We have been joking for months now about “moving to the Arctic North”: Bellingham is a whole 80 miles north of Seattle, and temperatures are typically 2-3 degrees colder than Seattle.  The joke’s on us, though, because on Monday we loaded all of our stuff into the Uhaul, and when we got to Bellingham, there was an inch or so of snow on the ground.  We woke up on Tuesday morning to a gloriously sticky 3 inches.  It then turned into a warm day, so it pretty much all melted by the end of the day.

We had hoped to hit the ground running and start painting on our first day here, but we were utterly exhausted and didn’t accomplish much on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Our biggest accomplishment so far has been buying cinderblocks and putting the washing machine on top of them so that the drainage hose can reach the drainage pipe.

Contractors have also been busy.  We had new flooring installed while we were gone: new carpet in the living room, and vinyl plank flooring over all of the old linoleum.  The new floors are a really dramatic improvement.  It’s hard to get pictures of the floors, though, because we have scattered our stuff all over the house.

A new wooden board has replaced the old “brick” wall that we tore down.  That board leaves plenty of room for our buffet next to the dining table.

Our bedroom is right next to the laundry/furnace room, and the furnace can be really loud.  They built a solid wall with insulation and a solid-core door for the laundry room, and the noise difference is really dramatic – much easier to sleep now!

We’re working on getting the bathroom and kitchen cleaned and unpacked, but we hope to be able to start painting soon!  We can’t really unpack the other rooms until we paint.