House in Progress Diary

We're in!

(insert bars of dramatic organ music here)

We are IN the new house. First night. So, of course, I cannot sleep.

We have crammed our boxes and furniture all on the first floor since work will begin with gutting the second floor entirely. We will be saving every piece of trim, every door, every beguiling bungalow feature and dragging out everything else.

The house had only 1 bathroom and 5 bedrooms until 1951 when W decided to purchase "brand new watercloset accessories" and convert the upstairs bath into the strangest, elongated bathroom you have ever seen. While expanding the possibilities for bathroom usage, it is not the most elegant of solutions. The bathroom-related portion covers 1/3 of the room. The rest is just...well...open space. Plus, lack of proper ventilation has made a mess of things and a broken wax seal on the plumbing years ago that went unattended to made a mess of the ceiling of the bedroom in which we camping out. Since we have to lay at night and look at that for up to 12 months or more, we purchased 4 inexpensive tablecloths from Le Target and will be pinning these to the ceiling in the manner of a sultan's tent. Self-denial is a balm to the renovator's senses.

Everything is still covered in a film of grey dust. Maybe it's the dirt left over. Maybe it's an asbestos cloud from the tiles the PO began tearing up and stopped. Maybe it's the newsprint we used to pack everything or the fact that our things just spend 8 weeks in a garage. Whichever it is, it is making Dave the grey and white cat into a decidely grey cat. I did spend my first night under our blissful new showerhead. A rainshower purchased at Home Depot last week...forty of the best dollars we ever spent. Even after I turned off the water, I turned my face to it and watched solemnly as each diamond shaped nozzle cried its last tear of beautiful clean water.

Heaven. Being so clean.

Posted by jeanne on June 22, 2003 at 1:06 AM