Monday, September 26, 2011

Days 18, 19, 20, & 21: Finally Moved

What a weekend!  Friday night we officially got all of our things out of the Hoboken apartment!  It was a lot of work, and a lot of "just throw it in a trashbag and we will figure it out later" thoughts as we packed up the last carloads of stuff that really doesn't pack well.  Once we got everything into the new apartment, we realized we really need to get rid of some things!!  We definitely should have done that before we moved, but this spur-of-the-moment move just didn't give us enough time.  It's a good thing there is a Salvation Army store right down the road!

The big news of the weekend is... (drumroll)... we got a new stove!!  AND Sears was able to get out the old nasty one.  Its just nice to have something brand new... We wanted our first celebratory meal to be something special, and I'm sure we will make something special to celebrate once we get everything put away, but last night we cooked rice on the stove for curry in the crockpot.... just rice??  Not so celebratory.



Most of the rest of the weekend was spent putting together our bedroom, with a new lofted bed frame!  Thanks to our good friend Zack, we now have our bed lofted above our dresser with a "closet" underneath.  It was completely made of 2x4's and 1x3 slats from our old bed, and cost less than $100 to build the entire bed including the clothes bar underneath.  The only thing that might have pushed us over the $100 mark was the 3-step ladder we had to get so I can make it up to the bed!  We definitely wouldn't haev been able to do it all without Zack's expertise (and muscles!!)  At first our frame was a little wobbly, but we eventually bolted it to the wall, so it doesn't move at all now!







After completing the bed frame, we decided to utilize the light outside, turn off the electricity to the apartment, and change out all of our light fixtures.  We definitely didn't know what we were getting into!!  The living room light is ancient!!!  And the wiring is even more ancient!!  We took off the fixture, but when we were disconnecting one wire, the wire basically crumbled and fell to the floor, leaving no evidence of where it came from in the soot-covered wire mess in the ceiling.  Unsure of what to do, we moved onto the kitchen light (such a breeze to change!!), and then to the bathroom. 

When we pulled out the bathroom glass globe covering the light, it was FULL OF WATER!!!  Last time I checked, water and electricity aren't friends.  No wonder we were getting "wiggled" whenever we touched our metal shower curtain rod while standing in our cast iron tub!  There has been water leaking in the ceiling!! 



We dumped out the globe, and set it to the side, again puzzled at what to do.  Luckily, though, we have a wall-mounted bathroom light, so we aren't totally out of luck with light in the bathroom.  After removing the wall fixture (and subsequently the only outlet in the bathroom, it was a part of the fixture, weird), we found what looked like brand new wiring!  This must have been the only fixture in the whole place that never saw water damage, haha, because the fixture was still ancient-looking.  We installed our new light, and hung the new mirror below it too.  Looks like a nice bathroom now! 



Now we only need the shower curtain my mom is making, a better storage system for my bathroom things and for towels, and a window curtain and we're set for the bathroom!  ...well... and that ceiling light.  Last night Mr P heard a dripping sound coming from the bathroom, went in, and found a drip coming from the ceiling light area and a solid stream from the ceiling to the tub!!  WTF!?!?  We ran upstairs to the neighbor who is remodeling her bathroom too, and apparently they found a pipe that had been leaking water for ages.  The pipe had a huge gauge in the one side, almost like it was twisted or crushed.  It's thick metal though, no human could make a water pipe look like that, so who knows how it got like that!!??  (I wish I would have taken a picture, but I didn't...)   At least we solved the issue of leaking water into our ceiling, and hopefully we will be able to install a new fixture and fix the ceiling soon.

Last night we finished the kitchen floor tile and moved our fridge next to the stove.  This makes our kitchen feel sooo big!

There were lots of ruts in the road this weekend, but we still accomplished a lot, hopefully we can finish the renovations this week and put everything away so we can start decorating :D :D :D   ...and hire an electrician to tell us what in the world is going on with our living room light, and fix our bathroom light!!  Next weekend will be a dud on the renovation schedule, because we are going to OHIO for the O'Dell wedding!!

Toodles.
J&H

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