I'll try to do a quick recap of the first 3 weeks to get us up to today with men climbing in my trees.
Dec 11 KEYS YAY! First night at the new house, we slept on a mattress on the floor in the master bedroom, it was awesome.
Dec 12 Big move. We've got a 17 ft truck, we've got a few strong 20 year olds and where ready to go. Unfortunately, everything took twice as long as we anticipated.
Dec 13 We woke up early to unload the big truck and return it although we were no where near done but out of man power. It was a flash flood type rain storm. As hubs and I were off loading the last piece, the heaviest of all, the most delicate, my dresser and we heard a terrible crash. We thought little of it, we live in the forest, branches will break. One we got in the house I could see some branches on the outside deck. Ha ha, we had a good laugh, hey look, stuff to make a wreath. Hubs went out back to throw the branches off the deck when I looked up at out 2 skylights in the living room. One now looked like it had cracked ice on it. I thought, how bizarre, it's not THAT cold. Then I realized it was the Plexiglas outer covering to one of the skylights that had been broken by that branch we laughed about. No big deal. We have money set aside for just these things, we have contractors in the family; we will have this fixed in no time...right? Well, apparently not. As neighbors came over to introduce themselves and we told them our story, we found out that it is really common, and that you can't get it fixed until it dries out in like...SPRING! Ack. I had to quickly come to terms with being OK with a blue tarp on my roof. 2 days in the mountains and were already tarping it. It could have been a lot worse and we were told by a few that it was a good omen. If the house didn't want us, the branch would have come through and caused a lot of damage. Ok, I'll take that.
Dec 14...VISITORS yes already, but welcomed as they brought lots and lots of food.
Dec 15 - now have really been a blur. We had comcast out of cable, phone and internet but they only could give us internet and phone. I'll live with netflix, downloads etc. A few days into the house we realized the sellers left us with very little propane in the tank. Propane runs the water heater, forced air heater, stove, and maybe the dryer, not sure. Kind of important in the winter up here. Not to mention the fireplace in the front room was surrounded by boxes so we couldn't fire her up and the one in the living room seemed to have a colony of spiders inside and was of questionable safety. For whatever reason, it took over a week to get propane delivered from the time I contacted them. Which means we really had to conserve on everything we had to keep warm. That was a tad miserable. I felt cold for several days constantly. We have had a few guests up for the day and a few brave enough to spend the night not knowing what the sleeping situation would be yet. January 2nd brought new couches in the front room and living room as well as a visit from the chimney sweep. The sweeps visit was not a happy one. He is not comfortable with the insert installed in the front room and 100% certain the potbelly in the family room has to be replaced from bottom to tipy top. An initial estimate of $5,500-$6,000, just for the potbelly. Hubs was a little put off by the guy and headed to Google to see what he could learn about the insert in the front room. Hubs is certain that the sweep was just over worked and grumpy and didn't want to deal with it. It's not all that big of a deal but as the sweep mentioned more than once, we have a heater for heat and a lot of his clients don't, they only have fireplaces so we are low on the list. After a moment of WHAT THE FUCK, I decided the only solution at the moment was a space heater. Problem temporarily solved for the living room, front room is fine as is.
We're now working on setting up the office, cleaning the basement, organizing the basement, creating work spaces and eventually once that is clean I want to strip the kitchen cabinets and refinish them.
Tree guys are pretty brave, strong, crazy guys.... and fun to watch! In light of the branch we call skycrasher, we have hired arborists to limb the trees and take down the dead, heavy or compromised branches safely. They have been here 4 hours already and keep hoping up to the top of those trees, tying off limbs, sawing them off, slowly lowering them down and then hauling them to the chipper. I can only imagine how many calories those dudes burn! Enough for today, more mountain madness tomorrow!
