This was another week of busy house activity. We returned to stay at our house (day 22), sleeping in sleeping bags because we don’t have any furniture in the house. We continuously worked on unpacking, installing, and fixing things through the week. The carpet installation took place later in the week (day 25), and once that was done we were able to rapidly get fully moved in. By the end of the week our house was in order and it felt like we were finally home.

While it’s great to get to this point, I don’t think we will be able to truly soak it in for another week. With so much of JC’s family in town we will be running around, having people over, and not really have time to think or reflect on completing this return to CO.

FIRE: Day 22 (7/20)

Today we came back home after a few days at JC’s mom’s house. We were excited to get back to our own place, even if it is disheveled and uncomfortable.

It’s day three post hardwood finish, so we were able to move furniture and appliances in. We bought some ram board to protect the hardwood, and then got the fridge and stove back in place. As the afternoon went on, JC and I both started to notice a weird color affect on our floor, where it looked almost blue or purple. The black appliances seemed to somehow set that off. After kicking it around with AI though, it confirmed some of our other suspicions.

It was only in the afternoon when this started, and with the north facing windows we just get scattered light. That combined with our very light green wall was casting an odd hue on the floor. We’re both feeling a little down about the floor color overall, but there’s no way in hell we’re going to refinish it again. We just want to move in to our house.

FIRE: Day 23 (7/21)

JC had to take her mom on a day trip to see JC’s aunt, so she was gone most of the day.

I did some visual tests of putting the baseboard shoe back in place to see what it looks like. To me it looks good and would be the easiest path back to a finished state. I nailed some of the pieces back in place, but took the majority and painted them because they look like crap. Once they dry overnight I’ll be able to put them all back in place pretty quickly.

I went to the gym and had no issues with my elbow thankfully. Glad I didn’t do any real damage to it.

JC started freaking out that we picked too dark of a carpet giving our very dark hardwood. I thought we basically picked a white carpet, but it’s darker than I thought with all the flecks in it. To visualize it, I did an AI mockup with a current photo and the picture of the carpet we took while looking at samples. It should look pretty good but I think JC is still panicking a bit.

FIRE: Day 24 (7/22)

Today we spent a lot of time getting the house ready for carpet. This was pretty easy though, with just the safe and entertainment center as the only large items we had to move. I did some other small tasks like replacing the downstairs bathroom faucet, and hanging the living room curtains.

On the financial front, the 401k money made it to my rollover IRA, so that was a relief. It all shows as settled so I will invest it in the morning.

FIRE: Day 25 (7/23)

The carpet installation was today, and they arrived at 8:20am, a little before the stated 8:30-10:30 window. It was just two guys, but they moved quickly. They had all of the carpet ripped out within an hour. At that point he asked if it was ok if they ran a little long and finished the whole job today. That was great for us, and as far as we were concerned they could stay as late as necessary.

It was a long day of mostly sitting around outside of our house. These two guys really did a great job on the carpet. I walked around all the edges inspecting closely and only found one minor thing where the carpet ran up a door jam a bit. They discovered and fixed that on their own though before I had to bring it up. Also they did a really nice job on the subfloor access hatch, which is tricky to carpet around.

We changed our moving truck rental to 10am tomorrow, which is the earliest we could get a 15′ truck with a ramp.

FIRE: Day 26 (7/24)

My top priority this morning was installing the baseboards in the living room. I wanted that in place so we wouldn’t have to move the couch again once we moved it in. That task took me the whole morning up to our 10am truck rental.

JC and I got the truck, and all four of us went to the storage unit and started loading things. It only took us an hour to completely load the truck, and then another hour to unload it into our house. That first load also included all of the heavy items like our mattress, the couch, the filing cabinet, and our dresser. It was at this point that we knew we made the right choice not to spend $800 on movers.

After lunch we went back and got the remaining partial truck load. This final load included the walking desk treadmill which was leaking belt oil as I dollied it out of the storage unit. It created a trail of oil drops that we went back and attempted to clean up. We couldn’t get the spots to disappear but we at least made it so they can’t be stepped on and tracked anywhere else.

At the house we set the treadmill outside because we wanted to assess if it was still dripping oil. Of course then it proceeded to downpour and got the treadmill wet, so we brought it in and put it on towels to let it dry out. Not sure if it’s going to work or not, but we’ll find out after it dries for a couple days.

JC and I got our bed back in place, but couldn’t find the comforter anywhere. We think we put it in a garbage bag to store, and my guess is that someone threw it away. It could have been a mover on the way into the storage unit, us when we moved stuff back into the garage, or even one of the flooring crew who may have done us a favor by including it in their trash. In the future we won’t store things in garbage bags without a clear label on all sides.

We also got the basement together enough to have a true FAC in the theater seats. It was AC’s movie pick and she chose Ready Player One. The one piece I didn’t have hooked up was the surround sound, and watching the movie without it using the TV speakers made it clear how nice the surround sound is.

FIRE: Day 27 (7/25)

With everything moved into our house, we started the process of getting everything unpacked and set up. I spent a lot of time in the basement working on the office and the theater area. JC and I made a run to Lowe’s to get various things.

We got new floor registers and it took some time to get those put in. The one on the hardwood required chiseling and filing the hardwood to allow it to fit. Others took some hammering of the sheet metal. I guess these new registers are just slightly bigger than the old ones. I listed the old registers for free on Nextdoor and had two takers very quickly.

In the evening we went to JC’s mom’s house to see her sister’s family who was arriving from the east coast. They will be here for the next week, so we have a lot of family stuff coming up. After that I feel like we’ll be settling into a normal rhythm for the first time since we arrived. It only took a month.

FIRE: Day 28 (7/26)

It was a long day working on things around the house, starting around 8am and going until 6pm. I started by getting all the baseboard shoe back in place. I had BC laying out all the pieces around the rooms and I was following behind with the nailer. After that I focused on the basement and got the office set up.

In the theater area I extended some speaker wire as well as the optical cable to make it easy to pull the receiver and/or entertainment center out. Before it was so tight I had to plug the final cables in blind with everything pushed in. BC was helpful here again because there’s one speaker wire that has to run through the subfloor, so I sent him down there to pull it across. He has been wanting to go down there for years.

At this point our house is almost entirely put back together. We just have a mirror to hang and some picture frames to unpack.

In the evening JC went back to see her sister’s family, and I enjoyed a movie in the freshly restored surround sound.