Welcome to our home … our second attempt at a fixer-upper.

 (A string of posts is coming your way … I’ve been writing, but not posting.  Finding the time to sort through the pictures and edit the posts has not been easy.  So, ignore the off tenses in these posts … they should have been added weeks ago.)

It’s been a while.  A long while.  We’ve been busy.  And tired.  And everything is still a mess.  So, don’t think I’m coming back, going from an empty house to a finished house.  Far from it.  We’re still working on, well, pretty much everything.

We stopped working on the new house on Sunday, April 18.  Then we packed ALL WEEK LONG.  The plan was to pack everything except the big furniture and move it down to the new house ourselves.  We tried to minimize as we packed … that went just okay.  We ran out of time and ended up moving a lot of basement and garage stuff we definitely do not need.  But, we did successfully pack all of our inside belongings in basically 1 week.  We packed and staged in the dining room during the week.  Patrick took Friday, April 21 off, and borrowed his buddy’s Suburban … and he ran 2 loads down to the new house.  He packed the truck up, drove down, unloaded the truck, came back home, and did it all again.  It only took 2 loads in the giant Suburban to move all of the items we had packed all week.

So, on Saturday, Patrick started with the basement, because most of that stuff is already packed up in boxes for storage – Christmas decorations, old video games, etc.  Then, as he loaded, drove, unloaded, and drove … I packed and packed and packed more and more stuff.  Then he repeated the entire thing.  I also packed my car up with more fragile items and art and drove down with him.  Then, we did this again on Sunday (with just 1 more load).  So, over the course of the weekend, we ran a total of 5 Suburban loads and 1 car load down to the new house.  The following week, I ran 1 more car load and we both packed our cars up the day of the big move.  Then, we had probably 2 more car loads of misc. boxes, etc. after the movers.  Overall, this move has been WAY more organized than the last time we moved, which has been helpful.

Moving day was Thursday, April 27.  The movers arrived just after 9am.  The sales lady who quoted the job thought it would take them 6 hours, but quoted 8 just in case we had extra boxes or something.  It took them 10 hours.  It was a LONG day.  A REALLY LONG day.  So LONG.  EXHAUSTING.  (By the end of the day, Patrick & I were helping to unload the last of the truck because we were so done with moving and the movers.)

And, while they did put the furniture where it belongs, and re-assembled the beds, table, etc. – so those rooms seem pretty put together – there are plenty of rooms that are just boxes and boxes and boxes.  And the garage and basement are just full of crap.

THEN … after moving all day … we had to drive back up to Dayton.  We had arranged for a dump pick-up on Friday morning with all the stuff we were throwing out.  It had to be in the driveway for pick-up by 7am, and we were not about to get up at 5am to drive up there and pull it all out there.  So, around 8pm, we got back in the car and drove back up to Dayton.  We had staged most of the stuff outside next to the garage, but we still had to pull it out to the driveway, and had some stuff in the garage and basement to move outside.  It was a REALLY LONG DAY & NIGHT.

On top of all of this, we received some bad news from our realtor – the buyer was asking for an extension on closing.  We didn’t have many details, but we knew for sure we weren’t going to be able to close on Monday, per the plan (& contract).  It was a mess.  We were SO. INCREDIBLEY. EXHAUSTED.

Annoying side story … the main mover forgot his tablet in our garage, so when he realized it on Friday morning (early), he called a few times wanting to get it back (which, obviously, we don’t want it …).  He asked if we could bring it back up to him in Dayton and/or drop it off at the moving company building (again in Dayton).  We were NOT in a hurry to drive back up to Dayton.  So, we told him we’d bring it up next time we were heading that way (probably Saturday) or that he was welcome to come and get it before that.  He called about 4-6 more times trying to get the tablet and arrange a convenient-for-him time/place.  His schedule was all over the place and we weren’t very accommodating, nor were we interested in meeting up with him somewhere out of our way.  So, we just dropped it off at the moving company on Saturday so he would stop calling us.

So, now, our super clean, nice looking new house … well, it’s a mess.

We’re getting it put together.  And, it’s coming along pretty quickly.

BUT … we did find the time to walk down to Oakwood Club once more. 🙂