May Summary

Another month is over, but we're making some progress. Slowly.

* Upstairs bath tub door installed.
* New stove installed.
* Living room furniture somewhat arranged.
* Belongings from old house slowly moving over and being unpacked.
* Iris bed cleared out.
* Auction items sorted and repacked. (Thanks Betty!)
* Most of house cleaned and ready to be moved into.
* Most furniture pieces from auction have been cleaned and moved into appropriate locations around house.


And here is what we hope to accomplish in June.

* Install downstairs bath tub door.
* Install door to basement stairs.
* Clean off remaining furniture from auction, which is currently being stored in garage and china room.
* Move more auction and previously owned furniture into rooms, arranging according to maps.
* Clear out and clean china room, which is still crammed full of stuff and isn’t ready to have stuff moved into it yet.
* Move remaining items from old house into new house.
* Move over swing set, sand box, and small pool.
* Fill holes where dirt on new water line settled in the rain. Holes have multiplied in the last month, darn it.
* Weed garden beds, which no longer look nice and neat. Or like gardens, really.
* Decide which appliances to keep from the old house, and where to store them.
* Clear out corn husks from metal shed.
* Fix roof on metal shed.
* Make landscaping plans for new trees and bushes to plant. Will require input from uncle who uses out buildings and winters cows in the pasture.
* Maybe move in?
* Maybe put old house up for sale?






Despite a few distractions, we made some more progress. Keep thinking of us, please, and sending us some good energy! Maybe at the end of June, the "finished" list will actually be longer than the "to do" list!

Progress on Packing

We're slowly moving more stuff over, and the girls love playing while one of us or our parents hangs out at the new house with them. We've used the new small table, and they think it's really awesome. Because it is. Especially with the rolling chairs!

So at first, I kept track of how many boxes/bags/tubs I had moved because I thought I would feel motivated by all the progress we were making.

It didn’t take long to realize that there is no motivation in finding out that I have, for example:

• 2 boxes of cds, which I rarely have time to listen to and some of it isn't appropriate for kids anyway (Sorry, Self Righteous Brothers. You know it's true.)
• 9 boxes of random papers and stuff that haven’t been sorted since college, and I have no idea of where to put them or what to do with them, but I still cling to hope that I'll get to it soon
• 6 small tubs of t-shirts, none of which fit correctly at this time since most of them came from the junior section

Arranging the Living Room

Today I attempted to arrange furniture in the living room.

Today was a total and complete failure.

We have one sofa of our own. It was Grandma's. It's actually a sofa bed, and I lost many friends in college after they helped me move it in or out of dorm rooms because it weighs about as much as a baby elephant and likes to open and unfold randomly, as is its wont.

But that item is going into the office, which is where it lived until 2001. So some of the new-to-us furniture is needing to be arranged in the living room.

At the auction, I bought Grandma's amazing mid-century green two-piece sofa. It was the most expensive item I bought that day, but it was totally worth it. It's awkwardly shaped and each section weighs as much as a baby apatosaurus. Adam says that the next time it leaves the house, it will not come back. And that it isn't allowed to go into the basement. But it's fun to jump on and has lots of cushions for building forts. The girls like it. So take that, Adam.

March/April Summary

So here's an overview of what we've accomplished in the last month plus a little extra, and where all the remodeling stands at this time.

* Preliminary map of furniture lay out made for each room in house.
* Carpets and flooring replaced as needed, all walls painted.
* Bath tubs replaced, bath tub doors not yet attached.
* Water and sewer working.
* New front/back door and windows.
* Light fixtures installed and replaced as needed, electricity fixed in garage.
* Island in kitchen torn out, space for stove/oven prepared.
* Stair fence replaced with solid wall, waiting on door to stairs.
* Fridge, washer, and dryer put back into place.
* Shelves put back into closets. Had been removed for painting.
* Driveway garden cleared out, still working on iris garden.
* Limited amount of stuff moved in and unpacked in living room and old sewing room, which are clean.

Here's what we're still waiting on or planning to work on in May.

* Install bath tub doors.
* Install new stove and microwave.
* Install door to basement stairs.
* Moving furniture into rooms, arranging according to maps.
* Getting the "okay" to move belongings into the rest of the house, unpack more things.
* Fill holes where dirt on new water line settled in the rain.
* Clear out iris bed.
* Clear out corn husks from metal shed.
* Make landscaping plans for new trees and bushes to plant. Will require input from uncle who uses out buildings and winters cows in the pasture.
* Unpack, sort, and repack items purchased at auction. Will require a great deal of help and emotional support. Many items (especially holiday decorations) will go back into storage for now.
* Maybe move in?

I know we're making a lot of progress. It just feels slow, knowing how far we still have to go. Thank you, though, for all of your support and encouragement!

Lunchboxes and Irises

So, I know what you're thinking. "Boy, those wrestler action figures sure looked sharp up on that decorative railing. What would visually compliment them best?" Well, if your guess is my lunch box collection, you are absolutely correct.

And yes, those wrestlers do look sharp. But someone needs to tell the Bret Hart twins and the British Bulldog to stop jumping off. That ledge is not a turnbuckle, and no is getting clotheslined today.

Anyway, my lunchbox collection is now lining one wall of the former sewing room/current play room. Except that it was never intentionally a collection, Karl and I just had some cool lunchboxes growing up. Plus a great Dark Crystal lunchbox we found in high school. And later some awesome Muppet ones, and it's hard for me to pass up Muppet merchandise. And I got a great Beatles one as a gift. (Don't tell Karl I took his lunchbox. He might not actually know. I don't really want to give it back.) (Don't tell him that, either.)

What Could Be Slowing Us Down?

So, we're still waiting on the currently empty rooms to be cleaned out. But while we wait, let's look at what's awaiting us in the other rooms.

This is the dining room. Washer and dryer were moved here during painting, and they will eventually be moved back to their closet. Although a washer and dryer might be useful in the dining room with our messy eaters. Hmmm.....

You can also see some of the furniture I was able to buy at the auction; some boxes of stuff Dad, Mom, and I need to divide up from auctions; and a couple of my little DVD racks that are just hanging out until they can be placed in the living room and used again. See that racket? The girls aren't clear on what it's for, but they love running around with it. Which is why it's up high right now.

Space to Play

The girls love playing at "the new house", as we've begun calling it. And as much fun as they're having, they haven't even gotten to see what we can do with the space.

Grandma has some great playing options, which I can tell you about from experience. The patio in back is great for riding roller racers and scooters. It's also great for coloring with chalk, but if you use crayon, it makes adults grouchy even though they should know better than to not have any chalk in the house.

We need to re-lay some cement going down the slope, because that's one of the best parts of riding things around back here. If you get going fast enough, you might even end up across the drive.

The windowed area used to be a little porch kind of thing, before the sun room was added on. That is one change I wish could be undone, because I used to use that area as a play house. But we'll leave it. I think Dad would be pretty put out if I tried to talk him into a new un-construction project so soon.

Wrestling with Interior Decorating

Still limited on how much stuff we can move over, but that's okay today. I'm working on decorating. And then unpacking the rest of the board games and random art supplies. Which kind of relates to decorating, right?

So, Grandma was a china painter and had many china painting friends. She has many places and furniture items around the house that were dedicated to her vast collection of china. We weren't able to keep all the china in the family. Not even the things she made, which is yet another sore spot for me, so we'll keep going with this story. Now I have a dilemma called, "What do I put on all of these shelves made fairly specifically for plates?"

We did buy as much of the china as we could, and some of the plates will be displayed somewhere in the house, but these shelves seem to be too out-in-the-open and too narrow for highly breakable things. The girls are careful, but things get thrown around once in a while. And this room is currently the front runner for where my awesome Dr. J foam basketball and hoop set from the 1980s is going to go. But it's okay, I have a great idea.

In sixth grade, I went through a WWF (now WWE) wrestling faze, as all young girls do. And as I've gotten older and had time to look back on those months fondly, I've bought a few of my favorite characters as I've seen them and been able to afford them. (They're a little pricey for something that is not a Muppet or a Beatle.) And guess what! They can mostly stand on their own! Sort of! So guess who's going up on the railing.....

Moving: Day 2

Today I did some more moving alone. I got a little more done without my small helpers running around entertaining me. But it sure was quiet! (The radio helped that, once I found a good classic rock station on the manual tuner, but I turned it off when Mom and Dad got there, since Mom would maybe not like Foreigner and Led Zeppelin blaring in the kitchen.)

Books are shelved, coloring books are in a cupboard, and board games are beginning to find a good closet to live in. The main level hall closets are getting their shelves back, which were removed for painting. My Grandma actually built in most of these shelves herself. Most of them are really pretty straight. We suspect she eye-balled it, so a few are a bit tilted. But they are all spaced according to her needs at the time, which looks pretty odd right now, on account of me not having the same things in the same places. We've really enjoyed seeing all of Grandma's carpentry. She has never been one to be helpless. If she needed something done, she did it to the best of what she could do. Which generally worked out pretty well. So we'll let two or three crooked shelves slide.

It's begun!

Today we officially started "moving"! Bags of movies have been organized onto shelves, and boxes of books are on the floor waiting to be sorted and shelved. That will have to wait until tomorrow, because the movies took all day. It apparently was a big deal to get every genre grouped correctly. I say "apparently" because I didn't plan for it to take all day, it just did. But my favorite TV series are grouped together, my favorite comfort movies are on two shelves (although I may reorganize them another day), and the ones I never watch/somewhat regret buying are up too high to reach. With the scary movies. Because no child under five needs to check out Scream or Attack of the Giant Leeches, regardless of how tame you think they may be. And how cute Skeet Ulrich is.

In case you were interested........

I don't know how many people know or care, but I wanted to give interested people a chance to follow how our move is going.

Yep! That's what we've been up to for awhile now. About a year ago, Dad and his sisters started talking about what to do with Grandma's house, since she's no longer living there. Grandma and Grandpa Luebbe built the house in the 70s, and the original house that Dad grew up in was moved to Goehner (it was not on the market when we moved to Goehner, but part of me was hoping it would be). I've always loved Grandma and Grandpa's house and I spent a lot of time growing up there.

So when the vote was to sell (after selling everything inside), we had to make some choices and look for some solutions. Dad knew this was important to me and Mom eventually okayed it, and they've helped us find a way to make it work. Hopefully.

Honestly, it's beyond our budget. We will likely go bankrupt in the next year trying to pay for it while trying to sell our current house, which we are still paying off. And my parents are technically buying the home and having us rent-to-own, so we will likely drag them down with us. It's terrifying, stressful, and sometimes I wonder what we're thinking.