Update on the move

It is Saturday, July 25, and we have been in our new house since July 13. We are slowly getting things put in their places, but there still are a lot of boxes to go through and stuff to sort, store, throw, etc. We have generated a lot of trash at both houses over the past few weeks.

The good news is, we finally got our old house on the market and should show up in the MLS starting on Monday. We hope it will sell quickly so we don't have to stress over having to make these large house payment for an undetermined amount of time. Pam and I spent some time at the old house this afternoon giving it a few finishing touches and I must say it looks really good. So, I hope the right family comes along and falls in love with it.

The new house is going to remain a work in progress for weeks and perhaps months to come. The kids' rooms are about as finished as they can be, but since we bought an older home, there are lots of other things we have to deal with that would not have been an issue for us had we stayed in the old house. The kids's bath tub has a large crack in it and we we don't think it is safe to fill it with water for a bath. So, we're having it redone. That will happen next week. We have added a lot of stuff to personalize this home already, but there are more things we want to do. That may take some time.

We have had a few frustrations with this home already. First, the electrical wiring has been modified a lot by the previous owners and from what I can see, they had no business tinkering with things they don't understand. The previous owners seemed to have an obsession with light dimmers. The trouble is, they put dimmers on things that shouldn't have dimmers (like ceiling fans), so I have been going around the house removing dimmers and installing standard light switches. We have a few lights in the house that don't work at all and that concerns me. I'm not looking forward to chasing wires in walls to figure out those mysteries.

Another frustration could have been disasterous for one of our children. The former garage of this house (they converted the garage into an extra room) still has the old attic access pull-down folding stairs in it. I went up to see if the attic had a floor in it and was pleased to see that about half of the attic floor over the former garage was covered with plywood. As I started back down the steps of the ladder, David decided he was going to come up and join me. I tried my best to discourage him from climbing as I was coming down. I got down to the last couple of steps and that is when the ladder cracked and separated; sending me to the floor and narrowly missing David as I fell. I was OK and so was David, but the attic could not be used until we fixed the ladder. We now have a nice, sturdy, aluminum folding attic access ladder in place of the old wooden one. The new ladder is rated for 350 pounds and feels really sturdy when I use it.

Pam has worked really hard at putting lots of things away in our house so far. I have tried to help in the evenings and on weekends, but most of my help has been to assemble new furniture and shelving from kits, repair door openings and latches, carry heavy things and hang stuff on walls. I also have carried out lots of trash and declared war on the insects that have been attempting to share our living space.

Pam and I both think we will like this new house a lot. We have more space than before and we live in a neighborhood that is super-quiet. The street is a dead end with a cul-de-sac and the only cars we see down here are of people who live here. There is no noisy traffic noise and the loudest sound we hear outside seems to be the locusts in the trees.

My music hobby seems to be on hold while we get the house stuff done. I don't feel right doing any practicing while we still have boxes to open and put away, so the instruments will stay put away until we get the piles dealt with.

I have been wearing my contact lenses for about a month now. I'm doing really well with them and what few shortcomings I do have from them are easily remedied. So, I'm happy with my decision to get off the glasses.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to post this time. I hope to have some soon.

More news later. Thanks for checking in on us.