Raincharm’s Weblog

Here is a last look at our apartment “kitchen”.

Apartment Galley

And here is our new house KITCHEN.

Spacious

(Yes, the picture is a repeat, but if I took one now you would see a bunch of stuff on the floor that has not found a home yet. Or is waiting to be taken out to the recycling bin.)

We are completely out of the apartment, and a bit into the house.
We still have 3 fully stocked storage units.
At least one will be emptied out this weekend, and possibly more.
We will have a truck, so all of the furniture is due to return.

It is actually rather nice living in a house that is populated only by a bit more stuff than fit into the apartment. Except when you go looking for something. And even if you know you should have that something, where it is can be a question.

Work goes on here at the house, but it is finishing up details.
Blinds have been hung.
Most of the painting is done.
We have 5 different keys to get into the house. That will hopefully be reduced to one after the locksmith’s visit tomorrow.

Big things that remain are the carport and new garage door.

And then there are the changes that we have requested as we moved in.

I really wanted a broom closet. We never had a place to put the vacuum cleaner and it just shuttled around from place to place. So we had a “broom closet/cabinet” made as part of the kitchen cabinetry. It would work perfectly. Except that it really feels like it should be a pantry instead.

As Jon described it – it is right in the kitchen in a “1” spot on the convenience chart. A vacuum/broom accessibility feels more like a “3” in terms of convenience requirements.

We have adopted Rey’s room as the computer room/coat closet room/Jay’s work room (per Sagan this morning). It would appear that the vacuum and broom can fit just fine in the closet with the coats.

So the cabinetmaker paid a visit this morning to determine what he would need to do for the conversion. In about 3 weeks we should have a pantry. That is about the same time that the new garage door is scheduled to arrive.

Perhaps it will all be done before the kids arrive home for Christmas. Except final outdoor painting and staining, that will wait for the dry seasons to roll back around.

The biggest thing about being back in the house is that it is really big.
The apartment was all about proximity.
You were always in close proximity to everyone and everybody and everything.
Here there are miles to cover, and everything seems so far apart.

The move. (The last move – apartment to house, everything fits in a car. Not to be confused with the previous move from the apartment to house, everything that would not fit in a car, that actually happened before Disneyland (see a post or two earlier).)

We lived for a week or two in the apartment with minimal dishes, the blow-up bed, the computer, TV and a small TV cart (too small for the TV that was sitting on top of said cart). Our clothes were in laundry baskets – his and hers. We had a card table and two folding chairs. It was sparse.

The reason for the staggered move was two or three-fold.

• We hoped to rent our apartment to somebody else for November
• We were going to be gone the last full weekend in October, when we could take the time to move heavy stuff.
• We wanted to stay out-of-the-way of the house work (mostly painting) as long as possible.

As it turned out, we stayed in the apartment until November 4th. Then we moved everything but the card table, TV, stand and a chair. And cleaning supplies. (The apartment had cable TV and the Sounder’s were still in the playoffs at that time.)

Man Cave (5 floors up) (Those are the Seahawks on the telly)

November 6th and 7th were cleaning days, and the final removal of all things that belonged to us. Cleaning went relatively, sort-of smoothly. After much elbow grease had been extended we discovered that our range had not only an interior light, but it was “self-cleaning”. Carl had to leave at one point because I would not let anyone use the bathroom. And the final cleaning of the cabinets cleared up the mystery of the missing compost bags. Keys were turned in on the 7th. We have yet to hear what we may get back from our deposit, and to our knowledge the apartment is still vacant.

Except perhaps for the Carbon Monoxide Detector that was left. We had said detector in our house before we moved out. It was plugged into a wall that no longer exists, so the contractor removed it. He gave it to us to take because it had a nasty habit of squawking when not plugged into an outlet. Of course, that is how it is designed to work. We received this unit with tape over the switch to keep it quiet. This only lasted until the switch overpowered the tape. This occurred one of the first days in the apartment and I thought the apartment fire alarm was going off. To silence the device I plugged it into the wall. When we were moving out I tried to hold the switch down with various implements, none of which worked except my thumb. I was trying to figure out how I could drive and hold the switch at the same time. In the end it was still in the wall outlet as a backed out of the apartment for the last time, scrubbing the last bit of floor as I left.

Now we need to make room for beds, chairs, tables, exercise equipment and boxes and boxes and boxes of things that we have done without for several months.

Hmmm… Ever see Storage Wars? (See what cable does to a person)
I wonder what folks would think of our units.

This entry was posted on November 14, 2013 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.