Time to go shopping!

I am so excited by our new walls!!! I have been told that drywalling is a very slow process and that it is an art, not just a skill. (Okay, some of those drywallers take their work pretty seriously!) It also looks like a big mess, even more so than painting. They put up big sheets of wallboard (which are not wood at all, but look like a cross between styrofoam and plaster of Paris, if such cross were possible.) These are slightly gray. Then they nail them to the wooden studs underneath the insulation. Then they put special tape over the seams between each piece of wallboard. Then someone else (the artist?) comes along and spackles over the seams and tape and nails. Those are the nails that stick out sometimes in your house, making little bubbles or "wall pops" and generally looking bad. Apparently, they are one reason why you want a really good drywaller.

You can see the white spackle in the pictures of our walls. The little short stripes in between are where the nails into the studs are. I think the effect is sort of visually pleasing. Not that I want to leave it that way or anything, it is just interesting. The next step is to sand the spackle completely smooth, but only after it is completely dry. Then they spackle again, a thinner and even smoother coat, and sand again. This may be repeated a third time. Steve told us that our drywall will take 5 or 6 days. (I guess you don't rush an artist!) When that is finished, he will give us an estimate of when the whole thing will be finished. We are sort of guessing the middle of November. As a totally ignorant new homeowner, I am having trouble seeing what is left to do and why it will take so long. I guess I will soon learn.

With the walls up, I have much more of a feeling for how big each room will be. I see-saw between thinking "Oh, my lord, this place is huge. How will we ever fill it up with furniture? Will it look like a cave? How can we afford to heat this thing?" to "Oh, maybe this isn't going to be big enough. Will the dining table fit? Where will all our books go?" I hope that means we picked a good size, since I swing from one extreme to the other.

The more it looks like a real house, the more I want to go shopping. I am trying to think of things we will need, rather than things I just want. THAT would be far too long a list! And we are going to be pretty broke at first, with just buying the house. Here is my list so far. Why don't you all suggest some important things that we are forgetting?

1. A big ladder for inside the house
2. An outdoor ladder
3. Bedroom curtains (our old ones might work)
4. Bathroom curtain (the old ones might work, or maybe that frosted-glass window cling stuff)
5. Lawn mower (no, our tiny yard does not justify the lawn tractors Derek is admiring at Sears!)
6. Hose and sprinkler
7. Carbon monoxide detector, battery operated (you really don't want one without a battery backup, because when the power goes out in winter you will want to use your fireplace!)
8. Larger fire extinguisher for garage
9. New fire extinguishers and smoke alarms (ours are all about 10 years old, which is about as long as you can rely on them to work. Very bad to grab an extinguisher and have nothing come out!)
10. Plastic carpet protector to go under office chair (is there a name for these things?)
11. Treadmill for Derek to jog on (yeah, Derek, keep up the good work!!!)
12. Snow shovel (ah, the joys of owning a home!)
13. Bathmat for second tub (the kind that keeps you from falling, that is)
14. Grab bars for tubs, showers, toilets, both bathrooms (ditto)
15. Contact paper for cabinets (has anyone noticed how expensive this has gotten? It used to be a cheap craft item. We may spend $50 on it for our new house! Is there a good substitute?)
16. Lever doorknobs for inside and out (us old people have trouble with our hands)
17. House numbers for front of house (I think 4 inches tall is required by our neighborhood)
18. Stencils to paint our house number on the curb (you really don't want the ambulance driver to have any trouble finding your house!)
19. Rake for leaves
20. Recycling bins? (I am trying to figure out if these are provide or purchased from the city. There are many arcane recycling rules in which I have yet to be initiated)
21. Big trash bin? (Do you rent this from the trash company? I don't know!)
22. Long-handled duster for ceiling fans and high ceilings
23. Hoe and rake for weeds (we may have weeds before we have a yard, since you can't really sod in the winter!)

Of course, there are lots more things I just want to have, like a brass door knocker and a coat tree for the entryway. But, tell me, what am I forgetting that we will need? Oh, it is so hard not to start buying stuff for the house now, but I really don't want more stuff to move.

Moving report: 90 boxes packed, including lots of kitchen gadgets and dishes for entertaining.

The next packing hurdle is our office. It is so full of papers that we can't really even work in there, we usually take the computer into the dining room. I thought about posting a picture of the disaster zone, but it might frighten the innocent and impressionable among you. My mother saw it, and I think she was pretty appalled. Sorry, Mom, we tried to get the door shut, but we couldn't. It doesn't just need to be cleaned, but all those papers need to be gone through, many recycled, many more shredded. Only then can we even start packing. Derek seriously suggested that we just put all the old receipts and paid bills and canceled checks into boxes and not look at them, just take them with us. It might come to that. I am really dreading shredding mountains of paper, too. Especially those little yellow credit card slips that aren't really paper, but are sort of shiny tissue paper, and are really hard to shred. I just hate those. Could we just close all of our accounts and open new ones, so we don't have to worry if anyone gets our account numbers? Then we could throw away all of these papers without fear.

Speaking of accounts, I spoke with our mortgage counselor (no, not a psycho-therapist, but more like a salesperson!) She said that we will probably need a down payment (duh!) and that we will probably have to pay for mortgage insurance (duh!) Sorry, I don't totally understand what the big deal is with that insurance. It is not as expensive as I feared, since so many people gripe about having to pay it. It's like $120 a year. Am I missing something? I mentioned that we had been working hard to pay off our credit card balances and she told me not to. (Boy, did I not expect to hear that!) She said paying them down is good, but not too far. Better to have $100 or so on each card than to have nothing. And she said the important thing is not to have a low balance relative to your credit limit (our credit limits are all absurdly high. It's like they think we have money or something!), but rather to have a balance that is below half of the highest balance you have ever had on that card. Does that make any sense to you?

I am seriously starting to think that the credit rating business is a form of voodoo. How do they arrive at a credit score? Do they throw dice, or do they cut open a chicken and examine its entrails? It amuses me that my credit score is higher than Derek's (nyah-nyah-nyah!), because he makes about ten times what I do. And he has a real, permanent, full-time job, and I am hired by the semester. But, apparently, it is more important that I had my first credit card before he did. Yeah, teenagers with credit cards are SUCH a GREAT idea! Honestly, it is a form of voodoo. Or haruspicy (a term meaning telling the future by killing an animal and then looking at its liver for spots or a funny shape, the ancient Romans did this.) A friend of mine has a t-shirt that says (in Latin) "When I want your opinion, I will cut you open and examine your entrails to find it." How much of a market could there possibly be for shirts like this? Very odd.