Home Ownership - week 1 ⇒
Many people have asked us how we like our new house. Well....the house itself is lovely and we love the neighbourhood but at the moment, I'm not really seeing the benefit! We've had a few minor surprises, inconveniences and domestic disasters in our first week.
First of all, before we had moved in we discovered something our house inspector had overlooked—a rotten kitchen counter top. Now...we wanted to remodel the kitchen anyway but we were hoping it wouldn't have to happen right away. Also, I'm not sure what happened to the gas fireplace, but when our gas guy came to install gas for our new stove he discovered shoddy wiring and poor ventilation so he was going to fix that for us too. Yay for Rick the gas guy!
Then on moving day our appliances got delivered but Rick was on holiday and he insisted on hooking up our gas stove (rightfully so) but on the Saturday he was supposed to do it, he was apparently still at the cabin and we couldn't reach him. Plus our dishwasher had a different connector than the ancient one that was here so we couldn't set that up either. Rick finally came on Monday and hooked up the stove but then, a day later, discovered by smell that it had a leak so he had to come back. He had to come back anyway, because he needed a different part for the dishwasher and he still had to fix the fireplace. Also on moving day Erin was drilling to move our cable outlet to the other side of the room and the vibrations caused some ants to come out of hiding under our baseboard heater. They were not carpenter ants so we are trying to kill them off ourselves. So far Raid Double Action seems to be working slowly but surely.
Flashforward by a week and Rick has arrived to hook up the dishwasher etc. and he was cleaning the soot out of the gas fireplace with his shop vaccuum not noticing a very fine black powder venting out the other end of the vac. Erin came into the room and noticed black soot all over EVERYTHING! So the repairs stopped immediately and the two went into clean up mode. Rick called a carpet cleaner, cleaning lady and emergency furniture restoration company. He is paying for the cleaning (poor guy—I feel for him, honestly). So there was soot all over the freshly painted walls, carpet, our couch, Erin's prized electronics...EVERYWHERE! I was in town at Yoga that morning and when Erin told me what had happened I decided I couldn't face seeing my lovely new home covered in black powder so I stayed away.
Keep in mind that I am only 6 weeks away from having a baby so I am in nesting mode and just want the house to be put together. We were making good progress and now we have to start all over again. It's been a stressful week all around, unfortunately, but we are trying to cope with it with humour as always!
On the plus side, we have professionally cleaned carpets which seems to have taken away the stale smell of the previous owners (hooray!) and we've met a nice cleaning lady if I need some help once in a while after the baby comes.