Today we met with the interior designers who originally helped the previous owner of our house set everything up. They do great work and I'd love the help, but man they're pricey. $150/hour for two designers plus a 10% markup on whatever furniture they help us get. Yikes. So no designers for us, I guess.
D. arrives in about half an hour. Our first visitor from S.F. (or, rather, L.A. now I guess since he relocated)--yay! Better go make sure the house is somewhat presentable.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Electricity good
Had our first problem with the house today--power outage. The electric company had to do some emergency work on a transformer that took out our entire block. W. went to go play with the circuit breaker in the basement and when he tried to turn the main switch back on, it refused to stay in the "on" position. Some guy at Home Depot told us that some circuit breakers require electricity to be running through it before it will go back on. So we wait...and we wait...and we wait...and lo and behold, all our neighbors seem to have power now, but our circuit still refuses to turn back on.
NStar (power company) guy comes out, tells us it's our problem because the circuit breaker is broken and that's not their responsibility. Stupid power guy, we never would have touched the circuit breaker if you idiots hadn't broken fudged up the power in the first place.
Luckily, I had talked W. into getting a homeowner's insurance policy when we bought the house. He and the realtor (who actually bought the policy for us as a closing gift) thought I was crazy for wanting a warranty on a house that's only three years old, but ha! Now we only have to pay an electrician $50 to come and put in a new circuit breaker instead of something like $200-300.
The electrician that stopped by tonight was really nice. He managed to get the circuit breaker to the "on" position again--or else I wouldn't be here blogging about it--but he's going to come back tomorrow when we can get ahold of the right part to replace. As he said, since we're not paying for it anyway might as well replace it so it won't happen again. So, after 10 hours or so without power we finally have lights again. Hallelujah!
The other exciting thing I did today was finally go to the Social Security office to start the whole name-change process. In about three weeks I will have a brand spankin' new card with my new identity on it. Exciting and a little sad all at the same time, but since I waited a year and a half before I did anything I've had more time to get used to the idea of a new name. New home, new name, same old me.
NStar (power company) guy comes out, tells us it's our problem because the circuit breaker is broken and that's not their responsibility. Stupid power guy, we never would have touched the circuit breaker if you idiots hadn't broken fudged up the power in the first place.
Luckily, I had talked W. into getting a homeowner's insurance policy when we bought the house. He and the realtor (who actually bought the policy for us as a closing gift) thought I was crazy for wanting a warranty on a house that's only three years old, but ha! Now we only have to pay an electrician $50 to come and put in a new circuit breaker instead of something like $200-300.
The electrician that stopped by tonight was really nice. He managed to get the circuit breaker to the "on" position again--or else I wouldn't be here blogging about it--but he's going to come back tomorrow when we can get ahold of the right part to replace. As he said, since we're not paying for it anyway might as well replace it so it won't happen again. So, after 10 hours or so without power we finally have lights again. Hallelujah!
The other exciting thing I did today was finally go to the Social Security office to start the whole name-change process. In about three weeks I will have a brand spankin' new card with my new identity on it. Exciting and a little sad all at the same time, but since I waited a year and a half before I did anything I've had more time to get used to the idea of a new name. New home, new name, same old me.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Our stuff is here!
Yay, our stuff is finally here! The moving truck arrived on Friday morning, promptly at 10:30am. They had called the night before to say they would be here between 10:30 and 11:00am, which is the smallest window I've ever been given by any sort of delivery or service person. Luckily the truck was able to park OK in front of our house (we're situated at kind of a funny intersection and regular access to the house is via a private driveway in the back), and in two hours the guys had all our stuff in the house and the futon and W's bike reassembled. Nice work!
They really pack those trucks in when they're driving cross country. Our stuff was stacked up to the roof, but amazingly there was no serious crushing of any boxes. The guy used a ladder to get to the things up top and take 'em down.
So now the house is a big mess with boxes and general stuff everywhere. Oh well, we'll get there a little bit at a time. We did finally make our first furniture purchase today too, a very cool counter-height table for the kitchen. The picture I took of it isn't very good so you all will just have to come visit us to appreciate it in person :) It'll be nice to have at least one piece of real "grown-up" furniture in the house. Bad news is that it's out of stock right now and we have to wait until late October or so to get it.
Oh, W. mowed our lawn for the first time today too. My parents gave us a manual mower that they didn't want anymore. Our lawn area is relatively small so we thought a manual machine would be more economical for us. It worked fine, but takes a little more effort--Willy definitely got a good workout. If we don't let it get quite so long in the future though, hopefully the mowing will be easier. The leaves are starting to change colors and fall here too, so more yard work but we're looking forward to enjoying a real Autumn for the first time in years.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Neighbors
We met our first neighbor today, the one who lives right next door in a house built by the same builder who did ours. I was just thinking yesterday about how it'd be nice to meet our neighbors soon. I didn't know if people still greeted new neighbors with welcome baskets and such in this day and age, but apparently they do! She rang our doorbell this afternoon, said hello, and gave us a very nice loaf of homemade bread (I'm assuming it's homemade since it was all wrapped up in tinfoil and had a nice card attached with some ribbon). We haven't tried the bread yet, but that might be tonight's midnight snack :)
So it's a married couple with two kids next door. They're also in the process of adopting a third child--how cool is that? They've got two cute little dogs too, both white, a Maltese and a Shih Tzu. They're really yippy though, which detracts from the cute factor. Anyway, looking forward to getting to know these neighbors since we're off to such a friendly start.
The big errands for today were to pick up my car and a run to Home Depot. My car arrived unexpectedly this morning, a full 3 days early. It was a nice surprise cuz I was getting sick of not having my own wheels. W. just says that I need to learn how to drive his stick-shift car; I maintain there's a reason God made automatics. As for Home Depot...how do you spend $300 on just random odds and ends? It's not like we need to do major renovations or even paint anything in the house, yet somehow we managed to put a good dent tonight into the gift cards we collected as wedding gifts (thanks all!).
Oh, and our brand new washer and dryer got delivered today too! The things you get excited about when you own a home. They're front-loading, energy star machines so that we can be environmentally friendly. Apparently we got top-of-the-line Whirlpool models--this is what happens when you let the hubby make the buying decisions on new toys :) Just kidding, babe, great job! The plumber comes tomorrow so hopefully we can finally get some laundry done.
We also learned a new house fact today: the front doorbell chimes twice (ding-dong!) while the back doorbell only chimes once (ding!). Ah, yes, we're really settling in now! :)
We love having our own house!
So it's been five days since we closed on the house and even though we have next to no furniture, have a to-do list a mile long, and have been busy every minute of every day since we've moved back to Boston, we're still SO HAPPY with the house! It was obviously the right decision for us since we've had absolutely zero regrets so far. That might change once the credit card bills start rolling in though :P
I gotta say that furniture shopping really sucks. We've only been doing it for a few days and we're alreaady tired of it. Everyone says it's supposed to be fun, but I'm not enjoying it so far. Maybe that's because we're so desperate just to have something to sit on that it's hard to be patient to find the right couch/kitchen table/dining table/etc. Did I mention that we really have almost no furniture? Check it out:
Yesterday we bought two desks at IKEA though so W. can start working again. I get a desk too this time unlike our old apartment so now it's really "our" study. We've vowed to keep the clutter to a minimum, but only time will tell how that works out. The two folding chairs we borrowed from my family are too short for the desks though, so here was W's solution:
Yes, that's a phone book he's sitting on.
Other than that, the only other furniture we have is more stuff we borrowed from my parents. We have my old bed that we're tossing as soon as our new Tempur-Pedic bed shows up, and there's a folding table and two more chairs. At least we have something to sleep and eat on!
I gotta say that furniture shopping really sucks. We've only been doing it for a few days and we're alreaady tired of it. Everyone says it's supposed to be fun, but I'm not enjoying it so far. Maybe that's because we're so desperate just to have something to sit on that it's hard to be patient to find the right couch/kitchen table/dining table/etc. Did I mention that we really have almost no furniture? Check it out:
Yesterday we bought two desks at IKEA though so W. can start working again. I get a desk too this time unlike our old apartment so now it's really "our" study. We've vowed to keep the clutter to a minimum, but only time will tell how that works out. The two folding chairs we borrowed from my family are too short for the desks though, so here was W's solution:
Yes, that's a phone book he's sitting on.
Other than that, the only other furniture we have is more stuff we borrowed from my parents. We have my old bed that we're tossing as soon as our new Tempur-Pedic bed shows up, and there's a folding table and two more chairs. At least we have something to sleep and eat on!
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