We’re ho-o-me!

When we left Oshkosh this morning, we only had maybe three more hours to drive, but we stretched it out by stopping for a couple hours in Green Bay.  We went to Home Depot to pick up a pole saw Mark ordered so he can prune the trees in our yard.  Then he stopped at Harbor Freight to get a chain saw sharpener.  We went to Costco and paid for a membership for the first time since we started Workamping.  There’s no room for buying in bulk when you live in an RV, but now that we have a house we can do so again.  Finally, we went to the VA to get some supplies for Mark’s CPAP machine.

Having done all the big city errands we needed to, we headed up the peninsula toward home.

Crossing Sturgeon Bay

Driving through downtown Ellison Bay

Pulling up in front of our new house.

Before I even got out of the U-Haul, two of our neighbors came to greet us. The one on the left is Karen and the one on the right is Lynn. They welcomed us to the neighborhood!

We had mail waiting for us and I discovered that there’s a planter box behind the mailbox!

While walking around the back side of the house, I found a pet cemetery in the woods behind our house.  You can see our meadow in the background.

This is the “Picker’s Hut” in our back yard. Mark plans to use it for doing his leatherwork. First he needs to patch up the holes where critters have gotten in.

This is the front of the garage…

…and this is the back of the garage. The workbenches will be where Mark does his tinkering for work and for fun.

Entering from the garage, the kitchen is the first room you enter. Mark pointed out to me that the counters are cracked.

I’m going to stop here and explain what we’d like to do with the kitchen.  Besides replacing the counter top, Mark wants to take out a couple of the lower cabinets by the sink and put in a dishwasher for me.  On the wall behind the stove, we’re talking about taking out some of the upper cabinets and the wall and making a pass-through.

This is the entry hall from the front door.

The other door you can see in the entryway is a half bath and the laundry room.

Both the kitchen and the front entry way lead to the dining room and living room.

The previous owner left her hide-a-bed for us and a floor lamp.  The walls have a sort of woven grass paper on them with paneled wainscoting beneath.  The grass paper is kind of loose at the seams and has marks on it, so I want to take that down and do something different with the walls.  The window seat you can see beyond the wood burning stove is wooden, but the wood needs some care.

This will be our bedroom. The previous owner left a small dresser and mirror for us. We tried to set our bed up in the room and discovered we’re missing part of the metal frame.

As you can probably tell in the picture, the walls are paneled, but the seams in the paneling are rather obvious.  I think I’ll take that out too.

In between the two bedrooms is the full bath.

We’d like to take out the sink and counter and put in two sinks — his and hers!

This is the larger of the two bedrooms and it’s on the corner so it gets more light. We’re going to use it for a guest room and my sewing room.

After exploring the house, we started unloading the U-Haul.  It took the better part of the afternoon, and we were getting really hungry sometime after 6:00 PM.  I was going to jump into our pickup truck and get some food, but it wouldn’t start.  Mark took his motorcycle to get food, and he also brought back a portable charger.  Even with that the truck wouldn’t start.  I guess we need a new battery.

Our first meal in our new house! We don’t have a table yet.

We finished unloading everything except the really heavy stuff, like the hide-a-bed we brought with us for the guest bedroom.  We’ll try to find someone to help us unload that in the morning.  Since the pickup truck is dead, we drove the U-Haul to Wagon Trail Campground where our RV has been parked so that Tim and Kathy could take care of our cats while Mark was gone.  I wasn’t sure how the cats would react to me since they haven’t seen me since the day after Christmas.

Kimba kept rubbing against my leg.

Dobby had the crazies and kept rolling around with my stuff.

We’re spending the night at the RV since we can’t set up our bed yet.  It’s good to be here, but there is still much to do to make our house our home.