Have a seat...

One of the carpenters was on site this week finishing up some stuff. The bench is finally completed and I think it looks great. It also works well :) He's just about done with the pergola, and that, well, we aren't as thrilled with. I don't have a picture for you today, but we are thinking it's a bit busy & out of character with the rest of the house. We are going to talk to the builder today & have him come over and give us his opinion, and we'll go from there.

In other news, we continue to putter along with little projects, getting things organized, etc. We are still on for a yard sale next weekend and are going to start pricing stuff this weekend.

That's it for now. I'm going to continue with the sporadic post for a while; I'll try at least one a week and see how it goes, but at some time in the near future, I probably won't have anything new about the house to talk about. I'll cross that bridge when I get there! Have a great weekend....

*Edit - I just saw this on Digg and can't resist. It is sitting related. Enjoy

Hanging artwork

We've spent quite a bit of time the past few days putting paintings up. Many of them ended up going in exactly the same spot as they were before because they still worked great in those spots. Some we ended up moving all together. We have a few more to put up, but overall, they are looking good. Here's a mediocre phone camera shot of the the entry.

It's supposed to rain today & tomorrow, strangely out of season. Oh well - my car is filthy & it could use a good washing...

Small updates

We got the first painting hung on Sunday. And, after 45 minutes of discussion & measuring, it is, of course, about 3" too low. No big deal - we'll fix it today. FYI - we saw these at Home Depot and decided to try them MonkeyHooks We thought they might be a gimmick, but they are really easy and work great. There are a couple of brands of them but I would guess they all work the same. Way easier than drilling holes & putting in drywall anchors.

I started working on the office more and finally got the printer hooked up. I really tried to keep all the wires nice & neat and did a pretty good job, but there are so many wires on our computer it's tricky. Jeff spent most of the day in the yard on Saturday and things are looking good. He put the Papyrus in the front beds, and planted the Mandevilla in the back yard. Riley has been chewing on the Papyrus in the back yard - not sure why (other than the fact that he's a dog...).

We decided we can't do the open house on the 29th - too soon. We might do the yard sale that day, and then don't have an open weekend until October 20th, so that's the new tentative date: Saturday, October 20th. Fall weather is generally really nice here, so should work out OK.

No new pictures today, sorry!

Exterior Lights

We finally go out exterior lights up and are happy with them. They give the front of the house a much more finished look. Now if we can get the bench in, we'll be in pretty good shape! The exterior lights around the house are all the same except for the front porch light, which is larger than the rest.

We also got lights above the kitchen counter installed, and the rail light in the living room. Overall, things look really good.

I've finally started hooking up the stereo/DVD player/TV but have some work to do. I want to do it right & keep it clean, so it's a bit of a chore, but it will be worth it when it's done. The dining room speakers are hooked up & working but I still need to attach the outdoor speakers.

Tomorrow is our semi-annual junk day, commonly called "gutter day" for the city folks who actually have gutters. We were surprised that we didn't actually have that much crud to put out. We managed to find some, but have already gotten rid of most of our junk.

FYI - we are thinking of Saturday, October 6th for the open house....

Settling in

We are slowly making progress in getting organized. I have moved things around in the kitchen just a little more and it's making sense to me now. The electrician will be here tomorrow to put up the exterior lights, the dining room light, the rail light in the living room, and the mini-track above the kitchen sink. It will be nice to get all that squared away.

I worked on my closet today and after buying a few more shelves & moving the clothes rods around, I got everything to fit just fine. We lost a space for the bigger dresser in the bedroom, so the goal was to make use of the closet space the best we could and so far, it seems good. Of course, my closet may never again look as neat as it does in this picture, but I least I have a record of it :) Obviously, we still haven't put up the closet "doors," maybe we will this week.

Our stereo receiver was totally misbehaving so we had to buy a new one. We'll get that on Tuesday, then we can hook up the rest of the stereo & DVD player, and mount the TV on the wall. The office is really the room that is lagging behind right now. We just have the basics setup, but I think I'll slowly start working on it this week. I'll post some exterior shots after the outside lights go up. I did put a few more pictures in the photo album if you care to look....

Sad

Von's is closing Saturday and they started a 50% off sale yesterday morning. I stopped by on the way home from work last night and it was depressing. Von's was the store with the best customer service and great prices. It was a small store, but it was a really nice place to shop. By the time I got there, it was well on its way to getting cleaned out. I did manage to buy some stuff, but it was a disturbing feeling, walking through a normally familiar store and seeing it look like a disaster area. I can't imagine there will be anything left in the store by Saturday!

Fire!

Well, I have not done a good job updating the Blog the past week. We have been busy, very busy, trying to settle in. I have wanted to take some pictures of the house but there has been stuff piled everywhere and it just wasn't looking so hot, so, I've passed. I promise, I will get some more pictures soon! In the meantime, here's the fire bowl in action. It needs a few more rocks, but otherwise, it's very nice. Of course, you can't just use rocks you find (we are told they could explode) so you have to *buy* man-made fire rocks. You would think rocks should be cheap, but oh no....

I would say we have about 75% of the boxes unpacked, thanks to my mom. She came down over the long weekend and really helped us keep things in high gear. I have re-arranged the kitchen cabinets multiple times, but I think I'm getting it figured out :) I want to have a yard sale Saturday morning and I think we will. Most of the stuff is gathered for it, but I still have to price stuff....

The final inspection is on Thursday, and hopefully we'll get signed off this time. We had to put clips on the hot tub lid to keep it secure, but otherwise, that's all we did. Everything else is "explainable."

That's it for now. It really is nice being home :)