The rest of this post is going to sound really negative, so I need to say upfront that it all could have gone horribly, but it didn't. Brad's parents came into town to help, and help they did, taking turns keeping Addison or helping me at the house before we even moved our stuff. We are so thankful to them and some sweet friends who helped us.
We bought a house on May 18th. This comedy of errors started about a week before that, however, when I made the mistake of buying a Pottery Barn rug for A's "big girl room" from someone I found on Craigslist. It was hot outside, she was 20 minutes late to meet me, and I had to pee... not a good combination for a pregnant girl. By the time the woman got there to meet me, I was so antsy I didn't even have her roll the rug out! I talked her down to $100 and felt okay about it. Needless to say, I got it home and discovered a horrible mess! After multiple hours on my hands and knees spot cleaning, and a few rounds with a steam cleaner, the jelly stain is out, the dark who-knows-what-that-was is lighter, and what I can only hope was juice has actually drained the pink color in a few spots. Oh well. One day Addison will discover markers and I'll be glad I didn't pay the $799 that rug is currently listed for at the store.
With any move, you can expect to bleed some money. We knew coming into it we would spend quite a bit getting our electrical system up to code, putting in a couple new appliances, and other "move-in" type things. The Wednesday before we moved in, however, I had to laugh at the rotating group of sub-contractors in our house. Brad's dad and I were cleaning (the entire house was filthy), and throughout the day we had the deliverymen bring in my washer and dryer, a couple of sweet, round, red-neck electricians working nonstop, a plumber who looked like he belonged on the movie Deliverance, and two painters who spoke absolutely no English. All in one afternoon. Pretty funny.
We had asked around about a painter to do some touch up work on the inside of the home. I really wanted to paint all the rooms, but after taking a look at the trim work that's chipped and the ceiling that needed repainting in a few spots, we decided to take care of that and a couple of rooms. We had several suggestions of who not to use, and only one suggestion of someone who did good work. I met with him and was a little concerned about his limited English, but we stepped out and agreed on a price and an end date. To make a long story short, he did none of the work and hired out to guys who spoke no English, they finished a day late, my trim work hasn't been touched, the coats of paint are visibly are uneven, and I've been scraping drips of paint up off the floor with my fingernails. Ugh.
With lots of help from Brad's parents and a couple of movers, we got our stuff over here and some boxes unpacked. Brad's mom started loading the dishwasher looked up distressed: the baskets in the dishwasher were literally falling apart! We priced replacement baskets and quickly realized that it made more sense to buy a new dishwasher. A week later the deliveryman actually showed up, damaged my counter top, told me he'd have to cut the kitchen tile in order to get the old dishwasher out, and left me with two dishwashers, neither working! He came back two days later with reinforcements and put it in, charged me more money, and left with my new dishwasher not installed properly. Ugh!
Today I woke up with a long list of "to dos." I tore my back out during all of the moving stuff, so I've been taking it easy. I intended to finish unpacking the boxes, rearrange some stuff in A's room and run a couple of errands. About the time I was finishing breakfast I heard a strange gurgling noise from the guest bath. I will spare you the details and skip to the end: the plumbers came back and had to replace a portion of the sewage pipe under the house; there was a hole in it that someone had tried to fix with a large rubber band. The hits just keep on coming, and our monetary hemorrhage continues. :)
We are enjoying lots of things about the "new" place though: A's playroom, space in our kitchen, an actual backyard, etc. I'm thankful that we're discovering all these issues now, and not when I'm days away from delivering this sweet baby girl. Have I posted that yet? That this bundle of moves is a girl? It's a girl. And she's either going to be a runner like her daddy or a dancer like me, because she moves constantly! Can't wait to meet her. Well, I can wait... I need to wait... I don't know where any of our "newborn" stuff is yet!
