A Huge Sigh of Relief

Despite the broken foot, I was able to make it upstate last week to close on the refinance of the house, with a whole lotta help from my parents and Eric chauffeuring my ass around. Our mortgage payment will be going up a quite a bit on June 1^st but hopefully there will be rental income at around that time, so it will all even out—I hope!

I walked away from the closing empty handed which made it all feel a bit anti-climatic, but today all the checks arrived in the mail. These are the checks that will allow me to pay off ALL my non-mortgage debt and even have a little cash left over to finish up the house. I just mailed off all the payments to my credit card and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off me. I'm sure I'll feel crushed again by June 1^st if we don't have tenants, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In the meantime, we picked up a few more things for our apartment, some necessary, others more frivolous, but it's nice to report on new developments down here instead of in the rental apts.

First off, our wine cellar arrived last week. While it isn't setup yet (Eric needs to recess the electrical box under the island to push the cellar in another ½ inch or so) it fits pretty well in that space and looks really great, almost like it was meant to be there all along—the handle literally matches our drawer handles perfectly! It holds up to 32 bottle of wine, with 3 zones for reds, whites and champagne. I plan on becoming a wine snob very, very soon so look out!

At Ikea I picked up two of these aluminum and frosted glass cabinets for our bathroom, as we were woefully lacking on storage space there, and they fit perfectly with the décor and really make the room feel much less cluttered. We mounted them side by side so they almost look like one double cabinet—snazzy! Just gotta clean off all those fingerprints…

Also new in the bathroom is that we took down the temporary shower curtain and bar and just have the glass wall now. It really opens up the space and allows you to appreciate the shower in all of its glass-tiled glory. Next up we are getting a much shorter chrome shelf to go between the sink and toilet and the final over-sink mirror with built in lights.

Up in the rental apartments, the Ikea stuff is pretty much all assembled and both kitchen and bathrooms are coming together. The 2^nd floor kitchen—just missing the stainless countertop. We have a nice stainless steel double sink already.

The second floor bathroom

The 3^rd floor bathroom—same stuff just slightly larger and this one has the faucet installed.

The 3 stainless steel drawer unit---those shelves will be mounted on the wall above tomorrow

The kitchen sink/stove/upper cabinets

Comments

[Vidar]

It's so fun to see IKEA stuff as far away from Scandinavia as this. I guess you like the names on the stuff they have. Like Grundtal and Värde, how can you possibly pronounce that? He he :)

[~dana]

Hey Vidar--I LOVE Värde--in fact I exclaim it every time I walk into that apartment, like a battle cry--but I'm very, very strange. Also, I don't know why so many people are down on Ikea in the states. I think we did really well matching the kitchens and bathrooms to the modern, loft feel of the rental with Ikea stuff. How are they regarded in Scandinavia?