We are moved in!

Our first night in the new house was New Years Eve evening. I spent the first half of New Years Eve at the house working with Joe the electrician, and David the low-volt guy, to wrap up some last-minute details. After heading back to the old house around 1pm, we ended up hauling two truckloads (using a rented 14' box van from Del's Truck Rentals) over to the new house. Two truck loads per days is pretty good, given the transit time (1 hour each way) plus loading and unloading time. My wife and son had staged most of the first truckload in the garage to make things go faster, but even so we were really moving to get that much done. We setup our beds around 11pm and were quickly dead asleep - no welcoming the New Year for us!

Anyway, at this point we are 99.9% moved in (including moving my boat). There is a few odds and ends at the old house (a few tools, cleaning supplies, etc), but nothing that would take more than a carload or three to bring over. More importantly: we have food, water, a working stovetop and oven, and the washer and dryer are hooked up. The place is liveable now.

Just a few observations after a few days living here:

• The water from our well tastes fine, and feels fine when showering, etc.
• Our Kohler "Pressure Lite" toilets work well, but sound like jet engines taking off when flushed. If I had known this in advance, I would have picked a less-efficient-but-quieter model.
• My wife was very disappointed to find that her Belgique line of pots and pans are non-magnetic, and therefore don't work on our induction stovetop. We'll have to go shopping for a new set (All-Clad seems like a good default choice). In the meantime, our trusty old cast-iron fry pans work great.
• Our internet bandwidth is great considering that we're on DSL: I'm seeing pretty consistent download speeds of 1+ Mb/sec, and upload speeds of .5 Mb/sec. This is a relief since I spend a lot of time on my computer.
• The stars are super-clear when you live in the middle of a forest and there's no lights around :).
• There is an annoying light flicker when the chiller (heat pump) kicks on....not sure what causes it, or what can be done about it, but I'm really disappointed by this.
• Radiant floor heating is great! Especially on the tiled surfaces - your toes stay toasty.
• Hardwood flooring is great, but it's, well - hard: I plan to buy some house slippers.

The blinds were also installed last week, and we are very happy with them. I will work on getting some pictures of them for the curious. The color match with the house millwork is darn near perfect - we got lucky on that.

So that's where we are. There will be a few more posts on final finishing details, including finishing the punchlist items with our builder, but otherwise expect to see the posting activity taper off. Writing this blog has been a lot of fun, but I need to get back to having a life :).