11 Days

Hello Everyone!

We've been in our new home for 11 days and we are both still trying to get adjusted.  I never imaged how difficult it would be to adjust and feel "at home" in a new place.  Its slow going, but we are making progress every day.

For the first time in my life, we hired movers, and they were absolutely terrific.  Nothing was damaged or lost and the guys were hard-working and very friendly.  If anyone needs a moving company recommendation in the MD-PA-DE-NJ area, I'd be happy to share.

I spent the day after the move unpacking the kitchen - we tripled or quadrupled the kitchen space and I'm still struggling to figure out where to put things so that they are in the most useful place.  I find myself walking around and around the island grabbing a spoon here, the walking around and grabbing a bowl there, then again for a tupperware....  Ah, the problems that come with that gargantuan island.  

The kitchen, before we started using all the counterspace
as a place to store things we don't have a place for yet  :)

42" cabinets are great, unless you are 5'4 - and then only the
bottom 2 shelves are useful.  I seriously am in need of a kitchen stool

I unpacked some of my great-great-aunt's china (circa 1929) and I
intend to use it the next time I invite the girls over.  Except for this, which
I think is a butter warmer.  Anyone?

We had people over a couple days after we moved in - probably not the best idea in the world, but it was nice to breathe some life into our new place.  Official housewarming will happen way down the road, when the 2 front rooms aren't filled with boxes.

So far, I think my favorite part of the house is the front porch.  If any of you out there are thinking about getting a porch and wondering whether to do it or not, don't hesitate.  Get the porch!!!  We are already planning for how to decorate it for Halloween.

Now that things have settled down a bit, I can get back to blogging and sharing our progress.  Hmm, or maybe I should unpack a box or two?

Shower to Shower

Ok people, I have a very important question for those of you with a stall shower.

How do you put your STUFF in it?!?!

I realized today as we were sealing the grout that we've got one soap holder in there, and that's it.  Its really pretty and sleek and fancy, but there is absolutely nowhere to put a bottle of shampoo, or a razor, or a shower poof.  I mean, I could change my hygienic habits, but BF probably would tire of that fairly quickly.

To me, the most feasible option looks like drilling some shower shelves in there, but drilling through that tile scares me!  Not much room for error there.

So, other than a thing that hangs from the shower nozzle, have any of you found any ingenious products for storing your suds in the shower?

My Precious

Good Lord, its over (well, except for the packing and the moving, and the moving in and the renting out of townhouse...)

We are now the proud owners of this Ravenna:

Our closing was at 11am yesterday.  BF and I had a nice relaxing morning, then drove to the lawyers office, which was so sterile and unpersonal if I hadn't know any better, I would have thought we were in a hospital.  We signed our names 7 zillion times to all sorts of papers that promised blood, limbs and firstborns if we were caught late with a payment, in default, or sneezing the wrong way.  The absolute BEST though, was the sheet of paper we had to sign for NVR providing a reason why NVR had pulled our credit reports!  I mean, if that just doesn't put the cherry on top of the NVR bullshit sundae, I just don't know what does.  I laughed and signed it, and thought "I can't WAIT to put THAT on the blog!"

We did some errands on the way to the house, and stopped at Sears to buy appliances.  I've had really good luck with Sears and Kenmore products in the past, and I just don't have the energy or desire to wander around Best Buy or HH Gregg and the small appliance stores in the area aren't open when I need them to be, so Sears it was.  With the Labor Day sale and a new Sears Card (that we purposely did not open until after closing was final) we got 35% off our Kenmore washer and dryer, and a really decent chunk off our Samsung fridge.  If anyone wants to know which models we decided on, let me know and I will find them and post pictures.  We bought a 3 -year service plan on the fridge, but nothing on the washer/dryer.

Then we headed to our house to meet our awesome PM, who had our keys there (yes, we left settlement with no keys to the house!) and who had done EVERYTHING on our final walk-through list in 1.5 days.  I can't say enough wonderful things about our PM - from start to finish, he was there for us and answered our questions and did absolutely everything we asked for.  EVERYTHING.

When we arrived at the house, there were new plants all over the front porch!  It looked so good; what a great gift.  There was no name or note on any of the flowers, so I figured it was a gift from Ryan Homes.  Our PM was puzzled when he arrived.  He said they weren't from him and that he had never seen the sales rep send them.  What a mystery.

We eventually found out that they were from my mother, who had driven over after dark the night before to put them out.  What a really sweet and thoughtful gift.  It immediately just made it feel like home.

We still have a long, long way to go.  New appliances are delivered Sunday, we still haven't packed anything and the movers come on Wednesday.  Wish us luck, its going to be a very busy Labor Day weekend!

The Keys will be mine, tomorrow

Folks, it has been one hell of an exhausting week.

We had our first showing, and are having second thoughts about our property management company.  There have been some rather glaring and annoying communication issues that make us both have a bad feeling about it.

Despite saying several times that they had everything they needed, we STILL had to provide additional documentation to NVR this week, including the paycheck stub that I received TODAY, for my paycheck TOMORROW.  Seriously NVR?

The neighbors continue to be both fascinating and completely irritating and horrible.  Which makes me think our chances of renting the townhouse are getting slimmer by the minute.

However, we had our final inspection and walk through and it was quite good.  I can write more later, but we found a couple minor issues that could have led to problems later on.  PM agreed to fix everything we asked and most should be done before we get our keys tomorrow.

Closing is at 11, then we are going to buy some appliances (cross fingers for kick ass labor day sales) and if I'm super lucky, I'll get to go to the DMV!  

Am hoping that one good night of sleep and the prospect of actually living in my beautiful new house will shift my attitude by tomorrow morning.

#7 - No More Butts

There are a lot of people here in my neighborhood that drive me insane: the ice cream truck men (there are three different ones!) with their loud kinder-muzak and diesel generators, the kids with their $500 cars, with the $3000 subwoofer, the kids in the street playing bball, the people who just can't figure out what day trash day is and what day recycling day is... Well, I could go on and on.

But the worst of them are by far, the smokers.  The smokers who stand in front of my house, or nearby, and flick their butts into the street, and the parking area.  And trash too.  But mostly butts.  They are everywhere - the parking area, my garden, my yard, the street, the sidewalk.  Its disgusting.  And, I can't for the life of me figure out why its not acceptable to toss your Burger King cup on the street, but its totally cool to flick a burning death ember.

I've tried, oh lord I have tried, to get the neighbors to not do this, but it has been an utter disaster.  The only time I had marginal success was with a guy down the street who had a crush on me and wanted to win me over.  And even then, I'm pretty sure he flicked when I wasn't around.

So, here's to #7 - coming out of my house and appreciating the garden, the sidewalk and the street, without cursing about the nasty butts.

4 Days Until Closing

Well, it appears that our new house is hurricane and earthquake proof.  I can't tell you how very glad I am that the week of East Coast destruction happened the week before we close, and not after we close.  We haven't actually gotten into the house yet (Final walk-thru is Wed) but we inspected it from the outside yesterday.  No siding was off, no shingles were laying around, and it looked like the basement was dry.  That's pretty damn good - there was over seven inches of rain there on Sunday.

I'm pretty brain dead right now - there is SO much going on.  We close on Friday.  We have showings this week starting tomorrow.  I've started changing addresses.  BF is making appointments.  Work is totally annoying.  Insurance company is being a pain in the ass.  Paperwork is flying.  Email box is cluttered.  You get the picture, and I know you've all been there too (or are going to be there very, very soon.)

So, because I have only a few brain cells left, here are some final pictures!

She's done!  Just waiting for that grass to come in

Landscaping in

More landscaping - with natives!

Dining room.   A little dark, but you can sorta see the floor and lighting 

Living room

My bare footies in the silky new carpet

Bathtub.  I guess its time to get some bubble bath.

Shower & private bathroom.

Master sink - i'll try to get some better pix

Family room.  Shiny shiny.

Wood Steps - it wasn't quite dry, but the PM ripped out the caution tape
and let us go up anyway

I know that we were really fortunate to not suffer any damage to either one of our homes.  I hope that all my blogger friends fared as well - and if you didn't, I hope that your insurance company and PM resolves it quickly and painlessly.

#8 - Disaster-Proof (cross fingers)

Those of you who live on the east coast may have noticed something amiss on Tuesday, as the earth shook beneath your feet while you were simultaneously looking at the severe thunderstorm warnings for Thursday and tracking the biggest monster of a hurricane we have seen in a century.  Yes indeedy.  Its Armageddon out there.

And so far, our Ravenna is holding up.

The earthquake did no visible damage - our project manager told us that the house was built to withstand at least the amount of shaking we experienced.  So, earthquake proof?  <check>

Floodproof?  <check>  With 2 sump pumps, good grading and good soils underneath, we haven't seen a drop of water anywhere on the property, despite the fact that we have had almost a foot more rain than is normal for this time of year.  And we've got another foot of water coming as we welcome Irene to our coastline.

Unfortunately, I expect some wind damage this weekend to both my homes.  Winds are predicted to be sustained at up to 60 mph here, with gusts of 75mph.  That's enough to do some serious damage to newly planted trees, not to mention siding and shingles.  But those things can be fixed easily, and are expected in weather conditions that are going to be so severe.

I hope that all my blogger friends take precautions and stay safe as the hurricane blows by.  This hurricane is not a joke, and we will probably be talking about it for a very long time to come.