As the U-Haul Slogan says "U Can Do It," We are MOVING!

We are moving! What a week this has been. We are putting the finishing touches on what we now call the "Beautiful House," and it's all coming together, but it's been a stressful week because now, the details of the house require more fine-tuning, and we are exhausted. It's hard to fine-tune when your muscles are shaking, your fingers are scraped, and your back is killing you. But, this is not a woe-to-us story. This has been a great month renovating this house and we are so happy we took on this project. Both Tim and I feel that we would DEFINITELY renovate another house. I just need about 6 months off for rest, and count me back in.

So onto the pictures!

 Here's an action photo of Mike, our electrician. Mike has been with us so much the past week, I almost feel like we need to offer him one of the bedrooms and let him move in with us.

The poor guy has crawled through every spooky/creepy part of both the current house we live in (to uninstall my favorite chandelier) as well as the new Beautiful House.





This light fixture is the new fixture that Mike the Electrician installed in our kitchen:

Tim Flaherty picked out this one: the new light fixture over the front door. One night, I'd had it. Tired, sore, crabby...I brought the kids home and got everyone ready for bed. We had to have the front door light fixture for Mike the Electrician to hang the next day.

Tim went to Home Depot and picked this one out all by himself, I think he did a good job.

This light fixture is the aforementioned "favorite" chandelier. I bought this chandelier before we left Syracuse with the proceeds from our moving/garage sale. So I feel that this light fixture is somehow tied to my time in Syracuse.

Anyway, it's been hanging in our current house for the past 4 1/2 years, and it's coming with us to the Beautiful House. It'll hang over our dining room table. They're not on in this picture, but we have little lamp shades that hide the light bulbs.



Here was this week's major bump in the road! The stove finally came in on Tuesday. Guess what? It's 3 inches shorter than the old cooktop/wall oven configuration we had. Not to worry though. Although I did in fact, worry considerably about this snafu..... This type of stove is called a "drop in," which means the top of it actually rests on the granite surrounding it. It is in the correct position at the top, but at the bottom, as you'll see in the 2nd picture, there is a gap of about 2-3" that we need to cover with a replacement drawer panel. Or something. Creative thoughts needed at this moment....

Right now, I can see black space. But I'm not going to think about that. The only thought I can focus on at this moment is to just get into this house!

There's the dead space underneath my "drop in" stove. We need to get a
panel / replacement drawer face to put there. I called the cabinet company
to see what they can do... fingers crossed.

Back to the move.... Here are our two professional movers, ready to get to work!

Timmy in the driver's seat, Norah the Navigator:

Showing Mary Reizun (our niece and kids' cousin) the newly Beautiful House:

The kids actually had a fight about who got to drive in the cab of the Uhaul with me. Norah got to ride there on the way TO the house, Timmy got the front seat on the way back. Why couldn't they both ride with me? Um.... this Uhaul had 3 seat belts..... but only 2 seat belt plugs....... Thanks Uhaul.

Last picture for this post. Tim and I went on a date night last night since our niece agreed to babysit the kids. Only in Orlando, we're driving around and we see Rocket Man in the car below. To the Moon, Alice!!!!!

Running on empty, but we are almost there!

As the title would suggest, we are pretty tired. Lots of sore muscles, bruises, scrapes, and general fatigue. This picture of Timmy sleeping it off in his Cheetah sheets pretty much speaks for us all at this point. But on the bright side, we are finally getting there, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Yesterday was an incredibly busy day at the Broken House as the following pictures will attest. At one point we had no less than 10 contractors working in the house, and we needed mirrors around corners basically to prevent traffic jams. Appliance delivery men, 5 guys finishing the tile and installing the carpet, 2 granite guys, and 2 electricians. For what it's worth, the granite guys showed up about 9:30AM and were there till after 10:00PM. I guess that's a lotta granite. They didn't get paid by the hour, and it was a flat rate for the job, so I give them credit for sticking with it and doing an outstanding job even though I know they were getting tired.

First picture, beginning of the day, granite arrives and we are so happy! 



In this picture, Rita is resolving the details of under-cabinet lighting and outlet placement with our electrician. What a nice guy... He was soaked in sweat and still has to come back on Monday. But he told me he had fun working on our job.

That's us, the party house!



So as I mentioned above, things got a little busy at times in the Broken House today.

Here's a snapshot of the kitchen area with just 4 people in there trying to work. This shows 1 granite guy (there were 2), the appliance delivery man (there were 2), Tim, and one of two electricians.

It was a fun atmosphere though. We had the radio on, lots of people talking and laughing, and a good group of workers. Everyone got their job done and I'm so happy with the sub-contractors we hired.

Here comes our new refrigerator. The blue stuff is a film to protect the stainless steel from scratches until after all the construction and moving is finished. We also got a new stainless dishwasher, stove/convection oven, and microwave.

The stove/oven comes next week, so as of now, we are still only about 3/4 complete on appliances.

An action photo of the two granite guys demo-ing the old laminate countertops. You can also see the new stainless microwave has been installed by this time, and we still have the old stove in as a place holder untl the new one gets delivered next week.

The electrician's ladder is visible in this picture. He is installing "above the bumpout" lighting (above the cabinet bumpout). That'll give the kitchen a nice glow in the evenings with the above cabinet lights and below cabinet lights as well.

From Rita's perspective, most of the day was spent painting over the creamsicle orange paint in the kids' bathroom. I had exactly two votes of confidence on the creamsicle orange from my blog readers, but the rest were silent. I guess if you don't have anything nice to say, people decided to say nothing at all. Tim was a little more vocal in his thoughts on the creamsicle orange. The decicing factor for me came when one of the flooring guys (who is also a painter) came by and said that with the proximity of the kids bedrooms to the kids bathroom, that "this end of the house looks like a box of crayons!" I think he meant it in a nice way, but I took the hint. So, the creamsicle paint was a little harder to paint over than one might have guessed!!!! I bought another paint in a pale yellowish/beige off of the $5.00 Lowe's bargain bin, so for those who are wondering, this bathroom has now cost me $10.00 in paint! It took a couple of coats of paint, especially on the cut-ins but I think the yellow is a little more subdued and normal. I also CLEANED the bathroom (much needed) and added a new light fixture over the sink. This is the 2nd light fixture I installed there. The first one was broken out of the box from Lowe's, and I didn't figure that out until it was mounted on the wall.

 

Next, here are Norah's and Tim's rooms with their carpeting installed. It's just a beigy-tan carpet in a berber style.

 Here is the clearer, better shot of the guest bedroom as promised. The carpet in here is the same as our Master Bedroom, and it's called "Stone" sort of a grayish/brownish/beige, a little darker than the kids' bedrooms.

 

Another shot of the granite guys in progress. Now you can see my faucet is installed, but still no dishwasher. We had to wait until after the sink, drains, garbage disposal, etc were all hooked up to install the dishwasher.

 Here's the refrigerator installed. Clearance of fractions of an inch on either side. Tim asked me as it was being delivered "Did you measure it? Is this thing going to fit?" My answer was "Yes, it'll fit" but mentally I was thinking "Oh crap, I should have measured."

Luckily it fit.

You can also see the granite on the little bar area next to the fridge, and the backsplash granite. I think it looks really pretty, and it'll look even better once the lighting stuff is all resolved.

So at this point in the day, the only ones left are Tim, the kids, me, and the 2 granite guys. Everyone else has been paid and left to start the weekend with their families. I think the granite guys wanted to hang out with us this weekend.... Just kidding. They were very hard working and they stayed until the job was done and they did an excellent job. One minor problem, the electrician had to leave and will fit the electric receptacles back into the granite on Monday. That means we didn't have any kitchen lighting and the granite guys had no way of seeing once it got dark!

Luckily, we grabbed one of the contractors before they left. They need to leave their trailer at our place over the weekend. We borrowed their portable spot light and used that in the kitchen so that the granite guys could see what they were doing.  That helped tremendously.

That's it for the Broken House on this edition. It's not so broken anymore. Today we are having new faucets installed in the kids' and guest bathrooms. We are cleaning the cabinets inside and out, and it's just the four Flaherty's in the house. We will begin moving in this week, having a garage sale at the old house next Saturday, and big stuff being moved next Monday. From soup to nuts, we have had the keys to this house for 23 days as of this morning. I can't believe it. On the one hand, it's been a blur, and on the other hand I can't believe how much has happened in 23 days. Tim keeps saying "This is like Ranger School all over again." For the rest of us who didn't go to Ranger School, it's just a put-your-head-down-and-do-it month!