We're here - and mosty unpacked!

The move went pretty well on Wednesday. I managed to stay away from the office the whole day, which earned me some points at home. The movers did a pretty good job, and they were fast. Of course, I discovered stuff that we hadn't packed well back when we moved out originally, had never unpacked, and had broken somewhere along the line. Not too much damage so far - a few bowls and a piece of "art glass." I haven't had the nerve to unpack the framed photos, but will probably undertake that tomorrow, time permitting.

The house is great. It really does have the open feel of a loft, but at the same time, various spaces are really private. The acoustics will take some getting used to - but that will improve when we put rugs down in the living and dining rooms.

The moon is approaching full, and each night we get to see it travel across the south-facing exposure. Last night an owl woke me up with its call. Haven't seen too much other wildlife, but the woods/undergrowth are thick enough now that the deer are pretty well-hidden.

We've cooked a few dinners, and now that we actually have stools, we can sit comfortably at the island to eat until our new dining room table and chairs arrive. We had our first official visitor yesterday (official visitor being someone to whom we haven't paid a sum of money or who wasn't in service to us to deliver something). A nice chat on the deck with a glass of wine while the birds sent out their evening calls - gratefully the mosquitoes were not around. We're looking forward to more friends and family visiting - will probably need to start thinking about some sort of party.

"My" deck is truly a respite - high up and with a great view into the woods to watch the birds fly through the treetops. I hope tomorrow morning's coffee and newspaper will be delivered to me there!














Our punch list is an interesting mix of things. Most importantly is finding out how to silence the alarm that sounds when there's a power outage - which happens often enough around here to be a nuisance. If we recall correctly, the alarm has something to do with either the well pump or some other mechanical system. Anyway, it went off somewhere around midnight our first night in - causing me to blindly stumble down the stairs and randomly hit buttons on the control panel til it silenced. Then about 2:30 it went off again, just to announce that the power was back on - requiring another stumble down the stairs and more random button hitting.

It took us a few days to realize that we hadn't used our great Phantom Screen yet. Yee-ha! Down comes the screen, open up the big folding door, and it's like the living room is a screened porch. So far it is the only screen that the cats have not climbed. They (the cats) have adapted quite well to the house. It took less than a day for them to decide that it's really cool to hang out on the cap to the cable rail, like a feline Olga Corbett on a very high balance beam. The drop from the top of the rail is probably 13+ feet, which makes us more than a little nervous. The new trick - as of 30 minutes ago, is for Ping to skitter down the banister overlooking a particularly nasty drop - or to jump up onto that same banister from the stairs. Yikes.














Next on our agenda - settle in, get some basic landscaping underway, plan the real plantings, and enjoy being here. Stella's already figured it out, watching from the catbird seat.

4 days til move-in

Wow - just four days and we'll be in! While there are still random items to finish off, it's really coming together well. We've started moving a few things to the house; mostly the stuff that we'd rather not have the movers deal with, like golf clubs, little fragile glass tables, and miscellaneous stuff that doesn't pack well. Everything else will be up to the movers. I'll be at work the day of the move, which is alternately a relief and terrifying.

Comcast showed up as scheduled Friday afternoon, and there's *hopefully* internet and cable in an operational status. Maybe we'll take a cable and try connecting one of our computers to the internet today - the wireless will need to wait until our move. We'll be TV free for the first many days, as we await the ordering and arrival of the hi-def TV. The Red Sox will be a sight to behold in hi-def, particularly whenever we're beating the Yankees. Goodwin's High-End will help us get outfitted, and we'll also get them to make sure the turntable gets properly re-established in the new house...still need to get a solid shelf built and anchored to the studs to reduce the vibration and keep the turntable out of the reach of trouble-making cats.

All of the lights are in. The outside lights look really good, and the best thing about them is that they're not the same as every other house you drive past these days. My very old George Kovaks light is up in the dining room, and I'm glad to see it there, like an old friend (and it's probably happy to be out of the box it lived in for 3+ years).

The sauna is looking quite inviting, especially on this 40-degree day, and the whole house looks great now that the cleaning crew has come through. All the stickers are off the windows and the floors shine!















What's not yet done...
We ordered the shower door for the master bath; for the guest, we have a piece of glass coming that will extend just high enough and far enough to keep the showers water inside the tub. It'll be nice to not have to deal with shower curtains anywhere. These will take 3+ weeks, and in the meantime, we'll just have to be careful - it doesn't make sense to buy a shower curtain only to use it for a few weeks.

We haven't done anything about lining up basic landscaping, or paving the driveway. Found some good books at the Concord Bookstore on native grasses and plantings, as well as garden and landscape design. Hopefully, these will provide the inspiration to do much of the design and installation work ourselves. For the time being, we have temporary steps from the back of the garage - not pretty, but mandatory to get the occupancy permit.

With the casting off of several bookcases, we need to get going on replacements; we also no longer have a built-in shelving that was so handy for CD storage. For what it is, a lot of what we've looked at is either cheesy or not worth the price. Perhaps we'll go back to Al, who did such a great job on the cabinets.

Things we don't know...

There are a lot of things we don't quite yet understand how to operate - including some box on the exterior of the house that we have no idea why it's there or what it is for. Even the thermostats have user guides. We'll have plenty of time once we're in to figure it all out.

Catching Up

It's been a while since the last post. As move-in date draws nearer, all the things that need to be handled seem to be converging and conspiring to eat up all of our free time on weekends, and a bunch of time on weekdays as well.














The town gets a black mark for requiring a drywell into which our water conditioning system will flush. I don't know why this wasn't identified as a requirement from the beginning, but it's a drag. The drywell is separate from the septic, so we're spending extra money for site work to build it (we were already over budget on the site work anyway), and the civil engineers placed it inconveniently (and billed us, of course), requiring a whole extra "sewer" line the full length of the house (which means unbudgeted plumbing costs).














The water conditioning system, however, is a supreme improvement over the old one. The guy who put in our new system installed and maintained the treatment system in the prior house (before we had it), and while it was fine in its day, it was pretty bad by the end. The new system will be easy to get at in the mechanical room in the garage, rather than buried in a half-height area beneath the stairs. Paul the plumber (we like the alliteration of some of these guys' names and trades), did a sweet job on the plumbing for it, with labeled shut-off valves and real pressure release valve at a height that we can hang a bucket off of when needed. the new system will be much more efficient, as it will only flush itself after we hit a certain water usage level. The old system had a timer, and that wasn't very accurate, either. So, our new system should use less salt, uses a less-invasive salt than the old one, and should give us a better quality water. We're still using a Multipure system at the kitchen sink for our drinking water. I've been a fan of these for years, and swear by the drinkability of the water; I'll trust that they provide the asserted levels of purification.

The finish work is proceding well - with a bunch of things underway, from the hardwoods to the countertops and the pantry shelves to some of the light fixtures. Hopefully this will all wrap up quickly as we're scheduled to move in on the 23rd - just two weeks away at this point.

We took too long in ordering a few basic items, so the washer and dryer won't arrive til a couple of days after we arrive, our new dining room table will get there about the same time. The use of a folding table for a desk will be verboten in the new house, so the old dining room table will serve that purpose for one of us until an appropriate desk or writing table is acquired. This experiment in sharing an office will be interesting - I feel an anticipation not unlike Les Nessman from the old sitcom WKRP. We haven't figured out stools for the island in the kitchen, but that can happen at our leisure (as will several other things).

Once we arrive, there's a lot to do, including blacktop for the driveway and basic landscaping (at least loam and basic grass seed). We'll do a landscaping plan and build it out over time. Hopefully we'll be able to include a lot of native grasses and plants and avoid having any space that looks manicured.

A bunch more progress was evident on our visit to the house today, but the electricians were pretty busy working and we didn't end up taking any photos. Hopefully we'll get some photos early this coming week and I can get some up to show how close we are to reality.