Daley Ponderings

Yes, we have a new house!  The closing was a little hectic because the seller left a van in the driveway and we had to work out an escrow agreement for them to get rid of it (which still had not been done by last night.)

Right after closing, we headed up to do work.  We have had several helpers, which is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!  The very first job I had on my list to do turned out impossible when 8 months pregnant (pulling old carpet staples out of the bedroom floor.)  So I cleaned out the very nasty freezer and not quite so bad fridge.  (They had left it plugged in but warm, which let stuff grow in the freezer.)  I only did the interior and exterior surfaces - I left the drawers and shelves for my wonderful next-day helpers.

So my job has turned out to be delegator/director, errand-runner, and children supervisor.  That is about the limit this Mommy can handle and so I am very thankful for my cleaning helpers who have made much progress on the road to making my new kitchen and bathroom useable.  (And one of the men who had finished what Jon asked him to do came and took out those staples!)

The new water pipes are in, the chlorine has been poured down and flushed out.  Now we wait and pray for no bacteria to grow.

Our bedroom needs more work than we thought originally - sanding and finishing the hardwood floor (should look nice in the end) and stripping wallpaper and repainting.  We thought we could just touch up the paint, but the wallpaper underneath is having trouble and would just peel off more after we did it.

There are also window frames/sills to repaint, and maybe some doors.  All the paint in the cans in the basement is old and unuseable, but at least some of the color labels are still there, so we can match it and not have to pick out anything new.

Jon also has exterior work to do.

The boys are sometimes restless, being there for hours on end and not much for them to help (their cleaning is not very thorough yet and they got tired of plumbing after the first day and started playing with the tools instead so Jon sent them upstairs.)  They did do some dust mopping of the walls last night, which was fun for them and a start for tomorrow's helpers.

And there's still plenty of packing to do in the old house!  I'm so thankful that we can still be living in our old house and not, for example, have to camp in the yard for weeks...

In related news, Jonathan got stung by a wasp on Friday just before we were going to head home.  Thankfully, he had no allergic reaction (this was his first time, so we didn't know for sure) but he sure did scream about it.  When he's upset, he's very irrational ("this will sting forever, it will NEVER feel better!") but he did calm down and said a cloth with water on the spot helped, and in a couple of hours it did not hurt any more.

Well, that's longer than what I meant to type, time to get going with the day.