Saying Goodbye

So the one part of this whole experience that isn't so much fun (aside from packing boxes) is having to say goodbye to the incredible people I've met here in Lexington.  I've lived here for 12 years, almost as long as I lived in the town where I grew up.  I've made many friends here at church, at school, and at work and saying goodbye to them isn't easy.  Because the move is happening over such an extended period of time, the goodbyes have been spread out over the course of several months.  I bid farewell to my church family a couple of Sundays ago.  A good portion of my personal friends will be helping with the house, so it's not goodbye for them yet.  But last night it was time to bid adieu to my coworkers. True, I'm at work today, but many of my fellow SCoBIRCers are at the faculty retreat so last night we went to dinner as a lab and I said my goodbyes.

It's not the first time I've said goodbye to these folks.  About a year and a half ago, I left the lab for another job after working there for 5 years.  It was a very bittersweet day.  I'm not sorry I left, but I'm also glad that I got to come back.   This time goodbye is both easier and more permanent.  I've only been back for 7 months, and we all knew going in that I wasn't staying long.  Maybe that's why it's not nearly as emotional as my last exit.  But it is still bittersweet for me.

My SCoBIRC Family

I've worked with many different people over the years in several different places, but I can honestly say that SCoBIRC people are the best.  Like any group or family we have our bad apples and our fights, but for the most part it has been a pleasure and a privilege to get to work with this exceptional group of scientists every day.   I've learned a lot from them, about all sorts of things.  I've enjoyed working with them, traveling with them, and relaxing with them.  They've opened my eyes to all sorts of new experiences and ideas--Indian Food and (real) Chinese food, Hinduism and Islam, horse racing and old movies.

Many of them have watched me grow up.  When I started at SCoBIRC I was 20 years old with a newly minted diploma and no idea what I was doing.  Now, 9 years later, I'm on the verge of turning 30 with enough neurotrauma experience to get a job nearly anywhere.  I've helped 5 different students with their dissertation projects.  I've published a first author paper in a respect journal, and I've presented my work at the National Neurotrauma Society meeting.  I've come a long way.

As with any major life change, I'm sad to move on.  But I also know that it's time for me to change course and follow a different road.  Neurotrauma was never my passion.  I didn't choose to work in this field.  I've loved it, but it wasn't what I wanted to spend my life doing.  And, while it is comfortable, it's time for me to move on.  So I am.  But not without a few goodbyes along the way.

The Other End of Moving

While the husband and the in-laws are back in Cincinnati working on the new house, I'm left here in Lexington packing up the old one.  It's an interesting kind of packing too since most of the stuff will be staying here until we finish working on the new house.  So I'm trying to sort out what we need to live for the next couple of months from the rest of it and get everything boxed up and ready to go.

My living room.  The Catsle and fishtank stand are gone now,
but the mountain of boxes keeps growing.

The Office and former home of the litter box.  Now overrun with more boxes!

The extra bedroom, which has served as a storage area for most of my things since last summer.

I'm close to having it all ready to go, but it seems that every time I turn around I'm finding more and more stuff to pack.  And I'm certainly looking forward to getting it all unpacked when we finally get to move into our new house!

Oh What a Weekend it Was

Normally the first weekend of the Olympic Games would find me parked in front of a television.  This weekend, however, there were more important things going on.  Friday I got my first look inside our new house since April.  I was a bit underwhelmed.  The carpet had been removed (thankfully, or so I've been told), as had the shower stall and toilet in the Master bathroom.

Maybe it was the fact that the house was so empty, or maybe it was just having more time to look around, but everything seemed so much shabbier this go round.  The paint (which we think is from when the house was built in 1979) is so stained up that some walls are nearly black near light switches and doorways.  The wood molding and baseboards were cut so badly that many don't meet in the corners.  The few light fixtures that exist are outdated and many are broken or missing covers.  And the flower beds were so overgrown with weeds and grass that you couldn't see many of the plants that were planted there on purpose.

Friday was spent mostly looking around and deciding on a plan for the rest of the weekend.  We had gotten a late start since a round of severe storms rolled in about the time I got to Cincinnati.  The power went out almost immediately, and Landon and I watched from the basement as the trees behind the house were nearly laid over flat.  With no electricity, we went out to eat with Landon's parents.  Afterwards we headed to the house to have a look around.  Landon and his Dad started pulling down drywall in the garage to assess the extent of the termite damage there.  It doesn't look good with several of our studs being nearly gone from insects, rodents, and the constant flow of water into the garage due to improper grading of the driveway.

Taking down walls in the garage.

And finding that what's behind the walls isn't all that good.

Saturday started with a trip to a local home supply store to have a look at their selection of cabinets, countertops, vanities, doors, and moldings.  We also popped into the local Habitat ReStore just to see what we could find.  We didn't buy anything, but I'm sure there will be many trips back now that we've had a chance to see what we're lacking.  By 11:30 we were at the house where Landon's Dad Alan was already at work with a couple of friends pulling molding.  I got to work pulling up the staples left from the carpet padding while the boys went to work in the backyard to start dismantling the deck.

At noon, a structural engineer arrived to help us figure out what we can do with the front part of our house.  He had just started his analysis when our friends Brad, Ann, and Alex arrived.  I did a walkthrough with them while Landon worked with the engineer.  Ann is a designer and will be helping me figure out what to do with this house, so I was excited for her to get to see it in person.  We talked about different ideas for how to open up the rooms as well as how to arrange furniture while Brad went out back to work with the other boys on the deck.

We had several other friends arrive over the next few hours, which was good since before the boys could totally dismantle the deck, they had to move the hot tub out of the way.  It took 8 men, 4 metal pipes, 2 wooden pallets, and two women to get the tub off the deck and onto the pallets on the ground.  It seemed easy; except for my spill on the slick deck boards there were no mishaps.  After the hot tub was on the ground, the boys proceeded to dismantle the rest of the deck.

Inside, Ann and I talked paint colors and what walls to take down.  I worked some more on the staples and then, since it was a nice day, we moved outside to tackle some of the weeds.  When we started, the bed next to the driveway looked like this:

Sorry for no "after" picture.  The bees made it hard to take photos.

It wasn't a pretty sight.  There were weeds nearly four feet tall in places as well as some small trees growing up in the beds.  Not to mention the grass.  There was almost as much grass in the beds as there was in the lawn.  But it wasn't all bad.  There were some nice flowers in there, they just needed to be liberated.  We worked on the beds until it was time to quit, and boy were we dirty.  After a quick trip back to Landon's Parents' house where we all showered and changed, we took everyone out to dinner at Silver Springs House.  The food was delicious, but we were all tired.  I had intended to write up a post last night, but once we got back to the house, it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to watch some of the Olympics before crashing into bed.

Today was more low key.  We slept in a bit and got to the house a few minutes after Landon's folks.  The boys started in the garage, working to remove the rest of the drywall, while I picked up the weeds from yesterday's weed pulling festival and then worked on cleaning up a few of the other beds.  I finished the bed next the the front of the house under the front windows before deciding to tackle the small bed around the mailbox.  I was hard at work there when Alan came running out of the garage.  He had found a bee hive between our stone and the fiberboard.  The bees were upset at having their house destroyed, so they chased him out of the garage into the yard.  After he got stung a couple of time in the yard, we both retreated into the house via the back door (using a ladder) since the garage and front door were now swarmed by bees.

Alan ready to do battle with the bees.

Since finishing the yard work was now out of the question, I went to work removing nails from the trim taken down the day before (since we're planning on saving it to use in the basement later).  The men started work removing the rest of the master bathroom, while Valerie (Landon's Mom) worked on more staples.  The two vanities were removed and placed in the master bedroom, and then the drywall between the "vanity room" and the master bath proper was taken out.  Landon also removed the walls and shelves from the master closet.

My master bedroom.  Complete with vanities.  It's a good look.

The room formerly known as the master closet.  Empty.  

Landon and Alan finishing up the vanity removal.

The empty master bath.  All the subfloor in here has to be replaced.
Right now it's nearly an elevator to the basement.

Later, I got into the act a bit and got my first taste of removing some drywall.   While I didn't get to smash it with a sledge hammer like you see on so many of the tv shows, I still found it very fulfilling taking down some walls.  It was certainly more fun that pulling up staples.  All too soon, however, it was time for me to head back to Lexington so I could finish out my last two days of work.  I'll be back on Wednesday, but for now, I'm back in Kentucky (and ready for some sleep).

The Devil is in the Details

Details, details, details......

So yesterday I told you all about how we bought the house, but I forgot to tell you about the house we bought.  And apparently people are interested in that kind of stuff.  Who knew?

Anyway, onto the details.  As you might have guessed from my last post, it's a ranch with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a family room, and a wood burning fireplace.  It totals 2,088 sqft with a full, unfinished basement.   If you're keeping score at home, that means there is a total of 4,176 sqft of space in this house.  It's huge!  It's also old.  And unkempt.  It needs work.  Let's begin with the exterior.

The exterior of the house is stone and cedar, which, while not my taste, is nice.  Although the cedar needs some work do to years of neglect.  We're unsure right now if we can save it or if we'll have to replace it going forward.  The house sits on about a 1/2 acre of land with a good sized front yard and an interesting backyard.  The backyard slopes up, away from the house.  Next to the house is a nice deck and a not so nice above ground pool.  The pool sits literally 3 feet away from the side of the house.  You can step out of the bedroom window into the pool.  It's not a feature we like.  The pool will be coming down.  We're also going to have to take down and rebuild the deck since it is rotting off the house.  But it will be replaced.  Oh yes, and there is a hot tub.  It works and is staying.

Just past the pool and deck, the yard turns into a bit of a forrest.  It's grown up with trees and weeds and honeysuckle.  There is, however, a path that leads up the hill.  If you follow the path far enough it leads you to.....A Secret Garden!  Or really, just a flat grassy patch at the crest of the hill.  I have no idea why they did the yard that way, but at least we have a flat sunny place for a garden.

When you come into the house, there is a foyer with a coat closet (yay!), a door to the garage, and entrances to the formal living room and the hallway.  I love that you don't walk right into a room.  It feel nice to have an actual entryway.

The formal living room.  The photo only shows about half the room.
Also, no overhead lighting is a theme for this house.

The dining room.  I have no idea why there is a ceiling fan in the dining room.
It's one of only two fans in the house.

There's a huge formal living room on the front of the house which connects to a huge formal dining room.  We aren't sure yet if we are going to try and open up this space or not.  I like the idea of having a formal dining room.  And, while we won't use the formal living room as a living room, I would make a great library or, eventually, a study or playroom.

The Family Room.  Love the vaulted ceilings.  Hate the blue color.

On the back of the house is a large family room with a vaulted ceiling.  It has doors leading out to the deck and a fireplace on the outside wall.  It's a good sized room, but it's sort of long and narrow so we're a bit at a loss as to how to arrange the furniture.  I'm hoping our designer friend Ann can help with that.  The doors in here will have to be replaced.  They are in bad shape and the set up is odd and takes up a good amount of floor space.  We're hoping to put in a giant (92") sliding glass door to let in light and not use floor space.

The doors that are going to be replaced.  And the hot tub which is not.

The kitchen sits between the family room and the dining room.  You can only access it by going through either the family room or the living room and dining room.  And, it's tiny.  For a house this big, the kitchen seems so small.

This is our entire kitchen.  There is only about 3' of counter space.
Obviously we are redoing this.  I can't cook in here.

The appliances are old.  Like original to the house old.  We know we are going to replace them with nice stainless steel ones.  And we are gong to try and open the kitchen to the rest of the house some.  And add some cabinets/counters.  And add a pantry.  Really, we are going to redo the entire kitchen.  Except for the plant shelf/window.  We are keeping that.  It's fun and I like it.

The only part of the kitchen we're keeping.

Towards the other end of the house is a long hallway with doorways to the three extra bedrooms along the back of the house, the guest bathroom, the basement stairway, and the master bedroom.  There is also a linen closet at the end of the hallway.  The three extra bedrooms are all a good size with good sized closets, although the smallest one's closet is currently housing the washer/dryer in an illegal and unsightly setup.  That room will eventually be my craft room/ office/study area.  I'm excited about that.  A wall full of yarn!

The guest bathroom, complete with stripper lights.

The guest bath is small but functional with a good amount of vanity space.  We're not going to be doing much in here.  Some paint and a new light fixture.  Maybe the easiest room in the house after the two back bedrooms.

The master bedroom is very large but with only one window which is totally off center in the room.  That's going to drive me nuts, but we'll deal with it.  It has a on-suite bathroom which has one of the more odd setups of anyone we looked at.  There is an alcove off the bedroom which houses a vanity and sink, and then you enter into the bathroom proper with a shower, toilet, and another vanity.  The closet also comes off the weird alcove.  We're pretty sure at this point we are going to enclose it all, expand the bathroom into the closet, and put in a tub as well as a new shower and double vanities.  I can't show you any pictures of the master bathroom since I'm not allowed to look at photos of the master bathroom.  Mainly because the one sink is so nasty that my husband is afraid that if I see it again I might not ever set foot in the house.  Yes, it's that bad.  But we're ripping it all out, so it's okay.

The basement, as I said before, is totally unfinished.  And let me tell you, 2,088 sqft of space looks huge when it's only broken up by a few posts.  We plan to finish it out one day, but that will have to wait.  For now we have enough to do on the main floor to keep us busy.

So, that's the house.  We plan to have more photos soon (as these were taken when we saw the house for the second time--all that junk is not ours!).  And stay tuned for more information that you've probably ever wanted to know about what we decided to do with each room and how we do it.  I have a feeling things could get very interesting.  Adios!

Day 1--Buzzing, Dust, & Sludge

Yesterday was a long day. I started the day like normal, going to work, but the big event was closing on the house that we’ve had under contract for 3 months. We inspected the house and wrapped up closing around 4pm. Got changed from my dress clothes into work clothes and headed straight to the house to get the renovation process (aka demolition) started.

 Termites were found in the dirt around the house during our inspection but none in the house or deck. So, the first step was to remove all dirt and mulch that was above the top of the foundation to decrease the odds of getting an infestation. I moved some dirt around and about 5 shovels in, I managed to find a yellow jacket nest, cutting that project a little short. I guess you might consider me lucky to get away with only 4 stings, but they are still pretty painful and itchy today even with antihistamine.

 After that drama I decided to do something inside to avoid the angry yellow jacket swarm. On the floors we were "blessed" with original 1979 carpet that absolutely had to go, all 2000sqft of it. So I spent most of the evening cutting and pulling up the carpet (gloves and a mask were required). I managed to get about 75% of the carpet ready for the dumpster that is being delivered today. During the removal of the carpet I found a fully functional HVAC vent that was under the carpet and padding but still trying it’s hardest to help cool the house. I liberated the vent which should at least help with the efficiency of the A/C.

 While I was working on the carpet, my Dad cleaned out the gutters as there was so much gunk and sludge that they actually had saplings growing up to a foot tall through the gutter guard. The gutters were this bad pretty much all around the house which is not good for water flow away from the house! And we want to have a dry basement!

The other task that was started and will take a lot of time was draining the 13ft x 26ft above ground swamp (aka pool) that is way too close to the house. We poked a few holes in the the bottom of the liner and did some controlled pumping of the water out as to not flood any of our neighbors. With any luck we’ll have the pool drained and ready for dis-assembly this weekend. After about 5hrs of working we called it quits for the night. A lot accomplished and a really good start.
 --Landon

 Failure of the Day: Yellow jacket attack! Ouch!
 Find of the Day: A functional vent under the carpet and padding

We Bought a House! (Sort of)

We bought a house!  Finally!  In Ohio!

Now, you might be asking yourself how two kids that have spent their entire lives living across the rive in Kentucky found their way to purchasing a home in Cincinnati?  Or why it took the better part of 3 months to finally close?  Or why I am packing but not moving any time soon?  To fully understand the joy (and relief) in those statements, you need to understand the long and winding journey that led up to this point.

This saga began a little over a year ago when, like so many couples these days, Landon and I found ourselves unemployed and looking for work.  At the time we were both living in Lexington, Kentucky and had been for some time.  We met in Lexington.  We had our first date in Lexington.  We assumed we'd get married and buy our first house in Lexington.  The universe, however, had other plans.  As anyone who has ever been unemployed can tell you, sometimes you have to go where the jobs are.  For Landon, that meant Cincinnati (which was a great deal closer than Dallas, which was the other option at the time).  For me, that meant staying right here in Lexington.

While a long distance relationship wasn't what either of us wanted, we didn't have much choice at the time as he had no job opportunities here and I was striking out up there.  So we settled in to a new life of only seeing each other on weekends and tried to make do.  Eventually it was decided that, since I wasn't having much luck finding work in the Queen City, I would go ahead and apply to graduate school in Cincinnati to start in the fall of 2012.

Now, first let me say that I had been toying with the idea of going back to school for several years--well before I met Landon.  My original plan was to go back part time while still working full time at the University here meaning they would pay for me to take two classes a semester.  Doing things that way would have meant that in about 5 years I could have gotten my Masters degree without paying a dime.  That plan, however, went out the window the moment I got laid off from the University.

The new plan was for me to apply to the University of Cincinnati instead and to go to school full time instead of part time.  This would be a shorter course--2 years instead of 5--but a more expensive one.  But, it would put us back in the same city.

Once that was decided, Landon (who had been living in his parents' basement to save some money) began to do some serious house hunting.  The hope was that we would be able to find something this spring and then have the summer to get it fixed up a bit (since we knew our budget would most likely put us in a "fixer-upper") before I moved up in the fall to start school.  As it is now July 26th and we only closed on the house yesterday, you can judge for yourself how well that plan worked out.

I won't bore you with the details of our house hunt.  Let's just suffice it to say that, like any couple, we had some difference of opinion on what we wanted and/or liked.  We looked at approximately 1 million photos of houses online (give or take a few hundred thousand).  We did drive-bys.  We spent a couple of days seeing the insides of houses.  And finally, we found a winner.

I would like to say that it was love at first sight for me.  Really, I'd like to say that it was love at second sight.  But really, my first impression was of dirt and old and eww.  I did recognize that it had huge rooms.  And an okay yard.  But mostly I was ready to leave.   Landon however, fell in love.  He saw the "potential."  I saw a huge pile of work.  In the end, he won me over and we made an offer.

Okay, I need to back up again for a second.  We didn't really make an offer.  Landon's parents made the offer (in cash) with the plan that we would buy the house from them later.  The details of why we did it this way are messy and boring, but just know that we though making a cash offer would be the best thing and, since we didn't have the cash, they made the offer for us.  Then we waited.  And waited.  And waited.

In the meantime I got accepted to graduate school and got my financial aid package.  It didn't cove all of my out of state tuition.  Now we had another choice to make.  We were engaged by now, with a wedding date set for May of 2013.  But the only way for me to be considered an in state student was for us to get married NOW.  So we did.  We had a small ceremony with just our immediate family followed by a back yard bar-b-que where we formally asked our best friends to be our wedding party for the next May.  It was perfect.  And now we were husband and wife.

We also found out that day that our offer on the house had been accepted and, pending the inspection, we could close.  Then we found out that the seller was out of the state for a month.  And that she needed almost another month to get packed and move.  We'd been under contract on the house for more than a month at this point, so we were disappointed that it would take that long.  But we went ahead.

Yesterday, three months after we made an offer on the house, we finally closed.  For those of you keeping score at home, that gives us a scant week before I'm due to move up.  Obviously, with the amount of work we'll be doing, we aren't moving in any time soon.  Landon says two months.  I think he's underestimating, but only time will tell.

Am I nervous about moving to an entirely new state, starting school, doing a complete remodel on a house, all while living in my In-laws' basement?  Of course I am, but I figured writing about it might help.  And I'm sure everyone will want to see what happens with the house.  So here you go.  Stay tuned for the adventures of a Bluegrass girl (and boy) as they figure out what the heck they are doing in the Buckeye state.