Out in the woods, the house is almost done...

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The second floor has its second coat of poly. Third coat will be applied after all other work is done. First floor has been sanded and is waiting for its finish.

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Might be a little hard to see here, but the balusters (the vertical parts of the handrail) are pretty close together. I saw a railing like this in another house in the development and said we wanted them spaced out more. But, it turns out they have to be that close together because of building codes: 4" minimum between balusters. Drat!

Also, upstairs windows all must have child-proof mechanism to stop them from opening more than 4" without pressing a little button while lifting. And so they do.

The kitchen is progressing.

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This is the first time we've seen the house with lights in it. It's been natural light, only, up till this week. But now, it's alive!

We did our unofficial pre-walkthrough walkthrough this weekend. We made a list of things that need to be fixed. Most were minor: a couple of cabinet doors don't close correctly (too close together); some minor drywall patches needed; utility room sink is too small for the opening they cut in the counter; there's a big gap between the granite and the wall on one end of the kitchen counter, etc..

Mrs. discovered that the big light fixture she chose for the foyer is just too small for the space it occupies. So, she's going to have to see if it can be returned.

While we were there, there was a whole family working to clean up the sanding dust from the floor finishing: mother, father, two little girls. It did not feel great seeing two little girls wiping down our stairs by-hand. I don't feel its my place to say anything to anyone about this, though. Oh well.

Current house is still for sale. We were talking to some neighbors at a Halloween party who said under no circumstances should we try to sell an empty house - because if we did, people will assume we're desperate to sell and will give ridiculous low-ball offers. So, if we heed their warnings, we'll either have to leave enough furniture there to make it look lived in (not really possible - we really don't have a lot of spare furniture), or rent some furniture. Blech. Our realtor said not to worry about it.

We've scheduled movers! Very exciting. During their estimation process, they asked if it was a new driveway. We said: yes, it was. They asked how long it was. We said: I dunno, pretty long. Turns out that they will not park a fully-loaded moving van on a new driveway because the weight of the truck will crack it. They said it takes a year before the concrete will be cured enough to handle a truck. Mmk, I'm not gonna be the guy carrying the dressers however many tens of yards it is from the road to the house!

We're now onto converting our building loan to a traditional mortgage. This means another round of "Send Us All Your Financial Info" for us, even though we're dealing with the same people who did our construction loan, and so went through the same process with us back in March. Oh well. We got a fantastic interest rate! If things turn out right, after we sell our current house and apply the profit to the new mortgage, we should be paying less per month for this new house than we're paying now. This doesn't count the cost of the land, for which we paid cash. But, that's ok. Monthly payments hurt more than lump sums from savings.

Dealing with real-life, non-scammy, mortgage lenders over email is a challenge these days.

In other house news: they installed the wrong shower door.

Congrats, Mr O, on extending your lease on the White House!

On Monday, Mrs. got a message from the appliance store. The guy wanted to apologize for not ordering our refrigerator. We had assumed the refrigerator was just waiting to be delivered after the floors were done. Nope! Somehow this little fact escaped everyone involved until this week.

When Mrs. mentioned this to the builder's agent, she said "Sears would never do that". Yeah, maybe, but ... you said we had to go with your vendor!!!!! Fucking A. Refrigerator guy won't return Mrs' calls, so we don't know if there will be a refrigerator in the house by the day we're planning to move in. Also, when it does show up, we have to be there, in person, to watch the installation - some kind of building code thing. I don't know what we're supposed to know about refrigerator installation that a professional refrigerator installer doesn't know.

Because the mortgage is already in progress, we're going to have to write a check for the new refrigerator out-of-pocket. Fine. Here, take another thousand bucks... Fucking A.

There is still no street sign on our little street. While the builder on the lot next to us has started building a gargantuan palace, we will be the only people living on the street for many months. It's going to be a private street, so we'll have to pay for maintenance, snow removal, etc.. I hope our new neighbors have a pickup truck big enough to carry a snow plow!

Builder's agent says we're closing on Friday, but she won't give us a time.

Today we close on the new house. We go to the lawyer's, sign a ton of forms, and eventually walk out with a huge amount of debt and a new set of house keys.

Whew!

I haven't been out there in a couple of weeks, so no new pictures. Maybe later.

Current house is a nightmare of boxes: empty, full, half-empty, half-full, unassembled.

We've decided to go without a land line phone. But, I don't like the idea of having to carry my cell phone around with me all the time. So, I'm thinking about getting a Bluetooth-enabled home phone system that can link to multiple cell phones. Something like this. Anyone have any experience with anything like that?

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Been packing boxes non-stop for what seems like a week, but is really just three days. But holy fuck am I tired. Tonight I got down on the garage - so much crap. Heavy crap. This AM it was the kitchen. So many crappy pans. Heavy pans. After a quick dinner break, it's onto glasses. So many fragile glasses. Mrs has a half-dozen boxes of ... shoes.

The electrician fucked up the wiring around the TV / stereo stuff in the new house. Where there was supposed to be a conduit from above the fireplace down to the bookshelf where the amplifier will reside is a ... coax jack. Where there are supposed to be speaker wire jacks to the porch speakers there is nothing. The cable guy hasn't showed up yet so I don't know if we'll have cable (or more importantly, internet access) when we move in, or anytime, really.

The new place is covered in what I assume is dust from the final floor finishing. It smells like the inside of a polyurethane can. We left the windows open all weekend, trying to air it out. Just made it cold and smelly.

But we're moving in on Tuesday. It's supposed to rain.

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Yesterday afternoon, while I was out in our new yard, wondering what to do with two acres of oak leaves, I heard a sound I hadn't heard in along time. Someone was shooting at something, a ways off through the woods. It was a sound I hadn't heard in many years. My grandparents lived in rural upstate NY where, in the cold months, those long-echoing rifle shots were as frequent as the cars on the gravel road past the house - and nearly as deadly to their dogs. A brown lab running through the woods in the winter is certain to attract the psychopathic liars who will later claim they couldn't tell the difference between a deer and a dog. Their black and yellow labs were liable to pass for deer sometimes, too.

Luckily, we don't have any dogs.

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For the leaves, I got my 50' extension cord and my leaf blower, and blew the first 50' of leaves into a low cardioid berm all surrounding the house. I'm sure it's all filled in with new leaves today. But it was nice to be out in the woods anyway. It beats staring at the maze of unpacked boxes that we have inside.

Nice day for yard work.