We’re moving today! I can’t believe we’re at this point.

Wednesday night we went and signed the papers. After driving all the way from campus to downtown (over an hour due to  Our agent and our mortgage office (who are friends) were both there for it. It went well and we had Indian food for dinner at then went on a crazy hunt for the perfect baby layette set for our REA’s twins. (She had them during  the time she was our agent and worked with us on buying the new place while she was on leave). We found two adorable outfits that go together without completely matching.

The past two days have been a crazy whirlwind of packing, cleaning and barely sleeping (not what my recovering from a cold body needs right now, but c’est la vie). Now we have a house full of boxes, empty furniture and misc stuff to be packed or taped up. I have the day off so I’m going to run a few errands before heading to SEATAC to get my dad and then C’s friend N who arrive at 1 and 1:45pm today.

When we come home we’ll get OFD and Friend F. Then I’ll head over to get the truck and we’re all start loading stuff. Luckily the only furniture is our bed frame, mattress, a small dress, small couch and small desk. Everything else is boxes.

Hopefully we’ll get it all done quickly–there will be 5 of us–and when C gets home we can just vacuum, do a last run though and go get dinner.

We meet our REA at 8:45pm at the new place. I can’t wait to give her the outfits and bottle of wine! But even more so, I can’t wait to be in our new home.

P.S. No reliable internet until it’s connected on Wednesday, at which point I hope to post about our home improvement adventures–and maybe I’ll even have some pics!

Still sick.
I had my throat cultured. It’s not strep.
Bundled up on the couch eating hot and sour soup, from here. Delivery.
My amazing wife–who did the bundling–is out getting me the rest of my “get well soon” kit.
Her jokes are even funnier when I’m sick. Unfortunately, laughing hurts my throat.

More about the exciting non-illness related life stuff (like moving!) soon…

I’m sick. I woke up yesterday with a scratchy throat and by evening it was a full-blown husky voice, uncomfortable to breathe/swallow, congested mess of a sore throat/head cold. C was cute in her offers to help and cheek kisses while obviously not wanting to catch it. While she needs space when she’s sick, I miss my cuddles. Usually, when one of us is sick we sleep apart; but the living room (current-but-not-for-long “guest room) is full of boxes waiting to be loaded up on Friday. So we slept in the same bed and I did my best to give her space–knowing that 3 feet vs the usual one is most likely not going to stop germs from spreading. Actually though, she slept and I tossed and turned, re-propped my pillows and was unable to sleep deeply thanks to needing to burp every few minutes after swallowing air when I tried to clear the perpetual lump in my throat. Lovely.

I woke up to a call from the escrow office assistant to schedule signing our real estate documents prior to closing on Friday.
Then I called LNL to reschedule our noon session. No need to get my pregnant acupuncturist sick.
I spent most of the morning resting in bed, watching tv shows online and drinking hot water.

Kai cooperated (for the most part) in my giving him a bath and soon I’ll be doing last-minute prep before heading up North for the night. This is another personal trip with a work-related bonus. There’s a grad fair in the same town my family lives in and I’ll be representing my program’s office as a recruiter. This fits well with my need to take Kai up there before Thursday night/Friday moving day. So Kai and I will head up this afternoon, spend the evening with family and then I’ll put in my four hours at the fair tomorrow. I get to count drive time as work time and get mileage reimbursement. Win-win.

When I get home tomorrow evening I’ll head to a public lecture that my core class is attending and then home to finish as much packing as possible before bed.
Wednesday we’ll both get off work early to go to the signing and then home to finish up packing and cleaning.
Thursday afternoon C’s best friend N arrives. I’ll pick him up from the airport and drop him off at home before heading up to work for the monthly evening info session. They’ll spend the evening together and on Friday morning we’ll move out.

I just need to take care of myself and push through. Four more days and we’ll be in our new place.

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A week from today we will be closing on both the condo and the new house.

This is a change from a few days ago when we were moving out by the 16th and then staying with our SIL for 4 nights until we close on the house on 11/20. Unfortunately, this change came with a renegotiation of the purchase price on the condo due to an appraisal lower than the purchase price. (The buyer offered us over asking plus covering her closing costs. This showed that our listing price was accurate and in line with the appraisal. Our amazing agent worked it out with the other agent that we’ll cover a 50% of the difference while the buyer will cover 30% and each agent will throw in 8.33%. Odd solution but it worked to keep the deal on track.)

We’ll begin packing the rest of our stuff this weekend (most of it is already in storage since before we put the condo on the market). Next week I’ll take Kai up to Bellingham to stay with my family until after the move. On Thursday, C’s best friend N arrives and on Friday we’ll rent a truck and begin loading our belongings with the help of another friend or two. My dad arrives Friday afternoon and after we get supplies for the big projects, we’ll get keys and unload in the evening.

Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish between the night of Friday 11/20 and Wednesday 11/25:

• Remove popcorn ceiling in living and dining room
• Paint pretty much every room in the house (no voc color selection going on now)
• Remove carpet from living room, dining room and basement
• Depending on condition of the hardwoods upstairs, potentially refinishing them
• Installing new flooring in the kitchen, both bathrooms and the basement den and “media room”
• Miscellaneous odd jobs (replacing kitchen cabinet knobs, lining cabinets, removing holly in the yard, fixing a gutter downspout, etc)
• Moving everything from storage into the house

Wish us luck in getting this all done!

 

P.S. If you have a Reader you may have seen my last post that I accidentally published prior to password protecting it. If so, you most likely have an idea of what’s going on and if you’re so inclined, feel free to email me for the password.

 

 

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Sheesh. This home-selling/home-buying/moving preparation thing is crazy!

Our inspection on Friday 11/30 went well. All the major stuff (plumbing, electrical) has been updated, but there’s still quite a list of things we want to do after closing. We requested a couple things from the sellers, and they agreed to them. So now we’re just pending until closing on the 20th.

I also made arrangements with my dad to come up and help us out with our To Do list. This is quite a list, but he has experience doing all the things we want to do and it will be a nice opportunity to catch-up with him for a week from 11/20 through 11/27, including Thanksgiving.

We’re going to be painting nearly every internal wall, removing the carpet, refinishing the hardwoods upstairs and installing new flooring (bamboo downstairs and marm.oleum in the kitchen and bathrooms). There are also a number of odd jobs (replacing cabinet fixtures, insulating pipes, maybe replacing a couple windows to name a few) and we’ll just see how much we get through during the week. There will also be professional help coming in to service the furnace, sweep the chimney and do some minor electrical work.

This past weekend we began continued our furniture and flooring shopping, including a trip to IK.EA, Mortackyfurniturestore, Dan.ia and a huge flooring place all in cities just SE of Seattle. We now have  a few less places on our list and a few ideas more idea about what we want. Bonus was that I get to include 3 hours and all mileage for reimbursement as work related because I purchased “supplies” (decor items really) for our grad lab/lounge.

I just completed the change of address forms on the post office’s website–paying $5–$1 each per name to make sure my former hyphenated last name, my non-hyphenated often used last name, my new-ish hyphenated legal last name, C’s name and my business name all get their mail forwarded to the new address–after a week of them all being held at the post office while we’re between homes that is…

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I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for a week..a month maybe even.

This real estate thing is some stressful business. After numerous hours sifting through online profiles, three viewing sessions (3, 3 and 6 hours each), walking through over two dozen houses, hours of discussion, a short list and pro/con lists, we wrote up an offer on Sunday night. It was presented by our realtor on Monday morning and we spent a long 24+ hours waiting for a response. Their counter offer was acceptable and we signed today.

This is a house that we went to at the end of one of our after work search. It gets dark here pretty early in the autumn, and it was dusk as we arrived. The family that lives there now was leaving, and it may have helped that when we walked in it was warm and cozy and they had obviously just had dinner. There was homework on the large table in the kitchen and a candle glowing in the bathroom. I loved it right away. By the time we walked through the two upstairs rooms, headed down to the finished basement and poked around a bit before heading outside, it was too dark to really see the backyard, although we could tell it was big and had a nice deck. Christine didn’t love it, but liked it enough that I put it the top of my short list.

On Saturday, we went back to see this house, along with another 11 houses in the area. It was bright and as we walked though I could see us living there, raising a family just as this family has done for the past 9 years that they’ve lived there. C was still not sold, but it did make her top five and we had three that we were seriously considering.

Sunday after teaching Sunday school we went to an open house in a neighborhood we really like. Unfortunately, the house was overpriced, awkward and had too much land to maintain. After coming home and comparing notes on all the top houses, we wrote out an accurate (but ultimately not very helpful) pro/con list. Every house has pluses and minuses (at least in our price range, maybe if we had another few hundred thousand dollars to throw around it would be a different story). In the end it came down to which one we could see ourselves in the future, what house had the most going for it now and potential for the future.

Here it is:

Inspection later in the week. Fingers crossed that goes well and we can move forward.

More to come after I catch my breath!