The Worse Part

The house is finished now.  It only took less than a week but it feels like it took forever.  The day the carpet went in was rough.  Kevin took the day off and his dad came to help.  By pure luck, Kevin's cousin stopped by and ended up helping as well.

The packing and moving up all the belongings just to put it back while people were waiting for us to finish was brutal.  Add to it that it was supposed to rain so we were trying to do all this without putting anything outside.  This entailed disassembling the living room and storing it in the kitchen and laundry room.  Then once the carpet was finished in there, reassembling everything in the living room then taking everything out of our bedroom and put it into the living room. Then doing all that again to empty the office.

The worse part was moving the World War II era oak desk and the 1980's former waterbed frame. Actually, the worse part was having the entire house turned inside out.  Kevin and I aren't wired to live in clutter.  Having the refrigerator and stove in the living room was actually making me anxious. Two days of that and it nearly drove me mad.

We really tried to be methodical about how we did this. When the kitchen floor was being done, I packed up the two china cupboards full of antiques.  I used every reusable grocery bag that I own to pack up my books.  There was at least twelve bags full of books stacked in our office.  There were also three large totes of stuff from the china cupboards stored in there. Plus I emptied the desk into file boxes because there just wasn't enough boxes in the room.  At one point, there was only a path through the office.

Or the worse part was that Kevin caught a cold a few days prior to this adventure and then thoughtfully shared it with me.  Nothing makes packing and moving furniture more fun than a head cold.

The other worse part is that the new washer and dryer wouldn't be here for another week. The boys didn't put the old ones back into the house for fear of damaging the new floor.  This meant I had to walk next door to do our laundry.  It could be so much worse but I'm still a little peevish about it. (Oh, wait, it is worse. In the time it has taken to write this, their washer has sprung a leak)

Kevin gets an honorable mention here because he bought the washer and dryer for me two days after my surgery, while I was still on the couch.  Unfortunately due to the West Coast longshoreman contract disagreement, we're just now getting them.

Oh, and then there was the time that my father-in-law flooded our kitchen and pantry twice.  Twice.  "Luckily" this was prior to the new flooring. But this meant using a pile of towels to mop everything up.  Remember, I don't have a washer and dryer at this point.  Super happy.

The reason for the flooded kitchen (twice!) is that we bought a new dishwasher.  Even though it was installed before the new flooring, I didn't get to use it until two days after the carpeting went in.  It was just lost in the shuffle of everything.  

Because we're an all-or-nothing pair, we decided that this was the perfect time to replace some of our furniture and buy a new truck.  We bought the new truck from a dealership three hours away, because: of course. We picked it up the day before we were scheduled to pack up the house then we used it to pick up some of the furniture we bought. Because we're multi-taskers!

I didn't spend much on this new furniture so there was some assembly required. Kevin was pretty good about putting everything together and in place.  Right up until the last night when he was surrounded by parts of a four drawer dresser on the floor at 8:00 p.m. the day the carpet was installed.  Sadly, it wasn't a choice to not finish it as we had already loaded the old old console style dresser into the back of the truck and his clothing was all over the closet floor.  Lucky him.

Now it's done.  Our house feels brand-new now but significantly nicer.  We're so happy with how everything has come together that we've almost forgotten about all the hurdles. Almost.