Settling In

It's not quite four weeks since we moved furniture into our new house. and although we are not completely settled in, we are functional. Just yesterday we moved the last of the boxes that had been standing in that open area in the kitchen that I want to use for additional cabinets in the near future. These were the ones that got packed up the very last day (February 27) that we brought things over from the apartment: laundry supplies, because we continued to use the washer and dryer there throughout February, the few items that had languished in the dishwasher waiting for any additional ones that turned up in cleaning out, and the miscellaneous forgotten or odd-shaped things that were just the last to be transported.

We have assembled shelves and more shelves for the books, papers, and work area in my office, shelves with doors for the extra china and cutlery and serving dishes in the dining room, organizers for the clothes closets, new shelves for the pantry that had been turned into a wine cellar and then a laundry area by previous owners and now is returning to its original purpose, and a whole range of sturdy shelves in the windowless basement "study" that is going to serve us as a grand walk-in storage room to hold the still-unpacked boxes and out-of-season and seldom-used but essential items. Yes, we do intend to get it completely unpacked "soon," but at least for now it is organized.

We have also dealt with the aches and pains of adjusting to the mechanics of a new-to-you house. The first little problem was a leak on the basement concrete floor in the laundry/utility area, just beside the water heater. We have experienced a burst water heater once before in our lives, and we though we did not think this was an emergency yet, we didn't want it to become one. So we contacted the home warranty company--home warranty being a new type of insurance that we had never had previously in any of our houses. They told us the name of their authorized service partner to contact, and we did. Due to the unusually cold weather and the unprecedented number of calls, the authorized service partner never got back to us, so a week later, when the trickle of water was getting stronger, we contacted the warranty company again and got referred to another company. That service provider came the next day and fixed the water heater, without having to replace the whole thing, so we were lucky.

We didn't think we would be so lucky with the furnace. We had noticed that the gas-powered heater was surprisingly quiet at the beginning, and soon we noticed that--again with the unusually cold weather we were having (below zero Fahrenheit)--it was awfully cold in the house. When we lived in Spain I complained regularly about how cold it was in the house, but those houses were built without central heating. We were supposed to have central heat in this house! When we realized that the thermostat regularly indicated that the temperature was ten or more degrees below what we had set the thermostat for,  we contacted the warranty company again.

The first diagnosis was the timer. Then the blower. Then a circuit board. Finally we had practically a new furnace and we spent a night in toasty warm, without having to turn on the small space heater that we had invested in during the cool days. And then we woke up the next morning to 55 degrees. Our frustrated call to the heating contractor went unanswered, but we left messages. Twice. A call came through that he was on his way, but two hours later he was still on his way. True, there was the unprecedented snow and bad road conditions that morning... When he did get here later in the morning last Thursday, the problem this time was a sensor. Now we have a really almost new heater, and now, several days later, the heat in our house has stabilized and we feel we have achieved some control over the thermostat. And the weather this week is supposed to warm up to human temperatures again.

This evening we have rearranged the living and dining room slightly in preparation for entertaining a dozen or so of our fellow "scribblers" from the Scandinavian Society of Cincinnati tomorrow. Our hosting this event is something we have long awaited and we are happy to have it now occurring in our new home. And we are especially happy that we can do it in a warm house.