homeless

we finally closed on the house on monday. it was originally scheduled for last wednesday, then delayed to thursday morning, thursday afternoon, friday morning, friday afternoon, and then finally to monday morning. the issue was with the closing for the house our buyers were selling, but we were stuck until they got thier paperwork problem sorted out. but after a few additional nights on an air mattress and many additional drive-thru meals, it's done. good bye cute little new england house. you were good to us and we will miss you. now to find a job so that we can buy this awesome philly house that i am completely obsessed with!

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"big bear" abby the beagle thwacked her tail in some wet paint, and then thwacked her tail on the door. think the new people will notice?

also, new people only had one medium uhaul of stuff. i (who filled three PODS) am amazed.

sold!

i have been meaning to post a house update for a while, but i also kinda wanted to wait until things were more finalized. we received and accepted an offer on the house at the beginning of june. we've gone through all the crazy number of inspections and appraisals, and everything is good to go. the sold sign went up today!!

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now we have less than 2 insane weeks of packing and moving ahead of us. jeremy has already started his new job in philly though he is able to come home this weekend to help with some packing before he has to return to philly for tuesday. we don't have a house in PA yet since me not having a job yet hinders our ability to procure a mortgage, but we'll get that figured out soon enough. at this point, jeremy is staying with family friends in new jersey and the kids, dogs, cat, and i will head to my parents' house to regroup and plan the next step.

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it's funny. people keep commenting how this ambiguity must be so hard on us. (it is, don't get me wrong.) but we're so much more relaxed this time around. the move from virginia in 2007 was just so stressful and insane that this is just tame in comparison. at least this time i am not 7 months pregnant. at least this time we won't be carrying two mortgages for an unspecified amount of time (a reminder since the pain of all of that probably isn't as fresh in your minds as it is in ours - the VA house was on the market for more than 15 months, so we ended up with a full year of 2 mortgage payments, plus we had double electric, water, and gas bills, and we had to pay someone hundreds of dollars to mow the richmond lawn etc.) and at least this time the economy is on the recovery side of things, rather than heading straight for disaster.

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and now back to packing.

guess who's back, back again

some drama/trauma this time around. yesterday morning, halfway in to this latest monstrosity, jeremy went down cellar to see if we were still dry. big time no. not only was water seeping in from several small area in the foundation, it was also pouring in from under the bulkhead door (home to one of the two permanently-installed and currently overworked sump pumps.) the sump pump was not operating at 100% (probably since it has been running non-stop every 15 seconds for the past month) and it was getting overwhelmed. so lucky jeremy looked when he did because we probably would have completely lost the cellar within a matter of an hour or two. in addition to the two sump pumps in the cellar, we were also running 2 more outside submerged in the puddle spitting water into the road. jeremy moved one of them in to assist the tired pump, so we rode out the rest of the storm with 3 pumps in the cellar and one in the puddle. we also ordered a new big-ass pump online. it should be here friday to get rid of the puddle again - hopefully the final time this year.

sigh (a real estate update)

sorry for the lack of blogging. we've been scrambling to get the house ready to go on the market so we can be in philly in july. we were really rocking things out and we were all set to go on the market on march 1st (2 weeks ago) until we were hit with back-to-back nor'easters a couple of days before. the massive amounts of rain caused our annual puddle-pond to appear (see 2008 version.) we didn't really want to go on the market with 1/3 of our yard (i.e. 1/3 of an acre) underwater so we decided to wait a week and see what we could do to expedite the disappearance of the water. - first, jeremy bought a pump and tried pumping the water into the woods behind our house. he left it running for a couple of days with no visible progress. so jeremy called every septic company, pool company, and flood restoration company he could find to see if someone could come pump the water out and haul it away, but no one could help us out. one of them did recommend that we call the fire department about it (?) and since we were desperate, jeremy called. our adorable little town fire department sent a guy out to scope things out. he said there wasn't anything he could do to help, but also added that he had been here about 4-5 years ago (before we lived here) when there was 5 feet of water in our basement. he said that the sloping of our yard that causes the puddle-pond was actually the solution to keeping the water out of the cellar. i guess that's a good thing but still doesn't help us with the unsightly lake in our yard. fire dude put in a call to the town highway department to see if there was anything they could do for us. the highway guy came out and said it was too bad we didn't have a catch basin near us to pump the excess water into. jeremy did some scoping and found one at the end of our street, about 1/4 mile from our house. he went down to town hall to ask if we could run a hose to there and pump it out. miraculously, they said ok. when jer talked to our next-door neighbor to tell him that he would be running hose across his front yard, our awesome neighbor offered up his super-strength pump. so he and jer set up both pumps and just started pumping the water to the other side of our yard. after 3 days of pumping and nice weather (last monday) the lake was gone! woo hoo. so we gave the realtor the thumbs up to put the house on the market. we went live on march 8th. - on wednesday, we ran into another of our neighbors who has lived here forever and we learned that the land our house was built on used to be part of a farm before it was parcelled out to build houses. and there was a pond in our yard. like a real pond. good thinking 1960 house builder. that won't ever be an issue. eye roll. - so over this past week we had a couple of broker tours to build awareness of our little house and today we were scheduled to have our first real open house. but alas, another nor'easter rolled into town yesterday. 5 inches of rain later, the puddle-pond came back bigger than ever. and it is still freaking raining. ugh. there is also water coming into the cellar in a few spots through some teeny tiny cracks in the foundation i guess. nice. - we still had the open house and four families came through. i guess it's a good thing that the rain seemed to keep people at home. now we just need it to stop raining so we can try to make it disappear again. and the news just said we should expect 2-3 more inches of rain tonight before this finally stops. good times. - some pics of the pond as of this afternoon. these do nothing to illustrate the fact that this thing is more than 2 feet deep. swimming, anyone? -

hodge podge

lots going on we met with our realtor on sunday to talk about getting the house on the market soon. she came back today with comps and a price suggestion. sadly it's not great, but it's on the high side of what we expected so we're ok with it. based on the experience with the last house, we'd rather start lower and sell earlier than languish on the market for more than a year and end up selling low anyway. so the plan is to be on the market by march 1st. we have a few projects to finish up - bathrooms mainly and then a bunch of decluttering and packing to do. there is a shiny POD in our yard just waiting to be packed. it will be fun to trudge through snow to do so. quentin is a disaster these days. he is definitely in that "pushing his boundaries" stage. he gets a big kick out of ignoring us when we say no to something, like throwing his dinner at his sister or similar. and time-outs don't seem to have any impact - he thinks they are funny. his speech is also improving and he's getting more conversational. there may be hope for him yet! we had an interesting (only to me probably) conversation about one of the other kids at daycare. quentin was very concerned that baby charlie was not coming home with us but then he decided it was ok and said, "baby charry go with charry momma home." i think he really digs daycare because every morning when i get him up he asks to see linda. then he asks me if he will see the kids at daycare, "mikey? wyan? breddan? charry? bay-ee?" he's not usually happy when i tell him he's stuck with me for the day. his counting is also improving. he still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the numbers 3 and 4 but i have heard him get as high as twelve otherwise. he likes to count his body parts - "one nose. one, two ears. one, two eyes." (set the bar low, kid!) and his brand loyalty continues to expand... coming home from daycare on tuesday he was pleading for me to stop at "gurgit" (target) because he wanted cookies. normally he says, "no want this" when we pull into a target or other shopping center.

shiny happy bathroom

today we had some wonderful people come and reglaze the tile and tub in our downstairs bathroom. like the kitchen update we did, this was all about improvement at a bare minimum cost. we know that this isn't going to make any potential buyer say, "i want to buy that house because of that bathroom" but we are hoping it will prevent a potential buyer from saying. "i don't want to buy that house because of that bathroom." - some before shots of the lovely marbley patterned tan tile and disgusting tan tub. interestingly, we learned today that our tub has been reglazed in the past (1982, we think, based on markings on the old sink) and that someone CHOSE that tan color that doesn't match the other bazillion shades of tan in the room. (seriously, when we bought this house, the walls were tan, the tile was tan, the border tile was tan, the toilet was tan, the tub was tan, the sink was tan, the towel rack was tan, and the toilet paper holder was tan. and none of them were even remotely the same tan.) -

and after. it takes 24 hours to cure, so there is still some tape up and we can't put any of the accessories (like a toilet!) back in the room yet but you get the idea. the shiny new white on the tile sure makes the floor look gross. that's next! and painting the heat register thing. no more tan!

before and after

after months of work, the kitchen is pretty much done!! in all actuality it was just a few actual days of effort, but when you try to do a kitchen re-do in 1 hour spurts at night after the kids go to bed, it takes a lot longer than in should. i barely remember what the old kitchen looked like. -

to refresh our memories, here's a before pic of the old, dingy, dark cave kitchen:

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and here is after! includes new appliances, new counters, new faucet, painted cabinets, painted back splash, and new cabinet hardware.

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it's not perfect, nor is it top-of-the line gourmet. but for the amount we spent, it looks darn good.

scenes from a DIY kitchen remodel

christmas recap and pics coming soon. - the babies are having an extended christmas vacation at grandma's house while jeremy and i tackle some of the bigger house projects we have to do, namely the kitchen update and the cellar organization. - here is a pictorial journey of the kitchen so far: -

the cabinets before, with the doors removed

the cabinets, after sanding

the cabinets, getting primed

the faux brick back splash getting primed primer, primer everywhere

the back splash, fully primed

finished primer coat

a different perspective

the first coat of cabinet paint, it's somewhat hard to tell from the pics but it is a subtle khaki green

contrast between paint and primer

contrast of primer and paint on doors

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still lots more to do... finish a couple of coats of paint on the cabinets. put a couple of coats of off white paint on the back splash. poly the whole kit and kaboodle. clean the old hinges. spray paint the old hinges a nickel color. then reassemble. and finally add nice new nickel knobs. whew.