theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Home Improvement

  • new backyard

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    we missed a whole spat of holidays this spring — from my birthday, to mother’s day, to the lady sparkler’s birthday, to (i presume) father’s day.

    so, instead, we bought ourselves a backyard and are going to throw ourselves a party.

    i got new patio furniture, my wife got a grill — if you don’t know why that’s appropriate, you don’t know my wife very well — and even sparklet got herself a kiddie-wading-pool out of the deal.

    now we just need to pick a date. stay tuned.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    new backyard

  • video: the home campaign

    part of being my wife’s husband is helping her manage change.

    when she was young, the lady sparkler legendarily got upset that they rearranged furniture in order to put up the Christmas tree. (i can neither confirm nor deny that this is why i shipped her off to austin during the move.)

    so, in an attempt to protect life, preserve sanity during the move, i’ve been sending her pictures of the progress of Flickr and short videos (below) of the rooms as they’ve gone from project to completion.

    i should manage my wife professionally.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsBGicpJuAo
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qvq2htChPM
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyM4fINoGAM
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVwCQ8Fj0E0

  • home

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    photo of the week // nineteen months
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  • one final day

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    our last meal on park road ended how it began — with takeout. because all our pots and pans are packed. and we haven’t bought groceries in three weeks.

    and shortly after our “picnic” in the old courtyard, we walked the 550 yds to Monroe Street for our pre-closing inspection, where everything looked absolutely, refreshingly perfect.

    not only were all our inspection issues resolved, but the sellers actually went above and beyond — which was a great relief because we were frankly a little nervous about whether they were going to do anything at all. (get us drunk, we’ll tell you the whole story.)

    anyway, a friend today asked if I was concerned about the walkthrough and i said that — while we had trouble with the sellers leading up to this point — if tonight went well, all would be forgiven.

    all is forgiven. and we close tomorrow at 3pm.

  • seven days

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    in the next seven days:

    • monday — we sell our place on Park Road, and start our seven day rentback from the new owners.
    • tuesday — we walk through the new house to make sure they haven’t trashed the place.
    • wednesday — we close on the new place on Monroe Street.
    • thursday — the lady sparker takes sparklet to Tejas, and our POD is delivered bearing all the crap stuff we packed away last February.
    • friday — movers come to take the rest of our crap stuff from Park Road to Monroe Street.
    • saturday — i unpack.
    • sunday — our rentback ends, which means we’re fully out of Park Road.
    • monday — and on the eighth day, he rested.

    actually, we kicked everything off this afternoon with the buyers walking through our house to make sure WE hadn’t trashed the place.

    we hadn’t — well, except for all the boxes.

  • scratch ‘n sniff

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    sparklet’s latest trick is rubbing a plant leaf in between her fingers, and then lifting them to her nose for a sniff. (no, i’ve got no clue where that came from either.)

    speaking of — why we can’t be trying to sell our place now?

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    scratch ‘n sniff

  • found: someone who’s not read to move

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  • the boxes rise again

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    the boxes are starting to rise again, only this time we’re moving for realz — 18 days.

  • how i met your mother: house 1.0

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    dear sparklet,

    this is the nineth in a series of letters from daddy about how i met and married your mother.

    it has been quite some time since your mother and i started living together — and for some reason daddy wasn’t smart (or brave) enough to blog about it at the time.

    so, now that we’re all getting ready to move into house 3.0, it seems like a good time to flashback to the house (or two) that started it all.

    when mommy and daddy met back in 2004, daddy was living unceremoniously in his boss’ basement in a place called “Glover Park.” it was in a neighborhood that was a lot like Mount Pleasant — only filled exclusively with 25 year old female interns from the midwest whose daddies were determined that their daughters would be geographically removed from anything that might possibly resemble a city.

    (oh, and the 45 minute walk to the nearest metro stop, and the $30 a plate restaurants, and the whole foods, and the small children running around wearing designer toddler clothing that they would out grow in the next two weeks — other than that it was exactly like Mount Pleasant.)

    mommy, on the other hand, lived about 30 feet from the (literal) wrong side of the tracks in “old town” Alexandria, Virginia.

    on the rare occasion where it made sense for daddy to spend the night in Alexandria (read: we were flying out of national airport the following morning) it was a lovely experience (sweating, with no air conditioning) through the parts of the night (those without gun shots) through which we would sleep like lambs (in between freight trains).

    considering that mommy had (obviously) even worse taste in living arrangements than daddy, i tried desperately to convince her to move into D.C. with me — not into my boss’ basement, somewhere else — but she’d have none of it. her love of strip malls and horrible drivers was just too strong.

    the one legitimately nice thing about our living arrangement was the drive — daddy lived a couple minutes off the rock creek parkway, and mommy lived a couple minutes off the george washington parkway, a pair of beautifully scenic roads connected by the (equally stunning) memorial bridge.

    so, when i came time to develop some kind of master plan for our residential future, we picked a neighborhood in Arlington (called “Rosslyn”) pretty much entirely based on the fact that it was located just off our beloved parkways, halfway between our two houses.

    now, i actually remember precious little about the moves (plural, there were two houses after all) themselves. i remember that it was July, hotter than blazes, and mommy had managed to find a new job the week before and “just couldn’t take time off work to help out.”

    the apartment (and the complex) was a pretty unremarkable place — probably best illustrated by the fact that we never bothered to take any pictures of it.

    fortunately, the apartment complex’s website hasn’t been updated since the hoover administration and just happens to have pictures of our exact model:

    so, there you go … the “house” that started it all, and the one that set us up for the first home you ever knew.

    and with that, good night. ’cause daddy has to go pack. ’cause daddy is moving y’all into a new house in just 19 days.

    love,
    daddy

  • the waiting

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    thirty-seven days and counting — and right now that seems like a reaaaally long time.

    our Memorial Day closing date was an unfortunate by-product of our buyers freaking out about us doing a “rent back” of our current place from them, and going from “unlimited flexibility” to “you have seven days to sell the place, buy a new one, and move.”

    so, when they went rigid, we had to pick an arbitrary date far enough out that we were certain we could find a place to live in the meantime. a noble idea made kinda silly by us signing a contract later that weekend to buy the place on Monroe.

    regardless, we have this kinda awkward four weeks in the middle here — all of our inspections and appraisals are done (so nothing left to do with the buying or the selling) but we are still five-plus weeks away from moving (so it’s a little early to pack).

    and so we wait.