Before I begin, I want to give a small disclosure on this. Thoughts may be very disjointed and I may end up jumping around a bit as I remember some of the early parts of this story. This is partially because I'm writing after the fact for now and will be more linear as we catch up to now. On to part 2!

So, we left off when the house had no furniture, no food, but a Super Street Fighter 2 cabinet with Marvel vs. Street Fighter inside of it... Since then, there's been a lot of progress. We have replaced 2 light fixtures, swapped out the light bulbs for daylight LED in most of the house, and are starting to do some prep work on the bedrooms for painting.

One thing that I missed describing before was the back yard and how the previous owners left the house when we took possession. After what we've been seeing, it really explains a lot of what we've found along the way.

The day we took possession, we were told that they shut off the water because they found that the hot water line going to the laundry room was leaking after they removed the hoses. They shut off the main water line as well as the water heater. So, now we're in a new house with no water. My dad helped us replace the knob where the rubber seal had eroded away and now we can use the sinks!

They also mentioned to us that they had scheduled a bulk trash pickup for some things they didn't want to take with them. Unfortunately, they left all of it on the side of the house, not actually at the curb where, you know, the trash is picked up... So, as it was doing for most of April, it began snowing as we carried their stuff to the curb along with the boxes of trash left in the garage. Because of that, we also began dismantling a swingset that was in the back because it was held together with basically one bolt and rotting wood. If we're moving their trash, they can pay to haul some other stuff away.

The weather has since been warming up. One thing that we needed to do was take care of the leaves in the back yard. The previous owners just left them in the yard. My wife and kids did an awful lot of raking and bagging of leaves. I was amazed with just how many bags it took though. Our city offers a program where you can pay a one time cost to purchase a 95 gallon yard cart that you can put your leaves, small sticks, and things like that in and they will pick it up on your trash day. So, while the bags weren't absolutely necessary, they certainly helped speed up the process. The first round, we had probably 10 or so bags to go along with the cart. Over the next few weeks, we filled the yard cart as well as 60 bags of leaves.

Oh, under the leaves in back, we also found that they had left many trampoline poles behind the shed for us to take care of as well. Managed to get them to the curb for the bulk pickup. So, that was fun.

Now that the yard was cleaned up, it was time to do more work inside. Our home inspector did a radon test as a part of the initial inspection. If you are unaware, radon is a colorless, odorless gas that is radioactive and can cause cancer. My part of the country has pretty high levels as it is and the levels detected were over twice the levels where you should have a mitigation system installed. That was honestly not a terribly large expense in the grand scheme of things and was already completed. We also knew that we would have to install a new HVAC system. The furnace appears to have been original to the house from 1983. That installation is scheduled as well.

One thing that we requested was left as a part of our offer was the Nest thermostat and smoke/CO detectors. I've been researching various smart home pieces and if I could save some money by having them already there and installed, I'm all for it. Nest is a home automation platform now owned by Google. They started with a smart thermostat, but have since expanded to other smart home products like a security system, locks, and cameras as well as integration with other smart home products by other manufacturers.

To go along with the thermostat and smoke detectors, we went with the Nest Secure system. The up front cost is a little higher, but there are no monthly fees for any of the functionality. There is a monthly fee if you want to have 24/7 professional monitoring though. But, right now, we have one app that we can check the smoke detector batteries from, change the thermostat temperature, check if any of our exterior doors are open, and set an alarm that will go off and send a notification to our phones if it does.

The painting has started as well. My wife painted our bathroom and work has started on my oldest son's room. He is very excited to get his room painted because it means that he can start moving things over and decorating.

Spent a good chunk of time one Saturday replacing all of the exterior locks. The existing ones on a couple of doors were keyed on both sides, which is not only a pain, but also a fire/safety hazard. Plus, we put a smart lock on the front door as well. This lets us do a couple of things. We can send an electronic key to our friends or family if they would need to come in the house while we were away. We can also set times that the key is valid for, so we don't have to worry about someone coming in when we aren't expecting.

So, at this point, we have now painted all of the rooms we want to right away (kids' rooms, master bath, walk-in closet, and basement. This has allowed us to move most of our stuff from the old house over. We've now been staying in the house for over a week and have just moved the dogs over. Still need a little time to figure out where we're putting stuff for the cat and our sugar glider, but we still have a little time to work that out.

In the next part, I get to start the fun stuff: Cabling

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