We were done closing on our house on Friday at 9:15 am so I headed in to work (took a half day) and then was able to leave very early. We pack up our cars with fragile stuff like computers, electronics, glasswares, etc that we were concerned about being in the moving truck and we headed for the house...
Upon arriving at the house, we were appalled to find the previous homeowners STILL THERE packing things up, frantically trying to clean (which they did a horrendous job of). It's one thing for 8 people to live in a single house, but these people were pack-rats of the highest order and there was such a thick layer of dust on everything in the house we were afraid to touch anything even after they were out! They assured us they would be out by morning as I told them I would be there early in the a.m. with the truck and ready to unload. Patti and Fred helped us with a load of stuff later on Friday after my near-death experience on Route 53 when a large shop-sized broom flew off a roofer's truck and struck my windshield at 75 mph... Luckily there was no damage as it hit broad-side, but it easily could have killed me had it come through the window stick-first. After making the truck pull over and berated them for a few minutes, I was back on my way.
So here is how the rest of our exhausting weekend unfolded after these Friday shenanigans:
Saturday:6:30 am: Wake up and head out to get the moving truck from U-Haul. (was a 5-speed manual transmission 26-foot truck that required 3 shifts just to get to 15 mph, what a beast)
7:30 am: Arrive back at Tom's townhouse to load up what was left or my bedroom and some boxes from the kitchen.
8:15 am: My parents and brother Derrick arrive and help us load the heavier items. Went pretty fast and smoothly.(aside from having to transport 7 tomato plants in the their pots) We were out the door and on the way to my In-law's house by 9:15, where they had graciously allowed us to store our stuff for 2 weeks.
9:30 am: Packed up EVERYTHING into the truck from the garage (including our new 400 pound grill that we are dying to try) and were out of there by 11:00 or so. It went really fast with 8 people passing everything into the truck while I organized and packed the truck from floor to ceiling.
11:30 am: We arrived at the house only to see the previous homeowners had left stuff in the garage and all kinds of junk lying around. What the hell? We managed to get a hold of them through their realtor and found out they were supposed to be coming to pick things up later Friday night. They eventually arrived but could not haul away quite everything. As of Monday morning we have a free extension ladder and wheel barrow as well as a lot misc. lumber and unwanted junk that is still sitting on the edge of the driveway or in the side yard. At this point, my friend Shane joined us to help and thing went pretty quickly. By 1 pm we were done with the heavy-lifting and by 2:00 we had moved 2 of the 3 leather couches into the basement and had located most of the essentials in the proper locations (beds in bedrooms, boxes in the right places, etc).
3:00 pm: We headed to the RAM Brewery for lunch/dinner with my parents and brother and we were able to catch the last 2 innings of a White Sox victory over the Detroit Tigers over beer and tasty upscale bar food.
6:00 pm: Arrive back at the house to find the previous owners there loading up the last of their junk, including tools, some garbage they took with them and some various other items. As I said earlier, they didn't get everything, but enough was enough. On that note, however, when you have a big family and local extended family helping with the move, how does it take you more than a full week to pack your stuff, load it into something, etc? These people were at their new house messing around with bedroom arrangement while they had piles of crap still sitting around their old house! What is wrong with these people? They were very nice people, but very clearly not a motivated or organized group that had any kind of plan for how this whole thing was going to or should work.
8:00 pm: The previous owners finally gone, we start organizing and getting our plan for the next day ready. During the move we had ripped-out the nasty window valences and found them to be so dusty that we couldn't touch them without incurring an "explosion of dust." We went around the house tearing them out and cleaning in our aftermath, eventually coming back to the kitchen, only to find the refridgerator filthy and the freezer even worse. Having not been defrosted, we turned it off and began scrubbing, as the frost melted and we contorted ourselves as we cleaned this thing inside and out. GROSS. It took the 2 of us 2 full hours to clean this thing going non-stop!
12:30 pm: We'd had enough and finally hit the bed after showering-up and taking a few minutes to relax and plan our Sunday.
Sunday:7:45 am: Jenni decided that since she couldn't sleep anymore that it would be ok to just wake me up too... grrrrrrrr. Not only that, but her alarm clock from Baltimore decided to go off 5 minutes later inside some box in the bedroom, officially putting an end to my plans to get another hour worth of sleep.
12:00 pm: Having finished cleaning the kitchen, removing the cabinets from the wall we are going to knock-down and cleaning some of the other areas of the house that had been previously neglected, we headed over to Patti and Fred's house (Jenni's parents) to borrow their Minivan for a shopping spree.
1:00 pm: Done at Menards where we picked-up fire/CO2 detectors, a new sump pump, ant/roach/mouse poison and traps (don't know what we have, so we're gonna Nuke them all), and new locks for all the exterior doors. Head back to Elk Grove to get some Subway and hit Sears Hardware to get my Craftsman Quiet Glide tool chest and pick up all my dumbells and weight rack from the Townhouse before heading back to unload before heading to Home Depot.
6:00 pm: Having unpacked the van and placing all my food from the townhouse into the newly cleaned and cooled-down fridge and freezer, we head out to Home Depot for the REAL shopping spree. When you do a change-of-address the USPS sends you a packet with coupons. One of these coupons is a nice 10% of entire purchase coupons at Home Depot. Luckily, we had one of these coupons from Jenni's move back 2 weeks ago, wo we headed out to address the need for tools, exterior doors, paint, ladders, etc etc...
8:00 pm: After spending a lot of time picking out my nail guns, battery sump back-up system, circular saw, level, ladder, and a new Jeld-Wen door for the basement's exterior access, we head out of Home Depot considerably poorer, despite the coupon!
10:00 pm: After dropping the van off at my in-law's and returning home, we decided to start tearing apart the family room. The family room was covered in wood paneling and had 2 cedar wood beams going across the ceiling. It was a lot of work and the new crow bars and pry bars were put to good use. We finished by about 12:30 am and decided that we had to clean up before going to bed so we could leave the dogs in the house the next day. By the time we were done cleaning and showered up, it was 1:30 am... TIME FOR BED.
This morning we had a plumber come out and give us an estimate to have a gas line run to the exterior of the house. Luckily, we have a VERY good idea of how the kitchen will be laid-out, so we are having him place valves for the cook-top burners as well as an additional valve for a future patio-heater or turkey fryer. It doesn't seem like that much work to me (lay 15 feet of 3/4" black pipe and put 3 valves and about 2 turns in the 1/2" pipe to the outside of the house) but somehow it still comes out to $850 bucks! Good lord, I'm gonna be broke forever!
Next up is the wall between the kitchen and family room. Should be gone by this weekend.
We are finding that there is not much in this house that we are going to be able to "live with" for any considerable length of time, so we are going to have to suck it up and get this stuff done ASAP.
