The Move (Part 3 of 3)…

Sunday began with a call from Lowes telling us they were going to drop off the missing piece for stacking the washer/dryer and then redelivery of our units. Our landlord informed us we needed to drop off our keys so Jedd and I decided to split up. I dropped off they keys and went to purchase a split queen box spring because we needed to get the bed set up so we could start organizing the stuff that was in the room. We also had someone come over to fix the a/c because after two nights of sleeping in a house that did not drop below 85 degrees we were getting grouchy.


I was super lucky in the fact that the place I purchased the box spring from was right acrossed the street from the Container store. I’d been having some troubles because we had two shoe racks in our closet that are stackable and after putting them up I realized I really needed four but had been to the Container store I originally purchased them from and one a 50 minute drive away looking for the shoe racks and hadn’t found them. I really wanted matching ones but after talking to someone who worked at the NW containers store I figured the two I purchased were the last two because they were discontinued so I got two different ones. Now you’ll need to remember all this because I plan on posting about the shoe rack saga more indebt later and you’ll want to just think back about how I casually mentioned that I’d been to three different Container stores for them.

So anyway I dropped the keys off, purchased a split box spring, several under the bed storage bins and made it home in time for these lovely people to be our first visitors.

Our patient friends who were supposed to stay with us only to return to the country, they’d been in England, to find out they absolutely could not because we had no bed for them (we were using the spare) and no A/C decided after days of us putting them off that they would come and make us/pick us up dinner. This was great because we wanted to see them and because I absolutely did not want to cook dinner or get dressed (I’d been wearing nothing but sweats since Thursday night…not that this is a big departure from how I normally dress at home).

Having them come over was great for many reasons. The first was because it was great to have someone come over and rescue us from leftover microwave pizza and endless conversations about how we absolutely needed to do whatever home task we absolutely needed to do that night. It was also nice to have someone come by and be as enthusiastic about the house as we were before the 9 week stretch of trying to get it move in ready. We enjoyed excellent conversation, excellent homemade guacamole, and some wonderful take out from across the street. Also they brought us wonderful housewarming gifts:

Praline truffles from London are so worth it. I might require them as an entry fee should we decide to have a housewarming.

I went to bed that night happy and content and excited to do my first load of laundry in these:

The Move (Part 2 of 3)…

So Saturday ended up to be the hardest of the three days in my opinion. I think one reason was because on Thursday night I fell when coming down the back stairs of the old apartment and I don’t know if it was all the moving/lifting from Friday but when I woke up Saturday morning my ankle had swollen a bit and my back was killing me. The mission of the day was to clean up the old apartment which was made harder by the fact that there were random little things in every room waiting to be packed. That and I really had no desire to do any more cleaning/packing after Friday. Lucky for us my Mom came down and gave us a helping hand. That being said it still took four people four hours. Fast forward to Monday and the property manger sent an email telling me I forgot to clean the oven (ugh, will this ever end).


Saturday was also made complicated by what we thought was a tight schedule, we had a delivery from Lowes scheduled to occur between 1 and 3 pm. We had another appointment to get cable and internet with Comcast between 2 and 5 pm. When I woke up Saturday morning (at 6 am) I just knew the day would go smoothly because I had confirmed with everyone. Around 12:30 Mom heads back to the house to wait for Lowes and I swear they must have waited for it because at 12:45 who calls to tell me that the delivery schedule is pushed back because they are behind. New delivery time is 5 -7, which is super annoying because we were supposed to meet our friends for dinner who were supposed to stay with us but didn’t. I end up calling them to reschedule for the 2nd time (I’d also rescheduled on Friday). I’m like ok, no biggie; at least I should have some cable to watch while I wait.

Once home I realized that there is a big old plus to moving, a memo must go out to your loved ones saying “we need food” because mom had prepared a huge amount of pulled pork, which covered us for lunch which I didn’t think about until I got home at 2 pm starving.

Clearly she made enough pulled pork for the week. The pic you see is after we had three large sandwiches of pork. We haven’t even made a dent in it. If I was smarter and more organized I would have frozen half of it. As it is we’re going to have to eat a lot of pulled pork this week so it doesn’t go bad. Not that it’s a hardship.

We also got a special delivery from Jackie, which was the best surprise house warming gift that came just at the right time. We had been sitting in the house and I’d run out to let out a friends dog I watch sometimes and when I came back, hot and tired this cool little treat was waiting for me:

It’s one of those edible arrangements, which was a first for us. It came with perfectly chilled ripe fruit in a cute little house vase. Jedd and I tore into that thing like the greedy people we are. I’m torn between which was the best part, the pineapple or the little chocolate balls you see. What those ended up being were bites of banana dripped in white chocolate and milk chocolate. I don’t know who invented that combo but it was superb and I don’t even like bananas. I actually had pulled a similar recipe recently to make for Jedd, but since I don’t like banana I never got around to it. Now that I realize bananas dipped in chocolate are a whole different ballgame I think I’m going to do it (because I’m not selfish at all).

So something around 4:15 said “call Comcast” I make the call only to find out they are running behind schedule and do not expect to be out until 6:30 pm. I’m a bit annoyed but what can we do. At 6 pm Lowes finally shows up. They come in and tell me they cannot install the new washer and dryer because we are missing a stacking kit, which is hilarious since the people at Lowes who sold us the washer and dryer specifically told us what we needed to have on site to ensure the washer and dryer would be hooked up without incident. After calling and speaking to a manager at Lowes it was determined that they would bring us a stacking kit (free of charge thank you) the next day and redeliver the washer and dryer at that point. This made the most sense because there are liability issues. Let’s say the washer and dryer sat at the house for 24 hours and when you have it installed it doesn’t work. Well there is no way for anyone to know whether it did not work when they delivered it or did something happen within that 24 hour period. I hate game playing, so after 5 hours of waiting for Lowes we were faced with another 2 hour wait the following day.

Then 7:30 pm rolls around and still no Comcast. Finally right when I’m on hold, but giving up on having any cable the installation person shows up. I cannot tell you what a difference cable makes. As I was sitting on the couch enjoying the TV I thought to myself “now if only we had a/c”, haha. One thing at a time I suppose.

The Move (Part 1 of 3)…

We did it, we are all moved. I’ve decided the best way to cover the move would be a three part post that basically covers Friday, Saturday and Sunday separately. But before I start in on Friday’s post I wanted to post a message to three lovely ladies who I know read this religiously, going forward they will be known as “The Mom’s” it’s basically my mom, Jedd’s mom (Dorinda) and my god mother (Jackie)…


“Ladies, I know you love to shop and buy us things but do not take my posts as a secret message to you to make any purchases. NO shopping, no sending stuff unexpectedly to the house. I thank you for your desire to provide us with everything our hearts desire, I love you/we love you all, but absolutely NO shopping.” I must also follow this up with “and yes that does include the “Just a little something” you’d planned on mailing out this week”.

I have to post this because after my post last week my mother send a bazillion links to aged leather dining room chairs and when I got home Jedd was like “my mom wants to get us dining room chairs as housewarming gifts”. All I thought was uh oh, why didn’t I see that coming. So now on to the move:

Friday I took off of work and hired some men off of craigslist to come help me move because Jedd couldn’t get off of work and I’d become concerned that giving ourselves just Saturday to move and Sunday to clean the whole apartment wasn’t going to be enough time. As you’ll see it was a good idea because with all the hiccups this weekend having that extra day proved to be crucial. I also rented, picked up and parked this bad boy myself:

If you know what a notoriously bad driver I am you would understand what a huge accomplishment this was. I’m not sure if you caught it or not, but I also parallel parked that bad boy myself, right in front of the house, which should provoke all of the loyal readers to do jazz hands while saying “WINNING”. I didn’t think to get those signs from the city that zone off parking temporarily in front of the houses so it could have gone either way. Someone must have been looking out because I got parking in front of both places numerous times throughout the day which made the move better than it could have been.

Of my four craigslist hires, all of which confirmed the day before, one was a no show and one I realized after 1.5 hours wasn’t planning on doing any actual work. He was one of those stands around and observes the other guys type of mover. Or if I asked him to get something and move it, he took one thing at a time and took as long as possible getting it where it needed to go. I think he thought it would spread out the move since he was being paid hourly. Little did he know that’s why I hire more people than I need so after 1.5 hours I paid him $20.00 and sent him on his way.

The last two movers were able to get all the large items from the apartment to the house with only two trips. The only hiccup was this:

Yup that would be our queen box spring sitting on the floor in the hallway and then to its current resting place behind the couch. It absolutely did not and will not fit up the stairs. The movers discussed pulling it up the outside of the house through a window, but we would have had to pull the entire window out and it wasn’t 100% guaranteed that the box spring would fit. So needless to say we’ve got to buy a new split queen box spring (which I did on Sunday). It’s a great thing we bought that sleeper sofa last weekend and our house guest passed on staying with us this trip because we are now sleeping in the spare bedroom until Tuesday.

The other little hiccup that was the breaking point of having house guest was the air conditioner went out. Our first two nights there were rough, no a/c in 100 degree weather does not make for a happy first few nights. The best part of Friday was that when Jedd got home we went and picked up the boys who had never been to the house. It’s funny the things that make a house a home. I’d spent a few hours before Jedd got off sorting things out and waiting for the pickup and it really had not sunk in that the move signified us moving to our home. Fast forward to bringing the jerks (that’s what we like to call the boys when they are bumming around acting all moody) and it really hit me, this is the place, no more house hunting, no more waiting to get new furniture because we don’t know how big the house is going to be, no more landlords and maintenance companies. The dogs were not concerned with the mess at all and settled right in:

So Friday night ended with a lot of stuff in piles around the house waiting to be put away, a semi empty apartment needing our attention, and no A/C or cable, but when I went to sleep that night I was definitely very happy and content.

This is really happening….

30 minutes until I break free of this place and go see the floors. Yes the floors which has stopped me up until this point from moving all this…

Into the house. But tomorrow is D-day, or should I say M-day, we’re moving baby we are MOVING!!!!!

If you don’t hear from me it’s because I have to get all my stuff out of the apartment and the apartment completely clean by Sunday night. OR ELSE.

Reason 1 Million: Why we haven’t moved yet…

When we first moved into the house Jedd saw the floors and said he just could not live with them. Just in case you don’t remember or I didn’t post it here are the floors as they looked two months ago:

Jedd’s rational for why the floors would keep him up at night were that the run in the wrong directions. They are “historically inaccurate” not only because of the direction they run but also because of the material. Plus they look fake. A bigger issue was that the floor just wasn’t level.

So fast forward a month and I finally give in since exposing the brick created a gap between the stairs leading the 3rd floor and removing the carpet also uncovered what a crappy condition the stairs were actually in.

So why haven’t we moved into the house. WELL we were going to move in this week, but then we decided to fix the floors which started Wednesday (a day later than scheduled) and is now expected to run 7 days rather than 3. I’m not surprised. The only thing I keep telling myself is that in 20 years I’ll look back on all this and laugh.

My only real complaint (besides all the NON-REAL complaints) is that I think we did this is the wrong order; we probably should not have painted the baseboards before we installed the floor. If I was planning on doing this again I would not do that.



Best thing to come out of all this is they removed the part of the fireplace that came so far out and are going to run the floor right up to it. And the appliances in the kitchen that sat too low and weren’t level with the counters will actually be raised.

You notice anything about the wood we selected? Five guesses….ok I’ll tell you, it’s unstained. Yup because we like to make decisions; because we’re so good at it we decided to have them stained afterwards. So we will be having the “what color should we stain the floors” saga all weekend. It’s sure to go as well as the “what color should we paint the living room saga”.

What are you doing this weekend?

Happy Friday!

Things I thought I NEEDED but Didn’t (Part 1)…

When we first talked about living together I thought it was absolutely necessary we get two full baths so that should we ever need to get ready at the same time we would have the option. The picture below is the shower in the bathroom downstairs that neither of us has ever used in the entire 2.5 years we’ve lived in the apartment. The only guest to ever use it was my dad and I have no idea why.

I should be embarrassed the laundry closet has so many dust bunnies in this picture, but I’m not. No it’s important for you to see this picture. I purchased that little hand held vacuum back in 2006 thinking it would be convenient to have to clean up spills or stuff in my car. I’ve used it once, when someone dropped some potting soil on the stairs in our apartment when we moved in…back in 2009. This was an excellent purchase.

I go through weird phases and one of the last ones I went on was water fasting. Yup it’s exactly what you’re thinking, consuming nothing but water for two days. Before I could do the water fasting I determined I needed to get a pitcher to filter the impurities out of the water after reading an article on water fasting. For this I purchased the water filtration pitcher on the left, turns out we already owned one (see example on the right) I found it last night when I was cleaning out the kitchen pantry. What makes all this worse is that the new fridge has that little thing where you can get water and ice out of the door, making both pitchers completely unnecessary?

In December of 2009 we decided to put up a Christmas tree since we’d never had one and we finally had enough space to put on up. I envisioned myself doing a lot of elaborate decorating so when I went to the store I got a lot of Christmas stuff. One of the things purchased is that wreath box which was “on sale” and a great purchase. The issue is that it’s now 2011 and I have never bought a wreath. Their expensive. I’m keeping the wreath box because if I don’t it would just be a waste of money. We have also never put up a tree since 2009. It’s a lot of work when you don’t have kids and the tree dies and you have to take the dry thing to the curb and the needles get all in your wool gloves.

Well off to put some things on Craigs List.