Home Sweet Home

We did it! After 688 days of dreaming, waiting, and stressing we closed on our new house. We could not be happier. We love our new house and we are excited to make it into our home. 

The last couple of weeks leading up to closing were full of whiplash. There were moments of elation as we saw good progress and moments of discouragement when it seemed like the house may not be finished in time. In classic Parkwood fashion, they were wrapping up way too many things the day before close - they had painters and a handful of other trades clearing as many open items as they could. They pulled it off better than I thought they would. We had some open items at close, but only a few. True to our nature we were prepared for close and it went seamlessly. We were in and out in 20 minutes. A couple of hours later everything was recorded and funded and we got our keys. Then it was off to the races. 

Parkwood gave us a housewarming gift

On our way to close on our new home

The next five days would be a whirlwind of activity as we worked to get moved in. We underestimated how large of a task this would be. This would be our third move in the last eighteen months. The other two went so smoothly that it made us overconfident. This was the most complex and presented challenges we didn’t foresee - mainly the amount of effort involved in putting together furniture. 

While we were waiting to get our keys we went grocery shopping so the first thing we unloaded into our house were groceries. Back at Blake and Debbie’s, we had their truck and SUV loaded up with a few things we wanted to hand carry - mostly screens and some of our other fragile/valuable items. While we were unloading we had a guy over to replace our garage door openers. We didn’t like our options through our builder so we did our own thing. We also had a bunch of trades from our builder working on open items. There are a few left for them to wrap up in the coming weeks. We moved around them. Our goals for the day proved a bit ambitious. We planned to hang four mirrors and two televisions. We ended up getting the two mirrors in the primary bedroom on the wall. It was a more involved process than we thought it would be. So once we got them up we called it a night. 

The bulk of the move took place on Thursday morning. We hired the Other Side Movers to move most of our belongings. They were well worth the money. Alison stayed back at Blake and Debbie’s to direct and coordinate the move. I headed over to the house where we had quite a bit going on. We hired a guy to build and install a porch swing, scheduled Century Link to set up our internet, had the low-volt guys come to install our sound system/TVs, and had a team come to install shades. Between the movers and all of the people in our house, it was a crazy day. Crazy but good. 

Alison’s family came over for dinner at our new home. We had Costco pizza and Salt & Straw ice cream. We pre-made Chocolate Gooey Brownie ice cream. It was the same ice cream we made when we moved out of our last house - I liked the symmetry. By the end of the day, we had most of our stuff in our house, some of our stuff was unpacked, and many important projects were wrapped up. The last thing we did was pick up Tex from Blake and Debbie’s and bring him home. He was a little nervous, but he settled in pretty quick. This was our first night in our new home. 

Friday was a bit of a rough day. We had a lot to get done and it felt like our progress stalled a bit. One of the main projects today was painting the floor of our storage room. One of the pluses of having a builder who was a bit disorganized is that they mostly finished (drywall, paint, etc.) the storage room in our basement that was supposed to be unfinished. We call it our “free room”. It still had a concrete floor so we decided to paint it. It took a couple of hours. While I was painting the storage room floor we hired a guy to paint our garage. It was good we contracted that because it took them all day. We didn’t have time for that. In the meantime, Alison did a lot of unpacking. I also got a little sidetracked on some smart home projects. By the middle of the day, our to-do list wasn’t much smaller than the beginning of the day. We refocused our efforts on setting up Alison’s office. Our goal was to finish by the end of the day. The main project to set up her office was to build her desk. We bought two desks from Wayfair. They look awesome, but the downside is they were difficult and time-consuming to set up (4-5+ hours apiece). We got Alison’s office set up but this ended up being our longest day we got to bed after midnight. 

On Saturday we regained our momentum. We continued unpacking and I prepped the garage floor for another project. Then we moved to my office. We had to put together shelves and a desk. It took a few hours and turned out so well. I love it. By this point, our entire living room was full of styrofoam and cardboard. It was becoming a problem. Fortunately, Blake and Debbie came in clutch and took two loads to the dump. Their help was huge. By the end of Saturday, the main floor was clear of boxes and our stuff was put away. So much of our stuff has been in storage for a year that it was a little like Christmas opening boxes to see what we have because we kind of forgot. Our home was really starting to come together. 

A dance party with our nieces in our new home:

Sunday started with another big project. We epoxied the garage floor. We knew from experience this only gets more difficult the longer we are in the house, plus we wanted to get it done before it gets too cold. Last time I epoxied the floor at our old house I did it alone. Having Alison working with me made it infinitely easier. We figured out a system and we were done in about three and a half hours. It felt really good to have the project done. We spent the rest of the day frantically unpacking and preparing for the upcoming week. By the end of the day, we were in a really good spot. We have some boxes in the basement and some projects for future weeks, but our house feels mostly unpacked. 

So we popped a bottle of bubbly, cued up “Someday Dreaming” by Karli & James, and we danced in our living room. I envisioned this moment when we heard Karli & James play in the Bluebird Cafe. It was just as sweet as I imagined. We made it - this part of our dream came true.