David and Pri

Incredible – really amazing!!!

4 brains, 8 hands and a lot of energy, courage and love to make this happen! We really enjoyed building something ourselves, and not paying somebody to do it.

This feeling of accomplishment is really great.

Without Donna and George here, it would have been much harder. They were essential, in all senses. How lucky David and I are having them help and be so enthusiastic about the whole process!!! Thanks again!!!

Check out the pictures during the construction!

Staircase for Deck

After the rain on/around May 13…. WOW! We got scared…

David left me a message in gmail around 4pm saying: “Pri you’d better come home help me with the water entering in the downstairs floor”. [David: I was running around in a swimsuit and didn't know where my phone was!  Rather than look for it while another 50 gallons of water gushed in, I sent her a gchat!]

Neil (other designer that works at the office) promptly offered a ride. So nice- thanks!!

David looked like he’d been swimming, and I saw that he had been working hard trying to keep the water out of the active room with towels and some of our mulch bags. Drains were clogged – partially taken care, but other part I cleaned. The rain was less strong at that point, and we kept drying and cleaning the downstairs. [david: it was not enjoyable work, but it was effective.  When I went down to my office the next morning, I was struck by the sensation that I couldn't tell that anything had happened!  Over time, I grew to see this as a good thing: no more speculating about last year, now we know the problem, and we were even here to keep it from getting bad.]

Ok – we should do something…. No walls damaged due to Davids work, but I felt strongly that this was the time to act in solving the root of the problem.

Our emergency plan consisted in placing sand bags around the stair under the deck to reduce the amount of water going down in the direction of our back door. It has been working very well as a barrier now. But we decided that it was time for checking what was going so wrong with the drain system in the patio.

I called Ken, and he also helped a lot getting some references for us. After talking with a couple of people, we found a guy that seems to be very passionate and knowledgeable about drains etc.. We hired him after his fantastic plan of action that will not cost much.

In the same week a big branch fell on the backyard (far form our house) on the neighbor’s wooden fence. This was a funny story that happened around 11pm -the cracky sound was a mystery until we figure out what was going on. We called the neighbor and there we were, deciding what to do… Next day the tree guys came and took care of it. We also hired them to take care of all other dead branches and some inconvenient branches around the house. service is done already!

Besides the drain issue we also had bad… no… not bad…VERY bad gutters that were sadly transforming rain in waterfalls on top of my flowers in the front bed.  I even used my umbrella to protect them, such strong pressure it was… Poor little thingies… [david: the umbrella was very cute...] But now we already have them replaced to new gutters, and even bigger gutters with a mesh-type protection for leaves etc.

The house is happy now, and so are we!

Now, the only thing missing is the patio drains, but we think that while this is not ready the sand bags can help with possible storms…  And, people came two days ago and cut down into our concrete 10 inches to prepare for the new drains.  [david: this is the first time I've felt optimistic about the issue... I really think the new drains are going to remove all reasonable risk]

Exciting!  Not always in good ways… but sometimes!

Well, now we have pictures… More to come…

Hoosier Cabinet

cheers!

Pri

Well, I made 2 videos today (one in Portuguese and one in English), showing a little bit of our house outside – and focusing on the little flowers popping out everywhere, and some of our work with the Hoosier Cabinet.

Bom, hoje fiz 2 videos pra voces (um em portugues e outro em ingles) mostrando um pouco da nossa casinha do lado de fora, as flores coloridas se multiplicando por todo lado, e o David pintando parte das portas do nosso movel de cozinha (que nao sabemos ainda onde vamos colocar). Divirtam-se!

Video em portugues:

Video in English:

(they are different – eles sao differentes!)

Once upon a time, when we were preparing the Big Move out of Howe St., we examined a chair I had inherited from my parents.  It looked pretty bad, and after some negotiation, we agreed to throw it away.  So, we threw away the cushions.  And then suddenly, we both looked at it and decided “Hey, this is actually a nice chair!”  I guess the cushions just weren’t very nice (at least not anymore… the chair was probably over 30 years old).  Pri said, “let’s keep it, and someday I’ll make new cushions for it”.

Ok!  Well, we scored some foam from my parents (thanks!  And you’re welcome for getting it out of your attic!), and then bought some fabric (not cheap, but not as expensive as the foam (or a new chair) would have been), and we dusted off my old sewing machine (probably 60 years old at this point).  Dusting it off was not a trivial task, and in fact at first it didn’t work.  For reasons I don’t understand.  But then it started working.  Hmmm…

I gave Pri a quick sewing lesson, and she took to it very quickly!  So, sure enough, later that same weekend, we had a beautiful, comfortable, new chair!  A click on the image will show you more pictures of the chair and the sewing of its new cushions.

Finally uploaded it all!

Pictures of:

Moving party, picking up blueberries for the wedding/housewarming party, some Brazilian trip pictures (Joao Victor music lesson, pingpong), cheries, gifts, old countertop, pictures of new house, etc are HERE.

Brazilian trip (most of them) are HERE

New Kitchen, Wedding/housewarming/dance party, Cedar Bluffs etc are HERE
Hope you have fun! At some point we’ll add captions, but I can’t promise when…

Today, Fiona, Doug (friends from Indy), David and I bikerode 1.5hours here in Bloomington and it was VERY nice (even with Doug’s flat tire that was solved super fast with David’s little kit).
Yoo-hoo! First bikeride of the year!!!
The rout ended in our new house, when the ex-owner showed us the whole garden. Fiona wrote down, locating in a map (incredibly well done- THANKS!) the 35 plants/flowers that we have in the new house’s garden, and I am extremely excite to understand how they work and how to take good care of them. (by the way, sh said it won’t be as laborious as it seems).
Between the trees that I recognized names, I am delighted to announce: We have a (already blooming!!) tulip tree (actually coming from our neighbor’s lot), a dogwood, oak tree, redbud, mulberry tree(I know what a berry is!yammy…), and even (maybe) a maple tree! Yellow,white and red…Between the flowers, there are lilacs, roses, lilies, daffodils etc. By request, I might put the complete list here. Let me know!

Hoje, sabado, fizemos uma bikeride com a Fiona e Doug (amigos de Indy) e foi muito divertido(apesar do pneu furado que foi resolvido rapidamente com um kit do David). Ela anotou todas as 35 (!) diferentes plantas e flores que temos na casa nova, e ela disse que tudo sera simples de fazer manutencao.
Legal, ne? Estou super animada pra cuidar do nosso jardim!

Well, I sure haven’t been writing much! But, we’ve sure been busy!

We got married on a Wednesday. We sent in the Immigration Application papers on Thursday. We started work on the brochure on Saturday. On Sunday, we found our new house. Accidentally.

In the fall, I’d done some fancy stuff online to help us organize the houses that we might be interested in, once we actually started looking. Our goal was to move in May, or close to there, so we didn’t really want to look in the fall, but of course, we were thinking about it.

Well, once we were done getting married and all, we thought “might as well get the ball rolling on that months-long-process of picking out a new home”. So, I went to my fancy web stuff to help us look at the latest offerings. Once I got it working (not an immediate thing, I’m afraid) I tested it out by clicking on 1261 S. Winfield. “Great, it’s working!” I thought. “Woah… this house has every single thing we said we wanted in a house,” I thought next, feeling kind of nervous. “Pri,” I said “come take a look at this…”

“Great, you got it working!”

“Yeah, look at this house….”

“… … We have to call our Realtor NOW!!”

View Larger Map

So, Monday, we went looking at houses, starting with this one. We liked it. Actually, Pri didn’t really look at any other houses very carefully after this one. She would walk in to a house, quickly determine that it wasn’t as good as the first one, and she’d be ready to leave. Our Realtor and I both gave more of a “fair chance” to the other houses we looked at, but I can’t deny, that first one was unquestionably the best one.

So, Wednesday we met with a mortgage person (and, I might mention, picked up the 250 printed brochures that Pri somehow created in that week also) and Thursday we put in our offer. It was accepted. Nine days after we got married, we had right of refusal on our house.

Great huh? Well, I have to admit, that it kinda freaked me out. I often describe myself as a “slow moving, long term kind of guy” and this, needless to say, was NOT slow moving. I tried to comfort myself by reminding myself that we weren’t going to be moving until May (this was another perfect thing about the house, the owners wanted to stay there for the remainder of the school year), so we’d have several months of NOT worrying about where we were going to live and such, with nothing to do but pack. Even I should be able to pack my house in three months, right?

So, now we’ve closed, and I’ve started packing, and I’m breathing enough to think about nice things like writing in this blog, and maybe even writing in my own blog. But, that’s another story. Let’s talk about the house. No, let’s look at our PICTURES of the house! Or, we can see the Bloomington Board of Realtor’s web page about this house.