Dreaming.In.Reality

and the painful days prior to it.

Friday the 18th was possession day. I had zoomed out to the barn to visit with Flame as I knew I wouldn’t have much time over the next few days to get out there. After that, I decided to go to the post office and submit the change of address form. While filling it out, the cellphone rang. I figured it was K calling to see where I was because I was taking a bit longer than I had said. Suprisingly it wasn’t him, but the assistant from our lawyer’s office. Our key was ready. It was 12:30pm. YAY! For early key getting. So I called K to let him know, he was on the phone. So I left a voice mail, finished up the CoA form and zipped on back to the apartment. I went in, K was still on the phone, so I waved at him, he asked what’s up and I asked him if he would like to go get a key or not. After finishing up his bit of work, we zoomed out to the lawyer’s office, picked up the key and headed straight to the house. I set the camera up and took the obligatory picture of us opening the door as homeowner’s for the first time.

Upon entering the house, we started having a look around. Inspect the holdings, make sure all that was said to be left was left behind, or to see what treasures they decided to leave for us. They left us a clock and papertowel holder. The papertowel holder is cool, if I decide to keep/use it, it will be repainted. The clock is going, we have 2 on the stove/microwave that work just fine. I have a beautiful ceramic plate/adjustable month wood based calendar my dad bought me a few years ago, that will go just perfectly in that little spot where the clock was. Everything in the kitchen looked to be pretty ok minus two big dings by the door. One was being covered for the most part by the paper towel rack, and the other while boldly staring us in the face, had been previously covered by a picture frame when we viewed the house. No big deal, so we move onto the living room, and that’s where the sadness was.

We knew there would be some patching and touching up in the living room as they had picture frames and some other assorted things hanging on the walls. But oh my it was banged up, scuffed, and even stained more than we had ever thought. The 2 cinnamon walls in the living room were pretty much mangled. The two lemon walls were fine, with just a couple of little spots to patch/repaint. There was a good crack over the fireplace in the drywall (that had been cleverly covered with photo frames on the mantle). We headed up stairs to check the bedrooms and washroom out, everything up there was pretty fine. We found in checking the room, that the previous owner left her robe behind. We trucked down to the lower level, everything down there was fine. We spent some time under the crawlspace making sure it was all ok, they had left some bits and pieces for the kitchen down thre as well.. a chunk of counter top, some stained bits of cabinet wood. Which is good for when we decide to add in a dishwasher, we’ll need that wood/stain for adding doors etc. We stood infront of the paint can cupboard figuring out what was what. The prev. owner had graciously labeled all the cans with some masking tape so we had a better idea what was what. The living room paint, the kitchen paint and the trim paint.. dried solid. yay. We made note of what was needed and off we went to Home Depot and the paint store.

The paint store was able to match the cinnamon colour, the trim for the house baseboards, and the kitchen paint perfectly from the dry cans. The store we went to (little publicity plug here) was Colurlux Decorative Products, LTD. They’re located at 208 Rochester Street off Carling Ave. If you need paint here in Ottawa, I highly recommend them. Fast, super friendly, and the paint quality is superb. I was amazed how well they matched the colours and everything. The only thing that was slightly off was the kitchen paint finish was wrong, however it was not a big deal, we just painted that whole one wall and left it at that. You can’t tell it doesn’t match the other wall finish at all.

Friday night showed us back at the house, with paint in hand, as well as some tools. We had originally thought that we would have to “shore up” the floor under where the piano was going, but the prev. owner had already put the support beam thingies back where he had removed them for ease of moving around in the crawlspace. We spent the evening masking up trim and doors, removing closet doors and getting things ready. K’s dad and his gf, M were here to help us, so everything went really fast. We didn’t eat till very late, over at Bella Vista. Had some late night pizza and beer. Had only a couple of hours of sleep. Saturday morning bright and early, we were back at the house, where we drop clothed the place and busted out the primer. We had a work crew of no less than 4 people at a time on Saturday and Sunday, helping us prime and paint everything. We were soundly finished with all the painting by Monday night around 5 or so. Must needed eats and drinks followed. We then went back to the apartment for our last night there.

Tuesday morning came SUPER bright and early with a drive to the house for the checkbook, as I packed it, and already moved that box. After stopping for a cup of coffee with a nannernut muffine for meee as well, back to the apartment we went to finish packing in anticipation for the movers. We had 3 movers and all 3 were great guys. Very friendly and cautious of what they were moving. After packing up all the apartment into the van (minus what we were moving ourselves), we headed out to K’s mom’s townhome to pick up the piano. While they were manuvering that out to the van, I spent a few minutes chatting with Sportbird, as G was minding him for us during the move. After G’s house, we zipped over to K’s dad’s for a chair, some side tables, and a dining set. That took no time at all, I had just barely enough time to pet 3 out of 5 poochies (Kalimonster wouldn’t let the shelties in, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Charlotte to go away. Viking did dash ins for pets and then run aways!) and off we went. The movers were done unloading by 230. We started at 8am. The only thing that got messed up was our one wee bookcase for the bedroom. It’s IKEA so it’s not like they destroyed a solid oak antique shelf or anything..but it’s sort of annoying. The backing had popped off and they retacked it on for us with new finishing nails. No big deal right? Well they tacked it onto the FRONT of the bookcase, not the back*L* So we have 5 neatly spaced tackholes on the bottom shelf of our bookcase. We unpacked a bit a little bit to get a feel of where things were, and went out for supper.

It’s now the beginning of week 2. We’re mostly unpacked. Everything seems to be falling into it’s order. There were times when looking at the kitchen and the den, that I had moments of dispair*L* It would never fall into place. There still is quite a bit of boxes upstairs in the two bedrooms to go through. Clothing, knickknacks, junk. Stuff we keep for one reason or another. I want to sort most of it, repack what needs repacking here soon and contain it all to just the smallest bedroom. Everything that has been taken care of and reboxed needs to go downstairs and sorted into storage. I have most of the trim painted. I have some random little bits up and down that will be taken care of when I start the living room. Half the closet doortrim in the upper hall closet, 2 doorframes downstairs. I have to mask off the walls in the living room still. I also need to measure the window frame in the living room for a drapery rod, as well as measure the drapes to see if they’re long enough. They match beautifully with the shades of yellow and red. I found a decent halogen piano light too, so now if I am incline to practice at night I can.

We’ve met a few of our neighbours,they’re great friendly people. I noticed a bunch of birds in the area, so I broke down last Saturday and got a feeder. So now the abudnance of wild birdies in my backyard has tripled! We also have a few bunnies, some sort of voleymoley creature, squirrels and one GIANT cat. We’ve also been experiencing some of the better joys of homeownership. LIke oh, shoveling the driveway. Let me tell you. It’s not a big driveway, and we have a great shovel.. but it still sucks! Especially when the street plow comes through and plows up a big wet slushy snow wall about 2 feet high at the bottom of your driveway.