16 posts tagged “moving”

 

We've had this Rhodo in front of our house, the house we just moved out of, for at least 20 years. It's always been a skinny, awkward plant, sprawled over an impressive amount of space but never with enough leaves on the brittle branches to look good. These things are supposed to produce lots of big white or pink flowers in the spring but ours never produced flowers on the ends of more than five or six of its long, mostly bare stems. Some years it had no flowers at all.

 

We moved out of the house on April 30th. On May 15th I went back to the house to check it over, air it out and pack up the last few odds and ends that were left behind.

And the Rhodo picks this year to put on a big show! It was covered with big fat bright pink blossoms. I took a few pictures.

Delicate item packer is here. I've decided to entrust my computer to his packing skills. You should see how well he packs glassware and dishes!

So I will be off the net until at least Friday.

Need to shut down now...

Yesterday, The Big Guy, after noticing me carefully packing the household cleaners in a separate box, clearly labelled according to the moving company's instructions, finally reads the moving company's pamphlet, Handling Dangerous Goods. Keep in mind that we have been packing for several weeks and have more than 200 boxes sealed shut and stacked up in the garage.

Guess what was packed somewhere in those boxes with their all too vague labels, e.g., "misc radio gear and parts", "cables and connectors", "computer accessories", and so on. Aerosol cans! The type of cans containing pressurized air that you use to clean the dust off delicate electronics. And aerosol cans of any type (except personal stuff like shaving cream) are clearly listed in bold on our mover's Prohibited Dangerous Items List.

These cans just contain pressurized air, no nasty chemicals or flammable gases. What's the worst that can happen? I guess one could blow up. Seems a pretty remote possibility. I was all for pretending that we didn't have any such items packed in our boxes.

But The Big Guy's much more "by the book" than I am.

After fretting about it for several hours he decided we had to find those cans and get them out of the boxes.

So that's what we did yesterday evening.

It was not as bad as I expected. For me anyway. I just checked off box numbers on our inventory list. He did all the hard work, shifting around the stacks in the garage, ripping off tape, rummaging around inside, resealing boxes and then restacking them. We found the cans after about 50 or 60 boxes.

Three more sleeps...

 

Today's word: maudlin.

Definition (from dictionary.com): adjective, 1. tearfully or weakly emotional; foolishly sentimental

Use this word in a sentence: She writes maudlin prose, putting off the time when she must choose which of her houseplants to keep.

--- 4 more sleeps

Five nights left before we leave. 

I started taking pictures of the houseplants today but after Barry and Lily I didn't have the heart to look at any of the rest, trying to decide who will come with us and who will be returned to the earth.

Barry's grown several new leaves, an annual process that starts in February with the lengthening days and lasts for several months. The new leaves are a brilliant green and feel thinner, more flexible and delicate than the older leaves. I love photographing them. Barry used to have a pet rock. The Big Guy would scoff, not seeing any sense in messing up the plant pots with rubbish like stones and little sticks and snail shells. Barry's previous owner told me that the rock helps Barry feel more like he's in a natural environment. I imagine him in a tropical rain forest, his unconfined roots curling around rocks, growing deep into the earth.

 

Lily's also got new leaves but then she grows leaves all year round, not caring whether it's the deep dark of the winter rainy season or sunny July. Except when I don't water her. Then she gets all limp and sad looking. I add water. She perks up after a day or so. A couple of the oldest leaves get yellow and die. Then she grows a few more. Right now she also has three flowers dropping pollen dust all over her new leaves. The bright white flower amidst dark green leaves forces me to work extra hard to get the exposure right in the photographs.

 

The Big Guy told me today (he said *reminded* but I don't remember him telling me before so I'm sure today was the first time I heard) that the movers are coming Monday to finish the delicate item packing and Tuesday to actually move out all the boxes and furniture. So I have one day less than I thought to finish purging the kitchen -- The remaining canned goods to the food bank and the last of the unwanted utensils and ugly dishes to Value Village. I filled up a box with unbreakable plastic stuff today. What should I do with the opened but not emptied boxes, bags and bottles of flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cooking oil, vinegar, olive oil...?

I removed the last of the pictures from the walls today and packed most of them too. Now the house really looks bare.

 

And it is The Big Guy's birthday today so we celebrated in the usual way by eating ice cream. This year Maple Walnut is our favourite flavour.

Tomorrow I have to look at Spike and Birdy and the rest.

Moving day is soon now. Tuesday the movers come and Wednesday we get into our car and truck and drive away from this house for the last time.

It will be nice to move on to another lifestyle that isn't day-in and day-out getting ready to move. I feel like I've been packing or trying to get rid of stuff for months.

Here's what some of my week looked like:

• Managed to give away an ancient and decrepit sofabed to a pair of students who somehow requisitioned a autoparts supplier van to haul it away in.
• Got the SPCA to come and pick up two equally ancient IKEA dressers that we bought way back when we didn't even have enough money to furnish all the rooms in this house.
• Emptied more bookcases and closets into boxes.
• Hauled two more car trunk loads of unwanted stuff to Value Village.
• Gave myself extremely painful muscle spasms in the left gluteus medius by hoeing and raking in the front yard much too vigourously.
• Visited my chiropractor three times and my massage therapist once to get myself fixed up again (problem in the SI joint).
• Fended off BellExpressVu's attempts to keep us as a customer (But you're one of our original customers! We'll give you free installation! And a new satellite dish! How about 50% off for a whole year! We'll keep your account on file, call anytime, just ask for Julie! Etc., etc.)
• Ate up almost all the food in the freezer and fridge.
• Got a new dog tag for Andy with our new phone number on it.
• Packed the rest of my eBay store inventory and temporarily closed the store. I'll reopen it once we get settled and I unpack the inventory.
• Got to level 2 in ARX Fatalis. Hey, a person's gotta play too!

Busy, busy, busy. Packing, giving stuff away, and slaying monsters.

Tomorrow I need to decide which houseplants will come (I'm pretty sure Spike and Lily will move with us) and which will go out with the garden waste (probably Barry, Spidey 1, Spidey 2, Phil, Birdy and the Hairy Twins.)

I know it's silly that they have names.

Maybe I should take pictures to remember them by...

I've had Barry since 1976.

Boo hoo!

Ok, here are pictures.

Front: Yes, it is a bit plain in pale yellow and white but it will look brighter once the final coats of paint are on and the landscaping is in. The builder is waiting for warmer weather to finish painting the exterior. We'll live with the colours for a year and if we still find it too plain after that, I'll have it repainted then.

Landscaping... I have vague notions of a raised bed in the front of the house behind a low stone wall with low maintainance shubbery and perennials. I'll have to figure out what sort of plants the deer won't gobble up the instant they're planted.

Back: The upstairs windows from left to right are master bedroom then dining nook then the living room which has french doors opening on to the deck. Downstairs will be mainly The Big Guy's territory. Deck railings need paint.

Living Room: Lots and lots of windows facing west and north. Gas fireplace. Hardwood floors. French doors out to the deck. Most of our current family room furniture will work just fine in here. There isn't enough wall space for our oak bookcase so that will end up in the den.

Deck: This good sized deck is partially covered by the roof overhang so it can be used on both sunny and rainy days. I will need all new deck furniture of course, the old stuff just won't do.

Kitchen and Dining Nook: We will have all new appliances! The Big Guy will not be allowed near the new appliances if he's holding a screwdriver or a drill or any other sort of item from the tools section of a hardware store.

Den: The oak bookcase will go in here along with one or two other bookcases for my books plus the bookcases holding The Big Guy's DVD collection. I'll add a comfy rocking chair with ottoman and floor lamp. Yikes! I don't think this room is big enough for all this stuff. Anyway, if there's any room left at all I'm putting a small TV in here too.

Next week we both going over for a house walk-thru with the builder. I sure hope The Big Guy likes the house and property. I've been through it in person but he's just been going on my pictures and descriptions so far. We get possession on the 16th and we're actually moving the week of the 28th.

It seems as if there are a million things yet to be done!

Today I loaded up the car with three more big bags of stuff to donate away, set up a new account with Shaw for our HD TV and High Speed Internet service and bought a shower curtain and associated accessories so that we can shower in our new house as soon as we get moved in without having to immediately go out searching for stores near our new neighbourhood that sell these sorts of things.

Tomorrow some guys are coming over to dismantle and bring down the RBRAT (Really Big Radio Antenna Tower). Our back yard will seem empty without it.

We're still waiting for the formal signed paperwork to arrive but we've been told that our offer won the house.

I'll post more info and pictures in a day or two. Right now I'm too tired to compose a readable post.

As per our New Technique for acquiring a house, our agent submitted our offer for the second house on our "A-list" last night.

This house already has an offer on it but the seller put a time clause in his acceptance. That means he can continue to consider other offers while the first offer has outstanding conditions. We don't know exactly what those conditions are but they probably had to do with the buyer selling their current home to get financing for this house.

With a little financial tap dancing and doing a couple of other things out of the normal sequence, we are able to submit an unconditional offer.

And, we just heard that the seller accepted our offer at noon today!

Now the buyer who submitted the first offer has 72 hours to withdraw their offer or remove all their subject-to clauses (in which case the seller could choose between their offer and ours) or just let it terminate.

More nail-biting suspense...

With our house buying techniques notable for plenty of nail-biting tension but a stunning lack of house purchase results it was time for a change.

Technique Not Working:

Choose four to nine houses from the MLS listings that are clustered in one geographic area that one can drive to and tour around within a few hours. Go to Vancouver Island. Tour the houses. Find and fall in love with our new dream house. Go home. Prepare and submit an offer to the seller before someone else gets their offer in.

New Technique:

Choose more houses from more than one geographic area. Spend a few days over there instead of just one day. Pick several houses that are adequate, not just one dream house. Don't fall in love with any of the houses! Prepare and submit an offer to the seller that is not just intended to be the first offer but that is designed to be better than any competing offer.

Progress To Date With New Technique:

The house at the top of the "A-list" (see photo) was snapped up by someone else before we even had a chance to go over the hundreds of house photos I took during the four days on the Island. But that's ok because we had an "A-list" with four houses on it, a "B-list" with two houses, and one "C-list" house that I had not been able to see the inside of yet.

Tomorrow we submit our offer on the second "A-list" house. There's already an offer on this house too but the seller put a time clause on it so we designed our offer to beat the one he already has.

Cross your fingers!

By the end of this week we'll know whether this modified approach resulted in a new house for us.