Not Quite Sure How to Say This….

There’s so much I could say, but instead I am going to get right to the point.

We have sold the Two Cats house. We are here, but we are currently renters.

I would have told you sooner, but…it all happened so fast.

We met with a broker and told him we were beginning to think about possibly selling. About a week later, we had an Open House on a Sunday. The next day, we had three offers on the house–two of them above asking price.

We accepted the offer that came with a personal letter from the potential buyers. They were renting a small apartment downtown, had a baby, and they loved our house. They had even read our (this) blog. As they wandered through during that open house, they looked down at a heating grate, and suddenly realized–they were in the Two Cats house.

We met them on Wednesday at the closing. They are a lovely couple. Like us, they lived in New York before moving to Portland. I think they’ll be very happy here.

As for us, we are moving on to a bigger house… with a yard. Now that we have two children, who are both extremely mobile, we just want more space. We are not leaving Portland. We’ve moving about two miles inland as the crow flies to a family-centered neighborhood at the edge of Evergreen Cemetery.

We are really going to miss the East End. We have lived here for almost 5 years. I will miss hearing the foghorns on misty nights. (I hope we can still hear them in Deering Center.) We will miss Rosemont, and the Hilltop Coffee Shop, and the Prom, and “our” playground, as Sadie calls it. I’ll miss the 4th of July and being able to walk to the beach. And boy oh boy will me miss this house. This house is our family. We built this house from blood, sweat and tears. It’s hard to extract our family from this house.

But, we are still a family, wherever we go. These four walls, as much as we love them, don’t make a family. The four of us do. And our new house is going to be lovely and so much more in tune with our needs. We close next Wednesday.

As for the blog, well, as it turns out, the woman buying the house is a writer. Maybe she will want to continue the 2cats blog?

For our part, we have some remodeling to do at our new house. We will most likely begin a new blog for that house, too.

Stay tuned…

We’re Baaaack!

Or at least, we will be. Soon, I promise. There’s been some stuff going on in our lives, like this:

Baby #2

And like this:

We made it official!

So between nursing a newborn and planning a wedding, there wasn’t a lot of spare time for blogging in 2010-2011. But now Clover is walking, the wedding is behind us, and we are back to renovating. Pics soon to come!

Oh, Grate!

We bought three of these iron heat exchanges at Nor’east Salvage in New Hampshire; the circular one was original to the house.

Room for Two

We’ve done a lot but have been bad about taking pictures. (That might change now that I’ve upgraded to my iPhone 4.) Anyway, still no baby sister, but here’s the dresser we just got for Sadie’s soon-to-be-shared room. We got it from the Mill Stores in Scarborough, which sells unfinished pine furniture you can then get painted or stained in any color. It looks great and it holds a ton of clothes.

The new double dresser for the girls' room!

Thumbs on Deck

Cappy took this photo of Thumbs hanging out on the deck. Look closely at the mildewy gutters, because after tomorrow they won’t be there! We’re getting our missing siding replaced, along with the old (useless) gutters. We’ll be sure to post photos when the deed is done.

An Olive Branch.

After demo of second stairway, this patch remained.

We finally got around to some planting in front of the house. Beside not having planted a thing outdoors in my life, there were a few unusual obstacles as one might expect around Two Cats by now.

The plot of land I chose to plant Reeve’s Mother’s Day rhododendron plants was once the site of the second entrance stairs. The ground was hard and needed tilling, so I began by removing as many rocks as possible, including, it turned out, some that formed the foundation of the house. I discovered this when I suddenly was able to see into the basement from the outside.

After replacing the field stones and patching them with hydraulic cement from both sides, I recommenced the planting. Unearthed artifacts included several dozen rusty nails, many shards of glass, a few marbles, a rusty spark plug, a broken thermometer (hope rhododendrons like mercury!), and many many non-foundation stones which I used to border the patch. A few cubic feet of Miracle Grow soil and a spritz from our new hose caddy et voila!

We achieved our goal, which was to announce to the neighborhood that we are more than just another trashy East End family. That, Typar and rusty mailbox aside, we care about aesthetics and are committed to being a cute house someday.

Decked Out.

This was our deck last August, about two months after we began demo. The vinyl siding is still completely intact, as we hadn't yet installed Sadie's egress window.

This was during the mending, scraping, filling and sanding phase.

Finally a day off without rain! I’m making the most of it by painting our once-sad little deck. The goal is to go from shabby-shabby to shabby-chic. Next step? Replacing the siding around the deck and painting our Adirondack chair. Oh and Doing some container planting and putting up a trellis in front of that neighbor’s window.

Our Biggest Fan.

Well it took a couple of days and some monkey-like rafter swinging but we got our ceiling fan installed in the bedroom. And just in time for the hot weather! Sadie smiles and says “fayun!” whenever she looks up and sees it.

Do Not Adjust Your Monitor

This is not a test. The photos you see here are REAL. This is our actual bath tub. With tile. Not concrete backerboard. We have been taking showers now for nearly a month and it is blissful. Especially for this 7-months pregnant lady.

Before and After: Sadie’s Room

Lest anyone forget how far we’ve come at Casa Dos Gatos, let’s take a look at the evolution of Sadie’s room. All of the following photos were taken from the same angle:

Sadie’s room as it was the first time we saw it:

First glimpse of Sadie's room

After the previous owner moved her stuff out:

The carpet was soaked in cat pee.

Mid-remo:

New window (sized for egress) and closet wall. Floor not yet laid.

And now, one little step from completion (fabric roller shades):

Wow. We've come a long way!