The new place is probably about 75-85 years old (We don't have the exact year yet), but beautifully refinished, with plaster replaced by insulation and drywall, new windows, gorgeous new hardwood floors, remodeled kitchen and bathrooms, and fresh paint (mostly beautifully chosen). Without the attic finished, it's about 1700 sq feet, but the attic refinishing which should be done just before the baby is born, will add about 600 sq feet for the twins rooms and a walk-in closet. We're very excited about it. How excited? Let me see...
What I've been doing all weekend:
That's right, I've been diagramming the new house using nothing more than the draw menu on Word some clip art, and a little dash of OCD. Not only the floor plan, but where all of our existing furniture might go. This important, since it's a pretty drastic reduction in space, albeit one that saves us a lot of money in the long term and gets us into a neighborhood that better suits us (and is 3/4 mi from campus, which will add fuel savings to the mortgage savings). The point is, we havee to figure out which pieces in the new house will not fit in (like my grandmother's century-old piano) and then have enough time to find suitable homes for these things.What I'm not doing: On the second-floor diagram, you can see, in a little smudge on the oval desk next to the blue striped bed, a small stack of papers entitled "book project." You can't see it, you say? Oh! That's because I've done virtually nothing on it in a month. I hit the 75-page wall, and have not touched the thing except to revise a few pages of prose here and there. Plus I've got an article due in the end of March that I'm not super excited to do, and a talk around the same time that I am super-excited to do (turns out enthusiasm to write is a limited resource), all of which are keeping that book project somewhere other than next to my actual desk. sigh. I'll do it right after we move, are unpacked, have a baby, and finish the attic refinishing, in between there and prep for next fall, which will give me all of about, oh, three sleep-deprived days in July.
2 comments:
Moving? Cool! You know I am clicking on all your little diagrams and scrutinizing them excessively. ... How much "refinishing" is the attic going to involve? That could be a handful. (not that having a baby, packing, unpacking, decorating (!!!) and writing a lot isn't).
And yay for being near neighbors and colleagues! And, hopefully, the ability to walk over to school? (Maybe not... snow? I know nothing about how bad it is to walk around in actual winter...)
The attic currently has a subfloor, and the eaves, and a big open space. It needs insulation, walls and drywall, basic electric (a few light fixtures and outlets), and carpet. The current owner, who renovated the rest quite beautifully, says he can do in 3 weeks for a quite reasonable cost, which we should have left over from the sale of our current home. So feasibly, it could be done with a bit of time left to spare before the baby arrives.
That all said, the house is totally walkable to campus most of the year, and super close to lots of friends/colleagues (several within a three-block radius). Even in snow, the cold and the roads are more the issue than actual snow, and 20 minutes of downtown walking shouldn't be a problem there. So yes, we're very excited...
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