 | Well, we Mark moved most of the boxes out of the condo on
Wednesday. Mark is going to do the official move on Friday, so Friday
should be our first night in the house. |
| Carlee & Co. stayed the night at our house on Monday cuz they still
didn't have any power and the generator was working at our house. We
did get power back on Tuesday. |
| Sage has been working on the front columns and the brick veneer guys
installed the brickwork on the columns and the front of the garage. |
| The house cleaners cleaned the house on Tuesday, and I got to come out and
see it before work on Wednesday. It was like really being in our house
for the first time, no table saw in the dining room, no menagerie of various
pieces, tools, and substances spread out across the countertops, the
stainless steel gleaming. It was wonderful. |
| As you may have heard on the news, or experienced yourself, we had a major
windstorm/rainfall in the NW on Thursday. We lost power at the condo
about 11pm after it had flickered multiple times. So, Mark & I
decided to go spend the night at the house, betting that the power wouldn't
be out there. Even though the house is on a ridge, we seem to be
fairly protected from the wind. Plus, the 520 bridge is closed so
it'll be easier for me to get to work in the morning. And, Mark really
needs power for his nighttime breathing machine to work.
So, we pack up, and go over to the house. There is some power on at
115th & Lake City Way, but there is no power the rest of the entire way
to the house. Then about a half mile before we turn off Simonds Rd,
there is power! We drag out the mattress from storage, and make our
bed up. We enjoy our first steam shower (it's absolutely
wonderful!). The lights are flickering a bit, but still on.
Finally, about 1am while we're watching TV, the power goes out at the house
too. Oh well.
So, work is closed on Friday (no power) so we decide to work at the
house. We have a generator, but we need gas for it. So, we go in
search of gas. The neighborhood has one access point; 157th off
Simonds Rd. which is completely blocked by a tree and downed power
lines, plus there are several downed power poles that the tree took down
with it. Fortunately we can go through the back gate of the parking
lot for the High School to get out. But the power is out EVERYWHERE,
Kirkland, Woodinville, Bothell, Kenmore. We can't find gas
anywhere. We buy some food to have at the house cuz we think it may be
several days before we get power back. Check out the pics. We
eventually find some gas at a rental place. We make it back to the
house, light a fire (using the awesome gas log lighter!), and I head back to
the condo to pick up more supplies and provisions, and the power is back on
at the condo. So, that's where we are tonight. |
| During the rain on Thursday, when Mark got to the house he discovered a
river of water running down all along 88th Avenue down into our driveway,
and into the driveway and garage of the Fong's house. We faired a bit
better, it just carved out a portion of the driveway. All the storm
drains were all clogged up along 88th so the water was just rushing down the
road. Mark went up the street clearing them all out to help stem the
flood and divert the water into the storm drain, rather than our
driveways. The good news is our house is fine. All the uber-drainage
we put in worked well. Mark said he saw water coming out of drains he
hadn't seen water come out of yet. And that was during November, the
month when we set an all-time record for rain in the Seattle area.
Over 18 inches in one month. |
| I have packed about 90% of the condo up. Thank goodness we just
launched a product at work that has perfect sized boxes. I must have a
hundred of them packed up, or folded flat waiting to be packed up, scattered
around the messier-than-it's-ever-been condo. |
| We have a cleaning company coming on Tuesday to pre-clean the house before
we move in. There is dust on everything. |
| Mark is going down to Chehalis this weekend to pick up the rest of the
furniture; farmhouse table (so we can have Christmas dinner) and the leather
sofa for the living room so we can have a place for our guests to sit. |
| We discussed timing the move so that we would be in before Christmas and
he told me that he had it planned for the 18th. When I protested
because I'll be running my training class from 10am-9pm, he said "all
you have to do is pack, I'll do the move." I love my husband. |
| So, speaking of the 18th...... I'd like to take you back a moment to here.
If someone had told me it would take 3 years, I'm not sure we would've done
it. |
| I've got four days off (sandwiched between two 6 day x 10 hr classes) and
will be doing nothing but packing, packing, packing. We have the
luxury of not having to move everything at once, but that can turn into the
never-ending-move if you don't force yourself to do it all at once. |
| Mark is finishing up the floor for the main area. Then he'll finish
the floor in my sewing room. The electricians are due back this week
to finish with all the light fixtures, including the cool schoolhouse
sconces over the bar. Sage our framer is due back to help with
other miscellaneous stuff around the house. Sage's roommate Ryan was
helping, but I hooked him up with at job in the call center, which is good
for him, but now he's not available to help at the house anymore. |
| The appliances will be installed this week. Still need the
dishwasher, full-size fridge, washer & dryer. |
| The steam shower is almost done. The door is in, the steamer works,
the shower works. We are just missing one tile that was broken.
One tile. It was $40 to get it in 2-3 days or $1.40 to get it in 8-10
days. Yeah, we can wait. |
| Check out Mark's hair in the pics,
he's decided not to get it cut until the house is done. He's got quite
a mop going. |
| We have passed our inspection, we have a temporary occupancy
permit!!!!! Woo Hoo! We only have a few things to do
on the outside, like finish the stone veneer, and put numbers on the house,
and a few spots of caulking. So this means we can get the bank off our
back, and we could move in if we wanted. We're not quite ready to move
in, but it's probably going to have to be next week. I'm doing a
10hr/day 6-day-in-a-row class today through Saturday, and then another that
starts the following Saturday. That puts me done on the 22nd, so we're
gonna try and squeeze the move in sometime next week.
<fingers-crossed> Anybody wanna come help pack? |
| We had our first meal, homemade pizza on Saturday. Yum, yum! |
| We installed the kitchen countertops, siliconed them down and filled the
seams with the color-matched caulk from the countertop company. I'm
loving the countertop |
| We installed the bar fridge on Sunday to satisfy the 'refrigeration'
requirement of the inspection. The bar looks great next to the stove. |
| Mark many several hours over the weekend trying to install the kitchen
faucet. He'd built some supporting braces below the countertop and it
make it difficult to work with. Then, once we got it installed, it
leaked, from one of the faucet parts, from the faucet itself, not one of the
parts that Mark installed. Once we removed it, we couldn't replicate
the leak, so we put it back in to come back to later. As Mark said
"What's the difference between my wife and the kitchen faucet? My
wife isn't high-maintenance!" |
| We have called for our final inspection on Monday. Now, we will only
be able to get the temporary permit, all the basics are done; safety
(railings, electrical covered), sanitation (toilet, sink, shower/tub),
living (functional kitchen with cooking/refrigeration - we've got the stove
and bar fridge installed). We're keeping our fingers crossed that we
get that. Cuz then we can get the bank off our backs. For the
final permit, we'll need to have all the flooring done, all the appliances
in, all the plumbing in, all the light fixtures in, etc., etc. |
| So, yes, the stove is in! It looks so good! Our plan is to
cook pizza on Saturday while we're working. |
| On Tuesday, the clan went on our annual Christmas Tree hunt. We were
finally able to get a nice, tall tree for the new house. We went on what
turned out to be the coldest day of the year so far (30F/-1C), and we pretty
much had the place to ourselves. When we brought the tree back to the house,
it was so cold the rain chain was completely frozen solid into one piece of
metal & ice. Because of the snow we parked up top and dragged the poor
tree down to the house. It faired pretty well, as did we. |
| Yes, the driveway is treacherous when it is icy/snowy. But, how many days
a year will that really be in mild-weathered Seattle? Three, maybe four? So,
we park at the top of the driveway those days, no big deal. We just know
that from now on our vehicles will have to have 4WD. |
| We FINALLY got our claw foot tub feet back from the metal finishing place
(we dropped them off July 28th!). However when Mark went to pick the up,
they'd (of course) been chromed, not nickeled as we'd requested. So
apparently nickel is a base metal layer under the chrome, so the guy went in
the back and just un-chromed them. He just took the chrome layer right
off. We're happy with how they look, they were in pretty rough shape
to begin with and we didn't want them to be perfect. |
| We bought a mailbox! We bought a locking mailbox and will put it up in the
next week or so. I've started to selectively give out our new address
so we need a place for the mail to go! We've had enough issues with
mail going to the new house that has no mailbox yet. |
| Dad finished the carpet Tuesday night before flying out on Wednesday to
continue Mom & Dad's year-long RV trip. They'll be back again in
February for the birth of Carlee & Cody's baby girl. The carpet
looks great, he did an amazing job. |
| My last piece of advice for today: If you build a house,
before you make any changes, try and think about how those changes
impact other things. We've had two of these lately, which are not huge
deals, but, rather, "oh, well" kinda deals. When we ordered
the butcher block countertop, we failed to realize that by getting a
great-looking thicker countertop, it would impact the installation of the
bar sink faucet. When we re-arranged the laundry room to get more
countertop space, we forgot that the dryer exhaust hose outlet didn't get
moved, so the dryer won't sit flush against the wall any longer. Oh
well. Neither are a huge deal, they can be all be fixed, but just not
right now. |