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We now are excitedly counting the days until we arrive at Maisto Mountain! At this point, our furniture move is still scheduled for June 17-18, and we have a UHaul truck scheduled in between that time to remove our remaining small items from our Avon home. Until then, Sarah remains in Avon to pack, transfer medical records and other appointments from the Indianapolis area to southern Indiana, and wrap up her job responsibilities at the church. Brad remains in southern Indiana checking off items that must be completed before our move-in date at Maisto Mountain. A reception will be held for us at church on June 12 to say farewell to our congregation, and Sarah’s last day at work is June 16, the final day of Vacation Bible School. It’s going to be a busy but fun few weeks ahead!
Since we’ve last written, Brad has sealed Maisto Mountain’s concrete basement flooring, an essential project be done weeks in advance of Sarah permanently arriving. Sarah is an asthmatic and probably wouldn’t have weathered the VOC level of the sealant application too well. The result of the project, however, is a beautiful and easy-to-clean basement floor! Minus, the trim, our Narnia playroom downstairs has been completed, with paint, flooring, and a painted-on chalkboard. My two youngest nieces gave their approval. When my 3-year-old niece saw it, she stretched out her arms as though she had just conquered her kingdom, said, “Thank you, Aunt Sarah. I sleep in here,” and then asked Uncle Brad where the chairs were. Probably needless to note that we purchased both a rug and two stools on a recent trip to IKEA. Nothing tugs at Uncle Brad’s heartstrings like a request from a little niece or grandchild.
We also have picked out door knobs for our home (interior and exterior) and made a recent trip to IKEA to purchase our rugs and a few other items for the interior of the home.
Brad has been extremely busy getting ready for our move. The maple trim and doors for the home arrived, and he has worked on applying sealant to each and every piece. He and my Uncle Jim, my mother’s brother, have hung some of the home’s key doors, and they will begin trim work soon. They also have put down an underlayment in the main flooring area (hallways, laundry, great room, kitchen, etc.) to help make the installment of this area’s flooring easier. Installing the underlayment required thousands of staples, but that hard work is now finished!
Our goal, by move-in date, is to have the master suite, great room, kitchen, and laundry ready for us (perhaps minus some of the hardwood trim work). We are sure some would say that every detail should be complete before move-in, but after a year of the building process, we are just ready for the basics to be complete, move to a single location together, and complete the details together. This way, we’ll be able to enjoy our scenic views in Grandview, put our Avon house on the market, and discuss our detailed projects in person instead via Skype and e-mail. We’re very excited about being back in the same household! And, as most homeowners know, you usually have at least one or two projects on the burner, anyway.
Some people have asked us why this house is taking so long to build, too. I thought we’d take a moment to explain. Brad took this house on as a project in his retirement and is serving both as the general contractor and as an installer/workman on several projects (which saves us money). The home is in a place that has never had electricity, water, or a home registered there. (We suspect a home may have been on the property there once without running water or electricity, but this doesn’t help our building process.) Brad meets individually with each contractor who works in our home, and sometimes he hires people to do the work for him (framing, concrete, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, kitchen cabinet installation, etc.), and sometimes, he chooses to do the work himself (sealing the basement floor, painting, installing the upstairs flooring, installing bathroom cabinetry, etc.). Because this is a custom home, we’ve had literally a world of options for each item going into the home, from the doorknobs to the light fixtures to the bathroom sinks. It’s been a lot of fun for us because we tend to think alike, have similar tastes, and not look back once we’ve made decisions. However, this process, which gives us more options and more freedom to do what we want with our home than a regular subdivision build with a general contractor, just takes much more time.
Despite all the work we have to do, we have not been all work and no play. We had a wonderful Mother’s Day celebration with Sarah’s entire family. We celebrated by eating a favorite local restaurant, The Patio, in Tell City. We also took a few days in mid-May to travel first to northern Illinois to see Brad’s mother and make a quick IKEA stop to pick up items for our new home. Then, we traveled with Brad’s younger brother and his family to Drake University in Iowa and see Brad’s nephew, Kevin, graduate from the university. Kevin was the ring bearer in our wedding and has grown up into such an intelligent and thoughtful young man. We enjoyed being a part of his special day. On the way home from the graduation, we stopped at a beautifully restored Frank Lloyd Wright hotel in Mason City, Iowa, and took in the beautiful architecture.
This blog may not be updated again until after we are official residents of Maisto Mountain, but we are getting close and very excited. Our goal is in sight!