Moved In and Waiting ...

You're all probably very curious to hear about our move in. This is my first chance to write about it and I'm not even doing it from the comfort of the new house because we're moved in but not living there yet. Needless to say I haven't been able to download pictures either so they will be coming, don't worry.


On Friday night, I could not sleep. I worried and worried and worried and got so excited that I couldn't sleep. It didn't help that we packed the curtains and almost everything in our room so it wasn't it's cozy self anymore. I'm a light sleeper as it is, so things like that affect me.





We woke up around 6:30am and couldn't fall back asleep, so we got an early start on things. Around 8am, my sister, Karin drove me to the truck rental place where Chris, Dad,Rich and Emma were going to meet me. It was busy there. I went to the counter with my reservation #, the guy looks in the computer and gives me a sheepish grin and says "Your truck got stolen last night"!!!!!! Can you believe it? All I could think was that no wonder I couldn't sleep because I knew something was going to go wrong. Then my brother's girlfriend, Emma, says "this is what happens to people who worry too much." and you know what? I think she's probably right. So then I said "But you have another truck for us, right?" And he says " no, I'm trying to call our other location but I haven't heard back from them yet". So then he made me wait while he serviced the other people in line. Finally, he called another rental company and at first they said they only had a bigger size truck but when we got there they had the same size truck, which was good because I was already a little bit nervous about driving that one. Meanwhile, our friends are waiting at their storage unit with a fridge, stove and dining room table for us .... and .... Reuben does not have a phone so I have no way of telling him what's going on. Well, in the end it was ok because he didn't even really notice how long it was taking, they got all the other vehicles we were using piled high with boxes and various miscellaneous items.


Well, we got the truck loaded up by 11am! It was amazing! Thanks to everyone, Chris, Trevor, Josh, Karin, Rich, Emma and Dad who helped us and then to Fred who helped at the house.


Unloading at the house was quick and easy, except for the little mishap where Fred lost part of one of his front teeth! Sorry again, Fred!!! I think we were done by 12:30 ish. Wow!



Now, you might be wondering why we are waiting and why we aren't living at the house. It's under construction. We needed new carpet in all 3 of the bedrooms so when we got the house we went in right away and ripped them out. Reuben's dad and mom were down helping us. As they were ripping out the carpet Reuben and his dad decided that the Master bedroom closet had to be changed. They ripped out the tracks and the ugly metal sliding doors and proceeded to frame in and drywall a new closet which will have 2 openings for French doors; sounds nice eh? And then they had time to put new drywall up on the ceiling in our room. All this is great but it pushed back our carpet install, which is the reason we can't live there yet. Building walls and redoing ceilings is not a simple process. Did you know that you have to put mud and tape on all the drywalls seams and you have to do this 2 or 3 times before you can paint? You have to sand it all too. As we aren't able to take time off work to work on the house, this construction is happening in the evenings.

Thankfully, my brother is in construction and he knows what he's doing. He's also willing to help us out. Thanks Rich ... you're the bestest!! Apparently, we only need one more coat of mud and then the sanding and then painting and we'll have the carpet installed by Monday. The Helders are coming to stay over for Thanksgiving ... that gives me 4 nights. Lord, give me patience.

Danger!

So does anyone else feel afraid when they walk to work? Now you might think, right away, that I'm talking about walking down a lonely street late at night. But it's not that. It's that to get into work from my car I have to walk underneath a concrete overpass (it goes to the 3rd level of the airport). At the moment they are jack hammering that overpass for some unknown construction reason and it scares the dickens out of me!! What if a little chunk of concrete comes flying off and lands on my head?? From that high up, even a little peice of concrete is going to hurt ... a lot!! This is besides the fact that the noise of jackhammers before I've actually woken up is enough to drive me bananas.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

It's begun. Although, making decisions together is a regular part of married life; now that we are co-owners of a house the decisions are coming at us fast and furious. Here are just some of the things we have to decided:

1. In our 3 bedrooms we need to pull up the existing carpet and replace them with something before we can live in them. Our Master bedroom window is leaking mould onto the carpet and the carpet in the other two rooms are very stained. It would be great carpet if it wasn't stained. So the decision to be made is whether to replace this flooring with more carpet or to go with laminate (hardwood being way out of our price range). I've always been partial to carpet only because of the way it feels on my feet. The other good thing is that someone comes in to install it so there is no work involved for Reuben. But the downside is that it's harder to keep clean, collects more dust and allergens and gets stained more easily. Laminate is approximately the same price as carpet but doesn't include installation, which Reuben, with the help of my brother or some other knowledgeable helper would have to do along with all of the other projects in the house.

2. To redo the kitchen or not to redo the kitchen, that is the question. It's a hideous shade of peach and cream. The counter top has a huge stain. The faucet is dangling in place. The cupboards, while fairly sturdy, are outdated and dirty. The tile leaves something to be desired. But redoing a kitchen is messy and costly, especially if we redo the floor too. I think we've come to some agreement that we won't be starting on that project too soon. We were going to try and complete it before we moved in but I think that would give us too much of a headache. Shopping for kitchen stuff is fun, though!

Other things to do around the house;
-scrub down all the walls and floors
-paint everywhere
-plant some bulbs so we have some nice color in our garden in the spring
-replace the Master bedroom window
-put facia up where it is missing (am I spelling that right?)
-mega-scrub mould out of the tile in the bathtub

etc, etc, etc ....