that brown house

i think the big questions on the minds of everybody who knows us are, “are you ever moving in?” and “aside from the inspector/water heater stress, what have you been doing for the past two weeks?”

well, we gave notice to be out of the apartment june 1…we’re very skeptical that we will have both the electric and the water heater/plumbing done by then. also, movers seem to be in short supply since everybody wants to move memorial day weekend and we don’t want to schedule one until pg&e has switched over the service. we have our fingers crossed for that to happen tomorrow.

the electrician didn’t return until thursday (1 week after the inspection that threw us into a tailspin), but worked through the weekend (saturday & sunday!) and spent what may turn out to have been the two hottest days of the year in our unfinished attic. he was re-inspected today and passed (woo hoo!) so he’s optimistic that he can be done in the house this week. power to the garage is also in the contract, but as far as we are concerned he can come back and do that once we are moved in. he’s also doing work for the friends who recommended him to us, and they too are trying to move into their new home asap.

we’ve done what seems like a million little things, but no “big projects” and, alas, still have no “completed” rooms. the weekend before last eric touched up (paint) all the ceilings where the old light fixtures had been removed and sort of finished touching up the dining room. i took all the drawers out of the built-in china cabinet, filled in the holes from the old hardware, measured and drilled holes for the new drawer pulls, and sanded & re-painted the faces. we exchanged one of the bedroom lights that we had purchased (not realizing it used candelabra bulbs) for the craftsman-style stained glass one i had been wanting for our bedroom. also, the kitchen fixture that had been backordered forever from berkeley lighting arrived, so i think all the new and refurbished light fixtures are finally accounted for.

i decided that even though we still had lots of painting to do in the bathroom, i’d install the towel bars (mostly because i wanted to put the toilet paper on the toilet paper holder). this seemed like an easy task. ha ha ha. we couldn’t visualize if there would be enough space in the nook at the end of the tub for the chest of drawers i’d gotten and a towel bar, so we decided to unpack the chest and sit it in place. despite what seemed like an excessive amount of packing, the marble top of the chest was cracked…so a good block of time was spent returning/exchanging the chest. i did make the exciting discovery that i can take the back seats all the way out of my car and achieve a respectable cargo area. of course, the seats are now in garbage bags in the living room…anyway, we got the new chest home and unpacked. i’m quite pleased with it, however, we still haven’t gotten the towel bars installed.

instead, i decided that i had to strip at least a few layers of the globbed-on paint off of the bathroom door frame. round 1, weekend before last, was paint stripper and various scrapers…and less than stellar results. plus a drip of stripper must have dripped down in my glove resulting in a small but annoying burn/rash. bleh. so this past weekend i went to the tool lending library (yes, oakland has one too, albeit smaller than berkeley’s) and borrowed a heat gun (just what you want to be using on sat. afternoon when it is 95 degrees). either i was doing something wrong, or there was something wrong with the heat gun (it was radiating heat…) because while i seemed to be bubbling with sweat, the paint didn’t. on to plan b: attack with sandpaper and steel wool. i did this until my shoulder ached, then eric took over. alas, this remains a work in progress. i guess i’m just going to paint over the window frame without first removing what’s there. bleh. bleh. bleh.

also, the new toilet is leaking. grr. arg.

we took my old weber over to the house and i took some time out to grill on saturday. the first meal prepared in the new place! i can’t wait until the back yard is presentable enough to host bbqs…yum. eric did mow down the terrifying mutant dandelions…

as yummy as our grilled food was, the introduction of food garbage (in a bag in the kitchen sink) attracted several armies of ants which prompted me to pull out the crusty linoleum that was on the shelves of the lower kitchen cabinets to try to find where they were getting in to the house. there was so much dirt and debris that i gave myself a mini asthma attack and had to stop. plus, i felt like i was in the electrician’s way. so when eric had to leave to get ready for a social event with past co-workers, i went back to the apartment and fussed over some more painted-over hinges, then motivated some friends to play bridge with mom and me.