Morris and Elisabeth and the House

So after busting our behinds over the last nearly 3 months (wow!), this past week we took it easier.  There was some more painting that doesn't show up as much progress in photos, some tinkering, cleaning, etc. My proudest accomplishment was putting up the shelving system I had from my old apartment in DC to house all our books and such in the sitting room. There is nothing fun about wrangling together the separate uprights, back braces and shelves themselves and there was some creative engineering. But I'm certainly proud of myself.  Now we just need to secure it to the wall before we start loading in all the books and curios. Additionally, since we actually have a land line (it's a VOIP line that came bundled with the internet package), I was able to pull out my ancient so very 90s phone and we can use the same hook on the wall that was already there! Look kids, it's our own family dinosaur! We took off for a few days to go up to northern PA and visit Mo

This past week has consisted mostly of us clearing up smaller projects, finishing those off, and then moving our stuff in. We managed to move everything out of our storage unit and apparently Morris had forgotten how many boxes of books I had.... Oops! I'm seriously looking forward to having all our things in one place and not having to commute between the apartment and the house constantly, but it will make some chores a little more difficult - like having to move things in order to paint parts that still need it. We've divvied up the additional bedrooms not still under construction between us so each has a room with a closet and room for a desk and such. I've started putting all my craft things and dance things into the closet for my office / guest room and my supervisor was very pleased with my progress! Some really good news for our supervisor is that now that the nasty chemical things are done and we've picked up the sharp/dangerous stuff from the floors,

So this weekend didn't have a lot of big builds, but we made some very tangible progress in making the house really livable and we have even started moving more furniture and boxes in! With enough of the kitchen floor done and whatnot moved into place, for example, we were able to move in the laundry machines!  And for freebies off of Craigslist, they worked very well after some troubleshooting.   Morris did a final pour on Friday night for the island while he was there alone (I was out for a dance event and that meant fewer feet kicking up dust) and made more progress spraying the paint in the living room. Saturday morning as we were getting ready (I was packing up some boxes from the apartment and getting the dog ready to go) I got a text with a photo that demonstrated real, deep love. If you buy a house that has been sitting for a while, the toilets will require a lot of arduous cleaning. I would show a before picture, but don't need anyone losing their lun

We finally had a weekend without rain! It was a miracle! It was also very hot, because the DC summer had some catching up to do, apparently. Yay, summer. There was a lot that happened this weekend: fun, impressive, and exhausting! Saturday morning was spent finishing the lights in the kitchen with success, and an opportunity to show off how much more of the lattice board has gone up, and isn't that just lovely??? Just needs  a little trim added at the seams. And we borrowed the drywall lift from the 2nd closest Home Depot again to start getting a ceiling up in the back bedroom that had flooded during the monsoon. Remember this room? Only 2 full sheets would fit based on the size of the room and location of the beams, so it it plenty amusing to haul out, rent this very heavy machine, set it up, screw in the 2 sheets, dismantle heavy machine, and haul it back to Home Depot. Then there were some new not super tacky lights in the entryway that went up, and

This past weekend we CONTINUED to deal with issues because it wouldn't stop freaking raining. Seriously!?! This weekend we needed to tackle the lawn, but the universe seemed stacked against us. Either the wet grass bogging down the mower and burned up the batteries or the skies deciding to open nearly every time we said the words "ya know, we should really try to finish mowing". It took a long time to reclaim our meadow into a lawn, we didn't even finish it by end of Sunday. (notice the random patch of long, dark grass with clover flowers amidst the sections actually mowed short) One really visible thing we did was to clear out a lot of the low branches on the tree in front of the house. There were many times we drove up, especially when it rained heavily and the leaves were wet and heavy, that branches would slap the tops of our cars and pluck the antenna. So, this weekend, out came the chainsaw. Morris got up and cleared out a lot of low branches that amoun

So our friends in the greater DC area will already know this, but the monsoon season here hasn't let up much at all. We're still getting regular showers, there are places all over the region that are experiencing really terrible flooding, roads washed away, and unfortunately even a few deaths to my understanding. Compared to these issues, our frustrations with the rain seem petty at best, but it definitely has interfered with our plans lately. It's hard for certain materials to dry or cure in the rain and some projects are on hold until we can work on them outside, so it didn't feel like we got a great deal accomplished this weekend. To demonstrate - this was the view out of the sitting room looking at the storm drain across the street, and the house is at the top of a hill that was backed up and creating a lake in road: Also, when Morris goes out of town for most of a day, it's amazing how much less gets done compared to me being out of town for a day.... H