Making the new house home

Last week, we moved into our new home in Renton. On Saturday, Andrea and I spent nearly the entire day unpacking boxes, cleaning out old carpet scraps from the attic, hanging curtains, and so on.

I've been meaning to take some pictures of the house now that we're in. With the progress we made this weekend, here are some significantly more representative shots.


The garage needs a bit of work but is coming along nicely. We plan to put Andrea's car in there once we make enough room. The washer and dryer are here (bottom left corner) and the attic is just above the ladder.

I expect I will seal the floor with some epoxy this August when Andrea and boys are in Minnesota.

Maybe add a workbench at some point?

The kitchen is basically done. It's easily several times as large as the one we had in Magnolia. Andrea and I made dinner together last night for some guests, and there was more room than we knew what to do with.

We're experimenting with our seating arrangements. We'd planned on putting this green bench against a different wall by itself, but that didn't seem to work too well. This may be more convenient, if not proper interior decor.

With the exception of the partially-assembled floor lamp, the living room has come together. The mirror above the mantle is setup just as it was in Clearwater. I re-installed the glass in the quilt rack Dad made.

I really like the way the end table works out here.

Andrea bought me this print for our ten-year anniversary. I wasn't so sure about the placement (on the wall between the kitchen and bathroom; across from the office), but the more I walk down our only hallway, the more I like it.

 The office is the one place that still needs some real work. We don't have our internet connection setup yet, so my computer is pretty much useless.

Still need to install my sheepskin throw on my IKEA chair

One of the less glamorous jobs on Saturday was cleaning the attic. Without a roof vent, it was quite hot up there. We found old, empty jars of hamburger relish; hanging lights and scraps of carpet that hearken back to the 70s; a newspaper from 1968 (pending a high quality digital scan from the fine folks at Sigh of Relief Organizing); a box filled with masking tape; various plant pots and stands; and a variety of other things that clearly hadn't been used in many years.

Jacob and Reed really wanted to join me in the attic, so after we cleaned out most of the old stuff and I swept as best I could, I gave them each a pair of gloves, boosted them up, and let them play. This was one of the most exciting things for them. They stacked the tape into a big pile then knocked it down. They explored the barely tall enough roofline without getting impaled by the roofing nails. And when it was time to get down, they promptly asked when they could go back up there.

We had some friends over for dinner last night, and as they were leaving, the boys found what we think are plums falling from the neighbor's tree. The two of them collected the small fruit and started pelting me, and an all-out food fight started. Luckily, it's not as dangerous as the apple fight I remember having at my Grandma Shirey's farm over twenty years ago.

Our boys are perhaps more enthused about our new house than we are. But I'm not far behind.