A much needed respite
All things have gone quiet for the last few weeks, with good reason. We never even showed pictures of things that have been completed (kitchen, dining room, bedroom) because frankly, we’ve just been sitting on our bums enjoying the house after getting back from Christmas break.
I’ve posted a few times since we moved in, but I never really told how things shook out with the move. We had moved 90% of our things over before we actually spent a night in the new place, living in a mostly empty Mt. Pleasant apartment for a few days. On Sunday 12/5, we had a small U-haul with some friends and took the rest of our big stuff over. Bed, furniture —whatever we couldn’t get in our borrowed SUV up to that point.
Our lease was supposed to end on Tuesday 12/7, but our gracious former landlords let us hang around for a few days. I think we finally left Kilbourne Place and spent the nights of Friday the 10th and 11th with some neighbors/friends in Petworth (our ANC commissioner, as it happens). We wanted to stay in the house sooner, but with the last of the floors getting done that very week and with the house still filled with dust, we just couldn’t get the place dust-free enough to sleep there.
Finally, on Sunday the 12th, we spent that day unpacking and cleaning and dusting (several times over on the same surface, it seemed) and got to stay in the house that night. The next week and a half was a blur of Christmas parties and holiday obligations, with a little bit of painting and other details still occupying my 8 p.m.-midnight hours for several of the days. But nothing like the six weeks previous, when I was at the house working without fail 5 days during the week and 15-20 hours on Saturday and Sunday combined.
We had planned to come back from Atlanta before New Year’s Eve so we could have some time to unpack and work on the house before going back to work that next Monday. We did half of that. Unpacking was about as far as we could get. And other than painting the french doors in the dining room one night, I really didn’t do much of anything before going back to work.
And then Rachel got sick and gave whatever it was to me. It’s not been bad, but it’s one of those things that just saps your energy entirely, making it nearly impossible to do much of anything. Just the thought of all the work that’s required only to get things together to start working on a project was enough to make me lay back down on the couch and take another nap.
But we’re getting back to it.
I’ve been walking around the house with a caulk gun for the last two days caulking absolutely every seam in the house that isn’t flush, has shifted away from the wall, etc. I painted the new baseboards and trim in the kitchen before I got sick. Last night I painted that side of the stairs that got inexplicably missed and forgotten when we painted it after Thanksgiving and has been sitting there spackled yet naked taunting me every time I walk into the kitchen.
It’s going to be a lot of that sort of thing for the next few weeks I think. It’ll be a week or two before I feel like tackling an all-day or 3-day project like hanging drywall on the sleeping porch ceilings or stripping wallpaper/paint in one of the other two bedrooms. Lots of caulking seems, filling nail holes, installing and painting trim and that sort of thing.
So the marathon continues.
