Friday, October 17, 2008

Yes we moved, now for construction....



We have moved in to our new home & unpacked at least 1/2 of our things. Why only half after over 2 weeks? Well we have all of this construction that we decided needed to be done & I don't like getting drywall dust off of every little thing I own, I'd rather wait & just have to clean off boxes. Realize I am writing this while the 5 guys or more are running around my house cutting holes in the ceiling & floors for our central heating (Yes we bought a house that had all electric baseboard heating with the plan of putting in central heat first thing, in the plan it was before we moved in, HA HA!). So about 90% of the ceiling is stripped off in my downstairs hallway, bedrooms, bathroom, & family room, I am sitting under one of the few areas that is not being touched, 1/2 of the family room which will become the pantry & my desk area (on the now non-existent wall of the pantry) or so is the plan which I am hoping comes through very soon!

Maybe I should go back & intro myself so that you have an idea why my dear husband & I would choose to pick a home that is full of so much to do! LOL Well we have 7 children, the classic yours mine & ours situation. He had 4 before we met, I had 2 which gave us 3 boys & 3 girls, instead of getting Alice like the Brady Bunch we added one more to the fun we call our family! So now we have 7, the oldest 3 are boys, ages; 17, 14, 12, the next 4 are all girls, ages; 12 (yes a twin), 10, 8, & 23 months (2 years in November, although Daddy just made a deal with her to stay 1 and he'll still buy her presents, she said "otay"). All 7 do live with us, 3 visit another home for 3 days/2 nights per week, the rest are all full time at home with us so it's a busy group every day!

After we married the 2 girls & I moved into the home hubby already had & finished the basement there including the family/play area, office stuff included there, finishing a bathroom, adding to an existing pantry (shelving mostly), & finishing a laundry hall area. After adding number 7 we could no longer ignore that we had outgrown our house (about the time we got married to be truthful!). So we finally started looking for a new house, we bid on three houses prior to this one & lost every bid, I kid you not! We were outbid on 2 apparently (last I saw the sales never did go through on either one of those homes), the 3rd chose to go into default & lose the home because they wanted more than they owed the bank & it wouldn't appraise for that much so we scrambled to find this home because ours was already sold when we found house number 3, YIKES!

So we found a home with about 400 square feet more than the last one, one more bedroom, one more bathroom (a master bath, no more sharing with the kids, YIPEEEE!!!!!), a way better floorplan that uses space better, overall. The kitchen has a nice open plan with a snackbar, great for all my baking projects. There are also 2 beautiful fireplaces, one upstairs in the livingroom which is all brick, another downstairs in the familyroom that is backed with rock all the way up the wall. The location is fantastic! It is a block from the high school (we have 2 students there & dh is a coach for girls basketball which starts sometime next month!). We are just over 2 blocks from the middle school (we have 2 students there, the twins, and another that will go there next year), we have 2 elementary school kids which we drive since their walking route goes by the high school & all the crazy teenage drivers! We are also just 2 blocks from the baseball concession stand that we run in the spring/summer so I am really looking forward to concessions next year & the convenience of being so close! When the pantry & my desk are finished I will have a fabulous space to scrapbook at which I have a lot of photos to work with 7 kids gives you lots of material to get creative with! We also gained great closet/storage space & a nice deck off the kitchen which will be nice when we BBQ which hubby loves to do ALL YEAR LONG! YEAH! Yes even in the snow he has been known to BBQ!

Now obviously our new house had it's challenges, a roof that could not be guaranteed for another 3 years, the need for central heat (no $600 a month electric bills because of heating did not sound fun!LOL), the need for a pantry lets face it with 7 kids we need food storage just to feed our kids & take advantage of the caselot sales when they happen! To add to the fun the flooring is a mess, the house has been a rental for the past 10 years with pets & major abuse on the home for some time. There is carpet in the main eating area! LOL With 7 kids, not going to work for us so we will be doing the floooring as soon as the heater is completed and the drywall that has to go back up, plus the drywall that will be going up to make our pantry, YEAH!!! I have one bedroom with new carpet from the previous renter, she wouldn't move in until her husband put in carpet. That leaves us with 5 bedrooms to carpet, we are putting Pergo flooring in the livingroom, kitchen, eating area, hallway, & downstairs hallway. Then we have to tile the stairs and landing/entry way (it's a split level home). Eventually we will recarpet the family room, but you can't measure for that when the wall does not yet exist! LOL Ontop of that we have some new flooring to put in at least one of the bathrooms upstairs, it's pretty beatup from all the abuse over the years.

The move itself was chaotic, we couldn't get the people to close on the house so the 10 days after our old home closed expired & we had to be out, imagine 4 ATV type trailers loaded with stuff, parked around town (one had my very full freezer on it, plugged in), then we had a 2nd storage unit filled to the brim (we filled the first one to make our house saleable, aka not look like 9 peoples worth of stuff resided there ;-) ). We put our family of 9 into 2 rooms at the hotel hubby manages, thank goodness they provide a full breakfast! We finally closed the house on a Tuesday around 6pm before it was all said & done, got the keys at 6:30pm & started moving in with the help of the young men (12-17yr olds) that go to our church. What took hubby 3 days to load into the 4 trailers took only 1&1/2 hours to have unloaded all into the appropriate rooms, YIPEEE!!!!

So here we are in our house, with at least 1/2 of it unpacked, still hanging shelves so we can continue unpacking the rest of our boxes, putting off the family room/office unpacking until that room is completed. We found many repairs to do that we had not planned on, new shower head because the inside of the shower head was missing, the water shot straight out in one stream! The same tub had to have the tub spout replaced because I turned it on to run a bath for the 1yr old & the spout literally shot across the tub! The pin went who knows where & who knows when it disappeared so off to the hardwared store for a new part. We tried to replace the flow control for the bathroom sink faucet, apparently it is the old welded on style & that faucet will have to be replaced also. The first week we also replaced the kitchen sink faucet which was leaking & loose on top of the sink, it was completely worn out, made of PVC inside, SHEEESH!!!! At that point dh said "Okay house, Bring it on, What's next?!!!!!" LOL

The outside is shaping up, the roof has been replaced this week, the overgrown pine tree has been removed, the front door & framing has been painted, it was so dry & the door that looks wood but is not had been stained at one time, wonder how long it took for that to dry! LOL Well I'll have to post some after pictures, if I get really brave maybe some before pictures! HA HA! Or during! That could be interesting, like my little 23 month old sticking her head in the freshly cut hole in the floor of her room & dropping baby dolls & stuffed animals into her 14 year old football playing big brothers bedroom! What a picture that made!

I better run, this has been one crazy day & since the weekend is coming I have no finished heating until Monday evening, back to laundry & baking to heat the house & a couple of small electric space heaters, get out the thermals & pile on the quilts!

More to follow, stay tuned... if you dare! ;-)

2 comments:

Norma =^.,.^= said...

Stacia,

Have you ever seen the movie, "The Money Pit"? Sounds exactly like what you're going through!! It's really funny and I believe it's PG - might be fun for your family to watch when things get frustrating!

Norma =^.,.^= (from FIU)

Stacia said...

Yes, I have seen the money pit & we joke about it. Infact we have talked about renting it to show the kids, at least it isn't to that extreme....YET! LOL

Stacia