Surviving major changes in a short time

[lana-banana]

My boyfriend and I moved in together in March. I started a new job in a completely different career field at the beginning of May. My boyfriend is starting a new job (also a very dramatic change) next week. We've agreed we're getting engaged by the end of September. Did I mention we're also buying a house?

 

Anyway, to say this has been a year of enormous change is a pretty big understatement. While we're both pumped for what's to come and we've coped well so far, this is still a lot to handle. We have nights where we're sleepless with excitement or anxiety. I'm still figuring out how to establish a new routine. I'd like to hear from folks, couples or not, about how they adjusted to huge life changes without much time to absorb it all. What kept you healthy? Aside from "try to eat well and get plenty of exercise" I'm not sure what else to do.

[No_Go]

Congrats on the changes!

 

Same here. I moved with my BF last November, the same time I also made a huge career switch - something if never dream off. Also unfortunately lost a lot of family last year, and officially immigrated. We're buying a house by next spring as well.

 

So my experience with the moving in: we had tons of fights months 3-6 after the move in. Now things calmed down a lot. How? We learned to express our opinions better, and timely. And to have time apart, even in our apartment.

 

But I'll be curious to see more advice from other people! Surviving stressful changes is a major topic, it deserves attention:)

 

My boyfriend and I moved in together in March. I started a new job in a completely different career field at the beginning of May. My boyfriend is starting a new job (also a very dramatic change) next week. We've agreed we're getting engaged by the end of September. Did I mention we're also buying a house?

 

Anyway, to say this has been a year of enormous change is a pretty big understatement. While we're both pumped for what's to come and we've coped well so far, this is still a lot to handle. We have nights where we're sleepless with excitement or anxiety. I'm still figuring out how to establish a new routine. I'd like to hear from folks, couples or not, about how they adjusted to huge life changes without much time to absorb it all. What kept you healthy? Aside from "try to eat well and get plenty of exercise" I'm not sure what else to do.

[clia]

Let's see, in the past 14 months we got married, threw two receptions, moved, found a temporary rental, sold our old house, bought a new house, moved into the new house, and I started a new job. So I can relate!

 

You know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, so keep your eyes focused there. Accept that there will be stress and anxiety. Cut each other some slack if you get crabby and snap at each other from time to time. It's not coming from a bad place so there is no reason to start a fight. Keep your sense of humor and be sure to make time to do the fun things you enjoy doing together. Talk about the future -- your new house. Go furniture browsing and talk about how you plan to make it yours. Keep your eye on the prize!

[lana-banana]

So where are we now?

 

As part of my new job I was scheduled to travel for eight weeks between May and August, working in two-week intervals but flying home every weekend (yes, for just 36 hours!). My boyfriend has started his new job and is also working part time for a bit of extra pocket money. We have a house under contract and are due to close in mid-August. Last Thursday he asked my father for his permission to marry me. Permission granted.

 

Life is good, but boy, I vastly underestimated how physically and mentally taxing this would be. Living out of a suitcase is hard enough, but flying back and forth so rapidly has made me a mess. I've lost a few pounds I can't really afford to lose and my hair is falling out. I don't have undereye bags, I have undereye luggage sets. Meanwhile, my boyfriend has been diagnosed with severely high cholesterol so he's got to completely change the way he cooks and exercise more on top of everything else he's doing. Our sex life took a major hit during the early stages of the homebuying process but is back in a good place.

 

It really helps to have such good communication. We text and chat throughout the day, which is a welcome change from our old jobs where we couldn't use phones. When we're outside of work or the gym we're pretty much in constant contact. We call just to hear each other's voices. And being able to see him for even a brief bit between assignment weeks helps tremendously. On the weeks when I'm home I try to shift gears completely, taking care of all the cooking and laundry and chores that he's otherwise been doing alone.

 

It's funny. If I was 23 and didn't give a damn, this would be a cakewalk. As it is it's much harder to enjoy a new city when I want to be at home, cuddled on the couch with the love of my life and picking out paint colors. I know love is a marathon and we're in it for the long haul, but this is a hell of an obstacle course.

 

31 days to go...!

[lana-banana]

For the entirety of the first two weeks of August we were both away for business trips. The cumulative stress of being far apart and trying to coordinate the house purchase fried my brain. We had a brief dust-up over an email I wrote to the lender. I tried to call him to discuss and to my horror he rejected my call. He's never, ever, ever rejected my calls before! This, in Insane Irrational Lana-Banana Brain, meant he was breaking up with me. I sobbed my heart out like an idiot for about an hour, convinced the world was ending. It turns out he was just in a meeting and was trying to reject the call with the "In a meeting" auto-response and missed. Duh.

 

Meanwhile on the homebuying front: the first appraisal was done by someone who didn't know the area and who thought it was an as-is appraisal. When he redid it properly as a construction loan his number was much too low. The result was such a sh-tshow they contested it, the appraiser pushed back and refused to alter his assessment, the head underwriter agreed, but after almost two weeks the CEO of the company agreed a second appraisal was due. This one was ALSO ordered incorrectly (they thought it was a refinance) and our realtor had to intervene.

 

I spent most of the evenings in my hotel suite embroidering and watching trashy television. One night while surfing through the channel guide I read the following description of a made-for-TV movie: "A home appraiser is found murdered in a coveted property."

 

Yeah, I watched it.

 

I picked him up from the airport on August 13th, which marked the official end of our intermittent eight weeks apart. We celebrated with flowers, fine wine, a wonderful home-cooked meal, and lots of amorous talk about all the naughty things we were going to do to each other that promptly ended when we fell asleep before 9 PM.

 

I finally decided to listen to everyone who had told me to switch lenders a long time ago. We got a new lender and I paid out of pocket for another appraisal with them, because at this point I would have paid a thousand dollars just to end the entire thing. (Oh, by the way, the second appraisal from the first lender came back more than 30k higher than the first. Whatever.) We got word back this morning that our loan has been approved and now it's just a matter of setting a closing date. It could be as soon as next Thursday.

 

How are we doing? We're a lot better now that we're together again. I've discovered we have a bit of a healthy codependency, inasmuch as we can function without each other but we'd much rather not. This is somewhat new territory as we were both used to being quite independent in our previous relationships. I think this may just be a normal function of finding someone you really love. Amd as glad as I am for having experienced it together---I am more confident than ever that we can tackle anything as a couple---this was an absurd amount of stress for such a short period. My anxiety and insomnia spiraled out of control in a way they haven't in years. He told me my undereyes "looked bruised" and at times I would start crying because I just couldn't sleep. We ended up in urgent care so I could get a few low dosage sleeping pills.

 

Tangentially related, yesterday's Steven Universe had the healthiest depiction of coping mechanisms I've ever seen in any media. The idea of negative thoughts presented as butterflies, that grow and grow and threaten to pull you apart from someone you love, until you take a deep breath and just allow yourself to experience the emotion...it's utterly beautiful. I wish my parents had taught me that as a kid.

Edited August 26, 2016 by lana-banana

[No_Go]

Ok now reading this I'm officially terrified to start home buying... I anyway postponed it for so long (now is 3 years from the time that I first wanted to do it) that it feels like an illusion...

 

I'm stuck with a dilemma to switch jobs or not. I'm missing my science, my current job feels good just as a money-making machine, the previous devotion is missing. On the other side with all events ahead (and in the near past) another major career switch will be exhausting so... I may wait another year.

 

Also my BF and I need to fly to my family before taking the next steps and this is crushing me from inside - I feel like an exposed teenager explaining to mommy for her school date...

 

Just venting... Nothing is that bad but it feels like heaps of stress.

 

For the entirety of the first two weeks of August we were both away for business trips. The cumulative stress of being far apart and trying to coordinate the house purchase fried my brain. We had a brief dust-up over an email I wrote to the lender. I tried to call him to discuss and to my horror he rejected my call. He's never, ever, ever rejected my calls before! This, in Insane Irrational Lana-Banana Brain, meant he was breaking up with me. I sobbed my heart out like an idiot for about an hour, convinced the world was ending. It turns out he was just in a meeting and was trying to reject the call with the "In a meeting" auto-response and missed. Duh.

 

Meanwhile on the homebuying front: the first appraisal was done by someone who didn't know the area and who thought it was an as-is appraisal. When he redid it properly as a construction loan his number was much too low. The result was such a sh-tshow they contested it, the appraiser pushed back and refused to alter his assessment, the head underwriter agreed, but after almost two weeks the CEO of the company agreed a second appraisal was due. This one was ALSO ordered incorrectly (they thought it was a refinance) and our realtor had to intervene.

 

I spent most of the evenings in my hotel suite embroidering and watching trashy television. One night while surfing through the channel guide I read the following description of a made-for-TV movie: "A home appraiser is found murdered in a coveted property."

 

Yeah, I watched it.

 

I picked him up from the airport on August 13th, which marked the official end of our intermittent eight weeks apart. We celebrated with flowers, fine wine, a wonderful home-cooked meal, and lots of amorous talk about all the naughty things we were going to do to each other that promptly ended when we fell asleep before 9 PM.

 

I finally decided to listen to everyone who had told me to switch lenders a long time ago. We got a new lender and I paid out of pocket for another appraisal with them, because at this point I would have paid a thousand dollars just to end the entire thing. (Oh, by the way, the second appraisal from the first lender came back more than 30k higher than the first. Whatever.) We got word back this morning that our loan has been approved and now it's just a matter of setting a closing date. It could be as soon as next Thursday.

 

How are we doing? We're a lot better now that we're together again. I've discovered we have a bit of a healthy codependency, inasmuch as we can function without each other but we'd much rather not. This is somewhat new territory as we were both used to being quite independent in our previous relationships. I think this may just be a normal function of finding someone you really love. Amd as glad as I am for having experienced it together---I am more confident than ever that we can tackle anything as a couple---this was an absurd amount of stress for such a short period. My anxiety and insomnia spiraled out of control in a way they haven't in years. He told me my undereyes "looked bruised" and at times I would start crying because I just couldn't sleep. We ended up in urgent care so I could get a few low dosage sleeping pills.

 

Tangentially related, yesterday's Steven Universe had the healthiest depiction of coping mechanisms I've ever seen in any media. The idea of negative thoughts presented as butterflies, that grow and grow and threaten to pull you apart from someone you love, until you take a deep breath and just allow yourself to experience the emotion...it's utterly beautiful. I wish my parents had taught me that as a kid.

[lana-banana]

It is a lot of stress, but there's no sense in worrying about it until it happens. I think you will find talking to your parents is much easier than you think. Your parents will be so happy for you things will proceed very smoothly. I was shocked at how simple it was---and I'd only been introduced to someone home to my parents once before.

 

After all the recent house stress he proposed we have a fancy date night to celebrate the end of summer. We were set to go to our favorite cocktail bar, an intimate reservation-only lounge. Before dinner we took a sparkly bubble bath (thanks, Lush!) and put on face masks. Even after getting all dolled up it was still somewhat early, so I suggested we swing by another one of our favorite spots for dinner beforehand. It was coincidentally where we had our first date. And as I sat next to him, reminiscing about the date and all the times we'd been since, I thought maybe it'll be tonight...? But no. Couldn't be. I just had this sense, you know? I can't explain it. My gut told me it wasn't happening and my gut is rarely wrong.

 

We got to the cocktail lounge a little early. He kept talking about all the great things we were going to do in Napa, so I was more convinced than ever that this was just an ordinary date night. He did, however, mention asking the bartender for a picture. I found this a little weird. The bar was incredibly dark and the bartender serving us was busy. Besides, the head bartender is also a celebrity in the industry; I felt nervous talking to him even though we go there often. Strangely, the bartender was more than willing. "You guys look great!" he enthused.

 

"I don't really want to do this. It's not going to come out well," I said.

 

My boyfriend was more enthusiastic. "But how about this?" he said, and whipped out THE ring.

 

Time stopped. The world stopped. I realized bits and pieces of it---it was all a setup, the entire staff knew, the bartender was actually filming---and I freaked out. I even stopped to take a sip of my drink in the middle of it. The first words out of my mouth were "No!", then "What?!", "Seriously??" and then finally "Of course, I love you more than anything!" It all happened so fast! I barely remember it. I know I cried, though!

 

One thing I learned is that you are never ready for the proposal. Even if you think it's going to happen, you aren't ready. You have absolutely no idea. It will just happen and you will be so overwhelmed you will not even know what's going on. So don't sweat it, because you're going to make a mess of it anyway.

[No_Go]

Congratulations!!! It sounds like an epic proposal and I'm sure you'd enjoy watching it over and over (first time will be very awkward probably )

I'm very happy that you're surviving all the changes and enjoying them!

Moving in the new home soon as well I guess?

Transducimg the positivity from this thread I'm getting more enthusiastic as well. We went on a wedding last week and are making now marriage references about daily so... Things are moving...

 

It is a lot of stress, but there's no sense in worrying about it until it happens. I think you will find talking to your parents is much easier than you think. Your parents will be so happy for you things will proceed very smoothly. I was shocked at how simple it was---and I'd only been introduced to someone home to my parents once before.

 

After all the recent house stress he proposed we have a fancy date night to celebrate the end of summer. We were set to go to our favorite cocktail bar, an intimate reservation-only lounge. Before dinner we took a sparkly bubble bath (thanks, Lush!) and put on face masks. Even after getting all dolled up it was still somewhat early, so I suggested we swing by another one of our favorite spots for dinner beforehand. It was coincidentally where we had our first date. And as I sat next to him, reminiscing about the date and all the times we'd been since, I thought maybe it'll be tonight...? But no. Couldn't be. I just had this sense, you know? I can't explain it. My gut told me it wasn't happening and my gut is rarely wrong.

 

We got to the cocktail lounge a little early. He kept talking about all the great things we were going to do in Napa, so I was more convinced than ever that this was just an ordinary date night. He did, however, mention asking the bartender for a picture. I found this a little weird. The bar was incredibly dark and the bartender serving us was busy. Besides, the head bartender is also a celebrity in the industry; I felt nervous talking to him even though we go there often. Strangely, the bartender was more than willing. "You guys look great!" he enthused.

 

"I don't really want to do this. It's not going to come out well," I said.

 

My boyfriend was more enthusiastic. "But how about this?" he said, and whipped out THE ring.

 

Time stopped. The world stopped. I realized bits and pieces of it---it was all a setup, the entire staff knew, the bartender was actually filming---and I freaked out. I even stopped to take a sip of my drink in the middle of it. The first words out of my mouth were "No!", then "What?!", "Seriously??" and then finally "Of course, I love you more than anything!" It all happened so fast! I barely remember it. I know I cried, though!

 

One thing I learned is that you are never ready for the proposal. Even if you think it's going to happen, you aren't ready. You have absolutely no idea. It will just happen and you will be so overwhelmed you will not even know what's going on. So don't sweat it, because you're going to make a mess of it anyway.

[deep_night]

AWW! how sweet! congratulations!

[lana-banana]

We closed on the house yesterday. After almost 90 days of negotiating and struggling and everything going wrong at once, we closed. It is about three weeks later than our anticipated closing date but we are here. We are homeowners.

 

We signed ten thousand sheets of paper and listened patiently to the title agent explain everything, all for that terrifying moment of the keys finally down on the table. It was like the proposal; I saw it in kaleidoscope vision. The entire world was contained in that set of keys.

 

I wish I could say I was in a state of bliss but I'm just numb. I'm still adjusting to the giant (and it is GIANT! He got a much larger diamond than I expected. Guess I know why he put in all that overtime) sparkling rock on my finger and today I'm a homeowner. And now I'm at the airport, waiting to fly out for a wedding and a week of luxury vacation in Napa Valley that we began planning over a year ago. I'll be off of LoveShack too---we are serious about this vacation.

 

We did it. We made it. We are on to a whole new set of challenges and stresses, but we got through and we're here together. We have a home of our own in one of America's biggest cities, we can afford our mortgage and we have a future.

 

Thank you to everyone who commented and encouraged us in this little diary. It means a lot. I can't feel anything right now but I'm sure once I'm ready to procesd emotions again I will be ecstatic.

Edited September 9, 2016 by lana-banana

[No_Go]

Yay! Congratulations again! I'm sure the vacation will be a blast!

Happy flights and don't leave this diary - we want to see vacation report, and of course - home-moving and wedding threads

 

We closed on the house yesterday. After almost 90 days of negotiating and struggling and everything going wrong at once, we closed. It is about three weeks later than our anticipated closing date but we are here. We are homeowners.

 

We signed ten thousand sheets of paper and listened patiently to the title agent explain everything, all for that terrifying moment of the keys finally down on the table. It was like the proposal; I saw it in kaleidoscope vision. The entire world was contained in that set of keys.

 

I wish I could say I was in a state of bliss but I'm just numb. I'm still adjusting to the giant (and it is GIANT! He got a much larger diamond than I expected. Guess I know why he put in all that overtime) sparkling rock on my finger and today I'm a homeowner. And now I'm at the airport, waiting to fly out for a wedding and a week of luxury vacation in Napa Valley that we began planning over a year ago. I'll be off of LoveShack too---we are serious about this vacation.

 

We did it. We made it. We are on to a whole new set of challenges and stresses, but we got through and we're here together. We have a home of our own in one of America's biggest cities, we can afford our mortgage and we have a future.

 

Thank you to everyone who commented and encouraged us in this little diary. It means a lot. I can't feel anything right now but I'm sure once I'm ready to procesd emotions again I will be ecstatic.

[lana-banana]

The last time we saw our heroine she was jetting off to an exquisite luxury vacation in Napa Valley. Now she's sobbing on a couch surrounded by rats and the stench of mold. Welcome back to the adventures of lana-banana, where today we'll recap the latest episode "What The Hell Has She Gotten Herself Into?"

 

I live in one of the most expensive cities in the US, which like most major cities was essentially unaffected by the housing crisis and exists in a perpetual bubble. The demand is constant. Outside the designated low-income market, most new homebuyers are wealthy couples, insanely wealthy foreigners looking to use real estate as a tax shelter, or even more insanely wealthy development companies planning new structures to serve all the new hyper-rich people in town. It's a horrendous cycle but it's become the norm for major cities around the world. At least we're not London.

 

All this to say that homebuying in our area is beyond tough. Even today complete shells of houses in preferred neighborhoods start at around 600k. So how did we get a place in a very desirable neighborhood for less than that? Well, that's where the rats come in. And the mold. And the fleas, and the filth, and the several hundred pounds of garbage left behind in the basement. The sellers were hoarders. When we first came through the house there were piles of junk up to the ceilings in every room, even the hallways. The kitchen is completely unusable, with thick layers of rust, mold and dirt on every surface. The smell of rotting garbage and mold hit you in the face as soon as you stepped in. Our home inspector was literally moved to tears during the inspection because he couldn't believe anyone was living in these conditions.

 

You are probably wondering why in the world we bought a place in such disgusting shape. I spent Monday wondering that too. But seriously, the house itself is a thing of beauty. It was built in 1913. It has these incredible ornate built-in shelves in the living and dining rooms that look like something out of the Great Gatsby---shelves the hoarders, bewilderingly, left unused. The house itself is structurally sound, much more so than you'd expect for something so old. Even the inspector commented on how the walls, ceilings and foundation were in remarkably good shape. The architects and contractors we brought on to review our renovation plans said the same thing. Everyone agrees this will be a thing of beauty if we put in the work.

 

We returned from Napa and had just nine days to pack all our things, move, and restore the house to a remotely livable condition. These were Herculean tasks given that we still had to work during the week. (My fiance said he wished we hadn't gone to Napa and honestly, I agreed. But we were there for a wedding and had planned the rest over a year ago!) So we worked. We packed. And we scrubbed. Lord, did we scrub. We had to use nearly a gallon of bleach per bedroom just to cut through all the grime on the walls. The house continued to surprise us with all its creaking and cracking and occasional acts of sabotage. When I turned the doorknob to the second bedroom, it fell off completely, like a piece of prop cardboard. On our second night of cleaning, my fiance inhaled too many fumes and coughed so brutally I nearly called 911. The next night it happened to me. "We're getting masks with charcoal filters," my fiance said.

 

We moved all throughout last weekend, unloading the final box into the house at around 1:30 AM Monday. We collapsed onto the couch and promptly passed out. Then...

 

Skitter-skitter-skitter. Skitter-skitter-skitter. Cskhskt, chskt, CRUNCH.

 

My phone said 2:36 and we were in the midst of a rat onslaught. The rats were intrigued by their new surroundings and swarming out to investigate. When my fiance flipped on the lights he saw them jumping into one of the few boxes we'd opened. I heard them above me, behind me, all over everything. y that point I was physically and emotionally miserable. I was so full of anxiety about the move that I'd barely slept in the preceding nights. Here we were, our first full night in our home together, and I had to be up not even four hours later for work. And I was surrounded by rats. That was when I started to sob.

 

Happily ever after, am I right?

 

Day two went better, if only because it couldn't really have been worse short of a cancer diagnosis. We bought up tons of rat traps and deployed them throughout the house. My fiance realized neither of us would be happy on the couch so he set up our mattress in the second bedroom. We went out for dinner with friends in the neighborhood and distracted ourselves enough that I felt moderately okay falling asleep. But when I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I realized we had a problem. Remember when I said the doorknob fell off?

 

"Holy sh-t, we're stuck in here."

"What?"

"I mean we're trapped in this bedroom unless you can figure a way out."

 

Figure it out we did, although it took about a half-hour of chipping, peeling, scraping, and manipulating the lock together until it came open. Thank Christ we had a little box of nails to use as levers and other tools. I don't want to think about how much lead dust we inhaled. Also, for the record, the fact that my fiance didn't murder me right then and there is how I knew we were meant to be.

 

The rest of the week has gone by in a blur. We hired a professional to clean out the garbage piles the basement and scrape off the worst of the mold. (We were reimbursed since the amount of junk they left behind was a breach of contract.) My fiance swapped out the locks. I added downspout extenders so the gutters would stop pouring water directly into the basement. We hired professionals to clean up the worst of the biohazard from the kitchen. We've killed five rats so far and last night I only heard one, briefly. We tore out the carpets in every room of the house; as I write this, my fiance and his friend are loading them into a truck to take to the dump.

 

It's already a completely different experience. The smells are just about gone, there aren't rat droppings everywhere, the grime is either gone or at a manageable level, and I can actually sleep a bit. Meanwhile, the architect and electrician have come over to discuss the initial stages of our renovations. Plumbing and electrical work will begin in October, while building itself should begin November or December. I am finally getting excited to build the home of my dreams with the man of my dreams.

 

And a word on that: my fiance is the happiest I've seen him in a long, long time. His last job treated him terribly, but it was very important work and it provided him a sense of satisfaction and meaning he's been missing since. He fell into a brief depression for a while and it was heartbreaking to watch. But now? He is amazing. He's more driven and focused than I've ever seen him outside of his last job. Not even two hours after vomiting due to those bleach fumes he turned to me and said "I'm so happy right now, and I'm so happy to be with you." He's also spending a lot more time talking to his father, who's a general contractor, and they have all kinds of plans to do other smaller renovations together. He is ecstatic and that makes all of this easier to bear.

 

We are meeting my parents tonight for dinner. They want to see the place too. At first I was horribly nervous that they'd be ashamed to hear about our rat problems and all, but my dad (the CEO of a large civil engineering company) happily launched into stories about how his fraternity used to kill rats with firecrackers and .22s, and Mom fondly talked about all the work they did on their first home when they were our age. So I'm feeling better. And I know many years down the line we're going to look back on these days and be grateful. But right now, it's a work in progress...like life in general, I suppose.

[lana-banana]

Wow, we're nearing the final stretch! The work for the loan is supposed to be completed by the beginning of March and I'm pretty anxious that won't happen. If they're late, we'll have to pay some extension fees to the bank. Our contractors are working at lightning speed but there's still only so much they can do in a day. The good news is that it'll be very close either way and the fees will hopefully not be too bad.

 

Thinking back to my last post it's just amazing to see how much progress we've made.

 

- We got rid of all the rats in about two weeks. As gross as the rats were, something about them was sort of cute? I felt bad for them.

- We also had fleas (in the subfloors), which for my money were far worse than the rats and easily the most uncomfortable pest-related experience of my life. For a while I was covered in long chains of tiny but incredibly itchy red welts. Thank God we got rid of those too. It took about 3 months of sustained bug bombing but they're all gone.

- We have a new HVAC, brand new electrical wiring, and new lighting in every room. They're simple recessed lights but I love them.

- We have a new roof. Huzzah!

- We tore down the back deck ourselves to save some money. It was just a matter of sawing up the planks, nailing down or removing all the nails, and hauling it away.

- We finally fixed the gutters and downspouts so it's not pouring water directly into the foundation of the house. Jesus Christ, the last owners were terrible.

- The back wall was in bad shape so we had that reframed and re-insulated. It looks lovely now. And the exterior had new siding!

- Our bathrooms are partially finished. We ordered some really cool tile and they look awesome.

- Our kitchen has tile floors and has been fitted for appliances.

- We have hardwood floors now! OMG OMG OMG. Having floors hasade the biggest difference thus far psychologically. It means so much to be able to walk around in bare feet in your own home.

 

Still on the to-do list: cabinets, appliances, shower and bathrooms, washer and dryer. Then we're done. There is work my fiancé and I will do ourselves---painting, putting drywall over the walls, scraping and sealing the basement---but we can do that on our own time.

 

There are days I haven't wanted to deal with this. I have sometimes been frustrated at how much there is to do and how it feels like it'll never be done. But there are also days when I am stricken by how good it feels, and there are more of those. I absolutely love our neighborhood. I love our neighbors too! The couple next door had a cocktail party recently and it couldn't have been nicer. I left with multiple phone numbers and several new friends.

 

Watching my fiancé (whose father is a general contractor and who has done a lot of this work himself) is so rewarding too. He is as happy as can be now that he has projects to work on---and more to the point, lots of expensive power tools. I love to see him so engaged and active and excited again. He experienced some depression when he left his last job in May, and ever since he started work on the house he's just...bloomed.

 

Homeownership is a marathon, not a sprint. We have a long road ahead but I think we're past the worst of it, inshallah. And thirty years from now I'm going to look back on these days as special and momentous in their own way. Building a home with the love of your life means a lot.

[No_Go]

Wow Lana, that's tons of work! I'm glad it comes all together now.

 

When is the wedding? It is really major changes in a short time for you!

[lana-banana]

The wedding is in October. Well, the party is in October. We will probably get married sometime in the spring. We don't really care when! He likes the idea of having one of his best friends there and his friend moves in June, so it'll probably be before then.

[lana-banana]

In September, I wore two sets of gloves and a HEPA filtration mask to clean a half-inch layer of rat feces from a kitchen cabinet. That same day I picked up medications for flea bites and got a tetanus shot to protect against the rusted nails sticking out of the subfloor.

 

Yesterday I sat down in the kitchen---a kitchen with Bosch and Thermador appliances, Italian ceramic, a double oven and brand new everything---and just took it all in. And cried.

 

My fiancé texted me to let me know we just passed both our final inspections. It's done. He's currently taking the first shower.

 

I'm probably going to cry again when I get home.

Edited March 9, 2017 by lana-banana