Another Video Walkthru

Our power has been going out and then coming on again all day long, so I thought I'd do a quick video of the house. 

Landscaping

Ok... so all of my still cameras are dead, so this post will have to do without pictures... use your imagination.

Here we are, a full week after we moved all our stuff into the house from storage. There are a few lingering boxes on the first floor and a whole boat load in my office. I plan on getting to them... uh... sometime.

The big news is on the outside. Our water spigots were finally installed, so we started to plant our lawn. So far we have the front lawn done and this week I'll plant the rest. We also hit up the local Lowes with the in-laws and bought two car loads of trees and bushes for 75% off! What a bargain! We've laid them out where they're going to live out their lives, but I haven't started to plant them yet. I was going to do that today, but I decided to go rock climbing for the first time in 3 months. I deserve it so don't give me any grief. Yehearme?

Oh and a little tip: don't put lawn fertilizer into an open wound.

Unpacking

Unpacking
Originally uploaded by bredto

A quick note. We brought all of our stuff up from storage, where it lived for the past two years, this past Sunday. We had Friends and Family help us on both end loading and unloading the Uhaul. Once unloaded, we spent all Sunday unpacking and shuffling boxes around the house. Tonight after work we decided to tackle the kitchen. Here are some pictures of the process.

I'm still waiting on our plumbing guy to come back and install our outdoor water spigots so I can plant my lawn. I'm told it's still ok to plant it, but we're getting into the lower 30's during the nights. My fingers are crossed.

  

Nearly done

Front Deck framing
Originally uploaded by bredto

It's been a while since we've updated this blog thing. After many, many long days the flooring installation is complete. You can also see that we've started our front porch/deck. Robin, the guy who did our drywall and stairs is helping us build it. Actually, I'm helping him and he's building it. We had to dig three holes four feet deep by hand and that wasn't any fun at all. It took us literally all day. The deck is the last thing we need to get our certificate of occupancy so we're anxious to get it done.

 

Appliances delivered

appliances
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today our appliances were delivered which is one more step to making our house livable. Unfortunately, the stove and dryer won't be working until the propane people come back to hook them up. We did make a run to the get some food to put in our new fridge (you served us well bud light fridge, but it's time to go) and did a load of dishes in our dishwasher. Once I can cook again it'll feel like a real house!

So once the guys left, the flooring has slowed down considerably for multiple reasons. Reason One - The work week started. Reason Two - they left me with the hard stuff... for me at least. Lots of work on the saws and difficult nailing. Reason Three - pain. I've opened up a gnarly blister from swinging the hammer and it's nice and tender. I believe installing flooring is a good way to end up in a wheelchair. My back kills and my knees hurt. Cool. Now only another week or two and I'll be finished!

  
  :

Flooring going down

acclimation process 3000
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today my sister-in-laws brother, Matt, came up along with my brother and nephew to help me get started laying the flooring. I'm very glad they did since Matt has had experience do floors before. We worked about 6 hours and 200 sq/ft. in. They'll be here through tomorrow morning and Matt insists that the pace will pick up and we should be able to knock out quite a bit more.

I'm also beginning to see why guys geek out about tools. Yesterday I drove down to Binghamton to borrow various saws and sanders for the upcoming job. Those along with my absolute favorite new tool, the pneumatic nailer, I feel like to can do anything!

My camera is broken, so no pictures of the process yet, but I did shot a little video which I'll post eventually.

We're in!

into the kitchen
Originally uploaded by bredto

Yesterday we spent our first night in our house. You can see we still have work to do, but it feels great to be out of our musty old apartment. My brother came up with one of his daughters to help us out with the move which was great. We still have about 75% of our stuff in storage in my in-laws house in Binghamton which we'll get once the flooring is down. Speaking of which... We picked up 900 sq./ft. (in about 50 boxes) of straned bamboo yesterday as well. It was amazingly heavy with each box weighing in around 50-60 lbs. We're hoping to have a friend come up mid-week to help us get started installing it.

The painter finished painting the downstairs too. You can see we added an accent wall of "copper penny" in the kitchen and used 2 shades of grey for the rest. It looks awesome.

We won't have appliances for at least another week and a half which isn't too cool, but we do have a microwave and a micro fridge which will hold us over till then.