The Move

Oh where to start :)

So, Thursday night we signed all of our papers for the bank and had a final walk through of the house, where we learned that the seller still had a few things there but that they would be getting them out Friday. We were also told that we weren't closing at the same time as the seller, no big deal. So that night we raced home and tried to finish packing - it was a long night.

****

Friday morning we closed, which seriously took like 5 minutes. Then we made our way to the new house to get the AC going and check it out. While we were there we realized that the seller had been there because some of the stuff was gone.... when all of the sudden the side door flies open and this man comes flying in asking if he can help me because he owns this house. I stammer that I was one of the new owners and that we had just come from our closing to get the house opened. About that time Doug came in the room and the guy backed off a bit, but then said he didn't know we'd have keys yet since we hadn't closed, apparently no one told him we weren't closing at the same time. He then tells us that the water department had just been there and turned off the water. Crap.

Doug had talked to the water dept. before and they had said that we would need closing papers to put it in our name, which we didn't have yet since the seller hadn't signed. But we were worried about what time they would close and had a major fear of having no water all weekend, so we took what few papers we had and went to the water dept to beg for service. The woman there was so nice! She went through all the papers we had and found something that would work. We started telling her about the run-in with the seller and she laughed and said he had seemed kind of high strung. They were so helpful, they had the water back on within an hour!

****

Doug's dad had foot surgery two days before our move, so we were a mover short. However, the help we had so more than made up for it. My uncle and Doug's bff were total lifesavers. They carried big heavy items out of the rental (down the 6 steps) like it was nothing. They took our bed apart in the blink of an eye and had the box springs out before I even knew they had started on the bed. Those two guys were incredible, and we sooooo owe them. My dad helped too, he was awesome about stuffing a million things into their van, mainly breakable items or things we thought wouldn't travel well in the multiple trucks. My dad totally rocks.

Doug was awesome about getting everything packed up incredibly quickly and whisking it out of the way, that boy moves quick! And I suppose it's ok to toot my own horn a little. While the guys were busy getting all the big stuff ready to move I literally stuffed my SUV so full that there was barely room for me in there! I literally could not fit anything else in. And Saturday night Doug told me that he was really impressed with me because I had no problem jumping in and helping with moving the big stuff, carrying a million boxes, and crawling around on the floor unplugging and unhooking things. Go me! lol

And our moms and my grandma were awesome too. My mom and grandma went to the new house while we were all at the old one and vacuumed and cleaned everything. Then after we brought over the first load of stuff they started unpacking stuff in the kitchen, because they know how important that room is to me. Doug's mom was great too. She had a crazy job of helping us out and then running home to check on Doug's dad. She was great about bringing over a few things, helping for a little bit, and then running home - and she always brought stuff back every time - like Pledge for my incredibly dusty furniture, or DQ for the starving moving crew.

****

For the most part the move went really well. We had been really worried about moving the fridge and stove out of the rental but that part didn't go too badly. The fridge rolled off the dolly halfway down the stairs and the door of the stove flew open on the stairs but the incredible moving duo saved the day both times. They had to take the feet off the couch to get it out and then it had to go partially over the railing to get outside, but they made it work.

The bad part came at the new house. When my uncle tried to unhook the stove that was already there the gas line did not want to come off. It took some WD-40 and a ton of elbow grease to come off and then our stove did not want to connect. I don't totally understand the problem but basically our line isn't the right size for the gas line and the connector my dad bought didn't want to fix on. We have a guy coming this morning to hook it in, thank goodness! I'm sick of fast food!

And the big issue: the fridge doors. We had to take them off to get the fridge out of the house. Well, the doors were held on by a couple brackets. When the doors came off one bracket got stuck back onto the fridge and the other went into a bag with all the screws and everything. Well, at one point on the way to the new house that bag spilled and came open and apparently the bracket came out. We all hunted through the truck for it, paced the yards at both houses looking for it, checked every box we thought it could have gone into, I even took every.single.item out of the trash bag that had been in the kitchen at the old house to look for it (and that was extra fun because the water had been shutoff - ick) - no bracket.... anywhere. Luckily Saturday morning my dad went up to the appliance store in town and found out that they could order it and that they had a similar bracket that could hold the door in place until the right one came in. So right now there is a backwards bracket and some packing tape holding the freezer door on so that we can use the fridge side. It's a pain, but considering how bad it could have been we aren't too upset.

The only other casualty was my dresser. It was already falling apart and the move just made it worse. So last night my dad brought over a spare dresser they had for me and took the old one away to use in his storage room. Have I mentioned that my dad rocks?

****

So that's pretty much it. Saturday morning we brought over all of the boxes that we had taken to Doug's parents' house and got them stuffed into our garage until we paint. Then Doug grilled out for everybody who was still hanging around and then Doug and I decided to go clean up and empty out the rental. Two hours, 5 trash bags, 2 truck loads/trips between houses, and a ton of sweat later we were totally done with that house. Yay! I started taking out nails and screws last night and we're going to start filling holes to get the house ready to paint after our concerts this weekend. So look for some before and after picks to start popping up in the next few weeks. I'll try to get some pics taken of the house so you all can see it. And once we get settled I'll be back to blogging more, promise.

My Current Workout

So I've been so busy with packing that I haven't had time for a regular workout. But what I have been doing has resulted in me being a tired, sweaty, sore mess. This is my current routine:

Cardio:
Acquire multiple cardboard boxes. Pack your belongings in them, go lite on number of books per box, but really stuff everything else in. Tape closed. Repeat until you have packed everything you own, or you run out of boxes.
Move all boxes onto your front porch.
Run each box down stairs to the ground, lift and shove into vehicle. Run back up stairs. Repeat until all boxes are placed in vehicle and you are sweaty, worn out, and slightly sore.

Strength:
Fill more cardboard boxes with items you want but don't have room for upstairs. Place in basement, allow to get very dusty.
Pick a very hot day and go into basement, it's best if there is little to no airflow there.
One by one, carry each box over to stairs, lift over head and place on platform of stairs where your partner (husbands work well) can grab it and throw it outside. Continue until every last box is out. This is best if you can find many (lets say 7) boxes of books that your husband packed incredibly full and if you have some heavy and awkwardly sized camping supplies.
Drag self up stairs (oh! added cardio!) and then proceed to help carry each and every item to awaiting trucks, lift onto insanely high tailgate. Repeat until all boxes are in trucks and you are sweaty, tired, and slightly sore.
Now go to your inlaws home and help unload every single box and place in their garage. You will again be a tired, sweaty mess.

Yeah, so that's what I've been up to. What about you?

Important Packing

So I packed a few boxes while Doug was at work tonight. I boxed up some of my cds (Doug's planning to do the rest tomorrow), put aside our DMB cds because I figure we'll want to know where those are because of the concert, packed some books, and then packed this box of very important items:

My Harry Potter and Twilight books! I finished my re-read of the HP series last week so that I could be sure to pack them all together. This is the first box of books I'm planning to unpack, I've mentally had these placed on the bookcase in our new house pretty much since we got the offer approved, lol.

Oh and don't worry, this isn't very heavy. It's a fairly small box, these are the only things in it, and 2 of the Twilight books and 3 of the HP books are paperbacks. And I also rearranged a little after I took this pic, I flipped the paperback Twilight and New Moon so they were spine down so the pages wouldn't get bent. Don't want to hurt my books!

I Have News!!

But first, let me catch you up on the house hunt.

- Two weeks ago we went and looked at a house - 2 bedrooms, eat-in kitchen AND dining room, laundry room, 1 bath, mud room, awesome deck, enclosed porch, detached 2 car garage with an indoor/outdoor dog run. But it also had - a huge (apparently) attic that you could only reach from a tiny little hole that was located in the top of the tiny little closet in the second bedroom, those odd/old cabinet "closets" on the wall in the master bedroom (I have no idea what these are actually called) where you could hang your clothes in a three foot box, a tiiiiny sink in the bathroom that didn't even come close to waist level and was crammed in between the wall and the front of the tub, a laundry room that slants - yes slants, I walked into the room and immediately noticed that the floor wanted to throw me into the opposite wall (anyone seen the episode of Mad About You where they flashback to buying their apartment and Jamie keeps saying that the floor slants and doing the slide with her foot? that was me).
But with all that we were still considering it (some of us more than others).

- Then last week we went to see a three bedroom I had been looking at online for a while. Oh my gosh you guys, I cannot explain this house to you well enough so I'm not even going to try. Let's just say: fridge wedged under the stairs, tiiiiiny kitchen, decent bathroom, no central air and it would be really expensive to put in, and let's just say you could really tell that they had cats. This did not make the list.

But.... when we saw the 3 bedroom house the realtor (not ours, she had something come up and someone else filled in) showed us a paper for a house that had literally been listed that morning that she said our realtor thought we would love. So we figured, why not go look.
So we went and looked at it. Two bedrooms - but these are nice and big, a huge living room, a huge eat-in kitchen, detached garage, nice backyard - almost totally fenced in, just needs a gate by the garage, nice front porch, and so many closets! Closets every where! It's in really nice shape, the owner had lived there for a really long time and had recently gone to a nursing home. So we looked around and checked everything out and then went home and talked about it.
We liked it - a lot. It's a great price, incredibly great neighborhood, way better than that other two bedroom. So we decided to make an appointment to go see it again the next day.
So, we went again - this time with both of Doug's parents, my mom (my dad was at work), and 3 of the kids my mom watches (including my bff's 2). Doug's dad had been with us the day before but his mom had skipped, so she and my mom were checking everything out and they really loved it, they couldn't believe the closets either, lol. And having the kids there was actually pretty helpful, we got to see what it was like with a toddler running around (not bad, you knew where she was but yet you weren't right on top of her) and she loved the porch and the yard (although she asked where all the "stuff" was in the backyard, silly girl).
Our realtor told us that she knew we wouldn't like the 3 bedroom but that she thought of us as soon as she walked through this one she thought of us. She also informed us that there was another showing of the house right after ours and another right after that! And that they seemed pretty interested.
So Doug and I looked at each other (we'd already pretty much decided the night before) and said "let's go make an offer." So we did. We played it off real cool when leaving because the next showing was already there and we didn't want them getting wind of our impending offer. So we went up to the office, made our offer, gave them a check for earnest money, and then left to go wait it out.
We went home and sat around for a while waiting for Doug's cell to ring..... finally about 8pm we gave up on it. But around 9pm it rang.... it was our realtor saying that she had called the son of the owner who has Power of Attorney and given him the offer and he had verbally said yes but they had to fax him the papers. So Friday morning Doug called me at work to say that the papers had been signed and it was official!
So Monday we had our inspection and it went really well. Just a couple of really small issues, mainly just things where code has changed from when the current owners bought the house. And the inspector said we were getting a really great house. And then last night I saw on our bank account where the earnest money had gone through, so I guess it's official!
So, prepare for lots of posts about packing and moving (this will be only the second time I've ever had to move! So expect lots of complaining!!) And then lots of posts about getting the house in shape - mainly painting and organizing. And if anyone has any packing, moving, or unpacking/organizing tips I'd love to hear them!