Busy, Busy, Busy. It's been a busy week indeed. When last we spoke, we'd had a bit of a hoop jump with closing on the house had been delayed a week until Monday, September 21st. (As I am writing this post on Sunday the 20th, we are in the midst of a leap of Faith that closing is still on. We had some emergency document E-Signing last Friday, but did receive a late email that closing will be at 1500 hours today. However if you should see a large mushroom cloud as you look towards central Texas at around that time...Well...)
But, as I say it's been busy around here.
How busy is that, juvat?
Well, Sarge, this busy.
And I didn't have my phone on me all the time. Tuesday the mover's arrived, the rest of the week has been unpacking, reassembling, running back to the old house for something we forgot, moving boxes... As I say, busy.
I can't wait for this move to move from the present participle tense to the past tense (e.g. from moving to moved). But...we are getting there.
One of my first students, on high school graduation, started a no frills moving company. No packing, charge by the hour, within the county only kind of thing. Seems to have worked as he's now got several trucks and crews. He's also dropped the within the county thing as I've seen his trucks in various towns around the Hill Country. We used him when we first moved out to Rancho Juvat 20 years ago, were happy, so hired him again. Showed up on time, moved our stuff, rode off into the sunset. Leaving us a large pile of boxes.
But...
As we did the walk through of what was being moved, they took one look at these pieces and the sobriquet was born. The BEAST is 8' tall. The House has 9' Ceilings. We originally wanted it in the Master Bedroom, however the Pythagorean theorem raised it's ugly head. We couldn't get it around the turn in the hallway. So, it went in Mrs J's Office along with its slightly smaller brother which couldn't make the Master because of it's width.
However a nice painting I picked up in Korea marks the spot of The BEAST's defeat.
We got far enough on Tuesday to actually eat dinner at the dining room table.
Make your own pizza with a chaser of wine and Naproxen.
Things got pretty hectic for the rest of the week as we still have some construction going on.
The front sidewalk for one. The Masons will also put a firepit in the back yard for s'mores as well as a way to warm my aching back. Also on the continuing construction front, installation of a phone landline as well as the WiFi Internet connection.
Based on all the moving parts in the project, it became obvious that we needed to make notes, set priorities and reminders. Above is the list for Sunday. That seemed to help quite a bit in making the project a bit less daunting.
Mrs J spent a considerable amount of time getting the dinning room up and running and I think she did a great job.
I hung some drapes, and generally got the guest room ready for our first guests. MBD and SIL are coming next week to help with the Dark Side of the Move. That would be the remaining stuff at the old house as well as the cleaning thereof.
Stuff expands to meet available space. Now we need to get rid of it.
But, the guest room is ready.
You may have noticed in the List above that completing the reconstruction of the Master Bed was a priority for Sunday.
Unfortunately...
There's always tomorrow.
Assuming I wake up from my nap.
Cheers, folks.
Aha! The house becomes a home......just reading about those bookshelves hurts. The joint looks good juvat.......I see the pup is tired out also.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nylon. Yeah, it's making progress towards home status. I've noticed both Mrs J and I are increasingly referring to it as "the house" in discussions about transferring things. Used to be "New House" and "Old House". So, making progress on all fronts.
DeleteThe place looks great with furniture and decorations in and proceeding. First time I noticed the flooring, love it!
ReplyDeleteLots of light coming in, great view from the dining room. I think you're going to enjoy retirement from here on out even more than you have been.
Very nice!
Thanks, Sarge. Lots of tweaking of things going on still (and probably forever).
DeleteGonna have to put drapes on the DR window also, gets a little bright in there in the afternoon. Mrs J thinks sheers will be a nice compromise. We shall see.
I'm still waiting for that "leisurely" retirement I was promised.
Those liars!!!
Looks great Juvat. Bookshelves are the bane of my existence although I have no-one to blame, they are mostly mine. I cannot imagine what solid mahogany would be like.
ReplyDeleteMine also. Unfortunately, since they're in Mrs J's office, she gets to use them. I have to figure out what to do with my books in my office which will also pull duty as the secondary guest bedroom, so space limited.
DeleteSolid Mahogany? Beautiful.
And HEAVY.
It's amazing how quickly the wide open rooms fill up.
ReplyDeleteLooking very nice.
When we bought the armoire for the bedroom we were a bit sloppy on our measurements. We got it down the hallway and into the bedroom just barely.
One of Newton's immutable laws of Physics..."Stuff expands to fill available space."*
DeleteThanks, John.
Yeah, we had some tight spaces also.
* If it's not, it darn well should be!
(Don McCollor)...Congratulations on your new homeJuvat! Moved a couple years ago. Heeded Adm. Rickover's demand for full-scale mockups. Cut a thin CX of the largest dimension of the problematic cabinet out of thin insulating foam (cardboard would do) and figured out it would fit and just how to maneuver it doing so (much easier than manhandling it)...
DeleteYeah, I did something like that but probably screwed up the measurement. The real thing clearly didn’t fit, so...
DeleteIt’s ok. I like it better where it is. Catch’s a visitor’s eye immediately after they enter the front door.
Very nice indeed. Love the open view.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Carlin once defined a house as "All your stuff with a cover".
We put new carpet in our bedrooms but switched the rest of the house to wood--bamboo. We put stick-on felt pads on the bottoms of the furniture to protect the wood. Sliding the furniture is a snap. The house came wired with security system. I've always wondered it there was a way to make the furniture on the wood floor self-propelled, then connect it by WIFI to the security system. Somebody breaks in, comes out of a bedroom to find the furniture has silently re-arranged itself.
I have an old antique roll top desk that I inherited. The only way to get it into a room is to dis-assemble it. Funny thing, twice in the past, someone has labeled the drawers right side and left side. Both are the same, and both are wrong. Drawers have to be reversed for the locking mechanism to work when the roll top is down.
When I hauled off our last pile of flattened boxes and donated them to the used bin at U-haul, it was very...satisfying.
Yeah, the floor is taking some getting used to. Had carpet most of my life and am used to walking around barefoot. Tried that the first day or so and wondered why my knees were aching.
DeleteFurniture pads are on the to do list.
I like your WiFi suggestion, however I would also add a laser pointer to the control. Centered on the bad guy's chest. Then a recording of Clint Eastwood's "Do you feel lucky?" played over the speakers.
I inherited my Dad's rolltop, must be the same make and model because...same issue on reassembly. Who knew?
U-haul takes used boxes? I thought I was just going to make the county recycling center ecstatic.
Lookin' great Juvat! It is a pain to move. Since we were totally self actuated, we moved some furniture 300' feet and some more about 2 miles from storage units near us. Then we spent the first year and more purging what we didn't want. We still have some boxes hiding in a couple of sheds on the property plus two storage units near Fort with garage/workshop and Ham Shack stuff, now two years on from our move.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bill.
DeleteYeah, going through a similar process here. Still got stuff in the old house, some that we know we'll need, but wanted to get the furniture in and in place before we brought the rest of the stuff. Didn't want to overwhelm ourselves in the house and leave it where it lands. We're trying the "slow and steady, wins the race" approach for now.
However, the plan is to renovate the old house and move my sister into it, then renovate her house and turn it into a second guest house.
I think that shouldn't take more than ten years or so to accomplish. ;-)
It appears that the light at the end of the tunnel is truly the end of the tunnel.
ReplyDeleteSo.... what’s next?
One certainly hopes, Skip.
DeleteSee my response to Bill above. Renovate and repurpose in general.
It's good to have followup goals
DeleteAgreed. But there’s a lot of knives in the air, any mis-catch could change my callsign from juvat to lefty or somthing.
DeleteAll your heard work appears to have worn the dog out. Zzzzz.
ReplyDeleteIt was all I could do not to lay down beside her.
DeleteBut, I haven't had much trouble falling asleep at night lately.
So does this mean the appliances arrived and were installed?
ReplyDeleteOther than that, whew, just thinking of moving again tires me out. Had to do it alone last time and it forced me to purchase a new vehicle as the old one was not up to snuff(I'm surprised it made it to the dealership for initial look at it's replacement and then back to unload and then back to the dealer for good.)
Regarding your dinner, back in the day we (fighter SCA people) used to call Ibuprophen 'Vitamin I' or 'Fighter Candy.' You can take a one-time dose of a fistfull (max theraputic dosage, can't remember it exactly now, memory slipping, getting... old) to take away the initial aches and pains. Good times, good times. When I did the last move, it was 1 day of packing and loading, 1 day of unloading and unpacking (may require several trips) and then 1 - 2 days of wearing a back brace, ibuprophen and heating pads to let the back settle down (and that's with wearing one of those kidney belt thingies with suspenders!) Old and out of shape. Sigh.
House looks great. I see you already have your Halloween decorations started. Get many trick-or-treaters out at Casa Juvat?
Unfortunately, the soonest the appliances could be rescheduled is a week from tomorrow. The full sized fridge we used as the beer fridge at the old house is in the garage in the house now filling (in all senses of the word) in as the main fridge. Laundry involves multiple visits to the old hose to load switch and unload. So...not optimum. But while typing this response, we just got a text from the bank that closing might be postponed again!
DeletePerfect!
Looks nice!
ReplyDeleteThanks
DeleteHang in there, juvat, it'll all be on the "done!" list soon.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have it in me to move again, at least not cross-country like we did.
I've been saying multiple times during this move "I'm moving one more time after this...into a box."
DeleteI don't think I'm going to change my mind.
Thanks
Pilots and check lists?
ReplyDeleteThere might be just a TOUCH of truth in that statement, WSF😀
Delete"Make your own pizza with a chaser of wine and Naproxen."
ReplyDeleteThe American Dream. You have arrived!😉
Looking good juvat. Enjoy!
Thanks PA. Pizza for the carbs, wine to sleep, Naproxen for everything else. Breakfast of Champions!
DeleteHey Juvat;
ReplyDeleteThe House looks great! I remember the pics when the construction started. It has come a looong way.
Yeah that does seem like eons ago, but it HAS been a strange year, hasn’t it?
ReplyDeleteHopefully, sleeping for at least three days is on the punch list to get your back to unkink after all the bending, lifting, and twisting! Looking good! And hope the final punch list with the builder was SHORT!!!
ReplyDeleteThe final punch list wasn't too bad and with one exception has been completed. One of our ovens has a dent in the door and the replacement hasn't come in yet. Due next Tuesday. But...That's OK, we still haven't closed on the house yet! ARRRRRGGGGHHHH indeed!
DeleteNaproxyn chaser! Funny stuff. House looks great. I expect I'll be building the dog ramp soon enough. Our Corgis are young, but they are short and their jumping ability will probably not last much longer. We keep them slim though so we'll see. What becomes of the old house? I'm sure you've said, but I've forgotten.
ReplyDeleteWe’re going to refurbish the old house, then move my sister into that, then refurbish the cabin she’s currently in into another guest house. Should take a week or ten years or so.
Delete