MOVING IN!

After a day of detail work Saturday, we started taking stuff over to the new house today! We are pretty excited ... though I have to say we'd be more excited if we were all healthy. Erik has been sick, and I'm fighting the same bug ... could well be H1N1. Erik has been rather miserable, which not only is no fun for him, but it puts a damper on how much we can accomplish ... but little by little we're making a home over there!

Here's the new fridge that we got for such a deal! It's a little short, now that we have it in the space -- we could have gotten a taller one. But the space is adequate. We flipped the handles over to the other side this evening.

After we got it into place, we noticed that the doorway to the addition (which is remaining a workspace for some months yet -- we've got a gate to go there so Erik doesn't get into Dave's tools) is more like a hallway. Dave pointed out that as we start to bring stuff into the house we'll realize just how small it really is.

I cleaned the big windows the other day ... it's nicer to admire the view from them now. Though it does remind me that we'll need to figure out window dressing at some point.

We put up the IKEA shelf in the kids room today! A place to store toys and more. I like that the desk part can grow with the kids, since all the shelves are adjustable.


We're using the futon as a couch for the near future. Dave stopped for a little while this evening to admire all the results of all his hard work!

Oh, there's still lots to do. More trimwork, doors, closet organizers, and a whole lot of general organizing ... I'm not sure exactly when we'll start sleeping over there -- probably not till after our trip to Iowa and the Cities this coming weekend. It's nice to be able to work after the kids go to bed, and I'm not sure how we'd do that when the kids are sleeping over there, especially considering there is no door on their room (that's also on the to-do list).

It's just awfully nice to have a LIVING space over there! The kids had a good time for a few hours this afternoon playing with the few toys we've now moved across the yard. (Moving the little chairs around the floor was the most popular -- makes us realize how foolish we were to be proud of protecting the floors so well while we were working in there.) I'm looking forward to having our stove and dishwasher, both of which we pick up this week.

... I heard the geese honking for the first time this fall as I was walking between the old house and the new one. We're not the only ones on the move!

Maybe we can move in this weekend!

I helped at a pancake breakfast last Saturday morning, and told people excitedly that we were going to move in last weekend! We just had a couple little things to finish before we got to moving.

Well, those couple little things still aren't quite finished, so the big "move-in weekend" fizzled. But this is all for the best, really -- we're now getting things done that would be a real pain to try to do once we're already living there.

We need to have the baseboard heaters installed in our bedrooms before we move in, and Dave was working on that and figured out that it would work better to have the wire come in from the bottom than from the back, so we had to cut a slit and then do some drywall repair. It's ready for painting now, once I get some touch up paint.

We're also still waiting for one heater -- Mertz ordered it and send us one with the wrong voltage. Here's hoping the new one arrives this week!


In the meantime, Dave started working on trim -- the particle board in the beams is now hidden on the living room side! Looks much better, I think.

It's not perfectly fitted (it was tough to get the beams trimmed exactly underneath), but I'm not going to stress about it -- it adds to the rustic look. We still have to do this trim on the kitchen side -- I'll need to stain it and varnish it, too. Then perhaps we'll be ready to move in!

Dave also gave in and put up my ridiculous chair rail. Looks lovely! (Even if it did take a whole evening.)

The gate for around the stove arrived -- it's quite nice, I think. Still need to attach it in some way.

Menard's took back the dishwasher, but returning it took a solid 45 minutes. (Very glad I decided to do it without the kids along! That would have been horribly stressful.) The replacement dishwasher should arrive Oct. 28.

We're going to go buy a refrigerator today! I went shopping at Sears and found one that was still in perfect condition but had been returned, so it was $300 cheaper than it had been. And I've got some gift certificates from Sears (I got them points from our credit card), so we're going to buy a refrigerator for $300! I'm pretty excited about that.

Blue, in case you are wondering, is absolutely fine. No sadder, no wiser -- she's still happily chasing cars. But she is a little slower (she walks with a bit of a hitch), so most of the time she doesn't get to the road before the cars have passed by. And I think she's keeping her distance a bit more in general. But taking off when she hears tires on gravel is a pretty strong instinct, I guess!

Gotta run -- it's Sofia's dance class day!

Blue's progress

I know some folks are wondering, so I thought I'd update you on Blue: She's doing much better, all things considered. She spends most of her time in the porch, but she gets up on her own to go outside with Dave. And she's been eating quite well (especially since Dave is feeding her pork hearts and liver -- I think she's eaten more meat than we have lately). Dave does wrap her up on a blanket at night (we call her the Bluedog Burrito when she's all snuggled up), and we always laugh when we see her in the pink blanket, since she is just not a pink-blanket kind of dog. (She has gender identity issues, but we try not to hold it against her.) She is much more subdued -- probably still in a fair amount of pain -- and she walks with a hitch in her step now, looking a little like a cantering horse. But she is a dog who got hit by a truck and lived to tell the tale! (And wag the tail ...)

... House issues were frustrating this evening. Dave went to install the dishwasher, and it was damaged. Looks like it was dropped upside down at some point, which we definitely did not do in transporting it to the farm. It's dented enough that it's tough to open the door, and I'm sure the seals would leak if we tried to run it. I'm taking it back to Menard's tomorrow -- hopefully we won't have trouble returning it, though it has been more than 30 days.

It's frustrating to have such a setback when we're so close to moving in! We need to have the end of the counter supported in some way so we don't accidentally damage it -- Dave's thinking of putting on the end support now, even though it would be easier to get the dishwasher in without it in place, just so we don't have to keep reminding ourselves not to lean on the counter.

... My pre-move-in to-do list is getting quite short -- just a few more beams to varnish, some trim to paint, and then I'll be down to cleaning! Which will take a while -- there's sawdust everywhere. But I think we'll still be able to start moving in this weekend!

White railings, a quirky window -- and snow

We had been planning a trip to visit the Iowa folks over the long weekend, but we've had to call it off. One reason is the weather -- today's weather might not be pleasant once we head south from here, as it's snow here (yes, snow, in October! not unprecedented in South Dakota -- it's not likely to stay) but rain further south, and central South Dakota is supposed to have quite a bit of accumulation on Monday when we're set to drive back.

But we probably could have tackled that. The other reason is that Blue, one of our dogs, was hit by a pickup truck this evening, and although we're pretty sure she'll pull through, we can't leave her to my parents' care like she is now. She let Dave carry her into the porch, but now she won't let him move her. We don't think anything is broken, but we can't really tell -- we're guessing it's internal bruising, which could be quite serious. Animals are tough, though. I think we'll be able to tell quite a bit by morning.

We knew this day was coming, honestly. She's an incorrigible car chaser -- we never could train her not to do it. When we were here in the summer of 2003, we tried everything we could think of -- including spraying her with pepper spray out the car window. That worked the first time; she quit and went to roll in the grass to try to get the pepper spray off. But before long she was back at it, so we tried it again -- and this time, even though it hit her square in the face, she just closed her eyes and kept on running. Dad eventually rigged up a cart for her to pull, as she couldn't chase cars while pulling the cart. (Of course, then we often found her caught up somewhere with her cart snagged up around a pole or in tall grass. But she's a vocal dog -- it was easy to find her.) This time when we came back to South Dakota we just resigned ourselves to the fact that she was a car chaser, and that someday she would no longer be as fast as she thought she was. Now we hope she's learned her lesson -- though we wish she could have learned it another way.

... The dogs were out by the garden with Dave when the truck went by (the driver did stop and apologize -- Dave told him it was as much our fault as his). Temps will get in the teens tonight, so Dave thought he'd better get out and get our potato crop in. This might take a while -- we had a good potato crop!


... This is what Dave was working on last night -- getting in one of my crazy windows, this one between the kids' room and the living room. This is one of the old granary windows. I think it looks darn cute in that wall! ... I do have to had getting a curtain for that window to the to-do list. I got it primed this morning -- hopefully I can get out and get it painted this evening.


... And here is the piece de resistance! I've been working on this staircase every evening this week. It's been sanded, stained, primed, painted (and scraped, sanded and stained again where the paint dripped) and varnished. It's still not completely done, as there is a little bit of trim missing (where the steps and the back wall meet), but I have to say I am pretty pleased with how it's turned out. (Thanks, Walt, for encouraging me to get the white painting done now!)

Wow. The house suddenly looks high-class!

The tiling crew made swift progress this morning -- they were done by the time I got back with the kids at 1:30. I walked into the house and just thought, Wow! That tile makes quite an impression!

I have to say I can't quite believe it all came together as well as it did.

You may notice in the corners of the photos that I started painting the spindles on the staircase! And that makes an amazing difference, too. I'm glad I got all the support from you commenters to do this now and not put it off!

One thing that does stand out now are the posts -- getting going on the faceboard just moved up on the priority list. (I'll try to be patient, Dave.)

Pleasant time in the pumpkin patch

We had a family outing to the pumpkin patch event in Aberdeen on Sunday -- such a very nice event, great fun for the kids and completely free (though donations are welcome, of course). I tried for some lovely pictures of the kids, and I think I got at least one worth framing:

It's still not perfect, but it's tough to compose an ideal picture with two young children. And they're cute enough that it makes up for some lack of compositional perfection!


Sofia had fun decorating her pumpkin. It was a project that required a lot of concentration quite a bit of time to complete -- hmm, I didn't take a picture of the finished pumpkin. Have to get that later. (I had to blur the background because the people walking by ruined the photo otherwise, and this photo had the best smile.)


Erik didn't really warm up to the event until we were almost ready to leave -- we interrupted his nap when we got there. But he had fun with the pumpkins for a little while, anyway.


The little lawn tractor-led train was popular with the kids. That's cousin Eliana in the rear, Sofia next, and cousins Viena and Amara next.

Sofi had to give a big smile to Eliana!

And here's the youngest cousin, Briella. What a little pixie!

Done! Er, wait. Not done.

I stayed up late, working on the staircase, finished at 1:30 a.m., stepped back to look at the effect of my hard work ... and didn't like it.


It matches the old wood fairly closely, but the overall effect is too dark, especially with the dark tile. It changes the feel of the whole room, which had been more light and airy before I stained the stairs. It felt like a sullen stranger had moved into our dining room.

So I started thinking about how I could fix it. This stain color had not been my first choice ... I came to it through a series of events that included grabbing a gallon of stain while trying to keep track of two rampaging children in Menard's (never a good way to make decisions). My original vision had been to have a dark railing and white spindles -- I'd seen something like this in one of the Sarah Susanka Not So Big House books. With that in mind, I started playing with my photo in Photoshop and came up with this:

And I like that effect much better! It involves a good deal of detail painting -- first primer, then paint -- but I think it will be worth it. I'll just use the high-gloss trim paint I have for elsewhere in the house. I haven't varnished it yet, thank goodness, or this change would involve sanding the whole works again.

Dave wants to wait on this project till next summer, but I'd like to have it done before the Tour of Homes in December ... the paint isn't that stinky. I can even do it after we've moved in, if it's at all warm enough to have the windows open.

Gotta love Photoshop!

Yay for tile!

The tile is starting to go up! Jason (of Cox Flooring) came by himself on Thursday to cut and lay the cement board, then the crew came this morning to get started on tiling the wall behind the stove. It looks really nice, I think! It complements the stove well. They'll be back to work on the floor Monday and Tuesday and should finish up Wednesday.

And you remember we said we'd MOVE IN when the tiling was finished?! Well, we'll see if we can move in exactly when the tiling is done. I need to have all the "stinky work" done before we move in -- staining and varnishing for sure, and the more painting of trim that's done the better. And then we need to clean everything -- the windows and really almost every surface are filthy from drywall and sanding dust. And THEN perhaps we can start moving!


I finished sanding the railing last night, working into the wee hours since I knew I wouldn't be able to work this morning while the tiling crew was here. Then I started staining.

I welcome comments on the color -- it matches the old wood fairly well colorwise, but it's got a different tone. The old wood has a warmer tone, a little bit of reddish color to it. I'm going to experiment with the oil-based polyurethane -- it "adds a warm golden glow," according to the label, which might be just the thing to get the new wood to look more like the old. And if I don't get it to match, I'm not going to stress about it. It'll be just another aspect of our "hand-crafted" look!


Here's the promised photo of the trim in the kids' room! I think we did the right thing going with painted trim -- there's a lovely contrast between the old wood beams up high and the glossy new look of the painted trim.

I know there's supposed to be a chair rail piece of trim where the different colors of paint meet, but I'm not sure if I'm going to put any up. I even bought a piece for that, but I'm not sure how to do the transitions -- it would meet other trim in odd places on two of the room's windows. Dave also says that if he hits a wire nailing in a non-necessary piece of trim ... well, he left the threat open, but I'm sure it would be bad. That's why we took pictures of where all the wiring is, right? ... We did do that, didn't we? Hmm. I'll have to check on that.

... Back out to work again for me tonight! I'll work on finishing those stairs and painting some baseboard trim. That's moved up on the priority list, since we're contemplating getting some of the baseboard heaters installed this weekend and it's easier to put the baseboards up first. We need to do that because the tile will need some heat in order to set up correctly. The backup plan is to set up our space heaters out there for a few days, so I guess we don't need to panic about it.

Move-in day is quickly approaching!