Moving

On March 20th we began long-term occupancy of Greyshade Estate. I'm preparing a post spelling out step by step how we saved our hardwood floors but for now just know that they came out great. As a couple we have moved ten times. It never gets any easier. There is a certain finality to this move both good and bad. Our temporary residence was my mother's house since 1960. It is the house in which both I and my two sons took our first steps. After we moved in my mother injured her leg gardening leaving her knee partially paralyzed. She is now in very nice assisted living facility and doing well, but the house must be sold to finance her care. It is the end of an era. There will be no more guava jelly from that garden. There will be no more secret stashes of childhood memories in the corners of closets. It is all must pass. Everything must be moved or disposed of. On the plus side Greyshade Estate will now be our home from now until, like my mother physical infirmity makes life here impossible. We are home.

Painting 2

I promised pics of the painting to date and here they are. The living room is painted in a sunny but earthy yellow gold color called Aspire 4. Our living room faces east so the setting sun really makes it glow. We painted the hallway the same color. Although it doesn't look as nice with the masking tape and newspaper carpet.

The most dramatic difference is the bathroom. There is nothing like taking a shower in a room with bad grungy paint, rusted lighting, and a cabinet that smells of mildew to make you feel... not clean at all. I found a bathroom cabinet on a curb in South Park just after we closed escrow, Mrs. Greyshade found a new light fixture, actually two of them, on freecycle. We had an old copper and brass faucet we bought long ago at a swap meet for two dollars (it was green at the time). The oak shelves were left over from the condo and the beveled glass mirror is something my mom had in storage. For paint we choose Yolo's Create 2. We wanted a color that harmonized well with the tile and stone but had a slight pinkness so the reflected light of the walls would be flattering to skin tones. The color works really well and, as our youngest puts it, our bathroom is "fancy!" Which is pretty good considering we spent about $60 on it and most of that was on paint.

Full Steam Ahead

We have been so busy working that we haven't had time to post about working. We want to move... NOW! We started sleeping at the Estate regularly in late January. We reasoned that we would get more done faster if we didn't have to make time just to be there. Mind you this is not the same as moving in. Our household was skeletal.Our kitchen consisted of a mini fridge, a microwave and a one burner camp stove on a crate. The master bedroom was furnished with a four inch thick foam matress laid across a saw horse table. The children had it better as we have a second set of bunk beds. We often tucked the kids in bed and stayed up until the wee hours scraping walls. The picture at the top shows the massive paint blister Mrs Greyshade scraped away on the north wall of our living room. That job alone took days, but by living on site we managed to get the bedroom, hallway and bathroom stripped and repainted in a month. (Pictures to follow) Then we put everything in the garage in order to sand repair and refinish the floors.

As primitive as our living conditions were it was still a joy to live for a while in a place of our own. We've been living with a relative with no formal agreement regarding rent. Some urban housing authorities consider people in this position "homeless." While we are clearly better off than people who sleep on the streets, it has been tough emotionally. We have now been "homeless" for a year. Packing up our bits a pieces of furniture and "moving out" again was painful. It is only by chanting in my head "the floors are the last step, the floors are the last step," that I could bring myself to do it. We have learned to live without a proper kitchen, so we have decided to save the rebuild for after we move. Just having a stove and refridgerator will seem like a luxury. We can live with this and many other inconveniences. We just want to come home once and for all.