En ma Fin gît mon Commencement

I am writing this last entry with the hope that my three loyal readers have not come to the very understandable, if flawed, conclusion that I have abandoned them. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, I have not written in the last month because there has not been much by way of constructing bliss and instead, we have focused our attention on decorating bliss.

Over the last few weeks, the boxes were emptied, contents located to their intended homes and the boxes recycled or reused for other moves:





We have also invited the succor and assistance of various deities to protect the house and those who dwell in her:







I even managed to squeeze my car into the garage, more or less:



The master closet, on the other hand, appears fairly organized and fully operational:




We have even set up the outdoor furniture on the various decks:





All that is left is to enjoy a cigar and a glass of Agavero on the deck:


and enjoy the view of San Francisco at sunset:



and before you know it, the house becomes a home:



Thank you gentle reader for following the adventures of our new home. We hope to see you on the blog for the next construction project -- but not any time soon.

The other Big "M"

The time finally came to take two relatively well-organized households and convert them into one chaotic one. I was chosen to be the first to have my household entropy increased by a couple of orders of magnitude and on cue, several strong fellows and a very large truck showed up at my house:



Like the locusts of biblical fame, they descended upon my modest possessions:



In surprisingly quick order, my house became a sad and empty place:



While all of my possessions were moved into the previously mentioned large truck:



The truck then backed up to the new house and the contents were disgorged with equal efficiency -- the whole load, drive, and unload operation was over by 2:30 PM. These guys are fast:





With the easy part over, our house has gone from Bauhaus to Warehouse:











Of course, not every room in the house is overrun by boxes, for example the uniplex cinema is in set up and in full operation:



as is the executive gym:



and the lounge/library:



And most importantly, we are ready to throw things away -- nothing says home like a trash can and recycling bin:

Unmoved

While little bits of construction continue, we are getting ready for the big "M". The house is slowly transforming itself into a home in the meantime.

The furniture is starting to arrive:




Including the office furniture:



The bed is now actually usable for sleeping:



And for watching the newly installed 50'' plasma panel:



If laying in bed and watching TV is not your thing, each of the other bedrooms have their own flat panel LCD TVs:



as does the office:



And for the near-cinema effect, there is the 73'' main TV in the family/media room:



This last one is still in the process of getting set up:





To make sure that only authorized individuals get to access all of this entertainment, the garage door opener is equipped with a biometric (fingerprint) scanner:



Which also guards the stuff already stored in the garage:




The flip side of all of this is that my current humble abode has now been transformed into a warehouse and I am essentially camping in my own house:



And Jenn has done a remarkably thorough job packing the house up:



I am pretty excited about getting ready to move to the new house, but the security system seems a bit skeptical:


I wonder what it knows that I don't ...

Accomplished but not done

After fighting us tooth and nail for two plus years, the great city of San Francisco finally relented and gave us a certificate of occupancy for the house. To share this news with everyone, and to save a bit of money, I found an absolutely incredible deal on a great banner to hang on the house -- here is the only time the banner was used and it is still in absolutely pristine shape:



I think it would look pretty good on the house:



Just like the last time this banner was used, our mission is nowhere near done. In fact, in most construction projects it takes a while to work out all the details that are left over from construction. For example, here is the contractor working on the punch list on this famous project (he claims they are only a couple of weeks away from getting the last couple of items off the list and that the Pharaoh could not be more pleased with the progress):



We don't have that kind of time and to move things along, in addition to banner shopping, we have been attending to lot of details that will turn this house into a home:

For example, the window coverings were installed this week. These are the high tech vertical drapes for the front windows. Here's how they look when they are open:



Press a button on this remote control ....



And they close off automatically:



The master bedroom and master bath got somewhat less high tech Roman shades:





The master closet skylights got cellular shades that let in the light but keep out the UV rays.





To compensate for the loss of direct natural light, we added a little extra lighting:





Some bits of furniture also got here:




All that work made me a little tired and I decided to take a nap in our recently-delivered bed (a tad uncomfortable, at least until the mattress gets here):



Some of our high-tech communication gear was also installed:




Despite all of these accomplishments, bits of green tape remind us that the mission is far from done:



Let's hope the post "mission accomplished" work is nowhere as arduous or as dangerous as it was for the original owner of the banner. We have some work ahead of us, but I am not planning on a surge any time soon.