Here are a few of the final things we did since we moved in, the things we have outstanding and the things we haven’t quite sorted yet.

The house came with a lovely wood front door with a big oval glass window, and a less lovely inner door, with a rectangular window of ugly frosted glass. We splurged on a red-yellow-blue stained glass window to replace that, although we’ve yet to paint either door and the outside one needs some minor repairs as well.

We haven’t picked the front door color either. I’m thinking rich, dark, glossy wine red, to go with the glossy cafe au lait of the windows and the outdoor trim.

We need a new storm door. We know the one we want, but the company keeps not returning our calls so we can’t place the order.

We’re about a third of the way to the finish line on window coverings, in that we’ve ordered blinds/shutters for three rooms but done nothing about the remaining two. We probably won’t do window coverings in the sun room. Nobody can really see in there anyway, and I like the open look to the to-be-garden. But we will need something for the smallish window in the living room, where we need every lumen of light that we can get

Talking garden, we got two proposals from an expert, although I’m fretting that neither is really what I want. He suggests hostas and standard trees (something grafted onto something else), while I’m more into things that I can eat. We can’t make a final decision until we and the neighbor decide what to do about one of the trees at the back of the back yard. If it comes down, we suddenly get sun. If it stays, the garden is 99 percent shade and I can kill the fruit tree dream. We do want to move the garage door to the side, and dig up the concrete path that currently bisects the garden in a most unfriendly way.

We need to do something about the front garden too. No clue what.

The cold room is home to something like 5 dozen jars of jams, chutneys and tomatoes, which means we’ve got a lot of jam-eating to do before the 2012 jamming season starts up. It’s also storing bicycle parts, for reasons I don’t quite understand.

The panel for our solar hot water is in the garage rather than on the south-facing wall where it needs to go one day. Crazily enough, we bought a regular electric hot water tank to store the water the sun will heat even though we won’t use the electric element. There’s no market for solar hot water tanks, it seems, so this is the most cost-effective route to go.

Let’s see. What else did I forget?

But why, when Canada is a single country, can we build a vanity to the detailed specs of the Quebec manufacturer, only to have the Ontario electrical inspectors reject it because the Quebecers placed the electrical outlet behind a vanity door? We had built to Quebec code, they said, but not to Ontario code, and that outlet had to go.

To cut a long story short, the outlet went, and we passed electrical muster this week, after chunks of time pulling wires through holes in foam insulation and doing the job over.

Memo to Ontario and to Quebec. Couldn’t you just get your act together, please?

We’re here a month already now, feeling settled and almost finished. Blinds will come (for most rooms) next month, and we have a red-blue-yellow stained glass window to replace the shower-stall frosted glass we inherited in the entry way. I’ll post on that once we paint the door to remove that dowdy look.

Did I ever mention how much I love this home?

The stove and the washing machine consistently draw favorable comments, and I’ve demonstrated the soda maker many times already. But it’s our blue-gray-white bathroom that consistently draws the oohs and ahs, which means I will indulge myself with a few more pictures, and a smug smile of satisfaction at the glories of heated bathroom floors.

The tub is the first thing you see, a gleaming white standalone number installed on the diagonal, with brushed-nickel floor-mounted taps behind it. It’s a tub built for long, leisurely bubble baths, and while I’m usually a shower type of girl, I tried it out once, and will look forward to a warm-up soak after skiing, skating or off-season biking. The Caml Tomlin web site tells me it’s a freestanding tub called Passion. I can see why.

The shower, just to the left, is spacious and surprisingly handsome, and I do love the glass accent tile. But the base is not quite level, so it doesn’t drain all the way and we have to squeegee the floor dry for now, which is a minor nuisance. But that’s the only flaw we’ve found in the bathroom or elsewhere in the house so far, and the spouse is working on a fix. The (modern, white) heated towel rail is our radiator, and the (modern, white) vanity has so much storage space that we don’t need the basket. And of course the cat loves the heated floor even more than we do. And the light saber lights look far, far better here than they ever did cramped up together in the bathroom downstairs.

All in all, a 9 out of 10 success (the shower base knocks off a point).

Here are the pictures.

But storing the fruits of a year’s labor was always something of an issue, especially when canning buddy and I branched out beyond jams and into those tomatoes, something that needs to be done in bulk to make it worth while.

Now there’s room for everything we make, in a nice (insulated) cold room that may need an iota of heating, or perhaps a cracked-open door, to stop things freezing when the Toronto winter gets really cold. A special room, just for jam? What a concept.

And just look at all those empty shelves. The game can go on for ever.

I must admit it didn’t seem like an easy task, involving adventures on the third-floor roof to remove an old chimney liner and insert a new one. There was also a lot of drilling of metal and slicing of squares out of metal plates, as well as rooting around inside the fireplace to fix the various gizmos in place. Just as well it’s not Christmas Eve. He’d have been brained by Santa or a reindeer.

We tried it out briefly, although it’s not really cold enough for supplementary heat. There’s a whoosh rather than a crackle, but oh it’s sleek.

In other news, a neighbor and her child came round with a box of welcome cookies. A few Christmas trees, a star or two, handful of iced cats with sprinkles, and a couple of multicolored hammers. How appropriate can we get?

After all of four nights here, and major progress in reducing the number of boxes in almost every room, this already feels like home.

We are surrounded by boxes, packing paper and Things That Don’t Yet Have A Home, and the internet works only with an airstick for now. But we are here, along with all the things we’ve not seen since for months. I like it. No, I love it.

We do still have work to complete, including a particularly irritating bit of remedial work after someone (not the spouse) did something distressingly wrong on the base of that picture perfect shower, and there will be more blog entries (and more pictures) to come. But this is the “we have arrived” entry.  Thank you for listening. And have a drink for us.

Me? I’m off to get a massage to  eliminate some of the mid-December stress.

Normal service will resume.

Of course I’m now pining for accessories for the clutter that’s bound to come as soon as we move in, given that both tub and shower have nowhere to hide so much as a bar of soap. we probably need a storage thingymajig that stands behind the tub, and a shelf of some sort in the shower area.

Details. Not until after we move.

Talking of moving, extra boxes are filling up, not to mention the ones we never unpacked in our eight months in temporary digs. We more or less cleared the basement today, and eliminated the last mounds of clutter from the kitchen countertop, exposing a gleaming black-grey quartz with sparkles of sapphire blue.

In a symbolic gesture, I unpacked my first purchase, a countertop soda stream that is supposed to eliminate the need to keep racing down to the store for more fizzy water. Toronto tap water never tasted quite so good.

What idiot designed a gizmo (pictured below the space for the microwave) that’s just an inch too tall to fit under a regular kitchen countertop?

And I sat back and beamed at how wonderful it looks.

Of course things are still distressingly different when I look in the other direction.

One day we’ll get there, right?

I did manage to sneak in a couple of micro scratches in an overenthusiastic attempt to vacuum up the dust, but I’m hoping there’s a way to make them less noticeable. Anyone got tips for getting micro scratches out of old but newly finished floors?

Elsewhere, the stairs have their first hint of the Oreo cookie look, and the mantle is painted and the brickwork is all sliced up ready to receive the pellet stove insert. The plumber might come tonight. I hope so. I want to see the tub in the right place and work out if it looks as good in real life as it did in the showroom.

And now that we’ve survived the reno, I think it’s time to post a picture of the birthday gift I bought the spouse this year, paying far too much for a copy of a New Yorker cartoon and then paying again to have it hard-mounted ready for hanging in the powder room.

We never really had a deadline, and the budget was sort of fuzzy.

But I think we won.

Pictures speak louder than words on this one. Here is the collection, including the (modern) heated towel rail for the (modern) almost-finished bathroom.

The thought of a toasty warm towel after a bath or shower is almost as appealing as the thought of toasty warm feet from the in-floor heating there.

Any feedback?