Moving in the middle of the busy season for books has been a challenge for sure!
Each move up until now has been into bigger and bigger houses. We were fairly comfortable in our home in Milford at just under 1900 square feet (possible future expansion to around 2500 sq.ft.). We moved from there to a gigantic old victorian that had about 3500 finished square feet (plus at least 1500 square feet of usable unfinished space). Fortunately, in the six months that we lived there, we didn't come close to filling that space! Our current home is somewhere around 1200 square feet, and we're getting creative about where stuff is getting put! I'm not sure how long it will be until the car will fit into the garage...
There's been a small list of projects around the house that have NEEDED to get accomplished. I think there is only one thing remaining on that list, after installing the kitchen cabinets from Maine into the basement for storage, mounting the microwave over the range, hanging some of our art on the walls, hanging the curtains (or at least the curtain rods, draped with fleece blankets for the moment), and as of last night, we now have a cooktop again! All that remains to be done (somewhat urgently) is find the futon hardware or buy some new hardware so we can get the futon mattress off the floor and use it like a couch again. It's awfully hard to get up off of the floor after sitting there for an hour or so!
I have taken pictures of the house and will upload them shortly. We've also got some size comparison pictures of the kids to update as well, although there are a few that we missed taking. We were very faithful about our pictures until spending July in Maine (we forgot to bring the teddy bears), and after that we got busy with work and moving. Now that we're kind of settled, I hope we can be a little more diligent!
I have made use of all of those kitchen cabinets that we brought with us from our Maine house (a kitchen's worth of base and wall cabinets, plus the additional base and wall cabinets that we had in that oversized laundry room). I built a wall to partition the basement and filled the laundry side of the basement with those cabinets. I installed them in such a way that they are not permanently attached to the house, so they can come with us when it is time to move again! They're just about filled and keeping all of our overflow stuff (formal kitchenware, cake making stuff, vases, candles, stationary, games, puzzles...) neat and out of harm's way.
Somewhere between the move out of Milford and the move into Massillon last month, there are two small but important appliance parts that were misplaced. The range that we used in Milford came from the factory equipped to run on Natural Gas and needed to be converted to work with LP for that house. I knew I had kept the Natural Gas orifice spuds that were swapped out at that time, but I didn't know where they wound up after we packed up and moved to Maine. The other thing that was missing was the two screws used to hold the microwave to the upper cabinet over the range. So for a couple of weeks, Heather has been VERY patient with me as I tried to find those things, putting up with the microwave sitting on the cooktop (the microwave worked, but the range was disconnected).
I stopped at Home Appliance in Massillon the other week to look for the Natural Gas orifice spuds to convert our range back from LP to Natural Gas. They did not have anything that would work for the gas, but they did give me several microwave mounting screws from his big box of miscellaneous parts, knowing that at least one set would fit. Sure enough, I was able to mount the microwave when I got home. I was also able to convert the oven to work on Natural Gas (only adjustments needed to be made, no parts needed to be replaced). So for the last week, we've been able to bake, broil, microwave and crockpot... and as of last night, I found the gas oriface spuds (in the refrigerator owner's manual, of all places...), and we now have the stovetop as another cooking option again! Yay for being able to boil water for pasta and brown hamburger! I was glad to have found them, since it would have cost me over $25 a piece (need 4 of them) to replace, and it would have been over a week to get in!
There were a few small projects that were nice to finish, making the house feel a little more like "home". Putting our cutain rods up and hanging our art is just what we needed to give it our personal touch. It's amazing how well all of our stuff goes with the neutral taupe walls throughout the house!
Two weeks ago, my throat started feeling scratchy and over the course of that Monday, I was exhausted just doing a light day's work around the warehouse. The last two weeks have been a struggle, and it's been frustrating to get so wiped out doing a normal day's labor (I have a feeling that what I was fighting off would have wiped me out if I was sitting around the house resting), and still having to find some energy to accomplish a project or two around the house.
