The new house was completed November 4 and the house was officially turned over to us on November 5. They were still working on it on the 5th cleaning it up and making various touch ups. We were pleased to see that they did open up the wall to give us a door between the garage and the stairway to the basement. I think the builder was happy to work with us (I think he was surprised at how easy going we were through the whole process--after the rocky start.) I appreciated that they delivered on what they said they would when it came to building the house. Our house also brought them some additional business in the area due to its visibility and we agreed to let them leave their sign out in front for a few more weeks.
We made the big move November 22 and unpacked enough items to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving dinner in the new house. We have been moving out of the old house for the last several weeks. Keeping up with the decisions while the new house was built was time consuming, but moving has been exhausting and, as it seems, never ending. Not having to move everything out in one day has been both a blessing and a curse.
Right after the house was done and ready for us to move in, I flew off to Las Vegas for a conference. This did not leave a lot of time for packing before the 22nd. But we got all the furniture moved and many boxes of things. Overall, we moved about 80% of our belongings. I don't know of any move that went perfectly smoothly. We had a few mishaps and had quite a difficult time getting the cable/internet/phone connected.
We moved my dollhouse ourselves with the help of my friend Nancy. Taking it out of the basement, I accidentally broke off some of the porch railings. We got it loaded into Nancy's van and transported with no problems, but Nancy tripped on the front steps at the new house and dropped the dollhouse on her ankle. She's OK fortunately, and while lots more porch pieces and part of the base broke off. It is all fixable. But who knows when I'll get to that. In moving our baby grand piano, the movers got our piano safely to the new house but damaged it while putting the legs back on. They didn't realize that the bolts for the back leg were longer than the bolts for the front legs and put a long bolt through a short hole and cross-threaded it. The long bolt interfered with the keyboard lid so that it wouldn't open. Steve was understandably distressed about this. Fortunately, our piano technician was able to get the bolt out. We are still waiting to hear if he was able to get replacement parts, but the piano is usable and sounds great in its new home (especially since it was just tuned.)
We also did finally get the cable/internet phone hooked up. The order was inadvertently processed as a reconnect--this was an existing address after all. And of course, Comcast has different crews for different work tasks, so the guy who came out to hook us up couldn't do the rest of the job. so he left. In addition to needing to pull the cable from the street, our house was too far away from the nearest tap, so a new tap needed to be installed at the street. Comcast had different crews working on it for several days, and it finally was up an running a week after we moved in. Good thing we had cell phones our we would have been without any phone service all that week.
But really, the move has gone well overall. OK Steve says the house is cursed, but then he is a Tambellini. The cats were stressed the first two days--Diva especially. She hid under the "big butt" chair for two days. But now both cats seem very at ease in the new house and have made themselves very much at home. I think they are adjusting better than Steve.
There is still much to do here and at the old house, but we are making progress. In addition to cleaning out the old house I have been painting two bedrooms. Now that they are empty, the flaws in the walls became all the more evident. The plan is to get the house on the market in early January. At the new house, we are set up to live, but there are still boxes to unpack, pictures to hang, things to organize. We also have a storage unit to empty and vacate. It is hard to believe that we got rid of so much stuff over the past year as we still have so much. Getting our address change out to all our credit cards, banks, the department of motor vehicles, magazines, etc. is a continuous project. We have one more month on the forwarding order so we are still having mail re-directed.
There are also a few items that we need to have the builder fix. For example, the lock on the master bathroom is on the outside of the door. Correcting these can wait until after the holidays. But we did have to call the electrician after some of power outlets and a light switch stopped working. A wire nut wasn't tightened and the wire fell out. I'm sure we will shake out a few more problems over the next several months as that is the nature of a new house. Overall, though, everything else in the house appears to be working well.
Fabulous!
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