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Pictures of the new house

Our house is finally presentable enough to post a few interior pictures. It still has a long way to go, but here's a little taste of the Hall-Smith house:

Entry way:


Kitchen:
Breakfast Area:

Living Room:


Kids' TV Room:






Kids' Play Room:


Gabriel's Room:


Cadence's Room:


Laundry Room:


Our Room:


Our Bathroom:




There's another bathroom upstairs (the kids' bathroom) as well as a half bathroom downstairs of which I did not take pictures. We also have another bedroom that is storing the few boxes that we have left that I haven't been motivated enough to unpack. I've already posted outside pictures... that really hasn't changed much.

The big move

After one cancelled closing, a no-show moving truck and three days spent moving in 95 degree heat we are finally in our new house. The original plan was to close on both loans at the same time on Friday June 26th, so I my last day in the office was Wednesday. Thursday Brandon (Dianne's boyfriend) and I went to pick up the 24-foot rental truck. When we got there we were told that they could not provide us with a 24-foot truck because they were all rented out - which really sucked since I had reserved it almost a week prior. The lady at the counter told me that my townhouse should fit into a 16-foot truck and offerred to give me a huge discount and let me return it at lunchtime on Saturday (instead of 9am as my contract stated). I agreed and we took the truck home.

At around 1pm we had the truck completely loaded. The only problem was that we still had about 2 rooms worth of stuff still in the house. So much for all of my stuff fitting in a 16-foot truck. :-/ Normally, this wouldn't be a problem because we could just make more than one trip to the new house, right? Wrong. We had to have all of the stuff out of the old house by the end of the day Thursday so we could go to the closing first thing in the morning on Friday and then move it all into the new house. So we went back up to the rental place to get another truck. Just as I had signed and paid for the second truck I receive a phone call from Jack, the realtor selling my townhouse. The closing on my townhouse on Friday has been postponed until Tuesday because of a problem with the buyer's mortgage company. Well this wouldn't have sucked too much except for one major issue: I needed the money from the sale of my townhouse for the downpayment on the new house. Which meant that the closing on the new house would have to be postponed until Tuesday as well.... and I had 80% of my house loaded into a moving truck and had just paid for a second moving truck.

Now the buyers of my townhouse wanted to know if it was okay to go ahead and move in that Friday anyway - even though the closing was postponed. I did not really have a problem with that as I was assured by the mortgage company that the closing would take place on Tuesday. The only problem I had was where to go if I let them move in. So Bob, the realtor helping us buy the new house, called the seller's realtor to see if we could move into our new house on Friday as well. The realtor couldn't located his client (a situation that has arisen a few times in this transaction) so he didn't know if this would be a possibility. So here we are at 9pm on Thursday with 80% of our stuff in one truck, another truck that has been paid for and we may not need and now we realize that our utilities are being turned off in the townhouse first thing in the morning. Crap.

Friday morning rolls around and I frantically call the power/water/sewer company and the cable company to make sure that we still have utilities. I cancel the appointment for the cable guy to come out to the new house. Less than fifteen minutes after I made these calls I receive a call from Bob saying that we can go ahead and move into the new house. I frantically call everyone back again. The power/water/sewer people say that there is no problem transferring the service that day. The cable people however, have already filled by appointment. They stopped service on the old house, but can't make it out until Monday to install the service at the new house. I have no problem with this but Chris has a huge soccer game that he wanted to watch on Sunday. Poor Chris.

We receive a call from Jack asking if the people can move into our townhouse on Friday as well. I told Jack that since we didn't finish loading on Thursday (because we didn't want to unload it in the event that we were not able to move) it would probably be best if they waited until Saturday. This also meant that we could make multiple trips and didn't need the second truck that we had rented the day before. What a waste of $20.

We returned the truck and spent the majority of the day moving the contents of our townhouse to the new house. I would like to give a big shout out to Erin, Jessica, Josh, Michael and Mark for helping us on Friday. It was soooo hot and we really appreciate the help that we received from everyone. Friday evening after we unloaded the second truckload we said good-bye to our friends and headed to the pool. There was a man named Scott and his two sons up there who were kind enough to let us in (we didn't have a gate code yet). We swam for about 30 minutes and then went back to the townhouse to vaccuum and clean. There is nothing more disgusting than cleaning behind a washer and dryer that has not moved in 5 years.

We got up early on Saturday and met Rob and Abbie at our house around 10am. We had to go clean out our storage unit and then go by my mom's house to get some boxes out of the garage - and by some I mean 20 or 30. We brought the truck back to the house and unloaded. We sat down for a celebratory beer. We now officially had all of our belongings in the house. They were all in boxes, but they were in damnit. We drove the truck back to the rental place and returned home to begin unpacking.

We continued to unpack throughout the day on Sunday until it was time for the soccer game. You know, the one that Chris couldn't watch because we cancelled the appointment with the cable guy? We met Josh and The Lube and spent the next 2ish hours watching soccer and working on our 100 oz beer. Let me repeat that.... a 100 oz beer!!!

On Monday we received a call from the attorney's office confirming that the closings were to take place the next day at 3:30pm and 4:30pm. Then I receive a frantic call from my mortgage broker. She had tried to reach me on my cell phone and then at my office. The person at my office who answered the phone told her that I didn't work there anymore. That's not a good thing when you are about to close on a house. Technically I did work there. My last day was the previous Wednesday; however, I had almost two weeks of vacation time remaining so as of Monday (and the closing on the next day) I was still an employee of that company. Wednesday I was going to be an employee of another company. My broker was not so happy with this news. She said that the mortgage company may call again to verify my employment and that if they get a response like she had just received they probably would not fund the loan and the closing would fall apart. Not good. So I called my old (or technically current) employer. They understood the situation and said that they would handle it. That didn't mean that I wasn't freaking out all night though...

Tuesday came and both closings went off without any major issues. The closings were so late in the day; however, that the loan on the new house did not fund until Wednesday morning. We are VERY glad that the stress of moving and closing is over with. We have the house in somewhat liveable condition, but it isn't quite ready for pictures. We will post some soon though.

We are also planning a housewarming party for July 18th. More details on that to come.