Moving Update

As with all moves, our lives have been turned upside down. Before moving into the new place we decided we really didn't care for the interior paint colors and decided to re-paint most of the house (all but the kitchen and I may yet paint that room too). I didn't realize just how much work was involved in painting. I was pretty confident we could get it done in one day. Boy was I wrong. I had first underestimated the number of times you have to do a single wall. First you have to clean the wall with a gloss-removing cleaner. Then you have to rinse the wall (although I just discovered -too late- that there are rinseless cleaners available). Then, depending on the colors, you have to paint on a coat of primer - which of course we had to do on most rooms. Then you have to put on 1-2 coats of paint (usually 2) to cover. And then there's always the fun issues of painting an old house like after you finish painting you see bubbles form under the new coat of paint that have to be removed, sanded down and all of the above steps repeated. And then there's the trim, which we didn't both to remove or entirely repaint. I decided instead to use masking tape and edge around the trim and touch up later. It worked, although doesn't look perfect. But we are, after all, renting. So as of Tuesday I had finally finished all the painting.

But that wasn't the end of it. The house, despite requiring an obnoxious $1600 deposit, wasn't clean. The hardwood floors were filthy and had to be extensively cleaned and I found mouse droppings in the kitchen drawers which sent me on a bleach-sterilizing frenzy in the kitchen last night. And then there was the small problem of not having any window coverings. Thankfully we found pull shades at home depot for about $3 a window and got those installed without too much trouble. Although we did have to fork over some cash for vertical blinds for the two sliding glass doors located in each bedroom. I don't care if my next house needs them or not, but I'm taking all of this crap with me when I leave. What kind of place doesn't come with window coverings? And then there's my newest pet peeve - most of the windows in the house are painted shut and none of the windows (not even the sliding glass doors) have screens. I still haven't decided how to remedy that. There's no way I'm paying to have screens put on the windows, but we don't have air conditioning either and need to be able to open the windows. And with the cats, we can't open the windows without a screen without risking an escape attempt.

So now that all that the painting and cleaning is done, we are actually starting to work on packing up the rest of the old apt and moving stuff over. I've just about got the downstairs packed and ready to go, with just a few exceptions. The upstairs looks like a war zone though. Our bedroom is a complete mess - we've moved out the bed and dressers and essential clothing, but was remains is a huge pile of books, weights, knick knacks and all kinds of misc crap on the floor. And then there's the "guest room" which is really the room where anything that didn't have a place ended up. I'm not at all looking forward to packing up that room!

While it's been a ton of work, I am happy with the new place. I think once we get settled in and really make it ours it will be great. Lichen is doing great - although much like a new baby he gets us up several times a night and wakes up way too early in the morning. He spends most of his day following us around and trying to get the cats to play with him. He hasn't had much luck there. Galileo is quick and agile and manages to stay away from him without too much trouble. Helix on the other hand, is slow, fat and rather limited in his jumping abilities. And thus gets the brunt of Lichen's playfulness. I think in the long run Lichen is going to be good for Helix - Lichen has turned out to be a great exercise program for Helix.