Moving Day

Ah, moving day.  So there's a reason (or more) it has taken me so long to update this blog since then.
At just 3 months in the apartment, we were more than anxious to get out of it. :)    Even on the rainy day it ended up as, with a super sick Daddy.

I was in charge of holding the fort at the house while the Movers brought in the boxes; Brian was in charge of staying at the apartment and packing up at the apartment.  Turns out -- there was more random crap at the apartment than we thought, and we wound up spending more of the next week to get everything out of it.  Aiyyiyi.

Seeing our STUFF actually IN this gorgeous new house after all this time was entirely surreal for me.  After months and months of ideas in my head and decisions and seeing it come together, I was anxious to see whether it would match what was in my head, or even make sense.  But as soon as the moving fellas placed our couch down in the living room, I knew it was exactly what I was hoping for.  Does that make sense?  It seems a little silly, but you know it was my little piece of playing a double life as pseudo HGTV. 

Our new house numbers

A coworker of mine (a guy nonetheless) told me that "If you don't have to buy more furniture after you build a house, then you didn't build big enough."  Now, that was NOT really our intent, but it is funny how there are holes to fill in or things to change, after just leaving a house that seemed cozy enough, if not too small. 

Living Room, with a temporary rug

It was a long day of unpacking for the kids too

Salem rather enjoyed all the packing paper

 

The rain

Poor Brian had to crash a little.  Luckily we had just had our new King-sized mattresses delivered as well!

AT LONG LAST!!!

It appears that we will be able to start moving in next week, and we cannot be more excited for it!  Lots of touch-ups to do before we move in, but the movers are scheduled to deliver out of storage on Wednesday afternoon. 
It's amazing that we are finally at this point and I am just itching to get in there and spend time getting everything set up. 
I can't believe we've been at the apartment for almost the full 3 months either (talk about cutting it close!).  It doesn't seem to have been too bad (although Brian might say otherwise since he is always the one to walk Cooper in the mornings ... ).  But I will be so glad to have the space to put everything away and spread out a little. 

Wish us luck that all continues to go well!

In anticipation of actually getting to move INTO our house, I am already trying to think ahead to decorating. 
My "visions" for decorating are usually incomplete and poor at execution/follow through.  (where do I find the time for it??)

I am horrible about getting things on the walls.  In fact, even as we were preparing to sell and move, there were so many things I felt like never got finished or put on display in the old house.  It's one thing I've learned to admire about my parents - for as many times as we moved in the military throughout the years, even in crappy can't-paint-the-white-walls military housing, they always worked hard to beautify the houses (or duplexes) and get things into a "normal" state quickly.  My memory is about as strong as a goldfish, but I can't remember ever being in even a semi-state of chaos during our moves.  And I've always loved the way they decorated for holidays, but I'm not sure I could aspire to the same level.  It takes me forever just to get the basics in place.  Heck - it's probably the reason why I can barely get the Xmas decorations packed away by Valentine's Day - I feel like I just put them up!
My mom plans to come visit and help out for a little while shortly after we move, so I'm sure she can whip me into shape. . . . er, give me some tips.  : )

I want to start collecting artwork, in addition to getting some photos on the walls.  And quite by accident (although I browse Etsy often these days), I fell in love with the animal watercolour paintings from THIS Etsy shop, and had to get the original painting of this owl: (and of course, wanted to share)

eastwitching

For an original piece from the UK, it is priced extremely reasonably (I think anyway), although I will need to have it framed. 
I can't wait to see it in person!

Still no firm date for moving ... still waiting to hear from the bank, and from the builder on a follow up to the punch list of items needing cleaned up or completed before or shortly after we would move in.

But, they've been cleaning up the house, and this weekend was the first view we had of everything without the paper or layers of dust.  ; )   I'm so proud of the work that's been put into this little house, and I can't wait to get in and continue to give it character and turn it into the comfortable, cozy cottage I am hoping it will be (it feels a little stark right now still!).

Here's a shot of the kitchen all cleaned up:

And the master bathroom finally put together:

And the front of the house - the porch rails are finally painted white, and while we are still waiting for the installation of the corbels, you might notice another colour that's been added .....  green!

Some sod was added to the front of the house.  The land developer insisted on this I suppose to help the house stand out since we are the first house on this street.  That's okay, it looks really nice, except we had to remind them to turn the sprinkler system on; with the unseasonably warm temperatures, the sod was starting to dry out already!

So, when are we moving in? . . . . . . . .   I still can't say for sure, but I sure hope it's sometime during October.  We are now waiting to hear from the bank about an appraisal for our "upgrades" and set a closing date.

In the meantime, finishing touches continue to happen, and as of today, they were painting the front porch rails, getting ready to install the exterior corbels to the roofline and power-washing the dust off the house.  It's terribly going at a snail's pace it seems - but on the other hand, we are so busy at work, it keeps us distracted (most of the time).

We can't say enough about the quality of work that Kai and his contractors do.  The electrician was thoughtful about where he placed light switches and how many (for the most part) and his trim and painters do an amazing job.  The paint finish on the walls and trim is silky smooth, I really don't know how they do it.


Some more pictures:

The exterior hasn't changed much

The Kitchen:

Added corbels under the top cabinets and feet to the bottom cabinets to give it a furniture feel.

The Kids' bathroom is complete.  It's one of my favourite rooms.  :)

The Master Bath and the "throne room". 

Master Bedroom.

Basement Bar:

Still dusty.

One of my favourite things for the bar was this corner trash/recycle center.

And our new broken window, thanks to two little hellions less than 6 years old.

We met with Kai at the house this afternoon for a walk-through to check on some final details and talk timing.  There is a bit of a decent punch list of items to close out, like re-touching walls, and finalizing a few installations.  There was some issue with the city's water pressure for the irrigation system, so we had a huge hole dug on the side of our lot for about 2-3 days.  : )  But it's these details and the quality of this work that I think will set Kai's homes apart from some of these others.  He is thoughtful about his building designs (even if his aesthetic design is different than mine) so that the engineering aspect is a solid, beautiful home.
Now, his communication and organization could maybe use some improvement, but we've gotten what we needed.  In a funny text conversation with him one night when I happened to be drinking (which is how I often communicate with him due to my schedule --- uh, texting that is, not drinking), he tells me that our "client folder" he has of our requests/communications/changes, etc is one of the largest he has, and he texts me more than many of his other clients.  He really does have a good sense of humour. 

And THEN, because we knew we were going to be at a big empty house for an hour or so with the kids, who can't NOT run around and act like wild animals whenever we are there, we brought our portable DVD player with us and a few snacks - they camped out on the carpet in the basement (their favourite), and they stayed quiet for the most part.  But as soon as we moved our discussion outside - as we are prepping to leave and chatting with Kai, I might add -- and all of a sudden we are standing in the driveway with Kai and we hear a big crash.  You've got to be kidding me.  The kids had thrown a huge dirt clump into the window well of one of the basement windows and broke the window.  Right after they'd replaced the window in the living room from being broken a couple of months ago.  So disappointed in our kids, because we have told them many times before not to do this.  Nice.
No TV for a week for them (side note: this may wind up being more painful for us than them . . . !) among other conversations. 

Anyway, what I'm really trying to get at is - they are almost done with the house and we may get to start moving in NEXT WEEK!  Whoo hoo!  It's been such a long journey all year, it's hard to believe we might actually get to live in it soon! 

: )