Home Sweet Home

We're home!!

Actually, technically we're not 100% there, as we are still sleeping in the loft - since I'm paranoid about dust, paint, carpet, and general new house fumes. But we spend our waking hours there, and -supervised - Ben is finally allowed inside the house too. We have a couple of nice days coming up, so I'm hoping that with some more cleaning and more open-window air-out time, that we'll return to our house permanently on Sunday.

So the house overall turned out beautifully. We love the upgraded bathrooms, the new floors and we picked out some rather bold paint colors that ended up looking pretty cool (at least we think so). Some of the details aren't so great though - and we're trying to not let that bug us. The engineer in me is trying not to obsess about crooked light switches and mis-aligned cabinet knobs. The handyman in Mark is trying to not obsess about all the parts of the job that would have been cheaper and turned out better if he had done it himself. But the house is truly way nicer than it was pre-flood, and we're both so relieved and grateful to have a home of our own again.

And so far, it looks like our stuff made it through the move okay. We were both pretty nervous about that - as we hired movers to pack and move our stuff into storage - unsupervised - as we were desperately trying to get the house back into order in the early days when we thought it would be a matter of days - or at the most - weeks. However, despite very serious orders from Mark to NOT pile anything on top of the percussion instruments, when he went to pull the furniture from storage, he found boxes and chairs piled on top of the xylophone, vibes and marimba. Gasp. Mark has examined but not yet played the instruments. They look okay, but there may be rattles and other extraneous noises when they're played. Those are hard to get rid of and difficult to say whether they're from age or from the storage situation. We're both dreading the process of dealing with a claim with the movers and figuring out how to get the instruments fixed if they are. Let's just hope for the best.

Our furniture (or at least the furniture that we are not replacing) is back in the house, and about 60% of it has been cleaned. Once we finish cleaning and unpacking for immediate needs (clothes & kitchen stuff), we'll embark on unpacking and cleaning the contents of the 75 boxes still in storage. We're planning on paying for the storage locker for the month of February - so that should give us plenty of time to deal with our stuff. Oh, all our stuff. Who actually needs 75 boxes worth of stuff?! I'm hoping by the end of this, it won't be us. :)

And amidst all of this change, we are also moving Benjamin into a new daycare program. There is now space in the small church Montessori program that has been at the top of our list for almost one year. Today was his first "transition" day into the program - where he and I spent an hour visiting the class together. Mark continues the transition tomorrow - and I think he leaves Benjamin in the room for about 15 minutes. Our little man has been such a trooper - and I think he will transition well. He slept in 4 different places over the last four nights - as we moved from the loft to a hotel, to another hotel, to our house (until I decided the next day that it was still too fumy), back to the loft...

Anyway, it is with mixed emotions that we make this move to the new program. I'll have to write more about that in another blog entry.

In the meantime, please pray/think good thoughts that the fumes will dissipate, the dust will soon settle (and not contain lead particles, which I OBSESS about these days), and that our house will soon be a healthy place for Benjamin to live. Oh yeah, and that I too will soon stop obsessing about whether the house is "settled" enough to live in 24-7. And finally, that Benjamin will make a smooth transition into his new class. Thanks. :)

I'll try to take pictures of the house soon and post them - but unless I do so before Sunday, it may be a while. The router for our internet is packed away somewhere in those 75 boxes...

Delays...

But it looks like we may finally be in our house soon. Latest estimate (as of today) is Tuesday. So keep us in your thoughts over the next few days as we migrate back into our house - it's going to be crazy and chaotic, and probably not much fun. But it will be so nice to be home for the first time in 4.5 months.

Brief Update, Long Overdue

Thanks faithful blog readers, for sticking in there with us even though we haven't updated the blog in FOREVER! At least, I assume you're one of the ones who didn't give up on this blog if you are reading this post. :)

So - no - we did not get back in the house for Christmas. Or New Years. Things really slowed down during the holidays, which was really tough for me especially, because I was sure we would be back in the house by the end of the holidays - so as everyone was getting back into the routine of getting back to work, etc., we went back to the routine of living in our friends' third story townhouse. That was a bit of a low for me.

We did actually have a pretty nice holiday, though, with lots of family to help pass the time, and help watch Ben so we could get a few things done. I hope to follow-up later with a post with pictures of our holiday fun.

Today marks the four-month mark since we were chased out of our home by Ike. At that time, I packed three days worth of clothes - who could have known that it would be over four months before we would get to return! It's just crazy to think back about those couple of days before the storm, when we had no idea that our lives were about to get turned upside down.

The latest estimate is that the house will be ready by the end of the month. We're hoping for much sooner, as our "hosts" have friends coming for a visit from overseas in a week-and-a-half, so we need to vacate for at least four days at that time. I have a feeling we'll be staying in a hotel - which is okay - but, obviously, would much rather be in our house!

Things are beginning to move along again, so that is encouraging. The bathrooms are almost complete (just built-in medicine cabinets to be installed), the ceramic & wood floors are down and sealed (as of today), the walls are painted (with rather cool colors, at least we think), the doors are in, the trim is up. So what's left? Engineered wood floors, carpet, second coats of paint, and lots and lots and lots of clean up. The "fit and finish" as our contractor calls it, can take a while - so while it doesn't seem like there is that much left to go work-wise, it sounds like time-wise there still is.

I'll try to take pictures next time we're at the house and post them - but the last of our holiday visitors (Mark's parents) are leaving in a few days, and our "hosts" at the Hippie Commune return tomorrow (after 4 weeks away traveling), so I have a feeling life is going to get hectic again rather soon.

But hang in there with us - we'll try to post again soon!