Movers came, stuff has landed. It was less painful than i thought. They were done and gone in 3 hours. The boxes & furniture got semi sorted and put in the right rooms, though most of the labels make no sense to me. It's like weird christmas. What's this? What's in here? The boxes are 75% packing paper. I could fill a small pool with crumpled packing paper, probably. I got the kitchen unpacked but that's about it, because i don't want to make things harder for the painters. The bedframe got assembled and it is so good to have our mattress back and not sleep on the floor. The cats immediately became happier, like they know this is a permanent thing now. They've been extra adorable lately.

The painters were hoping to be done saturday, but one guy was not feeling well so there's still a little bit left, maybe a half day. Putting the doors back up (updated the hinges to nickel to match the doorknobs & house hardware), switch plates, smoke detectors, some touchups. It looks awesome. They patched a few areas where it was an ugly crusty old patch job, and areas where trim got pulled off along with chunks of the drywall and the previous owner(s) didn't care to make it look nice. Can't even tell, it's like it never happened. The interior of the house feels so fresh and full of energy, the shabby feeling is gone. The sad depression cry-cry utility room, formerly mismatched badly painted light grey like the bowels of a mental hospital, is a lovely cheerful minty blue-green. The paint colors work together better than i imagined - like you can see little pieces of the blue-green interior next to the burnt orange hallway and it works. (But i love the combination of teal and scarlet anyway.) I'm really glad we did it to start because now we can enjoy the house, and should there come a time to sell it, we know it's had a proper good job. I gave some friends a little tour and they were very positive.

It's been weirdly exhausting, considering i am doing none of the painting work. I try to make myself scarce and stay out of the house, so i invent errands for myself. Very much looking forward to being done with painting so i can start unboxing and feeling settled. It's been almost three months of living out of a suitcase.

Spouse is over his pneumonia, yay. He's in a nice furnished apartment. He says it feels like a hotel, matching furniture and bland tasteful art. It's probably for the best he is doing this temp assignment right now, because he's not being inconvenienced by the painting. No worries of paint smudges on his suits. The thing he is doing in the city is important and i am glad he got the chance to work on it. Really, the timing is quite good.

We both went and saw the new dr strange movie today, so we can dissect it. I was really impressed, actually. Solid movie. Good to see bruce campbell. :-)

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I'm pretty sick of typing these things on my phone. It's not pleasant. I should get a desk set up soonish so i can get the pi running and type on a proper keyboard.

So the painters finished on monday and it is now saturday? They did a great job. It is not 100% perfect, i will have to go through and touch up some little things because the problem with being super visually oriented is you see all the wobbles, but overall it is really really great (also after 2 weeks, i just wanted the job to be done, ha ha). I wanted them to do the heavy lifting and get it to 98%, and they did. Plus now we have a good relationship with this contractor and he seems to know his shit and be reliable. He told me he doesn't take payment until the job is done and he called to make sure i was happy with the job before cashing the check. Like, that's really nice. I appreciate that. And he worked us in his schedule when i know business really ramps up in the spring/summer and he says he's having to turn away jobs, which i believe. There's other things that we'll want to do to the house eventually and knowing who to call is like half the work.

So i'm working on unpacking and settling in, and figuring out where to add shelves and such. We took down the crappy white wire shelving in the closets before painting because it gave us sad rental apt vibes. I'm reusing it to add shelves in the utility/laundry room, and then i have to add proper nice wood shelves to the main closet. I'm also putting up a pegboard wall in the utility room for tools. So today i should finish the shelving/pegboard in the utility room, which means i can unpack more.

I got the wood shelving & brackets & wood poles for the main closet. I do want to add a partial cedar lining. Alaska doesn't have some pests, but we def have carpet beetles and the last thing i want is those tiny assholes chewing on spouse's suits. I'm hoping the cedar will repel them preemptively. So that's another $100 or so, and complicates being able to unpack clothes in the meantime. Sigh.

Priority projects:

1) utility room shelving & pegboard

2) main closet shelving & cedar lining

3) replace sliding closet doors with the ones from hfh restore, get them working, donate old ones

4) make a new cat door insert from saved styrofoam packing

5) replace light fixture in 1/2 bath and put up shelves, toilet paper holder, mirror

6) replace kitchen & dining overhead light fixture w/ led panels (also make/buy flush mount frame for panels)

7) replace old wall outlets and update light switches throughout house (also update switch plates)

8) experiment with staining blue pine, figure out best approach

9) get metallic satin nickel paint for repainting whatever brackets and fixtures need painting

There's loads more but that's plenty for my plate right now.

The house has such amazing positive energy esp with the fresh paint. When i sit in bed and look out the bedroom window, i see a giant swath of sky with tree silhouettes, the tippy tops of some house/shed roofs, and the wood fence around our backyard. No neighbor windows - all our rear neighbors are single storey homes! It feels very private and spacious (for being in the city) and i love it. The sunset light that fills the backyard is so beautiful. We have gorgeous red and yellow tulips blooming in the front yard. I mean, it's a modest small house but the whole vibe is so nice and that's impossible to quantify like square footage. You live in an area with 2-3 storey neighbors and it ruins the backyard vibe having people peering over your fence 24/7. Like townhomes all mashed in together, one looking directly into the windows of another. Fuck that!! Not for us. How much $$$ is that worth? So far the neighborhood is fairly quiet and pleasant. The kitties are so happy. Life feels pretty good.

That's as much phone typing as i can tolerate today.