomorrow is the day!!!!

We're scheduled to close on the house at 1pm tomorrow.  I haven't been over to the house this week with the exception of Monday evening.  I'm trying real hard not to go over after work mainly because I kind of want to be surprised when everything is done on Friday.

Not everything will be 100% done tomorrow, but it will be enough that we can get the certificate of occupancy.  The yard won't be seeded until next year as its too cold now to do it.  Plus, the front doors need to be re-ordered and stained because they accidentally used the wrong stain on the doors the first time.  They tried to strip it and re-stain, but the 2nd stain came out looking very blotchy.  So we will get new doors in about 2-3 weeks time, but for now, we'll be able to move in with the existing doors.

One of the pendant lights over the island also won't be finished until next week.  Its a low-voltage LED light and the transformer in it was bad.  So we currently have 2 lights installed and the 3rd will get installed once the new transformer arrives.

The big plus is that all the appliances are installed...including the dishwasher!  Our old house had a dishwasher, but our rental did not.  After washing dishes by hand for the past 6 months, I can't wait to have that dishwasher back again!  While washing dishes isn't too terribly hard and I don't mind doing it occasionally or washing pots/pans that don't go in a dishwasher, its terribly frustrating to have to hand wash EVERYTHING. 

Let's see.... what else....  the sewing/quilting stuff is all packed up again.  Everything is in boxes again and ready to move.  It will take a while to unpack things, but I'm hoping that with my husband having to go to the doctor's one day next week that I'll have that day where I can unpack my quilting stuff. :-)  I'll have an entire room dedicated to my sewing, which will be a first for me.  There's nothing too awfully special about the room, just a standard bedroom, but its just for me!  I was able to pick a very happy yellow color for the room.  The builder even put in a dedicated line for the iron. :-)  Our last place, while it was only built in 2004, had issues when the iron kicked on.  The iron was a new one, but whenever it kicked on, the lights would dim in the room.  Very frustrating.  So I have a dedicated electrical line in the new room such that the lights won't be affected by the iron.

Anyway - only one more day and the house will be ours!! :-)

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Stashbusting 2011 - Week 46

Not a ton of quilting this week, but I did get the final borders onto a "Labyrinth" quilt.  This quilt was made completely from stash.  I'm also hoping the backing will be from stash, too.

Labyrinth-1

When I make quilts, I also keep some 2.5" squares handy and make them into 16-patch blocks.  I plan to make another queen-sized quilt out of the scraps.  So far I have 56 blocks of 99 to make the middle section (before borders).  Definitely well on my way... :-)
Scap_Quilt-1

Scrap_Quilt-2

I won't have much sewing over the next two weeks as we close on our house and move-in in less than a week.  I'm so excited about the new house and I'll post some new pictures once we get moved in.  I want the pictures to be the "finished" look.

So here's my numbers:

Added This Week:       0 yards
Added Year to Date:    43.89 yards
Used This Week:         2.14 yards
Used Year to Date:      36.05 yards
Net Year to Date:        7.83 yards