Selling your current house and moving to new home is a complicated process. There are so many little details to take care that it can almost be a full time job. Then there is the stress that come with worrying about all the things that could go wrong and totally derail the process. Our move was even more complicated because we were trying to do a simultaneous sell and buy on the same day which is harder than completing the triple lindy.
I am however a man who enjoys a plan especially when it involves challenging logistics. We were also lucky as the people who were buying our house did not make any unreasonable requests for repairs or changes to the house. The only thing they really asked for was for more time as they had a lease until the end of July. This wasn't a problem for us as we were not in any real hurry to move and actually worked out for us as the people we bought our new house from needed some extra time to take care of a death in the family. Although I'm sorry for the families lost it did allow us to do a simultaneous closing which meant we only had to move once.
Even though all the parties involved were reasonable it was still a very stressful process. There are just so many ways for the things to go wrong and turn the transaction into an adversarial process. As our realtor said there is at least once catastrophe in every sales she does that puts the sale on the edge of falling though. Both she and our lawyer said that this was one of the smoothest transactions they have been a part of. I'm not sure this was because we worked hard to get the house in good shape before the sale or if we were just lucky.
Still is was a lot of work getting the house ready for sale and cleaning up 30 years of living in it. Then there was the packing up of all the stuff we wanted to keep while at the same time looking for a new place to live. The last week was the hardest as we had movers come in and put most of our stuff into storage then we had to clean up the house for the new owners. In the middle of this there was a small plumbing problem I had to fix. The last two days before the move I worked 12-15 hours a day to do all those little last minute things that needed to be done before we could leave the old house. This included packing the last bit of stuff we needed to live until the movers delivered our stuff to the new house as well as cleaning up the old house for the new owners.
Finally around 1:30 pm on July 15 we left our old house with our car's fully stuffed to drive to the new house. It was a little emotional to leave a place we have lived for 30 years but we knew it was time to move on.
It was about a 25 min drive to the new house where we unloaded our cars. I also asked Jack and his van to help us with the move since all the stuff we needed for the two weeks until our furniture arrived won't fit into our two cars.
Although this move was stressful for us I was concerned how Frisket would take it. She is almost 18 years old and doesn't like change. However she seemed to be okay in the new place after exploring it for a little while.
We brought just enough stuff to camp out in our new house. This included an air mattress to sleep on.
As well as a TV and a couple of chairs as well as some minimal stuff for the kitchen.
After a busy Thursday the plan was to relax Friday and just organize the house so we could live with the minimal furniture we had brought. The reason we didn't have the furniture delivered right after moving in is because we wanted to have the place painted. We had hired a painter and they were expected to start painting the week after we moved in but by lucky chance they were able to start the job on Friday right after we moved in. This was good because it would mean that we would get the place painted right after moving in.
The only problem is that it meant that we couldn't sleep in and couldn't really organize the house. The company we hired to do the painting brought in 6 people to do the work. They worked fast and did a really good job. They were there for 10 hours both Friday and Saturday and painted the entire 2500 sq ft of the house. It was a quick transformation that really got rid of the outdated gold paint and updated the place to a more modern look.
During the painting I did what I could to organize and set up what I could. That meant getting the internet working which took a couple of calls to support and a trip to the Optimum office to replace a faulty modem.
Sunday I spent setting up the little furniture we brought with us. Our living room is just a TV with two recliners.
And our dining room is just a card table and chair but it is enough to get by for a couple of weeks.
I also set up an office in the library. The office is not as functional as I want it yet but good enough to work at until the furniture arrives.
There is still a lot to do to make this new house our home but the hard and stressful part is over. There are still a few weeks of work to get the house fully set up but we can now do that at our own pace with no deadlines so that will be easier than the last few days have been.
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