I think we've arrived.

After two months of nearly constant delays, I think we can begin to move in smaller items this week, furniture next week.

The painters finished Monday (should have finished last week - argh!) and the carpet was laid last Thursday.  It looks like a home -- one that's waiting, holding its breath.

There are many little details that still need to be finished, but they really shouldn't hold us up:

• delivery and installation of washer and dryer tomorrow
• last coat of finish on hardwood flooring this weekend
• install refrigerator and stove after flooring finished, early next week
• finish maple fireplace surround and mantel
• fasten stainless steel sheet to kitchen island, route a chamfered edge and burnish the finish
• finish maple trim on kitchen island after stainless is completed
• locate and purchase aluminum J-channel for mounting stainless steel backsplash behind stove, then cut, burnish and mount stainless (may have to pull stove back out, oops)
• sew temporary curtains for bedroom windows (already done for living and dining rooms)
• complete landscaping plan and present to association for final approval
• contract the landscaper to add topsoil and finish grade
• contract a builder to put up the deck
• arrange for pour of concrete pads for deck posts, air conditioner pad and walks at entrances and to deck
• contract with landscaper to complete landscaping after deck complete
• arrange for irrigation contractor to install mandatory sprinkler system (required in this neighborhood even though most don't use them)
• decorate the kids' rooms to their satisfaction so they can settle in (tropicana in daughter's room, outer space in son's room)

My daughter is terribly restless and eager to get on with this; she's already been moving things into her new closet.  She's been waiting for a room entirely of her own for a couple of years and is just plain done with sharing anything with her brother.  The room she has now is hers, but she must give it up if we have overnight guests.  She ends up in the top bunk in her brother's room.  It's hardly a sacrifice, but at her age she is developing boundary-setting skills; it's important to her to be able to say, This is where I start and you stop.  I can't blame her for that.  Far too many women never learned to set boundaries, and I learned rather late myself.

My son, on the other hand, isn't quite ready to move.  Whenever we are working at the new house, he asks to "come home".  We remind him that he is already home, but he just shakes his head.  It won't be home to him until all his personal effects have been moved, particularly his bed. 

My husband will be splitting his time between the new house and the old one until the old one is sold; there have been a number of thefts across this area, vacant homes for sale that have had all their copper piping stripped from them.  I'm not crazy about the idea of him being here alone and having thieves prowling around, but I don't relish the idea of having to re-plumb the old house.  (Okay, maybe if they take the old water heater, too, I'll think about it...we're probably going to have to offer a credit for the silly beast.)  I don't know how much time he'll have to spend at the old house, though; he's spending every free evening at the house working on many of the smaller finish work jobs.  One entire evening this week was spent together at the manufacturing plant he manages.  We set up a jig for the 4' x 8' sheet of kitchen island's stainless steel and cut it to size on the bandsaw -- how romantic.

I'm just plain ready to be done with this.  I want to move on.  I want my life back, repossessed, not split between two places.  I want out of this too small, too dark, too tight house and into the wide open space of the new great room.  I want not to see my neighbor who lives behind us, standing in front of the fridge in his wife-beater t-shirt and boxer shorts, fetching milk for his coffee before heading off to work (you would never know this guy was a millionaire that owned a business - ugh).  I'm sick of the steady stream of traffic going to and from the Walmart a block away from this house.  I dread being here as another school season ends, the little monsters who live kitty-korner behind us raising their annual summer-long ruckus, throwing debris in my yard and tormenting the neighbor's dog.

And yet I've been mourning.  This is the first house my husband and I owned together; we moved in the day after our wedding, held our reception here three weeks after the wedding.  Our son/stepson made lifelong friends here.  I'll miss the quiet summer mornings in the sunroom, having coffee while watching the rabbits in the yard; I'll miss my garden, large by suburban standards and unlikely to be replicated at the next house.  The decades-old crabapple and apple trees will bloom and scent the air, but I won't be here to enjoy them; in fact, it will be a long time before I can really have real trees to enjoy, no leaves on the lawn to rake, no branches for squirrels and kids to climb.  I'll miss the sheets on the line, bright white, fluttering in the breeze, smelling of summer on the bed; the new neighborhood restricts clothes lines, and hanging in the basement or garage will simply not be the same thing.

We learned a lot from this house that we're taking with us to the next house.  I learned that I really loved my trees; I'm going to spend a small fortune on getting the biggest trees I can possibly plant for the next house.  We learned that having a yard is a commitment, to ourselves and to our neighborhood -- and that one can get too carried away or be too lazy, and it shows most painfully.  My husband learned over the fifteen years in this house that when Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  Yeah, 'dat.  And he learned that he really does need a doghouse, a place he can call entirely his own, where nobody will walk in with a problem from the office nor will the wife make demands on his time.  A big, spacious workshop to enjoy what his hardwork has purchased and what his hands can craft -- and a space much bigger than the one he had in the basement in the old house.

Even though we started in October last year (long before, really, if one considers the timing of the purchase of the lot), it's going to take more time to transition from the old house.  We're leaving behind a substantial portion of our life to begin something new.

11:28:11 AM    comment []