Today is the last day before our Housewarming Party. This will be our one and only Houeswarming Party, since we intend to move rather often. We never had one at the last house because we got married around the time we moved in, and felt it a bit redundant.

We decided to make the food ourselves, which still mostly seems like a good idea. We don’t know how many people are really coming, and we invited quite a few. There’s going to be at least 35, but we think it might get closer to 55 when everything is said and done.

We’re making BBQ chicken and a ground beef chili, both in slow cookers. In addition we have lots of sides and salads, as well as chips and snacks. If we don’t have quite enough, we are sure there will still be enough for everyone to snack on. If we have way too much, well… it’s food so we’ll just eat it ourselves.

This is the first party of this scale we have ever had, so it’s more work than I expected and a bit intimidating.

There’s been a lot of shelving in our lives lately. These were a birthday gift from my Grandma. A strange gift, I know, but I told her and my parents that what I really wanted for my birthday was the ability to park in the garage before it got too cold. My parents bought me a garage door opener which took weeks to get installed. After a few trips to Goodwill and one to the dump, we finally parked both of our cars in the garage last night.

But back to the shelving: these two sets came from Home Depot, for about 60 dollars a set. The uprights have lots of holes so you can make the shelves whatever height you’d like. The bars that hold the shelves have metal tacks attached, so you just slide them into the holes at the correct height, and voila: super sturdy shelves. What we like best about these is they required no tools or hardware to assemble, which means they will be easy to move, and we can assemble them quickly in a storage unit to hold boxes.I may buy two more sets, and forgo a work bench for more storage.

Lately we have been accomplishing a lot of little things that have made a big difference in the house being complete. One of those things was vent covers. The ones we had were dirty and smelled like smoke, and would have taken forever to clean. When we decided to return the new vent fans for the bathrooms, we bought new covers for the rest of the duct work in the house instead. They were more expensive than I would have liked. Its a simple thing, but we are more excited about it than much bigger projects. It’s little things like this that no one will appreciate as much as we do.

We have worked on small projects while continuing to unpack and find a place for everything. We bought replacement vent fans for the bathroom, but after trying to install one we decided it just wasn’t worth it. We were unaware that they were attached to the rafters, and since changing them was a style choice anyway, we’re just going to clean and possibly paint the ones we have. We may still need to replace the one in the downstairs bathroom. I asked Aaron if he kept the fan he took down, and though he said yes it is nowhere to be found. The bathroom has no need for a fan anyways, so I’m not sure if we will replace that one or not.

We’ve planned a housewarming party , so we have divided our project list into pre- and post-party.

Pre-party:
Caulk and sand downstairs molding
Install floor transitions downstairs
Finish organizing garage
Move in futon
Finish unpacking/organizing/donating
Re-attach door frames and kitchen cabinet

Post Party
Refinish cabinets in kitchen
Refinish cabinets in bathrooms
Paint bathrooms
Replace gutters
Repair siding
Lay new flooring in upstairs bathrooms

As much as I would like for that to be the complete list, I’m sure there are projects I’m forgetting.

There have not been any posts lately because we have been working on the tedious task of unpacking. This house is a little smaller and without a cold storage room like the last house. Though it’s just the two of us, that storage closet was mostly full. As we are often told, we have a lot of stuff for just two people. I’m starting an aggressive donation pile to help get things cleaned up.

The stuff in storage wasn’t all junk. We kept blankets, comforters and pillows in storage bins as well as boxes, paint, sleeping bags, and extra seating. We intend to add plywood flooring to the attic above the garage, but we don’t have one of those pull down ladders, so I have to hoist myself up from a standard ladder. Aaron randomly knows about floor joist requirements, and said they are only adequate for storage. Begin half his weight, all attic projects will be up to me.

Originally, we assumed we would stay for a year, but now we are considering staying only six months. Knowing we may move again in a few short moths is great motivation to get rid of clutter. What’s more amazing is that I already got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved. We also want to buy more plastic storage bins, as they are sturdier and more reusable than boxes. They are also easier to stack, which will make moving and storage easier.

Once we had repaired the drywall, it was time to tile the surround. I was excited for this project because it is easy and makes a big impact. We chose this tile, primarily because it was on clearance for $4 a square foot.

We started placing it vertically, trimming the tiles as needed with glass snips. With the help of a friend the tile was up in under an hour.

I grouted the next day. There’s more finish work to be done, mostly reattaching trim and cleaning up.

We thought we would move in one week after we bought the house. We pushed it back because we didn’t have hot water, weren’t completely done with all the projects we wanted to do, and we were getting pretty exhausted. Sometime in the middle of week two I started clearing out the odds and ends from the storage unit to prepare for the big move.

We chose to move with one big U-Haul truck and the help of one good friend. On Friday, after 14 days of home ownership, we started loading up the truck at 8:00 am. Everything fit in one trip, but only because we rented the biggest possible truck. My dad later commented that we have a lot of stuff for two young people. We finished loading around 11, ate a huge brunch at IHOP and began unloading around 1pm. We had everything off the truck around 3pm. Luckily, most of our furniture was light and we put a lot of stuff in the garage. We had our stuff in the house, and we stayed there that night. We still didn’t have hot water and everything was in complete disarray, so we didn’t really start staying at the house for another week.

Over the next couple days we got the furniture moved where we thought we wanted it and stated to get boxes unpacked.

Since we fully intend to move again in a year, we are saving all of our boxes. As much as we have been able to unpack, we are not all the way there yet, and our garage is still a disaster. the office has become the official room of unsorted things.

There’s no easily accessible storage in this house, so the items from our storage room are awkwardly finding new homes. Even after clearing out the storage unit, there were items in our room at my parents house that still needed to be moved, which I tackled myself on the following Thursday. It took three weeks, but we are actually living in our home now.

The tree in the front of our house had branches that nearly touched the ground, so we decided to trim it up above our head level. The branches were sagging quite a bit, so we were cutting higher on the tree than we expected.

We used a folding saw, a chain saw, and eventually a ladder to limb up this tree. It was nice to get out of the house for a while, and it only took an hour or so.

I trimmed up the trees in the back after cutting the grass. We were considering taking the trees out, but they probably belong to the neighbor.

The limbs on this tree were completely touching the ground. There was another tree growing in between it’s branches that I cut down. I don’t think the neighbor will notice.

That is the ceiling of our utility room. That ceiling was discolored from smoking. It was once as white as the word painted on it. If in the future, I am looking to buy a house and I walk into a home where they smoked inside… I am immediately turning around and leaving. The only exception is that it would be so cheap that I could hire someone to prime the whole thing, lay new flooring and clean the ductwork. Even as we cleaned and replaced and painted things, our clothes would still smell like smoke at the end of the day.

 

There are still moments when it smells like smoke, despite how much we have done. It doens’t smell when you first walk in, which is a milestone in itself, but stuff hanging in our closet has a slight odor. As we continue living here, I will be investing in a lot of febreeze to keep things smelling fresh. Smoke absolutely gets eveywhere. Though the pictures here are the worst of the worst, every wall throughout the entire house had yellowed from smoke.

Even places that seemed to be white were in fact some dusty shade of brown-yellow. Even the upstairs closets were off-color. And we are certain that everything started as white, even though that seems unbelieveable. We took the utility closet doors off to do the flooring and realized that it was the worst room of all. Upstairs, the walls above the vents had discoloration which was from smoke emerging from the duct work. The blower fan had been replaced, obviously because every vent inside and outside of the furnace and duct work was covered in dust to the point that it was practically clogged. The duct work guys seemed a little amazed, and cleaning dirty duct work is all they do.
 
When we went to wipe down the cabinets we were convinced that we were taking off the finish because the rags were so dirty. We were not. The orange-brown that wiped off was not from the golden honey cabinets; it was the left over reside from smoking. To imagine that people could once smoke inside any public building is incredible and disgusting. Everything about this has been disgusting.