Some More Fun Before and After Photos...

Before

After

Before

After

This weekend marked two weeks since move-in day, and the painting continues. I had to go into work on Saturday, and was very pleasantly surprised when I got home afterward to find a beautiful harvest brown wall in the stairwell going up to our second floor! We hadn't been sure how we were going to reach that high over the stairs, but our friend Brian, from Atlanta, Julie, and Loren found a creative way to make it work.

While the painting crew finished work on the stairs, I spent time outside, clearing out our sad-looking flowerbeds along the driveway.

Before- Flowerbeds

After- Flowerbeds

In the bed I cleaned out behind the deck, I planted some fun zinnias that we picked out at the farmer's market Saturday morning.

 The garden is growing--even though nothing is producing yet, nothing has actually died!

In addition, Loren and I are continuing to organize and get things put in their place.

This afternoon we put up our new modular bar and finished touching up trim on the stairway. We also made a trip out to Sherwin-Williams to buy paint for the garage, which we decided we could paint ourselves.

Moving day has arrived and gone, and we transferred nearly everything into our new home last weekend! Loren happens to be an all-star at driving 24-foot trucks. I just stand and watch in awe has he deftly maneuvers such bulk, backing into driveways, over curbs, and between bushes. 

Luckily, several years ago when carrying mattresses down a narrow fire escape from Loren's Wicker Park apartment, we saw the wisdom (and sanity-saving logic) of hiring moving men, vowing to do so from that point forward. After pricing people out, we used Tetris Movers both this move and last summer, at least to help carry our solid mahogany furniture up and down stairs, and we've been very happy with their work. 

 

The weather couldn't have been more perfect for a summer-time move, complete with sunshine and a light breeze. Since Memorial Day was hot and humid, and we're still without air conditioning, we had a few concerns about how things would go.

We were VERY lucky to have a great crew helping...both my mom and Loren's mom, and Julie, Loren's sister. My mom drove up from Effingham and scrubbed out the entire house while I was at work all day Thursday, then helped me transfer and unpack our whole kitchen Friday afternoon (Loren did a great job with the glassware). Loren's mom packed and brought lunch for us all to eat on Saturday--they both carried boxes and boxes and boxes with unending energy. What would we ever do without our moms?

We also had several friends stop by to see the house and help out--both big and smaller helpers!

We still have lots of unpacking and organizing, rearranging, searching--and hopefully finding--of things before we know where everything is around the Madden home in Ann Arbor. Even with a slight degree of disheveled chaos, I am absolutely amazed at how our house has been transformed. The painting continues with many more projects yet to be done, but things are going well : )

Today is moving day! We pick the truck up in an hour and the moving men will be here shortly after that for our very heavy furniture. I've been able to do a couple of car loads each day, and a big thank you goes out to Julie and my mom who helped for many hours yesterday afternoon!

A few photos of the outside of our house are below...

The final paint job--Matt Lathrop and his crew did a great job. The gables are a color called "golden gate."

I was so excited the first day I saw the external paint up that I walked right by our beautiful rose bushes--suddenly in bloom for the first time--to the left of our front door. We'd taken them down from the lattice work so that could be painted.

Bright pink!

We borrowed Loren's parents' mantis and tilled the garden last weekend. 

This is before the planting happened, but so far we have tomato and jalapeno plants, in addition to seeds out for corn, lettuce, green beans, and cucumbers. 

After a weekend away to celebrate a lovely wedding and have a Notre Dame roomie reunion, the outside of our house is transformed! The paint had been scraped and the lower blue was started when I left early last Thursday morning, and today I was very happy to see how things are coming along. The shudders have yet to go up--they'll be white to match the trim--and we'll soon have "golden gate" accents. Overall, though, the external paint is well on its way.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before/During

After

When I stopped by after work today to check out progress, another neighbor came up to introduce himself. So nice! When I stopped by on the way to work this morning to look at things (our new house is on the way to my office and our current house so I get lots of sneak peaks), I got an update from our painter, and he expects to be finished up on Wednesday.

This afternoon I also got an update on the floors, and they should be ready to go on Thursday--a day or two earlier than we expected. Loren and I decided to go with a high quality Swiss product and a four-coat system, which takes several days to go on, after the sanding is done. I've been very happy with the service we've received from Aaron Hubbard with Father & Sons...let me know if you're looking for someone very professional with a great amount of knowledge if you're hoping to refinish floors soon in the AA area. 

The excitement of today's Friday afternoon involved learning about our boiler--what more could someone want? Really? Well...the obvious answer is, of course, two boilers! Our lovely home has two boilers ('87 and '93) because when it was a duplex, the first and second floor each had a separate thermostat...and its very own boiler.





Loren and I are led to believe that a surprising number of buildings in Ann Arbor have steam heat systems--most likely campus represents a sizeable chunk, but at least a couple of our new neighbors have steam or hot water heat. After 2.5 hours with Lee, our plumber/boiler expert, I have a somewhat clearer concept of what responsible boiler maintenance means. It seems to be lifting a lever, every few weeks, to flush out the built up sludge, rust, and minerals that have flowed back down through our network of pipes. The big take-away for me was to not "shock" the system by manually allowing too much cold water to enter a hot system.

When Lee first looked at our second floor boiler, he saw the darker brown discoloration on the photo below and to the right. The dark color toward the left of the boiler is bad news--Lee said we may eventually have to replace that boiler. I have learned that boilers are naturally ugly and sludgy and generally look rather corroded (which is why they require regular cleaning/releasing of sludge). When cast iron looks that bad, though, it's not a good thing. 

We wanted to observe the boilers being cleaned (and ask a lot of questions) in order to learn as much as we could about how to treat our steam system with love and care. We're also reading a great book called We Got Steam Heat: A Homeowner's Guide to Peaceful Coexistence, a high recommendation from us if you're interested in learning about steam heat.
   

 Even if the inside of our boilers aren't so very pretty, the outside of our home is starting to feel verdant and lovely. It's been fun to see our yard come alive as we discover what flowers and plants we have waiting for us as we transition into late spring. Right now our street feels lush and dark green and beautiful. Stripping the external paint should start tomorrow so new paint can go on early next week. After the ladders and painting crew have gone away, we'll put more plants out in our front bed.

Our beautiful house in late spring.