Before and After

Before Laura came...

Looking better! ( this blog was hijacked by Laura...guest blogger of the day)

We have survived....

The team of five movers showed up yesterday at shortly before 9 am in the BIGGEST moving van I had ever seen in my life. Every inch of the van was FULL.

EEEKKKKK!!!!!

I had labeled each room in the house, and had created a "cheat sheet" list of where I wanted our household items to go. I knew where I wanted holiday items to go, and what couch where and so forth.

The tricky part was this: The Houston movers had boxed everything with labels like "attic", without noting if it was the attic in the house or over the garage and "Hall Closet" without noting which hall...you get the picture...I often had no idea what could possibly be in the box!

Thankfully the "Marley" room is a big room that would hold a lot of boxes out of sight, so I just had all the mystery boxes loaded in there.

The movers agreed that Bernie and I were a very efficient team. B. checked off box numbers as the mover rapidly unloaded the van and I stood at the doorway to steer the movers with the boxes and furniture into the right locations.

Tiggie did his part by "snoopervising" all the activity from inside. He is such a good and faithful orange cat. The movers all just loved him! Hart bailed out early...and was stuck outside unnoticed in the snow for hours. We felt kind of bad about that, but he got lots of love later to make up for it.

And with a half hour lunch break and two fifteen minute breaks...the whole van was unloaded, non-stop, in only TEN HOURS.

{thud}

That was me falling over in that last line above. Yes, ten hours of five guys wheeling boxes and furniture. At one point two of them were folding packing blankets for about an hour, and another hour was spent re-assembling beds and tables.

Two hundred and twenty two friggin' boxes.

B. had to take the door casing off one door to get our over stuffed chair into the house.
All the cabinets and glass front book cases that used to be in my hat room are too tall for this house. I'm pretty dismayed about the bookcases....

The green flecks in the downstairs carpet matchs the green overstuffed couch and chair perfectly. The beige we painted the walls looks horrible with the furniture however.
Paint is cheap though...and repainting can be done after the house is settled in.

The green tea color in the living room might have to go too....we'll see how it feels after a little bit more time with the furniture.

The long triple bedroom dresser and the high black headboard actually made the turn to get into the master bedroom.

Jeff showed up about six o'clock with a bag full of delicious Mexican food. That was a lifesaver as we had been racing around on a bowl of cereal and a sandwich for food the whole day. He helped me unpack some lamps, and was horrified to discover how much paper is used to cushion the contents inside of packing boxes. The ecology of it bother him until we told him that the company picks up the boxes and paper...and that in fact all those boxes were NOT just filled with our stuff...but likely 30-40% of the bulk is just paper.

Still...it is an awful lot of stuff. The garage is full of things that we will try to sell on Craigslist, or a garage sale or just donate. Things like our mahogany office desk, the hat room cabinets, the red couch. The cars will be in the driveway until all that can be arranged, and this morning that meant that I had to brush snow from my car before I could drive to work.

At least it wasn't icy...just a wet spring time snow that barely even stuck to the driveway. I can manage as long as there is no ice!

And let me also share the best news of all...the plumber showed up while the movers were working. We had a working upstairs bathroom for the first night that we spent upstairs!

More good news: Today we are to get our kitchen counter top. And Laura arrives at 7.

There maybe a ton of work to do at home, and I may have to show up at work instead of staying home and unpacking, but at least I know that little by little eventually the house will be put together and will start to really feel like a home.

High Anxiety

Almost every morning there is someone doing something on the house, yet it is still not where it should be at T- minus two days from furniture arriving.
The kitchen appliances are on the deck, the toilet and sink is in the garage.
Having them in those locations is NOT useful!

More angst:

I spent almost five hours on Friday looking for a dress to wear to our son's wedding on May 2nd. It needs to be street length for a morning wedding, in some shade of light blue, as the bridesmaids will be in navy and the flowers will be fuchsia.

AND I spent three more hours at another mall today.

So far I've gone to Nordstroms, Macy's, Dillards, Penneys, Sears, Ross, TJ Maxx, J. Jill, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, David's Bridal, Nordstrom's Rack, a consignment shop, looked at Chadwicks, and Draper and Damons on line, the Bridal webpages MOB/MOG dress pages....

I do have a back up dress from Dress Barn in a sea green with short sleeves. It will be fine for a morning wedding, I just was thinking more a suit with 3/4 length sleeves.

Honest to Pete, last year there were TONS of such dressy suits that were just perfect for a morning wedding. But then again, last year I was in the South, where ladies regularly dress for such occasions and the stores have a plentiful supply to choose from.

All I could find here in Salt Lake City were overly dressy dresses in browns, black, navy's and a few dusty rose beige's.
Don't they do Easter dresses and suits around here????
What is up with that???

This is stressing me out because not only do I need a dress, I'll need to find shoes too. I wear a weird sized shoe, 9 1/2 narrow, and I know it likely will be challenging to find something that A. Fits, and B. is comfortable.

I'm still going to order one outfit on line and Laura is going to try shopping in San Diego for me, and will try to bring me some choices from there.

She will arrive the day after the dreaded 220 boxes arrive and will stay six days to help me organize. Boy oh boy do I every need all the help I can get.

The one fun moment this weekend was a bridal shower for my future daughter in law Rachel. The brunch was elegant, and the girls all looked like springtime had arrived in pretty skirts. I switched purses for the event, and forgot my camera so I have no pictures of that event to post.
I know...I am totally losing it.

It got up to 70 degrees on Saturday, and B. and I spent time loafing on the lawn and watching the cats explore the yard. B. constructed a plant table for his Japanese maples; they will need to be taken in later today however...as I write this it is beginning to snow outside.

We were warned not to trust warm March days.

Aside from planting peas, carrots and lettuce, we should hold off adding flowers to the garden until Mother's Day weekend.
That gives me something to look forward to. If the 220 boxes haven't be settled by then, I plan to just move outside for the summer.

I'll admit that both Bernie and I are apprehensive about the stuff arriving. We gave the contractor an extra three weeks to complete the work...and tried both "kiss" and "kick" motivation to get things moving along. Neither had much effect.

The biggest issue is that we will need to return all the stuff we borrowed from our son last September for the apartment and the house in order to make room for OUR stuff to be moved in. The movers will need to muscle our bedroom set into the master bedroom upstairs, and Jeff's loaner bed needs to be muscled out of the downstairs area by the movers.

That leaves us with sleeping UPSTAIRS, with the only potty DOWNSTAIRS.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but I for one am not viewing walking downstairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom as a "good thing".

Actually, another reason I am not crazy about having only one bathroom is that the construction guys have to use my bathroom too. They are nice guys, and I am not squeamish about them, it is just that I always have to remember to check to make sure all my stuff is put away.

I am not crazy about the fact that the guys usually show up while I am getting ready to leave for work...like getting out of the shower and such. Even though I enjoy greeting them as I leave, I just don't like having folks roaming around the house at work while I am here alone.

(It is hard to decide what to complain about most. I am really hacked that SLC has such a lousy selection of dressy wear. What the heck do the Mormon Mother of the Bride/ Mother of the Groom wear after they finish their temple ceremony anyway? Don't they have a reception and dress up a bit??? )

Back to moving angst....

I wish I knew if our furniture will actually fit through the hallways and doors here. Seriously...the 1954 style house was not designed to hold the over sized furniture from 2001.

While I was out shopping, Bob Marley got painted over. Well, Marley was dead to begin with...so RIP behind the paint Bob. The room looks a lot brighter with him gone. That room will soon be stuffed with boxes that contain who knows what. The movers in Houston just packed and labeled the boxes with the rooms that they packed them in. And they didn't always call the rooms what we would call the room. It will be "pot luck" finding anything for awhile.

There are still holes in the walls where the electricians put in new panels, baseboards missing (on order), walls needing to be hot patched, laundry room boxes built to put the washer and drier on (and won't it be GREAT to just toss in a load when needed again?)

Seriously....I would never undertake such a major renovation ever again. I just hope in the end this one will all be worth it.