We moved!

We are so very fortunate to have such great friends and family, who all rallied and came together to help us move, and made everything so seamless!   Ben and I do not like moving, and we know "will you help me move" is always the dreaded question friends get when someone is moving, so we did things differently this time, we didn't ask a single person to help us.  This time around everyone who helped offered a head of time, we didn't have to seek out helpers, because our friends all came together and told us "we'll help you, just tell us when"  which was so great!  We never want to put our friends into a position where they feel obligated, and this way we didn't have to!

It feels like we have been moving for all of 2011 already!  Actually looking back, it was the end of January, early February that Ben and I made the decision that we would be buying a house this year.  It all started on January 14th, when we had a murder mystery party with friends, and I started chatting with our friend Lee about a new type of mortgage.  It sounded awesome, and the next day we looked it up just to see what the details were on it.  The day after that Ben gave the bank a call just to see if we would even qualify, and how exactly the mortgage would work for our situation - which is when we got the news that launched this whole madness. 

So almost immediately Ben and I started packing boxes to get ready to sell.  We painted the bedroom, got a new bedspread, changed out the shower curtain, hauled car loads of boxes to work with us every morning, and over all devoted every spare second we had to getting our home Buyer ready.  We were on the MLS system March 25th, and sold April 3rd.  Then we put our offer on our house on April 15th, which was accepted on April 16th.

Then we took some time off.  Not on a vacation or anything, but we got back to enjoying our evenings and weekends.  We went for walks, watched movies, had games nights, and just took some time off from the move.  It was very much needed.  Come mid May we were back in it full swing.

On Monday May 16th, I went to my dance class, and then Ben and I went dumpster diving for boxes (FYI the Future Shop Cardboard dumpster at the end of their parking lot is an awesome place to get decent sized boxes in good condition) and started packing up our house.  On Tuesday we packed and moved boxes and furniture to the office (our boss is awesome and told us to use a spare office rather than renting storage).  Wednesday was the same, so was Thursday - work all day, work all night.  On Friday we were exhausted and sore, but still had a couple more loads to do.  Luckily Ben's mom came out to give us a hand, and we were completely moved out of the condo by 4pm Friday.  Getting to Ben's parents place I fell asleep on the couch almost immediately, and then enjoyed steak and drinks with the family later on.

Saturday morning Ben and I went back to the Condo to clean, and that was it - we were done!

Fast forward to this last week....


Ben and I only worked until 12:00pm on Friday May 27th, so we took that oportunity in the morning to pack up the truck so by the time 12:00 hit we could head out to the new house to get the keys and start day 1 of our move to the new place.  Our realtor met us at the house, and gave us a bottle of champagne and a BBQ tool set, and handed us the keys to our new home.  We got to the front door, and Ben scooped me up and carried me over the threshold!  Our new home!

Shortly after 1pm the Telus guy came to hook up our cable, phone and internet, and while Ben was working with him, Mom and I did another trip with the truck and un packed the kitchen.  Then Ben and Mom went to go pick up Lee's truck, which he graciously lent us for the move, and we met up at work for another load, which Erik arrived to help us with.

Now because Ben and I hate disorganized moves, we wanted to make sure our friends didn't spend the day cursing us, so we put in a lot of extra work to make sure the move when as smoothly as possible, this meant by the time Erik arrived we had already been at work for an hour and moved all the furniture and boxes we were taking down to the front lobby of our office building, so all we had to do was line up the vehicles in front and pack them up and go.  Once we got home unloading the trucks took about 10 minutes - and then we gave Erik a tour and treated him to dinner.  Total time Erik had to help us move including loading, driving and unloading?  45 minutes.  now THAT's how we like to move :)

On saturday Ben and I were up early, and headed to work for 9am.  The rest of our friends and family weren't set to arrive until 10:30, but like we did with Erik we planned to get everything down the elevator and stack up at the front door so it was all ready to just load trucks and go.  We had the lobby packed by 10am, and finally took a seat to enjoy a coffee and muffin (Ben's parents graciously supplied the muffins and arrived at 9:30 to help us move stuff). 

We had our entire house moved in less than 2 hours, and in two trips with 3 trucks and a car.  While everyone went to the house to unload the first wave of trucks, I stayed behind at the office and moved the rest of our boxes and furniture from the office to the front door.  And then I got bored and started moving it out onto the landing outside our front door - had the trucks taken any longer I would have had everything on the sidewalk at the curb!  And that was WITH a muffin break!

Our move was done by about 12:30, I ordered pizza and by 1 we were all enjoying the sun on our new deck eating pizza and drinking beer :)


On Sunday mom arrived to help us paint, and paint we did.  It turns out it doesn't matter if the paint has a built-in primer, if you are working with red/oranges, you need to put on an additional primer - which we discovered after 6+ coats of paint in our basement, and 6 gallons of paint later.  Upstairs went much smoother, as I was able to do the whole living room and hallway with 2 coats and 2 gallons, and Ben's dad helped frame the ceiling when he was there yesterday.

Furniture has been delivered, tape has been pulled off, basement floors have been washed, lawn has been cut - more and more it's starting to feel like a home!

We still have a room completely packed with boxes, but that's because almost everything in that room either belongs in the living room, or basement, and until recently those areas were still covered in wet paint.  Last night we unwrapped our new sectional for the basement, and placed the pieces where they will be in the room, as well we moved all of our Ikea furniture downstairs so Ben can spend his afternoon today putting stuff together  (he took the week off to work on the house) while I'm at work.  As well last night we put our new sheets on our new King Sized Bed - and had an amazing sleep! As Ben and I are not cuddly sleepers, we have been dreaming about a King for years, and finally got our wish last night as we were both able to stretch and flail as much as we wanted without disturbing each other!

Little by Little the house is coming along, but Ben and I still have a long list of things we need to tackle before we can finally relax, and when that day comes, we're going to break out the bubbly and cigars, and soak in our new hot tub!  I can't wait!