I wrote awhile back about the psychological transition of the property from being “the job site” to being “the new house.” Of course, if you’ve been following along, you know we recently moved into the new house and are finally living here (yay!) But even a momentous change like that isn’t instant, at least not in our minds.

For anyone who has ever moved homes may recall, the first days or weeks can be rather chaotic and overwhelming. We experienced this just over a year ago when we moved _out_ of this property to our rental place. But that sensation is all the more amplified when the place you just moved into is still half under construction.

The first week in our new dream house was honestly not so dreamy. You can’t take care of even the basics of life because all your stuff is packed away in boxes lord knows where. You can’t unpack the boxes because you have no closet shelves, no clothes-hanging bars, no pantry shelves, not even towel bars or toilet paper holders. You can’t move your furniture to its proper places because there are boxes stacked everywhere, not to mention doors and stair railings and 4000 lbs of hardwood flooring (in boxes, mind you) also still stacked around. And you don’t want to set up half your stuff because if you do you’ll just have to move it to install that flooring and those doors and those stair railings. And did I mention we had no doors? I mean we had doors, stacked inconveniently around the place, but not actually installed into the door frames like a door should be.

The kids took it all in stride. They gleefully went about unboxing their stuff and setting up their new rooms on that very first night. They rode along with the makeshift shower curtain and lack of internet access with no complaints. They quickly settled into new routines and started enjoying new features – the balcony has proven to be an early favorite.

Amy and I were a bit more frazzled by the whole affair. Everywhere you looked something needed doing and something was in disarray. We toiled diligently every night trying to create enough clear space in one area to transition things to their proper resting place and free up another space. We also prioritized flooring the main hallway, which would let us hang some doors in place. After three full days and seven full evenings in the house, I think its finally made the turn. As of Sunday, this house is now our home.

There’s still a lot that needs doing, no doubt. Its not even in as good of shape as I had hoped it would be when we moved in. I would have most liked to have finished up the flooring and got at least the bedroom and bathroom doors in before living here. Unfortunately we could just never catch up from losing 10 weeks on the front-side of the project last summer. But with the construction materials now confined to one room and two fully operational bathrooms (with doors) we can at last relax and just live here. And man does that feel good.