Resurfacing

Wow, nothing like moving from a big house, where I'd lived for the last 40+ years, to a much smaller house, to really upend a life! I wouldn't say I'm the classic kind of hoarder--you really won't see me profiled on one of those Hoarders TV shows just yet. But I am a collector, and a sentimentalist, as well as a quilter (fabric stash) and knitter (yarn stash) so let's just say, I have a lot of stuff!

Make that a LOT of "stuff." Luckily in all my collecting, the best things I've collected have been my wonderful family. Not just the people I gave birth to, either--they've all done a great job of picking spouses who are pretty damn great too! Amazing how they pulled together to get Good Old Mom out of the old homestead and into the new, more streamlined easier-to-navigate (no stairs!) place.

Oh, you'd like to see what it's looking like? Okay, here's a bit of a virtual tour. Bear in mind that there are a whole lot of unpacked boxes in these pictures, and a whole garage full of more "stuff" that needs to be gone through. Books, for instance. Don't be deceived by pictures showing a little room on one shelf or two--there are still books double-stacked on other shelves.

Kitchen

 So far I've been able to fit most of the "necessities" into the kitchen. It does help that a lot of kitchen stuff is consumables--cleaning supplies, food, coffee fixings--so as I work my way through them it will ease up on the storage situation.

I do miss the big pantry at the old house. And the slide-out drawers for the lower cabinets. So far, the stove and microwave are performing well. The dishwasher is on sufferance. I'll give it a fair trial, though when I made soup last week it took two loads to do what I used to do in one.

View from the kitchen window

Wide hallway = library wall

Fireplace wall

Living room--knitting nook

 The kitchen window looks out on the street and beyond to the hills and the freeway. The trees in the yards across the street do a great job of visually shielding the freeway, and inside the house there's very little noise.

I was hoping to hang the stained-glass watermelon in the window, but it's one of those vinyl all in one units and there's nothing to hang from. For now it's propped up there.

Dining area.

Indoor laundry. No steps. Nirvana!

Bedroom, with wall o' mirror and cat

Nucleus of the sewing area.

Desk and bookcase.

These three bookcases were in the back room at the old house but here there's room to line them up along the wall in the hallway. I do need to go through them (again!) and see if I can cull the collection one more time.

But that's a project for another day, or maybe for next year.

The tall bookcases that held my knitting and quilting books are in the new "office." Oddly enough, they are overflowing, and yet there was space on them in the old place. Hmmm....

Shyla has found her nest.

Living room and fireplace. The "thing" with the metal shelves is the TV stand/entertainment center. It's working all right although the placement here means that the shelving on one side is inaccessible so no room for CDs.

Might be shopping for a replacement but that's way down the road. For now it functions the way it's supposed to: holds the TV, Dish box, and DVD player.



My furniture fits just fine--the smaller scale of these pieces works in the room.  My eucalyptus
lamp works well for knitting light.












Almost sold the dining room table and chairs with the house, but now I'm glad I didn't. They fit just fine here.

We wondered about the placement of the light fixture because there's no room to center a table under it. Aha--it's centered with the kitchen window. If you stand directly in front of the window from outside, the light is centered. Odd but I guess it works.



Thanks to Meg and Marcia, the washer and dryer look practically new! I love having them in the house. So much more pleasant to do laundry now that I don't have to go down those steps to the dark dank garage!

I know, I should have had this arrangement all along. It would have been wonderful back in the days of three-in-diapers  (when all we had to choose from was cloth or cloth).

Doesn't stop me from appreciating it now!



I chose the smaller of the two bedrooms for my sleeping room. It's got more room that I had thought at first, so now I have two dressers and my armoire in it along with my bed. It's on the darker side of the house so it doesn't get the full blast of the morning sun. That's a mixed blessing for someone like me who's a slug in the mornings.

You can't see all the boxes still in here. There's a huge "mountain" that I need to get over--most of them are filled with memorabilia and things of little intrinsic worth but tons of sentiment.tic


The larger bedroom will make a great workroom. For now it's been dubbed "The Office" but we'll see if that sticks. That's my sewing machine cabinet setup starting there--the serger unit is stuck under the main piece, probably because both of their wheels have sunk into the carpet. Until I can get it freed I can't really set up the machines.

To the left of the rocker but out of the picture are the two tall black and white bookcases. The wall is a little too short to hold the CD rack as well so it's in limbo right now.


Here's the other side of the room. The left corner shows the machines in their boxes/carry cases and some of the files that haven't found a home yet.

The bookcase is put together from the two lawyers' bookcases I was trying so hard to sell. Ferdi helped me pick the better of the two bases and top units, and then stacked up the bookshelf sections. Out in the garage for now are the two lateral file sections and the other top and base.

I may decide to use them as long term filing space, but that's in the future.

HiHi has adjusted pretty well to the move. He's a little, okay a lot, clingier and sticks closer to me than he used to, but that's to be expected when he spent so much time at the vet's being boarded.

Shyla on the other hand is not nearly so shy. She has found herself a corner of the closet where she feels safe but she's not spooky about it. I go in to visit and pet her several times a day and I know she's coming out and eating, so I think it's just going to be a matter of time before she's coming out as much as she did before. Doesn't help that there's only one bed here--she and HiHi don't share very well!

So there you have it, the preliminary view of the new place. I deliberately didn't take a picture of the garage yet, nor the storage unit, but they are definitely on the agenda to be done ASAP. Seems among the little things the seller omitted to tell me is that there's a requirement in the CC&Rs that I have to park in the garage. Yeah. I think I'll be able to do it, but it's going to take some work to get there.

I can hardly wait to get back to quilting! At least I've been able to pick up my knitting again.