Cleaning

We spent last weekend cleaning the house we're moving into. Originally the house was a barn on the property of Nathan's grandmother's spinster cousins. When their parents died in the same year, the two ladies decided their house was too big for them, so they moved the barn to its current place and had it changed into a house. They lived in it until their passing, Joyce in the early nineties and Clara in 1996. The house was then rented and the last tenants treated it badly.

We have a long way to go.


This is the living room with the beautiful fireplace, built in bookshelves, and all our crap. There is a large window on the south wall that makes the room bright and airy.


We think the streaks and spots on the wall are paint balls. This is actually my favorite room, it has beautiful glass paned French doors and is a very bright yellow color.

In which we pay tribute to Nathan, who spent six hours on Saturday bleaching the hell out of the kitchen cabinets.
These are both views of the kitchen. I love the tiny cabinet under the normal-sized one and the shelf off to the left. The bottom picture is where my mom says a phone would have sat. Nathan is convinced we need to have a rotary phone now. I love that little shelf, it's so cute.This is the linen cabinet, for which my love borders on the unnatural. It is nice and deep and the top shelf isn't too high for me to reach. The drawers are also very convenient.

One thing I've noticed in the moving process is that Nathan and I have way more books than is probably either normal or healthy to have. What can I say, I love to be surrounded by books. That is why I was very excited when I saw these shelves in what was Joyce's bedroom and what will be our bedroom. The room itself is so big, we are thinking of halving it and making the end with the bookshelves a study.


This set of closets is in what will hopefully before too long become a nursery. The one on the far end has shelves, the middle one comes with a dresser, and the one closest has a clothes bar.

It's so cool.

The house also features a full basement, full attic, one and a half bathrooms, and another bedroom, which Clara once used as a sewing room.

It's a pretty great house.

PS, sorry it too me so long to update, we haven't had the Internet since the 13th. I'm actually at the library now.

Stats

We've lived in our little apartment for three years and in seven days, we're moving out. Here are a couple stats on our housing situation.

Apartment:
two bedrooms
five rooms
no dishwasher
no washer or dryer
cable internet
no basement
very little storage
suburbs
at least an hour and 20 minutes from friends and family
forty five minutes to an hour from work

House:
Four bedrooms
eight rooms
no dishwasher
washer but possibly no dryer
DSL
basement
lots of storage
thirty to forty five minutes from work
two to ten minutes from family and friends
fireplace
built in bookshelves
two car garage

Moving

It is shocking to me how much crap two people can accumulate in three years. Nathan and I started moving boxes two weeks ago. Even though we've gotten a bunch of things moved, it doesn't look much like it. There are still boxes stacked all over the kitchen and obviously everything we use on a daily basis is still here.

But this is a step up. The last time Nathan moved, when he left Waterman to come to Tinley Park before we got married, I showed up at his house the night before he was supposed to move and he hadn't packed anything. It was very stressful as we and his parents ran around throwing things in boxes and bags.

My biggest worry is the house. There was a time we were going to buy it and I'm kind of depressed now that we are just renting it. Originally I had so many plans for it, and Nathan had to remind me last night that things might not be able to work out the way I want them to.

We're really grateful to Pam and Craig, my in-laws for letting us live there and, when I thought about it, I actually really like the paint colors of almost all the rooms.

The house is in pretty rough shape, but it's a beautiful old place with lots of character and, as my friend Jules pointed out, it's going to look amazing once we're done with it.

Looking for the levity

It wasn't long after Nathan lost his job that we were able to at least see what the lighter side of the situation might be. We get to move home, like we wanted and Nathan doesn't have to commute. Thought we'll be trying to make it on like one and a half incomes for a little while, it's not like we haven't been in that situation before. It took me four months after we got married to find a job, and things worked out all right.

The truth is that this just proves to me life really is a wheel. A few months ago things were going very well for us, we were both working and at least relatively happy, we were saving money and getting ready to start the adoption process.

But, Nathan has a job interview later this month at Northern, which is where we want him to work, anyway, so everyone say a little prayer that he gets it.

The moving process has been interesting. I've never been in charge of moving a whole household before. We've already got a few boxes at the house with more and furniture to follow this weekend. Mostly our living room is filled with boxes in various states of readiness.