Boxes

We have officially moved into our new house. It is a big home in a great location - in a fabulous neighbourhood, right on the edge of a provincial park - a view of the mountains to the west and a view of the city skyline to the north, even with a lake that we have access to - but it needs some serious TLC. We're planning a full kitchen renovation (gutting and redoing), renovating the master bathroom, and the laundry room (walls coming down), ASAP!

I can't describe all the things that we have discovered that are wrong with this house. It's clear that the previous owners did little to no maintenance on the house at all. I spent ages scrubbing the kitchen sink as it was nasty-dirty. (Who leaves a house like that?) Lots of things are broken (plumbing in several locations, the fireplace, even cracked windows) and lots of things need repair - the biggest one being the roof, which needs a complete re-do - it's untreated pine shakes, which was a terrible idea. It's falling apart! Oh, my. It's going to cost a small fortune just to get everything up and running.

The gardens are also a disaster - poorly planned beds with falling-apart brick walls around them, overgrown evergreens and ugly shrubs. I am looking forward to getting that fixed, but the interior comes first. Maybe next summer.

Meanwhile, we are living on the top floor and the basement, using the kitchen on the main floor, but knowing we'll have to move all our stuff out of there when we start renovations. The ceiling on the main floor will have to come down (walls and lights are moving), and the floor will be all redone, so there's no point moving anything in on the main floor at all. Mia is loving running from empty room to empty room. She's handling all this transition so remarkably well!

So, it's another several months of living out of boxes and in a fugue state. We are happy to be out of the grotty rental house, but oh, it will be nice to actually settle in.

Anyway, that might explain the lack of posting lately. It's been extremely busy lately around here and we have a lot to do yet.