A real day off?! No, not entirely.

Once again, it's Monday and I'm not at work. I still, however, have a bunch of work to do. So far, I've accomplished going to the bank and the library, along with some wall q-tipping and sock photography.

My main goal for today is to 100% finish the wall that will comprise my main workspace in the office. I've cleaned out the grooves, but still need to wash the flat panels and then watco the whole thing. I also need to finish sanding my desk, and then prime and paint it. My Spanish class starts Wednesday, I have grad school orientation on Thursday, and then grad school begins on Monday, so I really need for that room to stop being a giant disaster zone like the rest of the house.

We'll see.

At least I got to have some fun yesterday, though! Amy came up to Asheville and we went to Biltmore and saw the house and did a wine tasting. After that, we went downtown and had dinner at Curate, which was really good (thanks for recommending it, Dad!). The food was excellent, and the tableside-made white sangria bordered on being a religious experience. I fully intend on going again sometime soon.

YAAAAY!

We are finally moved into the new house. There are still a few things left at the old place (mainly in the kitchen), but all of the furniture is here now. Along with clothes, books, electronics, and everything else.

Most importantly, we finally have internet.

A Fun-ish Monday!

Today, I drove up to Bristol to get some stuff out of my storage unit and visit my little sister. She wanted to show off her new classroom, which she'd spent the past few weeks decorating. I was pleased to see one of my old bookshelves, which she'd repainted into a much nicer color (it was pink and white, now it's teal and white) and a couple of dolls that our great-grandmother brought us from Mexico years and years ago that I thought had been lost. After she showed me around and introduced me to some of her coworkers ("You two look just alike!" ...sigh), we had lunch at the pizza place downtown and caught up. I had a really great time seeing her.

After that came the less fun part: hauling my crap out of my storage unit. The goal was to remove enough stuff to where I could get the rest of it in one trip in somebody's truck (I have a few options on that point, one of the upsides of living in the South). It was pretty painful. Not only was it as hot as eight freaking hells outside, I hadn't been to the unit in well over a year, so everything was covered in spiderwebs and dirt. Yuck. I also hadn't done a very efficient job packing when I left Nashville, so everything was pretty disorganized. It took me over an hour to get everything sorted, including removing some stuff from boxes and throwing a bunch of stuff into a nearby dumpster.

All said and done, I managed to cram a box of kitchen stuff (dishes and the like), a few trashbags of bathroom/shower stuff, some clothes, a nightstand, four chairs, and a microwave into my car. I never fail to be amazed at how much stuff can fit into such a tiny space. I had to leave my bed, mattress, box springs, table, and both dressers behind, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it all in a second trip (if not, I'll leave the mattresses, which need to be replaced anyway). I'll try to do that by the end of the month, as my free time will be dramatically curtailed thanks to the start of school.

Hey, look! Organization!

Since it's looking like the bulk of the blogging about fixing up the new house duties are going to fall to me, I've created a page (Home Improvement) where I'll be indexing my entries about it in a semi-organized, categorized manner. Speaking of new entries, I should have several up next week. I've been working hard and taking tons of pictures, as have Matt and his friends. For now, I'll tide you over with a picture of my finished bookcase:

I have cleaned both the walls and the shelves thoroughly, first with Murphy's Wood Oil Soap, then with some WATCO rejuvenating oil. I used almost an entire 750 count box of generic q-tips from Target to get the insides of the grooves clean.

The good news is that it's really quite clean, and knowing that it's no longer completely grimy is very satisfying. The bad news, unfortunately, is that the WATCO didn't do much, if anything, to even out all the sun fading and nothing to remove the Mystery Stains (more on those later, once I get the pictures off my digital camera).

If I want the walls to look even, I'm going to have to sand them down and refinish them entirely. I'd kind of wanted to do that anyway, since I'd like them to be a lighter color. They're beautiful during the day thanks to the gigantic picture window on the outside-facing wall, but it's very dark and cave-like in there at night. I'd also like to offset the dark bricks in the fireplace.  That's a project for next summer, though. I don't have time to finish it before school starts, and I don't want that room to be a construction zone when I'll need to be working.

All together, I'm currently about 20% finished with the walls in that room. They're taking way longer than I thought they would. I originally thought they'd only take an hour or two, and that has morphed into eight discs from Bill Bryson's At Home and counting. I am very thankful that the Asheville library system has a good number of books on tape-- looks like I'll be needing them for sure.

I miss knitting. :(

I guess the title says it all, huh? I haven't knit more than two dozen stitches in the last week and a half, simply because every moment of what little free time I have at this point has been devoured by the new house. I think things will settle down once the following have happened:

1. We actually move into said new house (no, that still hasn't happened yet).
2. The new house has internet (no, that still hasn't happened yet, either), so I can have netflix again.
3. I finish my office (desk, walls, desk chair, and unpack) and get my shiny new computer.
4. I finish the guest bedroom.
5. I paint the hallway.
6. School starts back and I will be able to justify not devoting my free time to fixing up the new house.

In the meanwhile...I miss knitting. :(

It mostly went okay.

Yesterday, that is. I managed to accomplish everything except acquiring wood restorer (Home Depot didn't have it, so I'll be picking it up at Lowe's today) and using it along with fixing up the new desk. Matt's Everything With This House is Harder Than It Needs to Be curse has struck me, too, it seems. I got up extra super-duper early in the morning to get everything done, only to be foiled by the following:

• the aforementioned lack of wood restorer at Home Depot
• a brownout that struck my area right as I was getting the sander ready to plug in that didn't end until less than an hour before I was scheduled to have dinner with my dad and stepmother
• Horrendously filthy...well, everything, but especially the walls in the room that will become my office.

That office. Oh god, you guys, it's so bad. Matt, my dad, and my stepmother overruled me on the painting the walls white front, so I've decided to clean and restore them. I thought that I'd only need an hour or two and half a bottle of Murphy's to get them nice and shiny, but I was so very, very wrong. They're pretty horrifying. You can't tell from looking at it, but the upper third of the room is coated in a very thick, very tenacious layer of yellow-tinged black grime (that slowly goes away as you work your way down the wall). 

That can only mean one thing: cigarettes (and, given the quantity of ick I'm pulling out of the walls, a lot of them) were smoked in that room. It must have been a smoking lounge at some point in the past. I know the immediately previous occupants hadn't smoked in the house recently, as I am insane allergic to smoke and wouldn't be able to be in there and still breathe properly. So, consider this my version of an anti-smoking PSA: if cigarette smoke and the chemicals it contains can cling to walls for decades, meditate upon the damage you're doing to yourself and the people/things around you by lighting up. 

Needless to say, it's probably good that I won't be painting those walls. I intend on washing them until the rag runs clean, as it were (e.g., until I can run a soapy rag over them without some hideous grime coming up), before I use the restorer, but that doesn't mean I'll have gotten all the nicotine out. It's very clingy, and damn near impossible to 100% get rid of. Luckily for my sanity, that wood has a slightly yellowish cast to it, even at the bottom, which is relatively unaffected (smoke rises, so the worst staining is within eighteen inches of the ceiling), so it's undetectable. Painting those walls a light color is officially off the table, though: nicotine bleeds through even the highest quality primers and paints. It's miserable to deal with-- ask anyone who's bought or rented a place that was previously occupied by a smoker. 

So, I have another to-do list for the day:

1. Sand, prime, and paint the new desk.

2. Take last night's laundry to new place and unpack it.

3. Come home and do more laundry, and take it over later today or tomorrow.

4. Go to Target. Acquire econo-size package of q-tips (sticking my fingers in the grooves of those walls when I was cleaning them yesterday was a BAD idea. It hurts to type, and my arms/shoulders are still kind of aching) and a big pack of Magic Clean Erasers (walls in the bedrooms are seriously scuffed). 

5. Go to Lowe's. Buy wood restorer.

6. Go to unfinished wood stores, acquire chair for desk. Then prime and paint it.

7. Finish washing the walls in front bedroom.

8. Finish washing the walls in my office (this round, anyway). 

I sort of doubt I'll be able to get everything done, but I'm working towards completing some immediate goals for the house:

1. Get my office in a usable condition before school starts on the twenty-second.

2. Get the front bedroom set up-- I'm hauling my bedroom set in from Bristol, so all I need to do is go to ikea to pick up the duvet set I want for it and then buy paint for the walls and some curtains (which my stepmother has very graciously volunteered to help me with). One good floor-scrubbing later, and that room will be 100% good to go. 

3. Paint the hallway. The previous owners had started working on it, but didn't finish. At my request, they left the paint they hadn't used and didn't take down the painter's tape on the doorways. I'm not really wild about the colors, but since I have no idea whatsoever as to what I'm going to to with that space, I may as well have  it look decent in the meanwhile. 

MUST NEEDS DO THINGS

Once again, it's my day off, which means I have about fifty thousand things that need doing:

1. THE ACQUISITION OF SHINY NEW SHOES THAT WILL NOT KILL MY FEET! (Can you tell I'm excited? After a closing shift on Thursday and doubles Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, my feet are threatening to file for divorce.)
2. Going to the bank to deposit all of my tips from the weekend.
3. Heading to the post office to mail a box of yarn to a friend.
4. Returning a few books to the library (if I can find them. Matt and/or one of his friends moved them to the new house, and I haven't the foggiest as to where they put them).
5. Stopping by Home Depot to pick up the following: wood soap, wood restorer, sandpaper, primer, and white paint.
6. Ending up at the new house, where I need to: finish unpacking my stuff in the bedroom, wash the walls in my office, possibly put the wood restorer on said walls, sand the new desk to remove the current paint, and then prime it and hopefully re-paint it a nice, brighter white. 
7. Once I get home to the old house, I'll need to do a giant pile of laundry and pack up the rest of my stuff that's still in the bedroom/bathroom here. Apparently, we're finally actually moving tomorrow! Yay!

That's unfortunate.

Apologies for the lack of regular updates here lately. The quest for internet at the new house has taken (yet another) turn for the mildly annoying. Here's the timeline:

Thursday, July 21st: Matt closed on the new house and contacted Charter to switch his account to it. They said they'd be out on Monday (July 25th). I was somewhat annoyed by this, as I felt Matt should have contacted them sooner so we could 100% move that weekend (since he needs the internet to do his job, he can't just go without for a few days).

Monday, July 25th: Charter doesn't show, and informs Matt that they'll be arriving on Thursday, July 28th.

Thursday, July 28th: Charter finally makes their appearance, only to leave fifteen minutes later because the house isn't wired for cable, and they'd have to physically transport the cable wire from the street behind us via the power lines-- which are apparently too overgrown for them to mess with. They advise us to call the power company to clear them. Matt called the power company, and they agreed to come by and assess the situation, but were noncommittal as to whether they'd clear it at all and, if so, how long it would take.

Friday, July 29th: Charter shuts off the internet at the old/current house, claiming that it had been connected at the new one. This is clearly not the case (see above). Matt called their customer service line and demanded that they turn it back on, but since it was late in the evening, they said it was impossible and to call back the following day.

Saturday, July 30th: Matt calls Charter back, and they again claim that they are unable to reconnect the internet (even though they said they could the previous day). He then told them to cancel his account, and called AT&T as soon as he got off the phone. They'll be arriving at the new house to install DSL on Tuesday.

Whether or not we'll be able to move then remains to be seen. We're supposed to go to Charlotte with Matt's parents to visit some of their relatives (and go to Ikea!) that day, and it's unclear as to how long that'll take. Either way, unless I hang out on the driveway, where it is quite sunny and very hot, I won't have consistent internet access until Tuesday.

Moral(s) of the story:

1. Charter sucks.
2. So do cable monopolies and states/municipalities that allow them, as that enables the shit-tastic and incompetent service we received.
3. When moving, it is a good idea to ask the previous occupants if the house is wired for services you'd like to receive and make arrangements for getting them prior to the last minute.

In Which I Get Lucky

Behold: my new desk. I found it at Goodwill a few days ago, and decided to buy it yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it; I'd originally budgeted a pretty substantial amount of money for a new desk, and this one only cost $20. It'll need some work, though (story of my life, these days). It was painted without having been primed, so I'm going to have to sand it down to the original wood so that I can re-paint it. There are also some dings and rough edges that need to be smoothed out. I also need a chair, so I'll be hitting the unfinished furniture stores for one soon.

I'm undecided as to what color I'll wind up painting it, though. I'm in the process of talking Matt into allowing me to paint the wood paneling on the walls white. He's balking at the idea (for no apparent reason), whereas I think it's kind of necessary: the paneling is stained, unevenly faded, and, in combination with the dark brick of the fireplace, makes the room look small and dark. I'd need to sand and refinish it anyway to make it look good, and I'd rather just paint it. If I'm successful, the desk will probably wind up being light blue. If not, I guess I'll paint it white again.

The pictures on top are prints I bought at Woolworth Walk to put on the walls. One of the artists there, Sarah Faulkner, works with colors that align very nicely with those I'm planning on using in the room (white, gray, light blue, and red). There are a few other artists whose work I also admired, so I foresee a few more trips over there in the future.

Behold: Organization!

Or something like it. The room that will become my office has two walls of built-in bookshelves. One is floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the other is 40% cabinet on the bottom, and then the bookshelves on top extend up to the ceiling.

I was originally planning on using the cabinet space for fabric storage and putting the yarn in glass jars and vases to be scattered around the shelves. I'd seen other knitters go that route, and it had a pretty neat effect. I ultimately decided against it, though, as the types of colors I use don't stand out against the medium brown, wooden walls (which I may or may not be painting, but that's neither here nor there at the moment). There's also the issue of stash: I'm trying to get rid of it, and using yarn as a decoration instead of, you know, knitting with it, isn't really conducive to that.

Instead, I measured the inside of the cabinet, went to Target, and picked up some storage bins that would fit. PSA: if any of you are thinking about doing some organizing, now is a good time to hit the stores for supplies. School's about to start, and I've found the kits they sell for college dormitories to be remarkably versatile. I returned home with my Sterilites, and got to sorting.

As it turns out, I have less yarn than I originally thought; only three tub's worth instead of four. The two tubs on the left have yarn I haven't used yet. The top tub contains lightweight yarn (lace, fingering,  and sport weights), while the bottom tub holds heavier weights (dk, worsted, aran, and bulky). The tub on the top right holds yarn that has been knitted, either works in progress or half-completed projects that need to be frogged, or unraveled, and knitted into something else. The tub on the bottom right holds my sewing machine, notions, and patterns. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough space in the cabinet for my fabric, so my fabric tub went into the closet where I keep my winter jackets and knitted accessories. I'll post a photo of that some other time. I'm hoping that once I get my yarn stash down to a reasonable size, I'll be able to transfer the fabric to that space.

I'm glad someone's enjoying the moving process...

The new happening place to be at the old house: a giant rubbermaid full of blankets.

All said and done, we've made a good amount of progress on the moving front. Or, I have. All of my stuff except for a few loads of laundry, the clothes I need for work, a book, a knitting project, and my bathroom stuff is there. I've also moved everything but my sewing machine, television, and a few sets of clothes out of my dad's house. The impressive part is that pretty much all of it is unpacked and ready to go. All that's left is clearing out this house and emptying my storage unit.

Matt, on the other hand, will probably be fishing things out of boxes for weeks, if not months. The same likely applies to his friends.

An Assortment of Moving Observations

• When I said the new house's air conditioning system was inadequate, I may have made the understatement of the year. At 10 PM last night, it was still at 77 F. 
• The house is largely populated by giant, indigenous dust bunnies. They're everywhere!
• The previous occupants also left us a half-eaten carton of peach ice cream. I'm not sure if I want it, though...
• The downside of floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves: I can't reach the top three shelves.
• Another downside of having enough space for all of my books: Matt read my high school yearbooks. EMBARRASSING. 
• At 9:27 AM on Moving Day, everyone but me (who was five minutes away from leaving for work) was asleep. If it affected me, I'd have remarked upon their poor choice of sleeping in and putting off moving until the hottest part of the day, but since I was going to be in the air-conditioning then (I had to work a double), I smirked as I contemplated them hauling furniture up two flights of stairs into the new place.
• I returned home at 10:30 PM on Moving Day, and all the furniture was still here. That explained a lot, but I still wish I could be smug. 
• If you are what you eat, I expect my transformation into a giant pizza to happen any moment now .
• Schrodinger's Move: We can't 100% move until Charter shows up with internet (Matt works in IT, and has to have internet available at the house), and there's no telling when that will happen. You don't know if the van is a cable van until it drives by...
• Wow, I have a lot of yarn.
• And fabric.
• I need a new desk. 
• My feet hurt.

This may take a while.

Updates are probably going to be sort of sporadic for the next week or two while we move. 

Obligatory Mea Culpa Entry

Apologies for the late updates for the last week and a half. I (stupidly) volunteered to work an extra shift, which led to me having zero days off for close to two weeks. Needless to say, I was completely beat by day eight and had no energy left for anything other than knitting, watching Grey's Anatomy on netflix, and the posting the occasional one-liner on google+.

Sadly, it's looking like the next two weeks aren't going to be much better. Matt's closing on the new house this Thursday (three days! omg!), and intends on moving over the course of this weekend. Since he waited 'til the last minute to select the moving date, I will be unable to help him because I have to work doubles on Friday and Saturday, and by the time my Sunday brunch shift is over, he'll be done. I am completely, 100% okay with this. I hate moving, and getting out of the lion's share of it makes me positively giddy. All I have to do is throw my stuff in boxes and unpack them once they arrive. True, I'll have to haul some stuff down from Bristol and transport my stuff that's in the closet (and my dad's garage), but I'll worry about that later.

Tomorrow is my day off, and I don't have to work until one on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited, but I have a crazy amount of stuff to do since all of my errands have fallen by the wayside over the last few weeks:

• Go to the gym twice.
• Go to the library, return books, and pay a fine (apologies to those of you who had to wait for The Psychopath Test and Packing For Mars).
• Go to dad's house, pick up mail.
• Go to Earth Fare, buy shampoo and wine.
• Go to Yarn Shop, acquire stitch markers and darning needles.
• Go to the bank, deposit serving earnings and meager paycheck.
• Write SEVEN (omg) book reviews. I'm so pitifully behind. 
• Finish my Juneberry shawl, block it, and post an FO entry about it.
• Finish my sample fingerless gloves, post a tutorial and an FO entry about it.
• Work on an assortment of knitting projects.

Yeah, that's a lot. Sigh. I foresee the exhaustion continuing well into the next two weeks...which is when school starts. Being an adult sucks!

More House Nattering: Picture Edition!

Matt and I met up with the HVAC and window people at the new house today. While 90% of the fixes the new house needs are cosmetic in nature, that other 10% is pretty important and needs to be dealt with immediately. The two biggest issues involve the air-conditioning system and the windows. The A/C unit is way too small relative to the size of the house, and the fan system is located in a utility room just off the living/dining room area. This means that the existing system not only doesn't adequately cool the house, it generates a lot of noise. The fix: installing a larger heat pump and moving the whole shebang up a floor into the attic (fortunately, there's enough room). The windows aren't in bad shape, but they are really old: they're original to the house, which was built in 1954. That means they're really inefficient, and bleed heat and air. The fix: new ones! This may cost a small fortune given the weird sizing and the fact that some of them will have to be custom jobs.

Meanwhile, back at the current house, Matt has a few projects to take care of. He spent the afternoon fixing a few leaks in the roof. This picture depicts the face he made when I advised him not to fall off the ladder (the last time he did that, he broke through a ceiling and dislocated his collarbone). He said that project is finished, so he only has a few left: fixing a leaky window, locating and fixing a leak under the master bathroom, repainting the entire house, ripping up all of the carpet and parquet and installing hardwood floors. I told him his next duty was to set up a wordpress account (for whatever reason, he prefers it to blogger) so that he can post pictures of his roof-fixing endeavor from earlier.

I have projects, too: helping out with the painting and removing the (godawful, moldy) wallpaper in the master bathroom. It's started to peel in places, so hopefully it'll come off easily. I'm probably not going to be involved in The Great Re-Flooring thanks (seriously, I hate dealing with carpet removal) to my weekend work schedules. The others should be able to get it done fairly quickly, though. Time is of the essence here; we want to get this house rented out as soon as we possibly can--the income will be paying for the renovation and furnishing of the new place.

The Everyday.

Sometimes I think I should do more blogging about my everyday adventures. Sadly, most of the amusing things that happen to me aren't fit to print for an assortment of reasons that range from "I'd really like to keep my job(s)" to "Yeah, my dad/sister really doesn't need to know about that" to "Wow, I've really gotten boring since I graduated from college and stopped living in what amounts to a clothing-optional commune." Not that the last one matters; even if my life continued to resemble a Brett Easton Ellis novel (which it does occasionally, just not as much), I'd still be less than willing to spill the deets where family members can read them.

Here lately, my daily activities have involved working, going to the gym, reading books, and harassing Matt about starting a blog about the new house endeavor. The latter should be ready within the next few weeks; we're set to close on the new house on the 21st and have a few projects around the current house to complete before then. All Matt needs to do is get his wordpress account set up and port it over to his domain name. Very exciting and all, but since I have no intention of doing it for him, it's on him. (I will, apparently, be doing the photography and editing for that blog. Whatevs.)

Today, though, I got to have dinner with Amy, a fellow feminist book blogger. It was pretty awesome; I really like meeting people from THE INTERNET. I always feel like I have more to talk about with them.

Moving, again.

When I responded to Amy's comment on my review of the hoarding (shudder) book earlier, it occurred to me that I have moved six times since I graduated from college four years ago-- and in one month, I'll be moving yet again. So that's seven moves in four years and two months, roughly one move every seven months. At this moment, roughly half of my things are in a storage unit, a fifth of them are in my dad's basement, and the rest are floating about Matt's current house.

No wonder I don't know where any of the lids to my pots are and can't think about unpacking all of my stuff without getting a noticeable twitch in my left eye.

Good news, good news!

I've been itching to post about this since Saturday, but I didn't want to jump the gun or jinx myself: Matt not only found a house he liked, he successfully put in an offer on it, AND, as of yesterday, it is officially not a money pit!

Or, it's a small money pit in all the ways we predicted.

Overall, it's a pretty awesome house. It was built in the 1950's, so it has some really awesome features, mainly hardwood floors and gigantic windows. Unlike most houses from that era, though, this one also has giant bedrooms (unusual) and normal-by-modern-standards-sized bathrooms (practically unheard-of). It also has a crazy amount of closet space and a full attic, on top of a giant open living/dining room. There's also a smaller front room, a medium-sized kitchen, and a bonus/second master bedroom and half bath that are located over the garage.

It's going to need a fair amount of work, though. It's been owned by the same people since the 1970's, and it's probably been about that long since anything was updated. Replacing the original (crappy, single pane) windows is a must, as is (in my humble opinion) getting rid of the orange shag carpeting in the bonus room and the stick-on linoleum tiles in the kitchen and entryway. The floors, in general, are a job of work: where they haven't been haphazardly carpeted or linoleum'd (I will never understand why people stick cheap linoleum on top of hardwood floors), they're in pretty rough shape: dirty, stained, and scratched. The whole thing needs to be sanded and re-finished. On top of that, Matt has some contractor-y stuff to do: none of the outlets are properly grounded, and the attic is inadequately insulated.

Meanwhile, I've tasked myself with making the place look nice, which is somewhat daunting. I'm not particularly wild about decorating; my idea of making a bedroom look nice is picking out a duvet set from overstock.com, Target, or ikea, selecting a color I like from it, and painting the walls that color. If I'm feeling especially interested, I may change the light fixtures or add some coordinating lamps or artwork. I have the same attitude towards bathrooms: pick out a set from Kohl's, paint walls accordingly. I guess that would go for living rooms and kitchens as well, but I've never "done" either one before. When you rent, you don't generally invest in sprucing up the place, and up until now, all I've ever done is rented or live with my parents.

While my usual approach will probably work just fine in the bedrooms, it's not going to hold up in the bathrooms or the kitchen. The bathrooms need new floors, and I'm not really a fan of the wall tiles (also, one of the tubs is mauve. MAUVE. Why?). It's looking like I'm going to have to start from scratch with all 2.5 of them. Indecision, ahoy! The kitchen poses additional issues: it has these really awesome vintage cabinets and countertops, but the formica topping of said counters has got to go, even if I wind up replacing it with formica of another color. Beyond that, I need to pick out a 100% new floor color, as I am 75% sure that there's no hardwood underneath the three layers of linoleum I was able to chip away. I also have something of a pantry quandary that can only be explained through pictures, and I need to help Matt select new appliances (must needs have a dual fuel range).

It's a lot to do, so expect further posting from me on the subject-- but not necessarily here. Matt's been considering starting a blog to document the process, and if he does, I may post my house-related entries over there instead of here. We'll see if he does it, though.