We Have Moved and Are Buried in Boxes

Yesterday the movers came and took everything to the new house. They reassembled any furniture they disassembled, but most of what they packed stayed in boxes. And boy, are there a lot of boxes. It will take us quite a while to unpack, and in the meantime we are having trouble finding things we need right away. (Where is the box cutter packed?)

Our computers are set up on our old desks, which will be replaced with new desks tomorrow. The old ones will go back to Cherrystones to be refinished and then they will be returned to be put in other rooms. We had to have the computers set up so we could connect to our new Sonos system and our new Unify Protect system. But also so we could order, from amazon, things we need real soon (cords the telephone, bumpers to stop doors from banding in the middle of the night, etc.)

Here are some pictures. The first is the garage with its new epoxy floor. The floor is still out gassing and we have to open up the garage during the day to help it air out. The vent hood in the corner is where I may eventually install a 3D printer. To the left of the vent hood is our only WiFi, which only turns on when we flip a light switch.

The kitchen is a mess with all the boxes packed by the movers for the kitchen. The dining room table comes tomorrow, so for now we eat on card tables.

Before the normal kitchen stuff gets unpacked, we had to transfer the contents of our chest freezer from our old house to the new house. I made a freezer run this morning with four large coolers and here is Daphne loading up the new chest freezer which had been cooling down all night,

The second floor family room is pretty empty. There are some boxes, but more are still in the basement. The reclining chairs we will put near the windows are currently in our living room until our new love seat arrives (later today).

Its the basement where most of the boxes are. The ones we packed and moved using my Prius over the last month are sorted by room. The boxes and other basement things from the movers are all over the place and need sorting.

Our A/V consultant is done. He installed our Sonos and internet infrastructure. Here is the cabinet in the utility room. Ignore the reflections in the glass. We have four Sonos amps, three sets of speakers (living room, kitchen and game room) and one soundbar for the main TV). We have an Ethernet switch in this cabinet and another one in a smaller cabinet on the second floor. We also have analog phone wiring for VOIP (the VOIP box is also in this cabinet), and a Roku (more on that later).

The plumber installed a water softener for the house. Our water is what he calls middle-hard. We now soften everything except the outside faucets (because the salt in the softened water kills plants) and a line going to a filter in the kitchen for drinking water. You can also see the hot water heater to the left. And against the wall, just to the right of the hot water heater, is the pump that circulates hot water to the master bathroom so we get instant hot (just in that bathroom, however).

Here are some interesting stories and tidbits from the move.

Spontaneous Sound

We have a soundbar in the living room, and ceiling speakers in three rooms. They are all connected to Sonos amplifiers in the utility room (see the picture above). When I was there two days ago, while we were working around the house, the soundbar started playing music, quite loud.

Well, I fumbled around with the TV remote and the electrical kill switch we have on the TV and nothing worked. Finally I was able to switch the TV to using the Roku and that stopped the music. Later in the day, the workers in the house asked if I could restart the music, but I had no idea how.

Then yesterday, it happened again, but this time the speakers in the game room started playing music very loudly. I did not know what to do. So I went downstairs and looked in the wiring cabinet and one of the Sonos amplifiers had a green indicator. I pressed it and the music stopped.

When our A/V consultant came the next day, he explained what had happened. The Sonos amplifiers were configured with the Sonos radio channel that the consultant was using for testing when he set up the units. It turns out that there is a very sensitive touch button on the amplifier’s face that start it playing. The electrician had been working in the utility room with the cabinet door open and if he bumped into an amplifier, it would have started the music.

So no chance it would happen in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping, thank god. And now the cabinet door is closed, so it should not happen again.

Roku Kill Switch

We use a Roku box for our TV (not a Roku TV, but the separate box). At our old house, the Roku would occasionally hang, and when that happened, we would turn off power to the entertainment plugs, which included the Roku, let it sit for a bit, and then turn power back on so it could reboot.

At the new house, the Roku is 30′ away, hidden in the cabinet in the utility room. Because of that, we included in the plans a light switch in the living room that would kill power to the Roku, and just the Roku, in the basement. Well, there was a switch, but it was wired to kill power to outlets under the TV, not in the utility room.

So we asked the electrician if he could fix that and he was able to run a wire down to a new outlet begin the cabinet in the utility room, which is now labeled “switched”. Then, the next day when the A/V consultant came, we asked him to move the Roku plug to that switched outlet.

Well, said the consultant, that was actually the wrong thing to do. It turns out, unbeknownst to use before then, that the A/V consultant had set up a web address where we could remotely reset any of the Sonus amplifiers or the Roku. No need for a switch. Sigh. We just wasted a bunch of electrician’s salary to wire up an outlet that we did not really need.

So now, if the Roku hangs, we will first try the web site to reset it, and only if that fails, will we use the switch. So for now, we have tape under the switch to keep it turned on unless we really need it.

Mystery Black Marks on Floor

When we were unpacking our clothes, there was a mystery stain on the floor. It looked like black streaks and it took some scrubbing to get rid of it. One feature of the luxury vinyl tile flooring is that it is rougher, meaning less likely to slip on the floor. But those ridges mean that dirty can get stuck easier and it is harder to clean, as we just learned.

Well, we really wanted to figure out where those black streaks were coming from. As it happened, we noticed some black material under the shirts, which had not been smooshed into the floor yet. We also saw some read and green material mixed in.

What we thought at the time was that some piece of clothing which had been in our old closet for a long time was breaking down and shedding material. We looked at everything and could not find any likely candidate. Then, Daphne noticed that some of our hangers from previous visits to the cleaner had a foam protector on them. Like the hanger below.

Well, it turned out we had a few hangers like that and when that material ages, it breaks down and drops black, green and red stuff onto the floor. Mystery solved. We looked at every hanger we had and removed all the hangers that had that foam. Hopefully, that will be good enough.

Broken Phone System

At the new house, we town internet service. But the town does not do telephone service. Therefore, we have switch over to using voice over IP (VOIP). I ordered a service and a few days ago the connection box (ATA) came in the mail and I added it to the internet cabinet the way I was instructed by email from the A/V consultant. Then I tested the phones upstairs. No dial tone. So I took a phone and plugged it directly into the ATA and it worked fine. Then I took that phone upstairs and pick a different jack and plugged it in. No dial tone.

So I contacted the A/V consultant and he suggested that the electrician look into it since it was probably the electricians wiring that was at fault. The next day, we added it to the electricians list. He poke around for quite a while (translation lots of hourly billing) and finally figure out that the cable from the ATA to the first junction box was bad. He replaced it with a cord from one of our phones. That fixed it.

The next day the A/V consultant apologized. He had use an old cord he had handy and it was bad. He did not test it. Sigh. Now we just have to wait for our phone number to transfer from the old house.

Anyway, today is unpacking (as will be the case for many days to come). We also got some furniture delivered and will have more tomorrow, so pictures will wait until then. In the mean time, here is a picture of Daphne at Fairhaven Bay looking at the aquatic flowers. This is from a morning hike.