One daughter bedroom, she wanted lavender. Trim not painted white yet and new carpet not in!
Rainbow over the house, funny how it looks white in this pic
Sons bedroom
moving in!
Our bedroom apt
Fans and lighting going in
Picture of trim I decided on found on Pinterest, didnt want the usual colonial
I can’t believe it finally happened and we are home. The last week was so crazy I dont even know where to begin. I am thankful we held it together and were a good team as a family and didn’t snap but maybe once or twice! Ha.
I can’t count the many blessings we had during that week. First, the rain started coming right after the exterior paint was all finished. It has been raining in Virginia for 10 days straight and we are expected to have another 7 on top of that! The weather looked bleak for both our moves out of the apartment and the storage unit. I wanted both of those expenses gone. We were scheduled to get both moved on Thursday, which called for rain. But that day, the rain held off! Friday was rainy all day and I was so thankful we did not schedule to move then. The whole weekend before the move we caulked and painted trim.
Monday, I painted baseboard trim all day, I mean alllll day. Tuesday, the hardwood got a final sanding and poly. Wednesday, the day before the move, I had carpet installed, the counters installed, duct work cleaned, the roofers came back to fix a few trouble spots, Maid Brigade came to clean the main house, the electrician installed lights and fans, and I needed the water softener installed and 2 water heaters. I forgot that when the heaters get installed all the water has to be off. So I was off to Food Lion again for bathroom breaks. Luckily I had water on the apartment side so my cleaners could get water. The duct work guys were very thorough actually and pulled out a whole village of legos in the duct work. plus alot of dust and grime. I never really trusted that business but I followed them around the whole time and watched how they do it. The HVAC guy said its a good idea to do it once before you move in to get all the construction debris flushed but after that your air filters do the job. Everything went according to schedule which was such a blessing. Looking back now it seems like a piece of cake! Just a few glitches.
We ordered a shower door to be installed but when the installer came he said he would not do that kind of door and the walls were alot out of plumb to guarantee the work (of course they were!), so we have to order a special door, and will have to use a curtain for now. We have not gotten our knobs installed yet on the cabinets so we used blue painters tape to make knobs and so no pic of the final install until they are in. Windows are still not finished painting because of the Home Depot fiasco. They need to be more secure around the trim and caulked and painted. The rep says that the window was not all together finished at the factory. Like that is reassuring…
Over the weekend, a woman drove by and stopped and got out of her car as we happened to be outside. She came over and asked if we were the new owners. She said she knew the house well and was friends of the former owner. She said he was a really nice guy, just had to have 2 and 3 of everything and was a bit of a hoarder. I wished he had hoarded more gutters and roofing and windows, but I guess not. She said he was still around and had told her about his woes. I was hoping the guy was long gone, he apparently had his business moved to Austin Texas and had a huge house there, but I guess not. I am not sure why she felt she had to come talk to us and it sort of made me uneasy. I hope he does not come back asking for a tour, cause I felt like that is what she was looking for. But Mark told her Goodbye quick.
Tuesday, while I was gone probably to Food Lion, the Loudoun County Sheriff put a notice on the front door. It was the Virginia Employment Commission looking for the former owner, ordering him to appear in court. I guess he was still around. The next day, an IRS agent knocked on the door looking for the owner of the company he ran out of the house. So now he owes back taxes. If they had just showed up a few months earlier, they could have leined the house and taken everything. After she left I laughed because here she was from the government wanting her money and the government had just awarded the guy’s company millions for some software thing he invented! They could have just looked from within and stopped the money. But that just proves how big and wasteful our government is. I also can’t believe they sent a sweet young woman to approach the owner. I heard he could be mean and had an arsenal of guns.
Thursday came, no rain and moving day! My plumber was here all day finalizing all the faucets and sinks after the granite went in (which looks great I think) and Mark was with the movers all day. It was disappointing because our regular mover took too many jobs so he subbed it out to another guy. They insisted on wrapping everything which took forever but they got everything in and up the stairs and then went to storage and we emptied that place too. I have too much stuff and how frustrating it is. The entire long tiled room is filled. I cannot move alot of furniture into the main house until I fix it up. As soon as I get my mortgage appraisal I am ripping all the nasty carpet up and starting up on that renovation. But for now it is crammed into that room. My friend Gretchen came over to help me clean before everything went in, and my friend Staci helped me put clothes away in drawers. (Thanks for the help!) My son’s room in the apartment is so small and I am going to have to renovate his room in the main house as soon as we get a mortgage in June. I feel sorry for him but he is young, he will survive. He is just getting used to dorm living he will have in the fall!
My one daughter moved into her renovated rooms in the main house. I think its cozy and nice, we are going to have to get new AC for them before the summer hits. Which it seems like it never will!
Friday the Broadband installer came, I was dreading not having Verizon but I am so surprised it is very fast! No more Verizon! I am sooooo happy! It took me 2 hour-long calls to cancel my service with them. The first time I went thru all the motions and he was just verifying my email address and we got disconnected. So I had to call back and do it all again. They got really testy that I was cancelling but it was not my fault they dont have service here. Verizon-free is such a good feeling. Anyway, Direct TV does not seem much better. They sent an installer that could not speak english. I had to keep from laughing when he was explaining everything I could not understand anything! What were they thinking. He said OSHA would not let him get on the roof to install my cable wire into the house. I told him to put a ladder up and crawl up there and if he didn’t do it I would. He did it. He tried to explain why I could not get service to the other side of the house for my daughters but I said forget it I would just add another dish when we move over there. I don’t want wires running all over the outside of the house. All my internal cable wires are old and not the right kind of course. He also plugged in this box that apparently transmits to other TVs but told me NEVER to unplug it or if we lose power they will have to come out and fix it. HA, I think he was crazy.
Monday my cat came back with a gash in his back leg and a cat claw stuck in his head I pulled out. I wondered what the other cat looked like. It seemed to get worse so we brought him to the vet. They gave him antibiotics, shaved his leg and told me to keep him in for 5 days. That would not be happening. Anyway, after one day he got out and ran back to Catesby address again. I just don’t know what I am going to do with him! At least I knew that people had seen him because of his shaved leg! After a day or so, the kind owners of my old home cornered him in the garage and we went and got him. I am thinking if he does this again I am just going to wait and see if he comes back, I mean he has to know the route by now if he can get there he can get back, right?
One day the sun came out briefly and a huge rainbow appeared over the house! I felt the Lord’s blessing over us and hoped this is where we were supposed to be. It has been an incredible journey thus far and I have learned to rely more on Him than ever. When I get anxious I just stop and pray for His peace and timing. I thank everyone for encouraging me during this journey and for pushing me onward! If you ever want to stop on in and visit feel free! There are still many things left to finish so no more pics until they are ready!
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