We finally have internet!

We closed on the new house on the morning of the 23rd and immediately moved our trailer from Briar and Gus' driveway into our own driveway. Briar and the kids came out that afternoon and, while the kids went nuts exploring the house and property, Briar shot one of her videos tours.

We've been very busy ever since. The house doesn't have a lot of carpet (the master bedroom and a couple of closets upstairs) but one of the first things that we noticed was that the carpet wasn't quite as pristine as it appeared when the house was furnished. Our furniture hasn't arrived so what better time to replace carpet. New carpet will be installed tomorrow morning.

As long as we're replacing carpet, how about paint? The master bedroom paint looked to be about 9 years old so we decided to repaint before the carpet gets here, We're planning to continue the new color (kind of a coffee ice cream color) throughout the house. One wall, in the kitchen area, will have the grandfather clock and china cabinet so we're going to make sure that it gets painted before the furniture arrives.

Speaking of the furniture, it left Riverside, CA on 7/22. The driver called a couple of days ago and he expects to be here o 7/31 or 8/1.

My new lawn tractor arrived today. I'd include a picture but I kind of have it in pieces right now. I want to install a mulching kit so I've removed the blade housing. I haven't quite managed to remove the blades just yet. I'm expecting to encounter some difficulties. The holes on some of Sears blades have 5 points while others have 6 points. It wasn't clear which was right for this lawn tractor. Sears gave me the part number for a 5 point hole mulching kit (which I ordered). Looking at the parts list for the new tractor, it says that the blade has a 6 point hole. I guess that I'll see when I manage to get the blade off.

Sears is batting 1000. They sent me a note yesterday that the snow blower that I'd ordered was out of stock. They were encouraging me to call and cancel my order, I got a really good price on that snow blower and, since snow isn't eminent, I called and told them that I'd be happy to wait. I got an email today that thanked me for my patience and said that the snow blower would be ready for pickup on 8/5. That was the original date.

I was kind of busy today so I didn't get around to connecting our new laser printer / scanner / copier to the network. Once I do that, I'll be scanning some pictures that the prior owner provided of the renovation that took place back in 2005-2006. I'll be posting those pictures here.

Briar is trying to get the digital copies of those pictures. In the meantime, here's a few pictures that Briar scanned.

These stairs have been reinforced and refinished and are still a part of the house.

This room at the end of the attic is still there (the mess is gone).

This has to be the kitchen (this entire wing was demolished and rebuilt from the basement up).

Side view. Note that there are 3 chimneys (only 1 remains and the fireplace that supplies it was completely rebuilt). The wing at the right was demolished and now sports an unfinished second story (which we will be finishing shortly). The house now features a garage off the end of that wing.

-jc-

Closing in on our close

It's been a long wait but it's almost over. We drove down to Wells Fargo in Hartford, CN on Monday to wire the money to pay for the house. Tonight at 5:00 PM, we'll have the final walk through and then, tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM, we'll meet at our attorney's office for the close.

So what have we been doing with ourselves all this time? Our reservation at the RV resort in Oakham was for a month so, on July 1, we had to move on. The trailer has been in Briar and Gus' driveway since then while we stayed in the guestroom. Our hosts were in California for 10 days of that so we weren't underfoot the entire time. They even got some cat / chicken / parrot / fish / egg (Yes, Gus is hatching some chickens in his incubator) sitting out of it. I'm sure that they'll be glad to see us go.

We've been using the time to do everything that we can possibly do to prepare for the move.

A first step made it possible to do many others. We were afraid that some of our actions might generate mail to the new address before we were there to receive it. We talked to the people at the Oakham PO and were able to arrange for them to hold any mail that came for us.

That done, we were able to open a local bank account (the closest Wells Fargo is in Hartford, CN) and get all new insurance policies. With a MA proof of automobile insurance, we were able to head over to the RMV to register the truck and trailer and get our Massachusetts plates. We won't be able to change our drivers licenses until we have some documents that will be generated by our home purchase.

We've arranged to have the utilities transferred or turned on when we move in (since we're on well water and septic tank, that really just amounted to power, internet and trash).

Then there's medical insurance, which has been a real experience. We had Kaiser in California and they don't exist here. We couldn' really do much about changing our coverage until very recently. We changed our address and then had to wait several days for it to flow through to the benefits website. That done, we could change our coverage. Now we're waiting for cards that are supposed to come by 8/1. With cards, well be able to schedule physicals and eventually get our prescriptions rewritten. I don't want to get into prescriptions. We made every effort to prepare Kaiser for what was happening but getting them to approve refills of our prescriptions has been painful.

Then there were countless address changes to make. That was kind of interesting. Before we left, we filed a change of address with the PO so that our mail would forward to Briar and Gus' house. Apparently, that triggered address changes with the credit agencies and with nearly everyplace that has our address. Most of the address changes that I've made have been from Rutland, MA to Oakham, MA. Weird and kind of irritating.

We had some purchases that we knew that we'd need to make so we've got some of those underway. Our new riding lawn mower will be delivered next Monday and a mulching kit for it will come on Wednesday. My snow blower will arrive in mid-August (great time of year for deals on snow blowers).

That's about it for now. More after we get into the house (and have internet - that would be next Monday).

-JC-