Social Life of Information

We closed on our first house together on Tuesday, July 3, after much drama and delay. Everett immediately left for Ann Arbor the next day, to pick up our cat and a few other items left behind for a second trip. Everything else is in our moving pod, which was supposed to be delivered on July 3. Of course, like all other aspects of this home-buying experience, this too went wrong; we still don’t have our pod because the motor carrier broke down, and at the moment the expected delivery is Tuesday. We are really not happy about this.

But we are happy with our new home, despite the seller screwing us on the electric work because of a technicality. We’re making a big initial investment in electrical because there are only two grounded outlets on the main floor of the house, and that simply won’t meet our needs. We also need to upgrade from a split breaker box to a standard 100 amp breaker box. Oh, the joys of home ownership!

Since none of our things were available to move into our new home this last week, we’ve been putting in some efforts to fix the place up a bit and make it our own. The first thing we did was strip out the dull beige carpet from the living and dining rooms, exposing the gorgeous hardwood floors. They still need to be refinished whenever we can arrange that, but the carpet has already been relocated to the basement.

The basement received our first gift to the house - a dehumidifier. The damp smell has gone away and it’s quite comfortable on a steamy day like today. We’re keeping the cat down here while we do work on the rest of the place, and Smokey is spending a lot of time down here keeping her company. It’s a lot more comfortable for him as well, as it’s cooler and there is plenty of room for him to sprawl out on the carpet.

Since that first trip to Home Depot for the dehumidifier and a few painting supplies, we’ve made additional trips almost daily. In five days, we have gotten quite a lot accomplished, starting with emptying out the garbage left behind by the seller from the attic and basement into the garage. Everett applied privacy film to the bathroom and basement windows because the neighbors can pretty much just look right in otherwise. In the stairway, we’ve removed two layers of wallpaper, scrubbed off the ancient wallpaper glue, sanded everything and primed the whole thing. In the breakfast nook, I removed horrible dark wood paneling and then the horrible yellowed linoleum glued to the walls under the paneling, spackled and patched up some fairly sizable cracks from the house settling, sanded it down a bit, completely finished repainting the trim and primed the whole room.

There is still a lot to be done. The stairs need more white paint and then the stairway walls can be painted in a robin’s egg color. I chose the shade because of the 1930’s vintage of the house, when pastel color palettes and the sleek, modern art deco shapes evident in some of our house’s original details were first popularized. The breakfast nook needs one more coat of white paint on the ceiling and then I’m applying orange peel wall texturing to mask the evidence of settling; after that, a couple of coats of light sunny yellow paint will nearly finish the room. It will also need a bit of ceiling trim, but that’s pretty minor compared to the extensive efforts just to properly repaint the room!

I like remodeling. It’s hard, dull, repetitive, and often frustrating, but the results are worth it. As a kid growing up in Lansing, Michigan, my parents bought a condemned house and over 20 years turned it into a real gem. I spent a lot of time helping out, from demolition to landscaping to refinishing original hardwoods, so this all seems very familiar and almost comforting. And I love that I get to have my house look the way I want it to, within the usual limitations of budget and practicality. Designing a living space can an interesting challenge in terms of both aesthetics and usability!