Tale of a First-Time Home Buyer: Moving Day
A lot has gone down since my previous blog entry last Wednesday. Above is my last picture of the house without us being in it too! Everything was completed and we settled on the house Wednesday, June 2. Then we set our master plan into motion, a plan which had been in the making for over six months...
Thursday, June 3
It started Thursday. I enlisted the services of my boss, Scott, to help me install the garage door opener and mount a TV on the wall in the man cave. The process did not go smoothly. We had some trouble with the garage door opener and we had to adjust the height of the motor and use our critical thinking and problem solving skills to finally get it to work correctly. It was frustrating for both of us, but as long as I kept the adult beverages coming, there were no obstacles we couldn’t overcome. Then we mounted the TV. Piece of cake. Phew!
Friday, June 4
The next day, I was off from work to continue taking care of details including meeting the Verizon FiOS guy who was scheduled to come and install the internet and TV services. His “window” was from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon. He arrived at 10:30 and finished around 3:00. While he was doing his thing, I decided to attempt my first acts of handiness ever and hung some mini-blinds in the basement. I was very pleased with myself when they turned out looking pretty darn good, so I took a picture and sent it to my wife, who was at work.
That afternoon I also received several phone calls – five to be exact – from my friends who provided some pretty weak excuses and bailed out from helping us move THE NEXT DAY. Needless to say, I was disappointed and then immediately much more worried about the impending move the following morning.
Saturday, June 5
Saturday – D Day. I woke up at 7:00 am and picked up the moving truck at 8:30 am. We had five total people helping us move, three of them guys, including myself. It was a long day moving every item of furniture we own. Only one of my six friends who were originally slated to help actually made it, my buddy Wade O. Thank you Wade! I told him his next bar tab just became my next bar tab. We finished moving the things from the truck into the house around 3:00 pm, but that was just the beginning of the work. We spend the rest of the day scrambling around, jumping from one unfinished project to the next, trying to somehow put at least a dent into the massive task of re-organizing our life.
We mutually agreed to stop working for the day around 8:00 pm that night. We cracked a bottle of champagne that we had been saving for that very occasion and we ate some BBQ ribs my wife’s mom picked us up from Costco. It was a great end to the busiest day of our lives.
Sunday, June 6
We woke up and spent all day Sunday trying to get situated, but even at the end of the second day we had several boxes unpacked and many items still without a home. Anyone who has moved before realizes (probably before me) that this process is far from over.
But we we love our new house. It is such a great feeling to go from renter to homeowner. We walked through the house and kept saying to each other, “That’s ours, and that’s ours, and so is that. We own all of this. See that refrigerator? No one has ever used it before. See this room? No one has ever slept in here before.” It is one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever had.
Next week I will have pictures for all my readers of the inside of the house with our furniture in place and all boxes and homeless items removed.
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Are you moving soon and hoping your friends will help? Here's a funny post I found that maybe I should have read before we moved! Just kidding!
Please note: I am not endorsing the techniques suggested in the below blog post...or maybe I am...I am posting it here aren't I? Oh, just read it for fun, would ya!
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Helpers
I think that all the helpers