Internet, I apologize profusely for my long absence. We bought that house (Squee!) and that set off a series of events that have taken up all of my time.
We removed more than 1700 square feet of carpet. The carpet was in good shape, in fact the nearly-white carpet in the downstairs was almost new...it just wouldn't have stayed that way once we moved in. I don't know who can manage to keep light-colored carpet stain free, but it isn't me. And since I have vowed to never live with carpet again*, we donated it to the Habitat for Humanity Restore.
*True story. Not only is R allergic to 90% of the world, carpets are designed to collect these allergens; also, we have dogs that have, at different times, bled on, puked on, and tracked poop onto previous carpets. Shudder. So carpet has been blacklisted in my household for health and sanity related reasons.
R and I then prepped the floors (removing all the baseboard trim and doors, then pulling out/scraping off all the nail boards, glue, and staples from the sub floor) and hired an independent contractor to help us put in laminate flooring. We ordered 110 boxes of flooring, which each weighed 45 lbs. a piece. That's literally a ton and a half of flooring! A ton and a half of flooring that we loaded and unloaded, then carried, pushed and pulled around our new house.
Oh, and since we didn't want to do anything half-ass, I also painted most of the downstairs and two bedrooms. I even did a little something special on the someday-nursery ceiling.
For three weeks we performed vast amounts of manual labor, arriving hours before the contractor and staying at the new house long after we would normally go to bed. Of course, we aren't pansies. We maintained jobs the whole time, too. Basically, it was a self-enforced boot camp for academics - shaping us into calloused workers with aching backs and knees. (sleep is for chumps)
After three long weeks, we were done! Then we only had to clean up our mess (AHHH, the sweeping! The dust!), pack, move all our stuff out of our rental, pick up our new furniture and appliances, clean the rental and unpack. Seriously, I don't know what took us so long. Sheesh.
We are in the final throes of unpacking. Just filtering in all the bits and bobs. I had planned to wait to write this update until I had pictures of all the completed work, but that hasn't happened yet. I do have before and during pictures, which I will post once I get the after pictures taken.
In the meantime, we are enjoying the good weather. (It's been nice for 5 whole days in a row!! That is in direct opposition to the rain and snow storms we had the entire time we were moving!) Our view and neighborhood are amazing and we couldn't be happier. In take our free moments, we are trying to take the time to bask in our efforts, our new house, and all the stuff we filled it with. I have never felt more American.
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