The borders between home and sleeping-place are ill-defined and will be for a while. I’ll report in from home later today – Friday evening livestream! Catch me at 6 pm central from the front porch of Home. Last weekend I evidently messed up the settings and that brief video vanished into the aether, sorry about that. This week I’m packing all the audio and video gear along with me to travel and do it up right. There’s internet, and good ‘net at that, already up and running at Home.
I’ve been packing, and being grateful that I exercised some discretion about not moving too much into the apartment. It’s bad enough as it is… but then again we had no idea where we’d be from the perspective of a year ago. Should I have been minimalist and camped here for a year? Perhaps. However, there were points we were talking about being here for two years, or buying in the city mess, and it was all very fuzzy. So I’m packing loads when we run up to Home, for the car, and perhaps by the time we’re ready to have furniture in the house, the apartment will be down to bare-bones furniture. Which I will hire a couple of guys to come move for us into a truck. And then another couple of guys at the Home end to unload.
Slowly, slowly, progress is made. As impatient as I am, I do know this. The Little Man has been posting photos to the discord server he set up for the purpose. He feels like he’s not been as fast as he planned. The First Reader and I from our perspective of vast (coffcoff) experience, think he’s going great guns and are very pleased indeed for work that’s being done largely solo. And the other thing the kid didn’t get was: we anticipated problems. Life is like that. Nothing goes according to plan, a smooth path towards a goal leaves you squinting at the horizon and your flanks in suspicion while simultaneously trying to look over your shoulder at what’s sneaking up behind you.
Is it weird that seeing the walls revealed to be a thorough mess actually makes me a little happy? It’s not that I’m glad we’re going to have to be creative to make them beautiful again. It’s more that ‘ok, that’s the thing.’ It’s offset by the floors being fabulous. The walls? I have a cunning plan. More on that later, with photos. And as was pointed out to me by my friend Jonna, it could be worse. She’s absolutely correct, although I thought her counter-example of what you could find behind paneling was hilarious. Two bathrooms with Hustler centerfolds decoupaged to the walls floor-to-ceiling… My son would have died on the spot. I’ll have to ask Jonna what they did to her walls to, er, cover those ladies back up.
Ah, homeownership. All the perils and pitfalls are so worth it to be talking about Home and going there, and nesting. I’m going to nest so hard these next few months. Being displaced into the apartment was a deeply unsettling experience and I do not recommend. On the other hand, I’m grateful we did that, rather than trying to buy too early. We’re in the right place, and it’s the right time, and I can see life slowly coming back into the focus of clear purpose. It’s good. It’s all good.
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12 responses to “It gets a little fuzzy”
If you’re around on a weekend, we’ll come meet you for coffee!
You mentioned the apartment as a deeply unsettling experience. We humans were created to belong to a place, and for that place to belong to us. Even nomadic people’s have their territories, and protect them if they can.
I don’t know if it’d work for anybody else– but we solved the rental-problem by making items the symbol for home.
A table, blankets, our-pictures-on-the-mantle, that kind of stuff.
That does help. For me, I think it used to be books. Those were among the first things unpacked in a new place. I’ve had to get rid of so many books, and most of mine are out of sight upstairs where they are less likely to mold, that the effect hasn’t been as helpful here.
That is some beautiful wood on that floor. Throw some plastic tarps down while working on the walls, and don’t worry about it too much as you’ll probably want to sand it down (rent one of the large sanding machines) and then hit it with a coat of polyurethane anyway.
We’re leaving the carpet in place, largely, to catch the paint and what-not, but I’ll get some dropcloths as well.
Don’t know how much sanding we’ll attempt, none of us have done that before and worry about creating more damage. But buffing for sure, and a fresh coat of poly (or two).
The big sanding machines are AWESOME.
I hear ya on the apartment thing. Even though we lived in one for the last 20 years, it was one of three in a converted row house, not a huge complex. One of the major goals moving down here was to get into a HOUSE. We did that, and are now starting to figure out where we want to be when we have our *home*.
If you two don’t want to be tied to that city, I know a great realtor. Just sayin’ 😀
And yes, we should get together sometime soon.
Sending you an email…
Congratulations on your successful purchase. I hope that you continue to love it. I have moved cross country four times, more or less, namely Buffalo to Cambridge to Santa Monica to Ann Arbor to Worcester Mass. In Worcester I moved once, from a townhouse into a real house. To move now, i would need two moving vans and, no, I am very good about eliminating junk as I go. Never again! is my philosophy. My house needed massive amounts of work, solved by deploying the most powerful of all home renovation tools, the checkbook. [I know I have no skill with tools, and do not pretend otherwise.]