Transplanting a Seattleite

I’ve been trying to get the two metal and wood, lightweight shelving units that I’ve had for decades and currently (well, until recently) lived in my office, cleared off so they can move to future office. I was doing well at getting and keeping one cleared off, but I had despaired of clearing the other especially since I’m going to be sending my desk on as well. I wasn’t sure when the niblings’ desks would arrive, so I also ordered a couple folding tables that are adjustable height. Well, one desk is here (and the chair for the other nibling, go figure), so I’m going to snag one of the folding tables and use it for my temporary desk in my current home.

I had a half a can of porter, and a little lightbulb went off in my head. Because I’ve been aggressively decluttering (you wouldn’t think that after so many rounds of decluttering there would still be that much more to get rid of), there was some empty space on bookshelves in the living room (IKR?!?). And I realized I could take the short bookcase by my chair in the living room up to my office, and clear off the shelving units and stage them in T.’s old room. And indeed, it worked perfectly! I put down some cloth to protect the shelves from the things I was storing on them (hammer, among other things; look, I wind up using it a lot and hate to go down to the basement to find one). I did a little back and forth with other surfaces, but it’s now both attractive and functional, altho for unclear reasons I’m unable to convince the printer plug to go back into its outlet. I’ll ask R. to help out when he gets home later.

And the remaining books that were on the dresser are now on a bookshelf again. Woot! I might even be able to clear out the stuff in the crate of lego instructions.

The Sprague and Carleton table wound up in the living room where the bookcase was; it looks very nice and fits the space better. Also, it’s no longer in the way in the eat in kitchen. Just a huge win all around.

I took a bag of my clothing to the clothing bins. I loaded up two boxes and another bag of clothes (mostly from R) and drove over to Savers. The binders are now genuinely gone! I also cleared out a holiday box, and reduced the volume of martial arts stuff I have left.

I found a box of coupe glasses. I think I packed three of these when I packed the sideboard? I found one in a kitchen cupboard (the box was missing 4). I’m planning on donating this, but may hold out to make sure the other ones aren’t somewhere in the bar or kitchen or whatever. ETA: I found two more, so now only missing one.

I am going through really old kids school stuff, and pitching most of it. Altho, like the travel binders, going through the memories is kind of fun.

R. is packing stuff up, which is really nice. I think he’s cleared out his dresser.

ETA: the new Revivalists album, Get It Honest, is really really great

One of the weirdest projects on the house has been the closets. There are a lot, but also, not nearly as many or as big as there should be for a house of this size. And then we lost a ton of them to HVAC equipment. The architect is a member of a firm that also has members who do millwork, and they were supposed to do all the cabinetry, but I got so mad at the architect that I went through everyone that was supposed to be done by his firm which wasn’t directly his work (so, all the millwork, but also closet installs) and yanked it out. The only things that survived were the ceiling in R.’s room (which is gorgeous, and phenomenally expensive) and the treads and graspable railing on the main stair. The treads took forever. They asked for a lot more money because they didn’t build any kind of inflation escalator into their contract, and we gave it to them and THEN they told us the railing probably isn’t going to be ready for the CO in time. And they have no alternate plan to get us to CO, so the builder has to devise an alternative. We’re all pretty frosty about it right now, but I’m mostly prepared to forgive them if it’s only a little late, and it is completely gorgeous in every way. (Obviously, I will tell the story forever. Because.)

We hired someone else to do the millwork in the kitchens and the bar and those have turned out quite well, which is not a surprise because that is who the builder normally subs to do high end residential kitchens, and for the most part, my kitchens are not that high end (the bar is a little ridiculous, but even that is not especially complex). (The Grothouse Anvil countertop showed up on Friday and I saw a picture and it is not disappointing. It’s on a par with the cost of R.’s ceiling, and I think it’s more bang for the buck, but R. may feel differently.)

But we’re still missing all that millwork in closets, including in a walk in and a walk _through_ closet, but also a bunch of reach ins and linen closets and so forth. After dithering forever about when and how to place an order with Lundia, I ultimately decided that the metal thing I bought when I switched from two laundry machines to the GE all in one was sooooo awesome that I’d just do the closets in metal. Since I have no idea which of these things is going to be good and what is going to disappoint, I’m trying a variety of brands and sources (Amazon including Amazon basics, Songmics and a third party seller of Nexel, Webstaurant’s house brand Regency Spec Line solid stainless steel shelving etc.). I may yet have to resort to Elfa in the niblings’ linen closet, but I’ve got a ton of other things more or less planned out. Despite the variety in sourcing, there’s quite a lot of continuity in style (even across the wire vs solid shelving) and in any event it’s mostly either in private spaces or in a closet.

It’s funny that after months of agonizing over this and being unable to commit to anything and then GLAD I hadn’t ordered anything as I lost so many spaces, and other spaces had all kinds of issues, I’m just rattling through orders without a lot of drama. We’ll see how I feel when all those boxes arrive.

I met BW for social purposes and we went for a delightful walk. We had lunch at Exchange St Bistro, and I ordered the fish and chips, which led to a flurry of discussions about whether or not it was safe for me (foreshadowing). I wound up having it baked with fries and it tasted great and went down just fine. (See tomorrow’s entry for Developments). I drank water, since I’d already had a lot of tea.

BW shared a variety of stories, and she’s really been going through it for a while now, which is a bummer, but I feel honored that she shared the stories with me, and I did what I could to validate her perceptions (cause I think they are largely accurate) and NOT invalidate her feelings while also trying to open up some space for her to consider alternative options. She’s really worried about someone else, and I think it’s leading her into a less than great for her dynamic, and obviously I want all good things for her. She’s smart and she totally gets it, and I honestly trust her judgment over mine in this type of thing. That’s all on the polycule side — the rest of the stories were really sad and it’s so hard to even imagine what her family has been dealing with this past year. It’s entirely too familiar material from my younger years and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I walked with M., and there was some chance of t-storms but they hadn’t started when we left. I commented as long as they didn’t start when we were halfway around the block we’d be fine, and of course I should listen to myself when I say shit like that because that’s exactly what happened and we got bucketed on.

My dresser is now empty, altho I am a little dissatisfied with my decluttering / packing — I haven’t taped the boxes so I think I’m going to be going in and donating a whole bunch of stuff.

A. didn’t get into the shower until 10, but we still got her into bed a little after 1 am, which is a freaking miracle. Of focus and hard work. Also, R. bought me Drayman’s Porter, which is probably why I even tried. At least it worked!

Today, B and I produced a list of non-furniture items that a house is expected to have / this house needs to have more or less at the beginning. It was long, and producing it meant that is no longer cluttering up my brain which is amazing and converts it into a list of Things to Acquire and Prepare to Move.

We also took trash bags into my closet and my dresser, and I filled 2 and a half of them. She relieved me of a couple of items, which made me feel really good about the whole thing. It also means that it’s easier to find an empty hangar, easier to hang something up, and the drawers all open and close much more readily now.

Finally, we went through the shelf o’ travel binders on the 3rd floor. Woot! I have a bit more to do there, but I got rid of about 80% of the volume, and I can get rid of a lot of the rest by tracking down my archival photo box and putting the photos in there, should I choose to do so.

R. and I had dinner at Great Road Kitchen. The ginger marg is amazing; I had two. I listed the Lounge Light, and it will be picked up in the morning. Someone else is picking up a bunch of the green plastic baskets. I’m going into Lexington to buy a teak shower bench lightly used for $50. Fingers crossed.

I did a meeting with LB from Glass Art, and I’m super optimistic that the niblings’ shower is going to turn out to be absolutely amazing.

I had a belated phone call with KC which was a delight.

I did FF with Priestess and the S’s, who are out having a great 4th weekend on one of the islands in Puget Sound. Delightful!

R. installed the fan in the dining room. It’s really nice!

He’s seemed like he was having some unarticulated feelings about what B and I have been up to. I’ve been super careful not to nag at him about participating in the move prep and packing and also not to be messing with his stuff. I asked him if he could tell me what he was feeling, and he said basically that he always waits until it’s slightly too late for big tasks and then just does them, and he’s really uncomfortable with watching how fast I am moving (with B’s able assistance), even though he recognizes that what I’m doing is important and needs to be done and all that. Which is quite a lot of forthright self-insight!

I had not updated my plan at Verizon for … a long time. I mean, other than to figure out how to return the cable box that T. decided he no longer wanted which was probably a year ago now.

I’ve had some discussions with various folks in the family about whether we could get rid of the “land line” (it’s not, it’s verizon voip) and whether we could get rid of our TV plan. Ultimately, everyone was basically unopposed. So I tried to figure it out on the verizon website, failed, and went to chat. I got rid of the phone and the TV, and have gone from 75 to 500 on the internet, and the whole thing is going to cost at least $100 less. Tech shows up in a couple weeks, and we’ll have to figure out returning the Tivo cable cards, but that’s about the extent of it.

I basically don’t watch TV (I do watch some stuff on Disney Plus occasionally). Years ago, I was still watching some NCIS shows, and TRMS and then Alex Wagner, but of course that’s all different as of this year and I had stopped watching before this year anyway. But R. and A. both wanted to know how they would watch This Old House and America’s Test Kitchen. Worst case scenario, the money I saved on Verizon goes to YouTube TV, and that’s fine. But I did want to do better than that if I could.

Step one: PBS website. You can definitely watch some This Old House there.

Step two: But if you go to the This Old House app, you can watch all of it. And cast it to your TV if your device supports that. Woot! Problem Solved!

And now: ATK, the tougher nut. Amazon Prime has some seasons. Philo may or may not have some seasons for free; I couldn’t get it to work. PBS has some of at least one season. So it seems clear that ATK vibe could be satisfied, somehow. Worst case scenario, a year of access to all of it via the ATK website is about $50. Which is less than YTTV for one month. I’m scoring this a win as well.

I’m trying to decide if I want to tackle the news subscriptions today or not. Probably I will go play my game for a while instead.

A little backstory on this project. I’ve been doing living room planning for the new house. I got to wondering just what exactly we would need in terms of equipment for the TV. I picked out the TV, with a focus on good sound quality, knowing that apps for all the streaming would be built in. But then: DVD? Playstation? XBox? I have no idea! But we don’t have cable at the new house, just internet, so the Tivo is not going there with us. And then I got to wondering why I hadn’t done that here at this house. And so here we are.

On the list of very many things we don’t do around here, xbox and playstation are extremely high, so those may be next on the decluttering list. But first! Game! (Sliding Seas is still fun, altho slower now that I’m past level 200.)

It got well over 90 degrees today. I am grateful for AC / heat pumps. Woot.

Some pickups happened, altho I think I’m being ghosted again on the last one today. No big deal.

I got R. to wrap the lego for EW, and drove it over to the UPS store. Yay!

I finished reading the rest of the Innkeeper series, so I will have to find something else to relax with. Maybe I’ll go reread the Iron Covenant book again. It’s been a little while.

Oh, and N. produced some sketches for the drawers that I want to go through the wall in “Reception” (basically, part of the living room) to the kitchen (into the corner that is hard to get at in the cabinets). I want something that games and whatever can live in, and I don’t want to have to put shelves or a cabinet in there. Sketches looking good!

When I got extremely frosty about the architect a while back, I systematically took all the millwork out of scope that I possibly could, and then I asked the builder to get me a different option for the kitchens and bar. I took that option and I’m so glad I did. The architect’s firm, a design build firm that does lots of millwork, bore the brunt of me being mad at the architect but I actually have had a few interactions with them, and boy, not regretting my choices.

Nevertheless, there are a few closets in this multigenerational house. Specifically, around 15 of which I will want something in, hopefully more than a rod and a shelf above. I picked out Lundia a while back as a good candidate for a get it in quick and maybe keep it forever solution. So today, I started actually trying to specify exactly what components would go in a closet, and then in several other closets. Unfortunately, while this stuff is framed, we haven’t quite gotten to wallboard yet, so I can’t do IRL measurements that are “real”, and that may matter in some of these closets. Also, we are having fancy, hinge switched LED lighting around the inside of the doors of these closets, and I’m really not sure how much space we need between that and whatever is going on in the closet for appropriate diffusion of light to occur. But at least I’ve identified these as specific questions to answer, and I can go about the business of figuring out shelves and/or drawers, hanging space, half height and/or full height hanging space etc. on a closet by closet basis and also identify closets where this system is inappropriate (which is how I got to the number 15, which might otherwise have been a somewhat larger number). (Also, this is a lot of closets, so there’s that.)

It’s been fun. Also! While I have been planning my future storage, I have been decluttering. The 7’ bookcase in the garage (formerly in the upstairs hall, removed so wallboard could be brought into this house, because I genuinely am that insane) was picked up by someone who lives in my town and drives a Passat. I was skeptical, but in 2D terms, he was right. Unfortunately, there was a height limitation that was not fully appreciated (internal to the car — the fold down seats don’t fold super flat, and so while a sheet of plywood would have fit, even a 10” deep bookcase hit a limit), so we couldn’t get it all the way in and had to come up with bungie and towels to get him home. I was impressed tho. Someone else picked up a bunch of the Halloween stuff.

Finally, I asked the google a question about rich people and clutter, and read this thread on reddit. I got a huge kick out of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/InteriorDesign/comments/16gp5wr/rich_people_hiding_clutter/

You probably won’t learn anything from it (I certainly did not!), but I was highly entertained.

And I’ve reached the end of the day feeling better. So there’s that. I can still go most of the way down a flight of stairs step over step (could do a whole flight early in the day). I had a visit with M.

No work here at the house, altho someone stopped by to do some measuring.

I dismantled the rest of Natural History Museum and packaged it up with the Vespa to ship to EW for offspring-in-law. I also took apart Grogu, listed it and it was picked up already. Woot! I listed some other stuff that will be picked up tomorrow. R. is clearing off some of the living room shelves too, so that’s great.

I really want to start Sunflowers, but I’m off to Florence tomorrow, followed by photos with JM, if weather / various health issues permit (her back, my knee).

Super happy about it! I did half of bedroom to main floor as well, but I think any more would be a mistake. No stabby pain, which is lovely.

The stairs keep creaking, making me think someone is coming down them. I think it’s because we opened window since it was cool enough overnight and so the humidity adjustment is wild. Nice, tho, not to have the AC on.

I took the Lego Natural History Museum off the front entry cabinet. I’m probably going to take it apart today (I was in the basement to retrieve boxes of ziplocs for that effort). That was the last lego kit on it (there was a little lego spaceman and a lego monkey, which went into a living room cabinet — the one with the jazz club kit on top of it), so I took the cloth off to run it through the washing machine, and I took the Remy / Ratatouille light up necklace from Disney off with the idea of posting it. But when I went to video it and show the lights, they didn’t work, so I’ve put it aside to open up the battery compartment and see if we can get it working again. I have the Disney snacks necklace upstairs, too, and I’ll probably list that also. It’s really cool that you can buy something awesome, love it for years, but then feel like, okay, I’m done. I still love it, but the draw is gone and something else can enter my life instead, and this can go to someone else who feels that pull.

I also ordered a bunch of Lego yesterday, because I saw the Neuschwanstein kit. *sigh* I think I’ll put that one in the entry hall, and work on clearing out more of my office after the Natural History Museum.

Last night I spent an unholy amount of time trying to figure out how bed + chair + rug would work in future bedroom. R. made the rug + bed decisions in our current bedroom, and at the time I had no idea how fucking rigid people can be about rugs and beds. I discovered that the carpet I really want (a Tibetan, kimono inspired design) is extremely broadly available and can be ordered online, so I’m also thinking about ordering it relatively soon and laying it in the new attic room so I can see how I feel about it in person.

We also had a discussion about the mud cloth curtains in the basement, that I had in the condo. I really love them, and have been trying to figure out where they can go. They are slightly short for the dining room in the new house, but there’s plenty (at least 4 panels lapa size, compatible colors, and the wider width, about 46”) for the 11’ span). After considering and discarding various alternatives, I ordered another, all black panel from etsy, that we plan on cutting up to create a top band with a pocket for a rod. The panels will need to have the crappy tab tops I put on them removed, and the narrow band seams have some gapping which will need repair as well. But in general they are in good shape because I had a liner between them and the window (uniform white appearance to the street rule in the condo).

The only remaining condo-era curtains that I could conceivably repurpose would be the blue and red ones in my current bedroom, and they have had a ton of use over the years and developed some fading, so I probably will not use them as curtains in the new house.

Because folks need to maneuver sheetrock through my second floor hallway (up one stair, around a corner, down a hall, around another corner, up another stair), I am clearing out as much space as possible for them to move. The hall was already mostly clear, except for the almost-a-room alcove on one end, where there was a treadmill and two bookcases. And a TV. We really packed a lot of stuff into our house. I’m really feeling it right now.

Anyway.

I have permission from the kids to dispose of the speakers they built in shop class in high school. I’ve otherwise cleared off one very tall bookcase, and it just needs to head to the basement pending a disposal decision. It may go to friends of ours. Otherwise, it’s either list it on FB Marketplace (maybe) or donate it to HG (probably). It’s risky listing large items like this on FB because I don’t want to deal with someone showing up with an inadequate transportation plan. Altho honestly, I’ve been stupid lucky so far.

The other bookcase is where some of the contents of that first bookcase went. Most of the contents have been listed on FB and have been moving steadily out the door, which is awesome. I’m currently putting a lot of the remaining books in my car to go to the book donation bin, altho a few went upstairs to the bookshelves there, what remains of a once vast physical book library. I hate to do it, but there are some items that I just can’t bring myself to get rid of (in this case, my oz paperbacks from when I was a child).

I’m mostly waiting on a decision from the friends (who have a son who still likes physical books) regarding how many and which bookcases they want for their living room renovation. There’s no particular reason to rush, and it would be incredibly satisfying for my bookcases to go to them. So many of my bookcases over the years have gone to friends’ libraries, and it always makes me so happy and according to the various friends, it’s made them pretty happy, too.

I’ve got a knee that is freaking out about all the stairs I’ve been doing, but other than that, I’m feeling pretty good. Each layer that I excavate and figure out what to do with is that tiny bit more freeing, even when another plastic crate (in this case, containing lego instruction booklets) lands in my office with no clear plan.

ETA: 7’ bookcase is not only emptied, it is in the garage, awaiting a verdict from the B.’s about whether they want 7’, 6’, 5’ or 54” tall bookcases and how many. Once they have a decision, I’ll have to clear off whatever else they’ve picked and get it out the door. I have one empty 54” and an almost empty 5’ case For Reasons, so Murphy’s Law says they will pick the 6’ cases.

ETAYA: Both bookcases (the 7’ and a 5’) are in the garage. I’m starting to disassemble lego and list it on FB marketplace, and while I’m mostly doing small stuff right now (a 12 in 1, some brickheadz, I am groot), it’s clearing out space on top of furniture notably on bookshelves on the main floor that may be getting reshuffled soon. I’ve really taken to heart A.Y.’s advice to heavily declutter as part of the Figure Out Where All the Stuff We Want to Keep Will Go in the New Place. It was tough getting started, but I’m really rolling now, and no one is freaking out (yet).

We’ll see how tomorrow goes. There are a _lot_ of pickups scheduled, and in theory the sheet rock folks are coming, so it’s going to be kinda nuts around here. I have warned most of the people picking up that if the driveway is full they should park around the corner and I’ll walk the item out to them.

Oh, and unrelated, H.S. in Seattle found some voorraadbussen at a thrift shop, and we were puzzling out what the labels meant. Kruitnoot was mysterious, but turns out to be a regional term for nutmeg in the past. Along the way, I reached out to B.L., one of my sources for All Weird Questions Dutch Adjacent, and we chatted for a bit which we have not done in a while. That conversation involved a lot of odd herbs and spices, and as a result of that, I’ve ordered seeds for lovage, chervil and watercress. I’m going to attempt a fall crop and see how it goes.