When we bought this house, the real estate listing for it said that there was a view of the Mississippi river possible, but when we came to walk through the house, we weren’t able to see much of it. We could get a couple glimpses of it through the trees in the back yard, but it wasn’t anything we would really classify as a view.

Since we moved in, though, we’ve noticed a significant change in what we can see through the trees … every day the view increases. Here are some pictures from when we moved in three weeks ago and what it looks like now. It’s been quite a change!

Even though we’re nearing the end of October, most of our trees haven’t really dropped a lot of their leaves … the leaves haven’t even really started to change colors yet. We can’t wait to see what our view is going to be like this winter when there are no leaves left on the trees. Depending on how good it is, we might have to consider thinning out the trees in the back so we can enjoy it year round.

One of the things that Chad and I thought we wanted in our new home when we started house hunting was a whole house stereo system, which is surprisingly popular in newer construction. We, however, fell in love with a nearly century old home, which not-so-surprisingly didn’t include a such a system. We considered this a minor drawback in comparison to the charm and character of the home, so we didn’t really think much more about it.

This weekend, though, we were finishing with some unpacking and started setting up some of our computer and stereo equipment. One of the things we brought with us from the old house was a couple of Airport Express’, which we had previously used to stream iTunes music from a computer to a single stereo for better sound quality than what we could get on the computer speakers. As we were setting them up, we commented on how nice it would be if we could get iTunes to stream to multiple Airport Express’ at the same time so we could have the same music playing in multiple locations in the house, but we couldn’t figure out a way to do it.

Today, I did some research on the Apple website for the Airport Express and it turns out that, with a quick firmware update, streaming music to multiple Airport Express’ from iTunes is possible. So, I updated the software this afternoon and have everything all set up to play music on the iPod HiFi in the kitchen as well as to the stereo in the family room, which pretty well covers the first floor. They seem to be working well and do a good job of creating the feel of a whole house sound system without all of the wiring.

The Airport Express is a pretty cool device that I’m not sure Apple has done a great job of marketing. We’ve owned two for a couple of years now and had no idea we could use them for so many different purposes. The Airport Express is a small device about the size of a large power adapter. It plugs into any outlet and connects to a stereo or set of powered speakers via an audio cable. We have ours set up to join our existing wireless network (which doesn’t have to be provided by an Apple router). From iTunes, we can then control playlists, volume, etc. and decide which set or sets of speakers we want to play the music on. I saw online today that you can also purchase a remote control for that can be used to control iTunes from any location where there is an Airport Express … depending on how far we take our setup, this might be something we’ll want to consider in the future. The Airport Express can also be used as a wireless print server and can be used to create a wireless network or extend an existing one (if your existing one is provided by an Apple router). We aren’t using ours for either of these functions yet, but considering the difficulty of running network and audio cable from the basement all the way up to the attic, the Airport Express (at about $100 each) seems like a pretty cost effective solution for a whole house stereo system, wireless print sharing, and extending our wireless network.

We’re not sure if it really qualifies, but we completed our first “project” of replacing a couple of toilet seats this week.

We have two “twin” bathrooms that are decorated identically, right down to the matching wooden toilet seats. It’s probably completely mental, but I’ve have an issue with wood in that location. It just seems like they’d have the same problem as wooden cutting boards and never really get completely clean or disinfected. I’m also not crazy about how they look … so, it was an easy decision to replace them with new, clean, white ones.

They were quick and easy to install … now the only problem is that we discovered (after we got the new toilet seats home and opened) our two nearly identical bathrooms have non matching white and beige toilets … and both now have lovely white toilet seats. Even though the toilet in the laundry room bath still doesn’t match its seat, we think it’s a definite improvement!

After a week of scheduling (and rescheduling) the delivery and installation times, Sears finally delivered our new stove and installed our new microwave/hood today. Chad’s successfully made some macaroni and cheese on the stove tonight, but other than that, we haven’t had a chance to use it much yet, so it’s a little early to comment on how well it does or doesn’t work.

I am pretty pleased with the aesthetic improvement over the old one-piece stove/microwave combination that was there, although we weren’t as pleased to discover that the tiled back splash was not continued behind the previous stove, so we have a small spot between the microwave and stove that’s a somewhat dented, painted wall. Eventually, we’ll get around to fixing that … once we figure out what the best approach might be. We also have a small project ahead of us to install an outlet in the cabinet above the microwave. Despite what the Sears salesperson told us, the installer doesn’t do electrical work, so he hung the microwave for us, but it’s currently powered by an extension cord that comes out of the cabinet and plugs into the wall outlet. Hopefully that should be an easy fix …

Here are some pictures of our new John Deere X720 riding lawn mower that was delivered today:

We selected the X720 model because it has the direct shaft drive mower deck as well as fuel injection, which we’re hoping will help with winter starting. So far, we’ve noticed that it runs smoothly and seems to handle the hills well. We got the 54″ mower deck and purchased a blade for the front for snow removal. Chad is also excited about the opportunity to add the tractor shovel attachment at some point in the future.

Looking at all of the pictures from our moving day, one thing you won’t see is the 24-foot U-Haul truck we were supposed to moving with and this isn’t due to lack of planning on our part. I did everything I was supposed to – a couple of weeks before the big move, I looked up all of the local U-Haul locations in the yellow pages and called the one closest to our house to reserve a truck. They took my reservation (and credit card numbers) with no problem, told me they’d have the 24 foot truck I’d requested brought into their location in time for our September 29th move, and indicated that it wouldn’t be a problem for us to reserve it from 9am to 9pm that day like I’d requested. Just to make sure, though, they were going to call the day before to confirm that everything was scheduled appropriately.

So, 5:00pm the night before moving day, I realized that I hadn’t heard from anyone regarding the U-Haul rental. I didn’t think much of it because we’d also had our phone service transferred that day, so I thought they’d probably just tried calling during the time that we didn’t have service at our old address and (because I didn’t want them to give our truck to anyone else), I called to let them know we still wanted it. I started by calling the U-Haul location I’d reserved the truck at. They told me that my reservation had been transferred to another local U-Haul store, but couldn’t tell me which one. So, I called the 1-800 number to talk to U-Haul customer service who gave me the location my reservation had been transferred to, but couldn’t give me any details about it. When I finally got a hold of someone at that location, they had our reservation, it was for a 24-foot truck, but we could only have it from 3:30pm-7:00pm because it was already rented to others for the rest of the day. In fact, every piece of U-Haul equipment at that and every other local location was reserved for our moving day … completely unbelievable!

So, I promptly called their customer service back only to find out that the date, time, and equipment that I had requested when I made the reservation were only a PREFERENCE … after providing all of that information, there was no guarantee we’d get any of it, which was exactly what happened to us. After some not-so-friendly words with the customer service representative, I cancelled our reservation and proceeded to call every other moving company in the phone book in the hopes of finding any type of rental truck still available on the night before the last weekend of the month (only the busiest one for moving).

Luckily, we finally found a 16-foot Ryder truck that was available all day on September 29th. The truck worked out great (even though we wound up having to drive almost 20 miles to get it) and we are very satisfied with our experiences with Ryder … although we can’t quite say the same for U-haul.

So, a word of advice to anyone planning to reserve a moving truck in the future … although U-haul may be the cheapest, there’s a reason for it. Don’t make your reservation with them unless you’re ok working with what equipment may or may not be available on the dates and times requested.

Last weekend, we made our first major purchase for our new home in the form of a washer and dryer set. I’d been doing some research over the previous weeks to figure out what would be a good choice for our new home and quickly settled on the Whirpool Cabrio line. I was kind of excited about the possibility of purchasing a front loading set since I’d read so much about what a great job they can do cleaning the clothes, but I also read a lot of reviews that said there were vibration issues, especially for second floor installations (which is what we have in this house). It was also recommended that the washer and dryer be installed near a load bearing wall to help minimize the vibration throughout the rest of the house. Given that the home we moved into is nearing 100 years old, it didn’t seem like the wisest decision to purchase a washing machine that has known vibration problems.

Of the few high efficiency top loading models I researched, the Whirlpool Cabrio (with no center agitator and with the glass lid) got some of the most consistently positive reviews, so I had my mind all made up that that was the set to purchase. After we moved into the house, we measured the laundry closet to make sure that the set would fit and the doors would line up with the closet doors and everything … and I was so happy to see that it was all going to work out with the washer and dryer dimensions. We were all ready to go make the purchase when Chad remembered that we should also measure the other doors in our house that the washer and dryer would need to fit through to get to the closet … and I’m so glad we did! Turns out that the dryer was going to be about 3/4″ too wide to fit through the door to the laundry room. (That would have been a nasty surprise when it was delivered!)

So, we went to the local Sears and measured every member of the Whirlpool Cabrio line in case there was one that turned out to be smaller … sadly, there were none. What we found instead, though, was a Kenmore Oasis washer and dryer that were sized just a little smaller and would fit into the room. (The Oasis line is the Kenmore equivalent to the Whirlpool Cabrio). We wound up purchasing the Kenmore Elite Oasis 4.5 cu. ft. Canyon Capacity Washer (model number 27062) and the Kenmore Elite Oasis 6.8 cu. ft Super Capacity Gas Dryer (model number 77042), both in white. The washer has all of the same features as the Whirlpool one I’d picked out except that we decided to get the one without the glass lid to save about a hundred dollars on the purchase price. The dryer is actually a littler smaller in capacity (hence the smaller size that would fit through the laundry room door), but otherwise matches the washer perfectly and the two look like they are meant to go together.

So far, our experiences with the new washer and dryer have been positive. We’ve got no complaints at all with the washing machine and have noticed only a few annoyances with the dryer. We’ve done a couple of loads where the Auto-Dry setting has had the dryer running for several hours before declaring the clothes dry enough to shut off. Once was with a load of towels and I’ve since read in the owners manual that a timed dry is probably more appropriate for that type of load, so maybe it’s more of a user problem than an actual issue with the machine. The other thing we’ve noticed with the dryer is that it vibrates pretty much the whole house and (because of that) can be heard from almost any room … probably has something to do with the age of the house, but it sure makes me glad we decided against the front loading washer! I think we’ll try putting it on a rubber mat to see if that will absorb any of the vibration. It would sure be nice to confine the sound to the second floor at least!

After an almost 2 week absence from blogging, we’re happy to report that we’ve successfully made the move to our new home! It turned out to be a full two days of work and we’re still living out of boxes.

I’ll post more details later, but here are some photos of moving day :

Moving Day Photo Gallery