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Oct
05

We’ve Moved!

After a month of working on the new house every weekend and spending most weeknights either packing or getting a few hours in at the new house, I’m excited to say that we’ve finally moved in! I’m sitting here in my new house enjoying a glass of wine after having the first non-pasta dinner we cooked in our new (to us) kitchen. So I’m now relaxed-enough to be able to think back over the last 2 weeks.

Filet wrapped in bacon

Filet wrapped in bacon, roasted red pepper & rice - yum!

It’s been almost a week since we moved. Those last few days before the move were brutal – I was totally stressed out about getting the old apartment packed up in time and getting some last-minute things done at the new place. Between that & work, I kept telling myself that I only had to make it to last Tuesday (moving day). Then I could relax and get unpacking & all of our future home renovation projects done at a more reasonable pace. It wasn’t until the Thursday before the move that I finally started to believe that we’d actually get everything packed in time for the Tuesday move. Before that I would wander around the apartment in a daze looking at all of the unpacked stuff, not knowing how we’d ever manage to get it all done.

*** Tip: a month before the move we decided to each pack a box a night. This would have worked out perfectly if we actually stuck to it, especially since our weekends were taken up working at the new place. We started out great and then were not so great as the weekend renovation work took so much out of us. So my advice is do as I say, not as I do. ***

Of course we did get everything packed. And didn’t even have to pull an all-nighter to do it – got to sleep by around 1am, which actually is much better than I envisioned. I purposely got up early to do one last coffee run at Philz(oh Philz, I’ll really miss you. Please don’t think less of me that I’ve found a new local favorite called The Grind that does coffee just like you, even has my favorite Turkish blend). Walking home through the Castro where I’ve lived for 12 years I actually got all teary-eyed. I’ve loved that neighborhood and my 100+ year-old Victorian apartment and will always miss it. Only buying a home of my own with a nice big yard could make me leave.

Castro Apartment

Had the entire middle floor - what a great place!

We hired ML Movers, who did a great job. I felt so bad for them that it was the hottest day of the year (although not as bad as when my family moved to Phoenix years ago on the hottest day of the year where it was over 110 that day). But they quickly loaded all of the boxes and then spent a lot of time wrapping all of the furniture and loading it up. Once we got to the new house I was stationed by the truck directing which room/garage/shed everything should go in.

One tool that really helped with this was Autodesk’s Homestyler, a free online tool. I was able to put in the measurements of the rooms, doors & windows. Then I dragged furniture in and was able to quickly see what would fit & where. It was easy to figure out, but the frustrating thing was that you couldn’t fully customize the measurements of certain pieces of furniture. I tried to find pieces that were as close as I could (always erring on using larger measurements). The big benefit was that I was able to figure out things like my massive armoire would totally overwhelm our bedroom before moving day so the movers could take it right into the storage shed instead of us having to do it ourselves after they left. Here’s an example of the Red Room layout – furniture style/color doesn’t match since I had to choose pieces based on size, not style.

Bedroom Layout

Red Room Layout

I had visions of the movers leaving, us unpacking a few boxes, making up the beds, and then sitting around to blog about the last few days. Turns out my visions aren’t that visionary. I smugly thought that we’d have cable & Internet that day (what’s with all of those silly people who can’t manage to get Internet hooked up for a week?) but although they came out right on time, they weren’t able to complete it and said it would take another 3 hour appointment where we’d have to be home. They kept offering me a 10-noon window during the week. Seriously? Who can do that? I didn’t have Internet so couldn’t work from home while they were there, which was from 10am – 1pm at a minimum. Right in the middle of a work day. So we had to settle for a Saturday appointment, meaning no Internet at home for almost a week. How would we survive????? What would we do?

Fortunately we had a ton of boxes to keep us occupied. 1 week in, we’re still not fully unpacked. But the kitchen is mostly done. And the furniture is all arranged. And we’re more than halfway unpacked in almost every room. Hmmmm….doesn’t sound like a lot. But we did manage to have a few friends over for wine & cheese on Friday night – our fist social gathering in the new house – before heading out for some yummy Turkish food in downtown Redwood City. I figure we’d get a lot of slack for the state of our boxes since we’ve only been here a few days. It’ll then be a very low bar for improvements the next time they come over – just getting the boxes out of the way will make it look like we’ve made a lot of progress.

And we got a few mini-improvements done over the weekend. Hugh had done all of the new wood floors except our closet before we moved in. So he got that finished up on Sunday so we were able to hang up our clothes (at least the ones that fit in that closet – will rant about our lack of closet space some other time). And we finished up the baseboards in the hallway to match the bedrooms. We’re getting good at that – took a ton less time to measure, cut & install everything than the first room we did.

Closet before floor installed

Closet before

Closet after wood floor installed

Closet after wood floor installed

Even got in a few improvements on the outside. We’re not sure what shape the previous owners were going for in the hedges out front, but we picked up a new hedge-trimmer and Hugh cleaned them up. They’re still a bit uneven, but are a ton better than they were (bet the neighbors are happy that they’re finally getting some love). Over time we’ll get them tamed.

So I guess we’ve made some progress. And now I can cross “update blog” off my list after being there for a week – don’t want all of our readers (ie, Mom & Dad) to stop checking the site because there aren’t any updates. Although I guess that will be a permanent to-do now.

3 comments

  1. Freddie Lieberman says:

    I love it! Your house–your blog–your dinner. But, of course, it’s Mom.

    1. Jami says:

      Glad you’re still a fan Mom!

  2. nurse practitioner says:

    Keep posting stuff like this i really like it

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