Home at last

I meant to post this about a week ago, but maaaaan, stuff keeps NEEDING TO BE DONE. Bad blogger, no cookie!

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Well, the move's all done. The floors are done, our stuff is all here, and we're officially moved in. 

 

Look at our sad, empty apartment. I'm so excited to be moving into this house we've been wanting for so long, but it's really bittersweet moving out. This apartment was our first home together, we love the neighborhood, and our landlords have been amazing. Only owning a house could get us out of here...and now we're out. 

So long, little apartment on the left. It's been fun. 

This is where we live now. We've turned in the keys to our apartment, and spent our first few nights sleeping in this house we've been working on for over a month. 

That's not a miniature nuclear explosion, it's just my phone reacting badly to an ordinary lamp IN OUR HUGE NEW BEDROOM THAT'S THE SIZE OF OUR WHOLE APARTMENT ALMOST.

If home is where the cats are, we're definitely home. (Even if at least one of them doesn't think so yet.)

Pecan spent a day or so hissing at the walls. Sass is still hiding, 

but frankly, that's not unusual behavior.

Let's play a game. It's called "I Spy A Cowcat Where She's Not Supposed To Be".

Less than a week in, and she already owns the place.

It's been yet another busy week - the final push before finishing up at the apartment and getting all moved in. Before we could bring the cats over, we needed to install window screens and screen doors to keep them from getting outside. (Although the neighborhood is full of friendly, well-adjusted free-range cats, I don't trust mine to be intelligent or wily enough to keep out of trouble.) Since we had a ton of stuff to do, on Saturday, Incredible Builder Mom and Incredible Builder Dad came over to join the fun and keep us on schedule. 

See? Whatever tool-craziness I have, I come by it honestly. 

On the list of Things To Accomplish:

1. Fix upstairs bathroom faucet. We'd tried to shower on Friday night (our first night at the house; the cats were still sequestered at the apartment) and discovered that not only did the handle leak like crazy, there was a bizarre extra spout attached to the bottom of the faucet that diverted most of our water out of the shower head and couldn't be closed off. 
2. Window screens. The whole house is still suffering from an oppressive stuffiness unless all the windows are open, and I don't trust the cats not to fall out. (Pecan would leap out on purpose while exploring, and Sass has absolutely none of the innate sense of balance cats are supposedly known for.)
3. Screen doors. Like with the garage doors, I have very specific, expensive ideas about how I want this house to be, and it's far cheaper and much less painful to build it myself than to settle for something else. 
4. Fix the dryer vent. On Friday, Jesse and I went to do a load of laundry (for FREE! in our HOUSE! NO QUARTERS REQUIRED!) and discovered that the floor guys had apparently unplugged the dryer to use the 250v outlet for their drum sander. Since the laundry sink blocks the washer, the outlet could only be reached by moving first the dryer and then the washer away from the wall. (I'm campaigning heavily for an eventual replacement with stackable models.) In the process of moving the dryer, we somehow managed to tear the vent tubing in half. Oops. 

Totally doable in a weekend, right? Only with parental help! We started off the day with Home Depot trip #1, for window screen frame kits and, of course, window screen. (I think this was also the trip where we picked up an extra couple of 8ft 1x4 pine boards, to replace the two I'd cut too short during a prior screen door experiment. Measuring twice and cutting once only ensures proper length when your measurements are correct to begin with.)

Then, it was father-daughter plumbing bonding time. (Emotional bonding, not chemical bonding. These leaks couldn't be fixed with plumber's goop.) Which, naturally, meant Home Depot trip #2 to get more parts. 

I'm totally helping. And by helping, I mean supervising. 

When we got back, Jesse had gone to the apartment for another load of household goods, and Mom was tackling the (extremely scary) task of cleaning the kitchen cabinets. No one found any more mummified mice, but that doesn't make it less gross. Thanks, Mom!

 Dad went back to plumbing, and I went back to supervising. 

Success! And the obligatory satisfied selfie.

Once the shower was fixed, Mom and Jesse came in to fix the bathroom sink, Dad started in on the dryer vent issue, and I started with the screen kits. 

I would like to point out that, at this point, kerf is still a four-letter word, and not a positive one. One of these days, I'll figure it out, but in the meantime, I am going way over the usual 10% project material waste allotment. Hence Home Depot trip #3. (Oops.)

In the meantime, Dad had recruited Jesse to the dryer vent project, and Mom had taken over paparazzi duties:

Faucet? Check. Window screens? Check. Dryer vent? Check. All that's left is the screen door:

And it fits! (For extremely liberal definitions of "fit". The door itself is perfectly square. The door frame? Not so much. Gee, where have I heard this particular story before??)

All that needs to be done is sanding, staining, attaching the screen, and then attaching the door to the house. Whew.

In the meantime, does anyone want to get me a housewarming present? Because I think this would definitely be welcome:

Source

YES, IT'S A GIANT OCTOPUS. THAT'S THE POINT.