Home Sweet Home

Here we are! This weekend we moved into The Schack. Thanks to the manpower and good spirits of Ben's brother, Dustin, it was a surprisingly good time. B&D handled the heavy lifting, and I filled in on cleaning and packing duty. We are now officially living in our new house, though still showering in the old apartment, since our gas isn't turned back on yet.
We've already met some neighbors. On one side, a family with two girls, on the other, a middle-aged couple who have lived in the house since 1975. Across the street, we met a CMU engineering professor who also has two kids. LOTS of little kids in this neighborhood. It's the absolute polar opposite of our old neighborhood - folks are friendly and interested and helpful, out in their yards on the weekends and walking their dogs in the morning. Don't get me wrong, our old neighborhood was great - and we were quite happy there for almost 3 years. It's nice, though, to feel more like a member of some kind of community. Maybe that only comes with property ownership?

And oh my goodness. Let me tell some other things that come with property ownership: Lists. Budgets. Distractions. Filthy dirty refrigerators, apparently. Lots of residual dog hair. A glorious front porch. One cracked toilet. Three more toilets in the basement. Big beautiful creaky old windows. Some with cracked glass. Drippy faucets. Weird smells.

That might sound like a lot of negative things, but we're really really happy and excited to be here. Besides, that's just the beginning of the list...

For the summer we've got a few projects that top the list.
(1) The working bathroom badly needs a new toilet and sink. We'd love to find The Perfect Salvaged And Reclaimed Toilet And Sink That Happen To Be Very Cheap, but barring that, we saw a few decent choices at Lowe's today.
(2) The workshop (this neat indoor-outdoor room that leads from the basement to the patio) needs to be insulated, drywalled and finished.
(3) Rip out nasty cabinets in the kitchen. No amount of bleach will save them.
(4) Buy a new fridge. (oogled here)
(5) Repaint. Everything. MATTE.
(6) Nuke the basement. Clean it, paint it, get rid of the smells.
(7) Revive and maintain the yard and garden. On the good side, there is a very old lilac tree. On the bad, the backyard looks like it got bombed. There is also a prickly pear in the front yard?

All in all, it looks to be an interesting summer.