Laura's Legacy: Moving and cleaning.

This was, without a doubt, the worst time I've ever had getting moved and settled in. As the house had been vacant for at least two years, everything was covered with a layer of black soot from the oil-fired furnace. A simple dusting wouldn't do the trick because if I tried wiping the soot, it only streaked into a black smudge. There was no cleaning cobwebs with a broom for the same reason. It took several days just to get things clean enough to move my belongings in, including getting out some old, unrepairable furniture and other unwanted items from the estate and hauling them to the landfill. I had ten days off from work and figured it would take a couple of days to clean, mop, etc. and the rest I could spend moving in and starting the fun things like painting and plaster crack patching. One of the days (of course, the second windiest day of the year) was spent travelling to Badin Lake to pick up a 1940s range and refrigerator I found on craigslist. It just wouldn't look right to put new appliances in the neat old kitchen. The ones I found worked like a charm until I tore up the range by putting in an aluminum oven liner. As soon as I turned on the oven there was a loud pop and a flash. The liner had touched the bottom element and shot it. $210 and two weeks later, the oven was repaired. Another three of those ten days were spent at a friend's house because one morning (of course, it was on a Friday) I flushed the toilet and watched as sewage seeped up into the bathtub. The plumber found roots had grown into the septic tank and up into the waste pipe, thus blocking it. There goes another $235. The front porch had some rotten support posts that desperately needing replacing but with everything else going on, I couldn't do it myself. $250 got the job done by a handyman while I was playing catch-up with moving in. At the end of my so-called vacation, I went back to work feeling I had accomplished little of what I had intended.

Here's the cool old appliances, kitchen, a couple of other rooms and the not-so-cool rotten porch posts. The pictures were taken before I moved in. Thought I'd spare you the septic tank photos.