Craigslist Adventures, 2014 Edition

Posted on by Jordan

I have a feeling this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time I mention Craigslist, but once again we have purchased furniture using said site.

Perhaps I should back up. So in giving a tour of our house to some friends, it was mentioned that we were hoping to recruit a babysitter. It was quickly pointed out by a veteran babysitter that our house lacked a TV, and that perhaps we would never see the same babysitter twice given that setup.

With that in mind… well did you ever hear that story about the mouse and the cookie?

No mice this time but…

We need a baby sitter.

To keep the baby sitter happy, we (I am told) need a TV.

To have a TV, we (I am told) need an armoire.

To get the armoire home, we need a truck.

Only the “truck” we borrowed it’s actually one of the largest SUVs in production, so try this again…

To get the armoire home we need a U-Haul

To get the armoire onto the truck, we need three extra guys. (no kidding, I was starting to doubt the four of us were going to get it loaded at one point)

To get the armoire out of the tuck we needed a ramp

And now, to get it out of our garage we may need to have a BBQ or something just to get enough bodies on site to make the transition to the garage.

 

On the less complicated side of things, even with the truck rental, it was a great deal on a *very* solid piece. Hopefully that means it’s quality because I do not look forward to moving that beast again once it’s in place.

Oh, and did I tell you about this party we are having? Yeah we thought we would grill and then

<cough>carryThatGiantThingInTheGarageDownstairs</cough>,

ahem excuse me. Yeah grill and then I don’t know have some ice cream? I think I know where that ice cream maker got unpacked. It’s just down in the basement… you don’t mind carrying something while we go look do you? 🙂

-Jordan

 

 

 

Notes From The Move

Posted on by Jordan

We are in KC!

It’s funny how often I think “this could probably be worked up into a blog post” but excess time and energy have been hard to find over the past week or seven.

That being said, I decided to sit down and share a few observations:

We discovered a new game, it’s called “What box did the bottles wind up in?” it is not a fun game. Just to paint the picture, it’s Saturday night, we have spent the entire day trying to unpack enough stuff to live in the house that night, and somewhere along the way we lost the one bottle we had held back from the packing process. (side note, hold back more than one bottle). Hannah only does one bottle at this point, but it’s a big part of her bedtime routine, and getting her settled is pretty important to us getting any sleep. About an hour before bedtime we realized we didn’t have a bottle and shifted our priorities to unpacking “kitchen” boxes, knowing that one of them would contain the treasure. An hour and a half later I and I have abandon trying to put anything away and am just tearing the top open on each kitchen box and trying to unload just enough to see what’s in there (not bottles). At this point there is only one box left in the kitchen, so better late than never right? I open that one and find a single infant bottle. I walked into the next room to share the um… news with Heather and was confronted with an entire wall of boxes marked “kitchen” yay! Hannah got to eat a NASCAR style bedtime bottle where the pit crew frantically reloaded a tiny bottle before she got knocked out of her grove.

When we started gearing up to put our house on the market, we followed the standard advice and packed up lots of clothes and other closet items to de-clutter the house. Given that the weather was something like 14 below zero then, packing all my shorts into a box seemed like a good idea. A month or two, and one move later, it’s getting kind of warm (or was) and *all* my shorts are somewhere in a box marked “garage.” This was perhaps a mistake.

Having a 15 month old is not a force multiplier. Hannah can somehow keep both of us tied up if she is properly motivated. She is really starting to feel at home in the new hose, and that helps a lot, but the first few days were really interesting.

The movers helpfully wrote “MBR” on lots of boxes. I may have been a little out of it anyway, but it did take me a minute to realize I wasn’t looking at a box of master boot records.

Speaking of boxes… I have a couple more to take care of before bed, so I guess I will call this post done. 🙂

 

-Jordan

 

 

Changes On The way

Posted on by Jordan

So that essay plan? Yeah I have one about half written, but it turns out I can’t just sit down and bang out something thoughtful so… I may have to plan my time more carefully for that to work out.

But what else could be imposing on my time?

Well…

We are moving to Kansas City!

Heather’s employer provided the option of moving there with her job. Given that we were looking to move somewhere, and there aren’t a lot of places in the Midwest that are viable for both my job and hers it was an opportunity we couldn’t say no to.

We have known for a while now, but didn’t want to say too much until we had a few things locked in / communicated, but at this point I think we have most of the details figured out. In just a few weeks we will be moving into a house in Parkville MO.

What does this mean for us?

  • I have to learn how to spell missury messuri muzury Missouri
  • Hannah will have an entire yard full of grass to contend with
  • Going to the garage won’t involve three flights of stairs and crossing a street
  • Heather and I will both be giving up our sub-20 minute commutes

And, probably other things we haven’t even thought of.

It has been exciting and kept us really busy, but I think we are nearly ready for the move. I suppose this does open up all sorts of opportunities to come up with blog posts, so that will be good too!

 

-Jordan

Decorations

Posted on by Jordan

My last post may have implied that we were taking a break from working on the new place.

While I took a week off from posting about it, we were still working. I guess you could say we are in the final phases of the project though.

We spent the past weekend decorating. My role in that consists almost entirely of hanging pictures.

A few notes from that:

First off, it seems like I have heard some disparaging remarks about people who use levels while hanging pictures as being OCD and whatnot. I can’t say as I care though, because without a level it just ends up being my eye against Heather’s and we never know if the picture is straight. Beyond that, we have a distressingly large number of items with two hooks on the back, so without a level it’s almost impossible to place the second hook in the right spot.

Second note, we picked up a rather large mirror in the craigslist campaign. I was really stressed going into the weekend with how I was going to rig some sort of board to span between two studs in order to get enough of an anchor to support this rather heavy mirror. But then I went to the hardware store, and found out that they have all kinds of options for dealing with heavy items hanging on the wall. We went with this guy, and it was about 20 times easier than the plan I had been rolling around in my head.

The other project of note was the wall decals. Heather picked a few of these up online, but we didn’t really know how to put one up. As with about everything these days, youtube was a great place to start.

The video was a far better guide than the somewhat confusing directions that came with our sticker. Speaking of the sticker, it was a bigger project than I was expecting when Heather said “hey, I got this picture to hang over our bed”

The picture shows Heather half way through the last phase of installing the first sticker, but the catch is that her plan involved two stickers. It may be worth noting that, although this was a challenging and stressful task, we worked as a great team during the installation! Perhaps all these challenging move-related tasks are paying off 🙂

The finished product looks really good:

The only problem is, now we have a new found confidence in our ability to install vinyl wall decals, and I thin Heather may have her eye on a few more blank wall spaces.

-Jordan

The Wall, We Have Hit It.

Posted on by Jordan

Actually… it isn’t that bad, after a ‘down’ weekend Heather and I are starting to feel like attacking the unfinished tasks again.

Let me catch you up on the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago, we were living in an apartment, and Saturday morning, the view was this:

As some short update posts already gave away, we had plenty of help and got things moved fairly quickly. What took more effort was unpacking and finding a home for everything that was in a box. We powered through that as fast as we could so that our house would be ready for company. Quite a bit of company as it turns out.

On the following Thursday, my grandparents stopped through on their way out to a wedding. That was the first night that we hadn’t both worked until midnight on something, but we still managed to sneak in a few minutes putting our house together. On Friday, Heather’s parents came into town, and they brought our favorite(only) nephew Holden.

He got the deluxe tour:

We took Holden and his grandparents down to the farmers market, and then later he did some fabric shopping with Heather and Pam. We quickly discovered that although the main area in our house was mostly put together, it wasn’t what you would call kid-proof. He kept us on our toes.

That crew headed home Saturday evening, leaving Heather and I a few hours to pull a few things together and grab some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, my parents, sister and brother came into town, just in time for church. We had some really ambitious plans to take them out to see the bike bridge I did a post on a while back. The triple digit heat index, combined with the fact that they had spent a considerable amount of time walking the previous day at the Omaha zoo put a pretty solid kabosh on that idea.

It turned out that a nap and breaking out our new copy of Ticket To Ride was about the perfect use for the Sunday afternoon. I can’t remember if I mentioned Ticket to ride when recapping our visit to DJ’s house out in Colorado, but it has quickly become Heather’s favorite game.

On Monday, Heather and I both worked, leaving the rest of my family free to head down to Pella for some touristing. They came back with some amazing pastries so I have to assume the trip was a wild success. That evening, Heather and I met up with them and headed just outside of Des Moines to where an annual balloon festival is held.

The weather was not ideal for hot air balloons, and we didn’t get to see the kind of numbers featured in the postcards I have seen of the event. That being said, it was really cool. I really don’t understand how they pilot the balloons, except to say they appeared to have more control than I would have expected.

After the balloons, we stopped and got pizza. This is noteworthy only because the local Cub Scout pack was busing tables as a fundraiser. It wasn’t the best table service we have ever had, but it was some of the best mealtime entertainment we have had… perhaps ever.

My family headed home the next day, leaving Heather and I finally home with no impending dates on the calendar. We haven’t been as productive this week as the past few. Today we finally got back into painting and may have a dresser ready to instal soon.

In hindsight, I don’t know if we would have really planned the past few weeks differently, as there were events outside our control driving each visit. All the same, I know we would have been better hosts had there been a few weeks between each event listed above.

On the other hand, we have proven that we can comfortably host three to four guests, and are always happy to have people visit!

… Just give us a week to wrap up this furniture painting 🙂

-Jordan

Moved

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I survived the move.

We have probably 75% of our stuff unpacked, and at least the basic layout of our new home figured out.

I currently have my computer setup, but cannot locate the box with deodorant in it… This may become more of a problem as time goes on.

I mentioned that Heather was doing some craigslisting? It turns out looking at listings from craigslist is a great way to see a city! We spent two nights this past week driving all over the place looking at dressers, end tables, and bed frames.

We hauled a majority of those home. Being used items, they had a few dents and scratches. Heather factored this into her plan and is in the process of sanding down and repainting everything.

By Thursday night, this is what our garage looked like.

The drawers pictured are now painted, but still need another coat… this may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t unpacked my clothes yet 🙂

Back to the move, at the risk of making a number of people upset about this picture being online… some of the *AMAZING* crew that came and helped us move:

We managed 12 volunteers for Saturday, despite the extreme heat. With that many people helping, the entire hauling phase of the move was done in about two and a half hours! I should mention that my sister came down the night before and was a lifesaver in helping get all the boxes packed before the crew arrived.

All told, we are in the new place, all thanks to wonderful friends and family who were willing to give up some (or all) of their weekend to help us out.

-Jordan

Still Alive And… Packing

Posted on by Jordan

Typically I take some time over the weekend to reflect and write up a blog post. This weekend I mostly focused on doors.

At this point we are done with the doors, and done with the massive cleaning project soon to be known as our home.

We did find time over the weekend to help a friend celebrate his birthday, by attending an Iowa Cubs game!

Typically we at least try to get the field in the background… you will just have to take my word for it that we were in fact at the game.

Sad fact about how the Independence Day weekend went for us… the baseball game this weekend was the first professional fireworks show we managed to take in this year. I suppose having a great new house to move into is consolation enough for this year.

So many things have happened… but there is still so much to do, so I will wrap this up and hope to have some great pictures of the moving day and perhaps the finished product soon!

-Jordan

And The Work Continues

Posted on by Jordan

The painting is suppose to be done today, but as you can see there will still be some work to be done.

Lucky we still have ten days before the actual moving day 🙂

In other news, we (and by we I mean Heather) have discovered that the Dave Ramsey “bargain with cash” plan is really effective when buying things off craigslist… We aren’t going to have any trouble filling the new place it would seem.

-Jordan

Moving Again!

Posted on by Jordan

Ok… so I am about a week slow getting this posted. Our big end-of-June news was that we are going to move again!

The Independence Day weekend was jam packed with activities, so I didn’t manage to sit down and write up even a quick post.

Back to the move, Heather and I purchased a condo in West Des Moines. It isn’t nearly as sudden as it may seem, as we have been looking for quite some time, and trying to purchase this particular place for months.

Almost four months to be exact. You have heard of “short sale” houses? Well, don’t let the name mislead you, it’s a slow process. When people in real estate hear that we were able to close in under four months they say “well that’s a lot faster than I would have expected.”

I write this about twelve days after we closed, but it feels more like a month. The place needed only minor renovations, and yet it’s been completely exhausting to get those taken care of.

Heather and I have learned a lot during this process. The number one thing we have learned is that we cannot build a house… ever. Even the relatively minor work we are doing (and having done) to the condo has caused incredible stress at times. I think we are also learning at lot about each other, and how to work as a team… but it’s going to be 20 years before we have those lessons learned well enough to consider a project the size of building a house.

Aaand that was probably more on that tangent than I should have shared, but it’s worth noting.

The short version is that we are in the process of preparing a condo that we own such that we can move in.

(and besides, I have lived in this apartment for nearly two years! It’s overdue to move again! )

-Jordan

Things I Should Not Cook Without A Recipe

Posted on by Jordan

With all the snow, I thought some home made chicken noodle soup sounded really good.

For some reason I have it in my head that I can just throw that together, despite having never turned out a good batch. I am not going to bother with a picture… but lets just say my streak of not very good soup continues.

It is edible in the sense that I have been eating it, but Heather won’t touch it. I am learning how big a factor visual appeal is in cooking. In this case even if it looked ok, the soup has other problems.

Anyway… beyond cooking, Heather and I have really gotten settled in around here. We had the snow day, Where we both had to work some, but were around the house, and then this weekend was our first week with nothing planned that we have had in a long long time.

We still don’t actually have that last box of books unpacked, but we re-organized some left over wedding decorations into a more robust container such that it can go to the garage and free up a little more space. (I have no idea why we have that stuff, don’t ask)

We also solved some of our closet problem with a little board with coat-hooks on it that Target had. Unfortunately it wasn’t 16 inches wide, so I used a heavy duty drywall anchor for the non-stud end… I hope when we move out the wall isn’t too bad. At least we have someplace to hang a coat in the meantime 🙂

-Jordan