The day started out with color-coded spreadsheets for everyone's chores. The kitchen at our house was a dispatch center of credit cards and runs for kegs, food and giant balloons while coordinating deliveries at the big house where guys were still shingling the front steps making dust amongst their extension cords and tools we walked over until Rachel gave them the final alley-oup forty-five minutes before two hundred people started showing up.

But in the end, the Open House was a delightful celebration of family and friends, well-wishers and new tenants in the latest Hawthorne micro-neighborhood beneath clear skies and a blustery night of leaves bouncing up and down the street.

Now we're in the final stretch running down a hallway that never seems to end. Temporary occupancy came at 6pm on November 1st the day we committed to letting the new tenants take up residence. The inspector took his almost cruel sweet time it seemed relishing a bit too much in the drama of delay before giving his expert approval - all against the backdrop of blocking his view of people starting to move their belongings in. One way or another the tenants were going to sleep in the house that night.

With the punch list whittled down to landscaping, mounting the gate of the ADA elevator to the newly powder-coated porch railings and the final removal of the performance art porta-potty-sculpture long past its welcomed encores…oh, and one more tenant…we're in the home stretch to selecting which pictures to represent the relocation and renewal of the Phelps-Montgomery House with a splash of Bonness/McCaffrey in the mix. Special thanks to Jeff and Jamie for their pictures.

Vote on when we're done done:

A) when the last micro-neighbor moves in

B) on the 1 year anniversary of the house move

C) with final inspection for occupancy

D) when the porta potty leaves