We moved in a week ago and everything went very well. Thanks to all of our helpers, it went pretty quickly. The longest part was waiting an hour and a half for the moving truck. So for the past week, we’ve been unpacking boxes. We still have a lot to go, but it’s coming along. I finished staining the coatrack. Now onto the floors…
Stop by and see us sometime!
Moving day is set for Saturday. We’re renting a truck and hoping to get everything in 1 trip. Mary’s been staying at the house all week since she’s working the fair. So we finally get to move in too!
We accepted an offer on the townhouse last night. The buyer will need to complete her loan with the bank and we will have a home inspection in the next 5 days. If all goes well, we will transfer the title on Sept 23rd. Yea!
New pictures of the house (the new one) are in the Photo Gallery. Ciao Ciao!
Last Thursday we closed on the house and signed our paperwork with the builder. So we’re able to move in whenever we want. There are still a couple of punch list items left that will be worked on in the next week. Jay and I need to get in and finish the wood floor, do all of the paint touch-ups, fill and paint the finished molding and paint some doors. So hopefully we can get that done in the next couple of weeks so we can move.
We finally planted our last 2 trees! So now all 10 are in the ground - some looking pretty dead without many branches, but I know they’ll come back. Next year they’ll look better. We’ll post the finished pictures very soon so you can all see.
I’ve been playing around with some software called Qik and doing some live streaming video from my cell phone. Pretty cool, eh?
I’ve got 3 house videos that you can check out on my profile page here:
Enjoy!
Can you believe it? We’re closing on Thursday. We started this process a year and a half ago and it’s coming to an end. We’re pretty excited (and exhausted). I guess the new house begins new projects of planting grass, building decks and finishing the bonus room and basement 
The carpet was installed this week along with the coatrack and finish molding. We got all of our doorknobs on also. They’re working on punchlist items now, so those should be done next week. Our closet shelving is also being installed today.
We probably won’t be moving in for a few weeks. We still have a floor to finish, a coatrack to stain, a few doors to paint and paint touch-ups (a lot). But at least it’s ours and we have working toilets, a microwave and cold water from the fridge. I can’t think of anything else we need!
Last week we got appliances and all of the plumbing fixtures installed. Dad installed the hood in the kitchen. It looks beautiful! We just have to work on getting the microwave trim kit installed. Dad finished the HVAC this weekend and we had the electrical inspection on Friday.
Jason is painting the doors today while I have an Open House. Hopefully we’ll get some traffic. We bought a paint sprayer and it worked really well. The hardest part is carrying all of the doors outside. Hopefully we can get most of them done and then we’ll just be left with painting the pocket doors. All of the trim is painted except the front door. Jason put the sealer on the front doors and we painted the stairs - the white part. That was a lot of time for the stain/white paint look for the stairs. They’re supposed to install the carpet this week, so we’ll see what the stairs look like with the runner. Hopefully once I take the tape off, it’ll look ok.
We planted 3 more trees last week, so hopefully they’ll live! Only 2 more to go and then all 11 will be planted. Only took us 3 months. Some are looking pretty weary and we haven’t had much rain, so we’ll hope for the best.
After carpet, the trim carpenters will be back Friday to install the quarter round trim, coatrack and doorknobs.
Next week is paint touch-ups (which means us) and final cleaning and then we’re done. Can you believe it
The wood floors were installed in the foyer, hall and office. We ordered them from Authentic Pine Floors. It’s wide plank, various widths, lots of grain and nail holes. Jason said they told him all it needs is light sanding and 2 coats of oil. It’s a Danish Oil - a combination of stain and protective coating, but doesn’t have the shine and slickness of polyurethane.
So last weekend, we rented a drum sander and a hand sander on Saturday. The hardware store recommended 3 kinds of sand paper, so we had a 60, 80 and 100 grit. We took them but didn’t think we would need. But Jason started with the 80 and realized we’d need to start with the 60 because it was still rough. So, he would do the drum sander on everything and then go back with the hand sander to do the edges that the drum wouldn’t reach and repeat - 3 times! So we’re learning as we go I guess. I guess by “light sanding” they meant that you didn’t need to start with the 30 grit paper that’s standard - but a lighter grit. We took back the sanders on Sunday and rented a polisher for the oil. But, we started to see round marks on the floor from the sanders, so we ended up sanding most of the floor by hand before we started. But when we were done, the floors looked beautiful and felt nice and smooth.
Onto the polishing - the bottle of oil had different languages and the closest we could read was UK. We were supposed to roll on with a paint roller, let sit for 20 minutes, sponge off excess while working into the wood, polish with a yellow pad and then a white pad. Jason started rolling on the oil and it looked black. We were concerned about the color because the woman Jason ordered from said it was a light brown. But we assumed it just needed to be buffed off and it would lighten. It looked even more drastic because the floor was such a light color to begin with. We waited our 20 minutes and then both of us got down on the floor, kneeling in the oil and began to sponge until it was dry. We only had a white pad for the polisher, so we started polishing with that. It didn’t seem to be lightening very much though. So Jay went to Home Depot and got every color of pad - except yellow. I guess that’s just a European thing. I continued to polish while he was gone and it was lightening up a bit. It just took a long time. We decided to try the green and that took a little off. The pads were a little different size though, so it was a bit of playing to try to get the pads in the right place. It was 10:00 at night by that point, so we decided to finish the next night.
We did the rest of the office the next night and this time, used a green pad and then white, but it looked darker then the other side. We were starting to like the dark color as we got used to. It takes 3 days for the oil to completely dry, so we weren’t sure what the final color would look like. We were supposed to have the floor finished Tuesday because they were bringing in the appliances and plumbing, so we decided just to cover them up and finish later because we’d never get it done in time. Jason later checked with Authentic Pine and the oil we got was a dark brown, so it was definitely darker than we thought. We couldn’t decide if we wanted to resand and do it lighter or leave it dark, but I think we’re going to leave it dark like the doors and cabinets. But that will be a separate project because there is so much time and equipment involved. And we only got 1 coat done and it needs 2! So we need to do it all again - roll, wait, sponge, polish and polish again. It’s no wonder you cannot find any kind of oil in the store for a floor and everyone we speak to has never heard of putting oil on the floor. It’s a long process…
It’s been 3 weeks and we’re still painting. The entire 4th of July weekend we painted. And every waking moment outside of work since then, we’ve been at the house. I think all of the nail holes are filled and sanded. Most of the trim has 2 coats except a few windows and doors. We’ve begun staining and have the first coat on the stairs. Hopefully we’ll get the second on tonight - now that we’ve found a color we like (after 3 tries). Jason worked on staining the front doors last weekend and ran out of stain with the edge of the door unfinished. It’s a special order from the door company, so we’re waiting. It’s a fiberglass door and it takes the stain at least 48 hours to dry because it will wipe right off. Of course, we had a thunderstorm on Sunday, so we created a plastic barrier on the front porch to protect it - a little sunroom of sorts. We did get a sidewalk, another heat pump installed and a pipe to collect water from the heat pump - so we don’t have to empty a bucket everyday! Many thanks to our families for helping us paint. Jay’s dad spent an entire Sunday with us and Joe and Carrie were with us last Saturday along with Mark and Luke. And Mom and Dad are over there all the time working on ducts and painting. We really appreciate it. At least we’ve had AC - except when Jay stains the doors and lets all of the humidity back in!
Last night we moved trees all around the yard with a wheelbarrel or rolled them if they were too big. I think they’re finally where we want them, so now we just have to plant them before they die.
They’re installing the vinyl and hardwood floors this week. And we saw pieces of our coatrack in the house last night, so that should be in soon also. Check out the new pics.
