Temporarily Settled

We are finally settled in over on the westside of town.  We have a nice bonus area over the garage over at the Harrison's that's working great as our temporary home.  It is so nice to be able to live here a while and not have to rent or live in a house that's not particularly liveable! 

After a very hard weekend of moving, we finally finished last night.  The Bulman and Lawrence crew came to help us on Sunday and we were able to get most everything done.  It was nice to have the extra hands.  Pam brought lunch and helped me clean, Gil helped load and used his great packing skills to fit as much as possible in our storage building, Harley helped move furniture and cut the grass, and Page helped with a little bit of everything.  So thankful they were all there and spent their (HOT) Sunday afternoon with us!  Next time, I plan to move in February.  I don't think we could have picked a hotter week.

We decided to take Monday night off and finished all of the little stuff late last night.  We didn't think we'd get it all done, but luckily the sweet Boland babies were in the bed and Ben came to our rescue and helped lift the last heavy piece of furniture that I couldn't do anything with!  Finally, Rutledge is clean and ready for closing!  Only 1 day away now and very ready for a vacation and to start work on the new house!

Moving = Not Fun

I am officially never moving again.  It's hard, tiring, hellacious work...especially in the 100 degree heat.  We got started at the crack of dawn this morning, and very thankfully, with Katie and Bryan's help.  It was so wonderful to have an extra set of hands to help me pack and to help Graham move the heavy stuff.  Twice the man power and twice the trucks makes all the difference! 

I forgot to take pictures of the major moving that happened today, but here's a few from one night this week when Graham and I moved a few things to storage.

 

This is the storage building before it got packed to the celing and out the front door!

This move has me feeling very out of sorts.  We have furniture and boxes everywhere.  Some things are in our storage building, others are in my mom's storage building, others in my dad's storage building, some in Page's attic, some at the new house, some at Pam & Gils, and the things we need to live for a month or so at my dad's house.  Very unorganized and I do NOT love it. 

Even though we worked ALL day today, we still aren't finished.  We've recruited Pam & Gil's help to finish off the moving and to help clean in the morning.  Woohoo!  We're hoping to get settled in over at Dad and Lisa's tomorrow evening so that we'll be ready for the work week.

I am sad that this is our last night at Rutledge Street.  We have really loved it here.  It has been such a perfect first home for us.  We've talked about all of the things we're going to miss, and the list seems to keep growing!  We have so loved being in Converse Heights, having the old craftsman style house, enjoying the tall ceilings, the little coal fire place (which sold me on this house the minute we saw it), and all the character that old houses offer.  There are so many great memories at this house will all of our family and friends. 

I think I'm definitely going to miss our front porch the most. I love swinging or rocking when the weather's nice, and our porch is perfect!  It's like an extra room in the house and I so enjoyed it.

This house is also so close to the Broomes.  It's definitely going to be different living more than walking distance away. 

Okay...sniff, sniff. 

Even though it's sad to leave, there is so much we are looking forward too! More than one bathroom is going to be so wonderful. Having a lot of land and privacy is on the top of Graham's list. Oh, and more storage!! Can't wait!  My Christmas stuff won't have to be stored in the crawl space any more!

We close on both houses in 5 days.  Fingers still crossed that all runs smoothly and this whole plan/move actually works!

Good News!

Today we met with a guy named Drew Wingo over at the new house.  He crawled all around in the crawl space, and luckily agrees that new gutters should solve the water issues in the basement!!  We were so excited about that!  Hopefully that means there will be no digging out, french drain, expensive fix since we have to put up new gutters anyway.

We also talked with Simon and have a definite get started date!  He is set to start on the exterior on Monday, August 8th...also the same day I go back to work.  No more Lifetime for me - things are about to get crazy.  While they work on the outside, we'll be working on some of the demo on the inside.  So, for now we are sort of at a stand still until we close next week and then go on vacation.  Busy, busy moving all of our things to the storage building and trying to get our things set up over at the parent's house this weekend. 

Waiting, waiting

Over the weekend I did a lot of packing at Rutledge.  Mom and Libby came to help me pack up my kitchen while Graham was out of town.  We got it done in no time and even got all of the boxes taken to the storage building. Since Graham and I are planning on living in the basement while the main level renovation at Burnett is being done, we are having to store a good bit of our furniture.  We have had a change of plans, though, and won't be living in the basement until some water issues are dealt with.  So far, everyone we've had look at the house seems to think that the new roof and gutters will solve the water problem.  Basically, water is coming in from the front of the house and has created a little tiny rut in the crawl space and is coming through the front wall of the basement.  New, cleaned out, and wider gutters will hopefully do the trick and solve the problem.  If not, we are looking at a more serious digging out, french drain type project.  So, since we are doing new gutters anyway, we want to see if that fixes the water issue before we go getting into a more expensive fix that may not be necessary.  We can't start the gutters/roof/and other outside work until after closing, so that threw a little wrench in our moving into the basement plans.  Hopefully we'll get started on the outside renovation very soon after closing and can move into the house in a about a month.  In the mean time, we are going to live with my dad and Lisa.  We are still scheduled to close on both houses Friday, July 29th, before we head to Beaufort for Jay and Elizabeth's wedding...then from there to a week at Edisto with the Broomes.  Whew.  There is definitely a lot of truth to "when it rains it pours!"

Lexie was not a fan of all the packing.  She's really confused.

Yesterday, I met with a plumber and floor man.  During the home inspection, a leak was discovered under the 1/2 bath upstairs.  Unfortunately it was in the wall, so the plumbers had to remove the sink and cut open the wall to fix the leak.  Thankfully it was a pretty easy fix and the old sink is gone!  The plumber also noticed that the bathroom wallpaper seemed to peel off very easily.  Yay!  I'm hoping it won't be too hard to get off the walls. 

The floor man came to look at the cement slab in the basement.  It is going to have to be cleaned before it can be stained and sealed.  He's supposed to meet me over there sometime today to look at how hard it's going to be to clean the floor beofre he can give us an estimate.  I also am going to have to pick a stain color.  Let the craziness of decision making begin.....

Yep! We're officially crazy...

Exactly one year ago, we were enjoying (and blogging) about our wonderful trip in California.  Here we are a year later, and I decided to get back to the blog.  Only this time, I've decided to document our progress on our, at this point, potential new house. 

In 2009, Graham appraised this house on Burnett Drive.  He told me all about the house and we even drove by so that I could look at it.  It was, and clearly still is, in horrible shape, but has loads of potential.  We talked about how great it would be if we could buy the house and fix it up.  But, in 2009 we were in no position to buy a house and didn't really even want to.  Eventually, Stanley (Graham's boss), bought the house and planned to renovate and live there.  I was so jealous!  I remember telling Graham that "we wanted to do that! It can't have been a bad idea if Stanley is doing it!" 

We didn't think about the house again until recently when our house went under contract for the 2nd time and the house that we thought we wanted was sold.  Stanley decided to put Burnett on the market about 6 months ago and since we now needed a place to live, Graham and I decided to look at it.  I think Graham initially showed it to me hoping that I would get it off my mind.  Unfortanately, I only saw potential....and here we are.  Oops!  We are set to close on the Rutledge house and Burnett house on July 29th.  I am very cautiously excited and praying that all goes smoothly.  Here are some pictures of the outside of the house...

Front view of the house. 

I think we'll keep the yellow front door!  Haha

Side view of the house and front yard.  Lots of landscaping to be done!

Carport, patio, and part of back of house.

Another rear view of the house with the basement.

Part of Back Yard

Yes, there is tons of work to do.  And those are only exterior pictures!  I will have to get to all of that later.  In the mean time, we are trying to fix up the basement at Burnett so that we will have somewhere to live when we leave Rutledge on the 29th.  Our current plan is to fix the basement over the next 2 weeks and live there while we renovate the main level.  The basement is about 800 square feet and is plumbed for a full bath.

Day 1: We forgot to take a picture before we got started removing the tiles.  That's me in the background wearing a mask. Those masks are no joke and I am not a fan.  Tile removal is zero fun.  We thought they would just scoop right up, but that's not exactly how it went...

The tiles that are up came up very easily.  The others...not so much.

Steps leading from main floor to basement.  We will def be removing the carpet.

Bar area in basement. 

Basement Bathroom...Like I said, it is plumbed for a full bath.

 Day 1: We had very lofty goals for our first day of work.  Originally, we thought we would be able to remove all of the tile and get it in trashbags.  We were sorely mistaken.  We got about 1/2 finished and instead of the tiles just scooping right up like we thought they would, more than we would have liked were still very glued down.  Luckily, Pam, Gil, and Page ended up bringing us some extra tools that we needed which helped us do as much as we did.  Page even did some tile removal!  Russell, Mom, and Nick also stopped by to check the progress.  All of the Broomes tried their hands at tile removal but decided to leave us to it.

Day 2: I'm so glad that we started working like crazy people on the hottest day of the year so far.  Today, we met with a sheet rock guy to see about a quote for finishing the bathroom.  When Graham got off work, we headed back over to Burnett to finish the tiles.  Before we got back to work, I went to Lowes and got us a floor scraper.  Thank God for that thing!  It was super hard work, but having the right tool really made the difference.  Graham did most of the scraping and I swept the broken up tiles into neat little piles.  We didn't get all of the trash picked up, but all of the tiles are out! 

Beginning of Day 2

Graham was so thrilled with the new floor scraping tool, he did some work while we met with the sheet rock man on his lunch break.

I did not love that scraper thing.  Graham was much more effective! 

I was a much better sweeper than scraper!  This is the end of day 2 and all of the tiles are up!

Starting to remove the carpet...another project that's not as easy as we thought.

Hot and tired at the end of day 2.

Now that the floor is out, we are planning to have the concrete slab sealed and finished.  We originally thought about carpet, but want it to be more of a rugged hang out area.  Sheet rock needs to be put up in the bathroom and a vanity, toliet and fixtures have to be installed.  We are going to paint the sheet rocked walls in the basement but possibly leave the brick exposed, depending on what it looks like after we add the water proofing stuff.  Hopefully it will be ready for ust to move in in two weeks!

Day 6 - Napa & Day 7 - San Francisco

Yesterday was a complete wine country day! We started our morning very early at the Ferry Building, and found a really great breakfast place there before we left on our wine tour. I was unsure of how the tour would be, but it turned out great! We had the best tour guide, Glen. He drove us around the city before heading to Napa, and we saw some of the famous sites around town. We passed by Jessica McClintock's house, the Party of Five house, and the Mrs. Doubtfire house. I was very excited to see those!

Glen knew tons of other things about the city and filled us in on all kinds of info on our way to Napa. Some of it, I wish we had known four our first day here! He had some really great advice on how to see the city, where to go, etc.

We drove through Sonoma and all around Napa on our tour. Our first winery was one called V. Sattui. It was our favorite. The winery was very old and they had a really great deli and picnic area. We also loved all of the wine we tasted there and even bought some to bring home. The picture at the top is from that winery. There were three other wineries on the tour. They were really nice, but we especially loved the first one.

At the end of the day, we took about a one hour ferry ride from Vallejo back to San Francisco. There were great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

Since our day started at 6 a.m. we decided to try a local mexican restaurant around the corner for dinner. It wasn't like Monterrey's by any means, but we still enjoyed eating there. After dinner we came back to the hotel, packed up, and went to bed early. I was sad it was our last night here, but I think Graham and I both ready to go home. I miss Lexie and Graham misses his truck - haha. I know Lexie will be so glad to leave the kennel! I bet she'll sleep for days!

Today we slept in and piddled around the hotel until we had to checkout. Then, we went down to Union Square. Wow at the shopping! We should have gone there our first day here when we still had money to spend!

After Union Square, we went to Golden Gate Park and also walked through Haight Ashbury. It was freezing down there, and Haight Ashbury was very interesting. I'm not sure we fit in there, but I think Graham enjoyed walking through that area anyway!

Now, we are a bit homeless. We've checked out of our hotel room and are just sitting in the lobby. Luckily the hotel will hold our luggage until we are ready to leave....at 11:00 tonight!

Graham and I both have really loved our trip! We have had a wonderful time, and have seen and done a ton! I'm also really happy that I was talked into doing the blog (thanks SK!). It is already helping me remember everything we've done! I also like to blog...maybe I'll keep it up. Could be fun!

We are headed to dinner and the airport. Home here we come!

Day 5 - San Francisco

We have been so busy since we got to San Francisco, but we love it here! We started out yesterday by going down to the Cliff House for breakfast. It was so delish, and the views were great! We also had a really wonderful waiter. We sat at a table right by the window so we could see the ocean and the waves crashing on the cliffs. There were also lots of surfers, and that was fun to watch.

After breakfast, we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. The bridge was packed with cars and people, but it was cool to be able to drive across. Luckily, we were later in the morning going over, there was little fog, and we could actually see the bridge! Sausalito was such a great little town. It was very low key, but nice. We enjoyed walking along the water, in the shops, and looking across the bay at San Francisco. The weather was much warmer and the skies were sunny and blue there. I still can't get over how cold it is in San Fran - and the weather man keeps saying it's a heat wave! Ha. He obviously hasn't been to South Carolina lately, because 62, no humidity, and wind is NOT a heat wave.


Before we returned our rental car, we drove through Pacific Heights and to Alamo Sqaure. Pacific Heights was gorgeous! We actually just accidentally drove through there, but were very glad we did. Driving these hills (aka, black diamond ski slopes) is very interesting. You get to the top of the hill and can't see over the front of the car to tell how far down you are about to go! Alamo Square was our next stop. That's where I am in the picture above with the houses. One of the houses in the backgroud was the Full House, house. Never could figure out which one. All I could do was sing the Full House theme song and was even tempted to run across the park with a picnic basket. Haha.

We also made our way down Lombard Street and to the REI store before turning in the car. I was driving on Lombard and was so nervous to go down! It was really pretty though, and we both enjoyed going down. Graham really wanted to go to REI, and it was close to our drop off spot, so we walked through the store, and after much hunting, finally found where to turn in our car.

No more car = walk. AHHH. I was more prepared this time and had on tennis shoes. (Thanks, Cindy, for your offer on the SAS senior shoes, but I made it!) However, these black diamond level ski slopes they have for hills, aint no joke! Here we are walking up Mason Street to our hotel...

We taxied our way down to the Wharf and walked around for a while. It was very entertaining but packed! There were tons of street entertainers. My favorite was one crazy homeless man sitting on the sidewalk with a large branch of greenery in front of him. He was very well hidden behind this branch and as people walked by he would jump out and scare them. I probably wound't have found it so amusing if he had jumped out at us, but it was funny. We eventually made our way to an Irish Coffee place called Buena Vista. My dad recommended it, and we ended up loving it! We split lunch and had a few drinks. It was nice to sit inside and people watch. As we were about to leave, a man and his son came in and asked if they could sit with us because seating was pretty limited. The guy was great! He lived in the city and gave us some tips on things to do, etc. He also bought us each an Irish Coffee! I don't love coffee, and this was so good! Graham and I both really enjoyed it and couldn't believe he treated us. Very nice!

After lunch, we decided we'd walk to China town. On our way though, we thought it would be better to continue our happy hour at the hotel. After many failed attempts at getting a taxi, we ended up walking back to the hotel. For happy hour, we went to the Tonga bar at the hotel. It is set up like a rainforest and even has indoor thunderstorms, complete with thunder, lightening and rain. Very different - one of our taxi drivers compared it to a ride at Disney World.

First full day in San Fran was great! Next up...Napa.