Warning! This post is LONG!

I am writing this blog on Sunday morning in Microsoft Word because our internet is hooked up at the house but our computer is still at the condo. I hope to post it by Monday night or Tuesday.

We did it! Our house is officially ours! I am finally so excited about this. I have been excited to an extent all along, but with all the financial stress of the last couple of weeks, it feels good to get in there and do some work to bring it closer to move-in ready.

Jason’s mom and I spent yesterday (Saturday) morning cleaning the condo. Jay and his dad went over to the new house to accept our deliveries. Then the women brought lunch over to the guys and we spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening assembling furniture. But we did get to take a break to order and eat Chinese food as a celebratory supper!

I am so thankful that we were able to take our time with this move. I couldn’t imagine trying to assemble everything we did yesterday (Saturday) with all of our boxes and other furniture from our condo in the way. I think with some furniture in there I finally realize how big our master bedroom and our kitchen/dining area really are. When we had our headboard set up against the wall with the box spring in place, we fit the new king sized mattress flat on the floor at the foot of the bed. I joked that we could fit two king sized beds in our room! (This is as far as I got on this blog on Sunday morning, the rest was written Tuesday afternoon.)

We spent Sunday morning and afternoon hauling over a few things from the condo that the movers wouldn’t move or we didn’t want them to move. Then we were invited to go to Jason’s aunt’s house for supper which we gladly accepted as we could all go for a home cooked meal. Then Sunday evening was last minute packing at the condo of things we couldn’t pack before then.

Monday morning the movers arrived at 8am (they said they would be there at 8:30am). The plan was for Jay and Dale to go over to the house and wait for the people from the Blind Factory to come and install our new blinds, and Clara and I would stay behind and direct the movers and clean the condo once it was empty. All went according to plan except the blind installers never showed up and Dale and Jason were really bored at the house by 11am. The movers took longer at the condo than we thought, but it does take a lot of time to haul things down in the elevator. It took them about half of the time to haul in the stuff at the house as it did to pack it at the condo. They finished up at the condo by about noon and were at the house unpacking until about 2:30pm. They were two young men and they were working very hard the whole time. I would definitely recommend Geransky’s moving to anyone looking for a mover. I can’t imagine having to move all that stuff ourselves. Even though it wasn’t cheap to hire movers I think it was worth every penny. Then on Monday from 2:30pm until 6pm we all worked at unpacking and setting up the computer. We ordered supper in, ate, then we sent Dale and Clara on their way back to Swift Current and we did a little more unpacking but then just relaxed. I think we are completely done unpacking the kitchen, I thought that might take forever but Clara and I spent a lot of time working on it yesterday!

Today we slept in. Well we tried to anyway. We are sleeping on our new ultra firm foam mattress so it is taking a bit of getting used to. The good posture that it causes feels very unusual indeed. When I first laid down it felt like I was hanging upside down a bit. I think that was because our old bed was saggy, so your butt hung down lower than your head or feet. Now that I am laying flat it feels abnormal. We also went out and did a bit of shopping today at Walmart, Costco and Home Depot.

We only hit three snags with our new purchases and deliveries. The first we found out about on Thursday last week when we called to confirm that our stove was going to be delivered and found it that it had never come in. We found out later that everything from Maytag was on backorder and that it will be in on September 28^th. They offered us a loaner stove until then but we declined because our new stove is a slide in range so the countertop has to be custom fit to fit it. It sounded like the loaner stove was just a plain one that wouldn’t have fit anyway. I guess we’ll be doing a lot of barbequing and using our electric frying pan.

The second snag was that our couch and chair didn’t show up on Saturday. We were a little concerned because when we tried to call Ashley (who is in the process of going out of business right now!) all we got was an answering machine that said their mailbox was full. I finally managed to reach someone yesterday and they said our furniture had just come in and would be delivered on Wednesday (so here’s hoping it arrives!).

The third snag was the Blind Factory. I am not sure if we misunderstood, but we thought they were coming to install them on Monday morning and they didn’t show up so Jay called and they said they were only done making two of our blinds (we are getting ten). They called this morning to say that they would be done next Monday and could be installed sometime next week. So for the time being we have sheets hung up over our bedroom windows and need to be careful about what we walk around the kitchen and living room in because we have some pretty large windows in those rooms.

I think the rest of the week will be spent doing leisurely unpacking and probably some rearranging in the kitchen. I know we just kind of threw all of our food in the new fridge without much thought, so that will need to be reorganized. I am really enjoying having a ready supply of ice in the fridge. I will admit that the crushed ice option makes more of a mess than it’s probably worth, but it is fun.

Sorry for the longwinded-ness of this post, but it has been a very full and busy three days of packing, moving, unpacking and assembling things.

I also need to give a good word to Sleeper’s Mattress Factory. We had a very positive experience dealing with them in the store when we purchased our new mattress and box spring. Then their delivery guys were very friendly and helpful. I think that their delivery guys actually work for Sleepers. Whereas Sears and Leon’s hire other delivery companies to do their grunt work. You could definitely tell the difference in the pride they took in their work.

Last, but certainly not least, I need to say a MILLION thanks to Jason's parents for working their butts off this weekend for us. We appreciate it more than we can ever say!

After what has likely been the most anxious and tense afternoon of my life, we just got the call that at 4:30pm we get to go take possession of our house. I know that we were cutting it close with all this financing buisness, but when I called our lawyer at 2:15pm they had JUST received the money from the bank and still had to write a cheque to Fraser's lawyers. We got a call at about 3:50pm that we can go get our keys at 4:30! I am still a little too stressed to be grinning from ear to ear, but I am so thrilled and I can't wait to move in!!

I bought a cute shower curtain for our house today. It isn't a top quality one, but I figured this way if I get bored with it, or if it falls apart, it only cost $15. It is from Superstore and it is a clear plastic curtain, but randomly throughout it there are silk gerbera daisies in little enclosed pockets. It kind of looks like this. I am still not totally sure what sort of colour scheme to use in the bathroom because do have a number of different coloured towels and our flooring and walls are fairly neutral (browns and grays). I thought the colourful flowers would be fun, and the see through curtain would allow me to have some light in the shower when I am in there.

Packing

It looks very much like I will have today off from work. I was on call because I had no appointments booked and here I sit. I decided that I was going to try to be very productive if I did indeed end up having today off. I did do a bit of laundry and put gas in my car and ran a document over to the mortgage broker. I decided that when Jay went out to take some pictures that I would go down to our locker in the garage and get a few of our many liquor store boxes and start packing up some more stuff.

The closet in our laundry room has been on my mind lately. It is where we keep our cleaning supplies, miscellaneous tools, extra paper towel rolls, extra boxes of ziplock bags, etc. I got up on a chair and pulled everything down out of the top two shelves. There were a few things up there that I sure didn't know we had and a few things I didn't have the first clue what they were. As I started looking, I decided that this might be a job better done when Jay was around to let me know what could be tossed and what should be kept. I am the type of person who doesn't have a lot of trouble purging old stuff. And to an extent I think that's a good thing, but I would hate to through out something important that I didn't realize was important. Then again if I didn't realize it was in our closet in the last two and a half years since I have lived here, how important can it really be?? Anyway, so I tried to organize what I could and so there are about five piles of different stuff in the laundry room right now waiting for Jay to get home and go through it with me.

Then I turned my attention towards the kitchen. We have a lot of things stored in the upper cupboards in our kitchen since Jay can't reach them. I pulled out a few things from one cupboard and found a box of extra speakers for our stereo in the living room. Then I remembered that Jay had said we should put away the two surround sound speakers that we had set up in the living room so I attempted that. When Jay moved in, his dad ran the speaker wire under the carpet and under the heat register along the wall. I managed to get the wire pulled out up to the garden door, but then his dad actually pulled up the carpet put the wire underneath and then stapled it back down. I can't seem to pull the wire through or lift the carpet enough to get it out (plus I don't think we have a staple gun to staple it back down if I pulled it up). Not sure what Jay will suggest for that. Maybe we'll have to cut it.

Then I got to thinking about packing and I had a few questions about what needed to be packed in a box and what could be left out for the movers. So I called our movers and found out that lamps do need to be put in a box as do stereos, however fans can be left as is. So I really need some bigger boxes to pack lamps and stereos in (please let me know if you have some you could give me!). Or maybe we could move a couple of things ourselves on Sunday or Monday because there are some things the movers refuse to move (ie propane tanks, household cleaners, etc). So basically right now this condo is in a bit of a mess....but hopefully Jay will be home soon and we can sort it out :) I can't believe our possession date is only a week away!!! I am getting quite excited!

Life

It has been a slow week at work again, but luckily I have been keeping busy with getting ready to move. After a super stressful day on Monday, we have some financing lined up to cover the cost of our new house until we can sell our condo. The situation is not ideal, but it will allow us to keep our plans to move next weekend.

The other day at work I had a new client. When the treatment was over and it was time to pay the client didn't have cash or cheque to pay (we don't accept debit or credit cards). Before I could say much to him, he said 'I'll go get some money and be right back'. Well two hours later he still hadn't come back so I called him and asked if he would stop by the next day and drop it off. He swore he would drop it off the next morning and when I got to work yesterday afternoon he hadn't come by. I called him again and this time he seemed a little annoyed that I was calling but said he had sent out his assistant to drop off the cheque over an hour ago and was surprised that he wasn't there yet. He again swore he would drop it off by the end of the day. Again, no money by the end of the day :P I am not quite sure what to do about it...I suppose I will keep calling him and if nothing I guess I just gave him a massage for free. That really ticks me off! If I was in a position where I didn't have money to pay for something I would go directly to an atm and bring back some money. I guess not everyone is that honest :P

UPDATE: I talked to one of my coworkers and his cheque was pushed under the front door when she got in this morning. It was made out for the wrong amount to the wrong person. It was made out for $11 more than it should have been and I can trade cash for the cheque with my coworker. So all is sorted out, and I won't have to keep calling or pay him a visit like I was contemplating doing.

Please pray for us.

We have been having a rough day today. We found out that if we can't take possession of our house unless we have money or financing in place to pay for it. We were under the impression that we could take possession and just pay the homebuilder interest until we were able to give them the money from the sale of our condo. Well here we sit two months after first listing our condo and it is still for sale. The real estate agent said there are a few condos in our area that haven't sold that have been listed for a while. He is quite baffled about it.... So here we sit trying to scramble to talk to the mortgage broker, lawyer and home builder and try not to cry or scream or break things because this really stinks. I know that a lot of things have come together to make the building of this house possible, and I am sure that everything will work out, but this is really discouraging. I have been praying and received some peace about the situation...but the thought of losing our house feels like a kick in the stomach.

Latest pictures of our house.

Today we went to our house and the newest addition was there...our railings! They look just as nice as I hoped they would, we are just waiting for them to be lacquered.

Our hardwood and lino The lino was also a new addition today. I love the hardwood, but I don't think this picture does justice to either floorings because of the glare from the flash. I think that all of the colours are coming together nicely.

This is the paint and flooring in the den. The flooring is a stone tile look laminate. I really like the colours and textures together.

We decided last week to ask if Fraser could build us a deck, and here it is complete with 12:1 ramp.

I thought it was quite funny when we went to our house last night and we walked in and we saw our hardwood flooring and were quite impressed with it. Then we noticed that they had done some of our cabinets in the kitchen. So we said "oooh look at our cabinets", then we noticed that our dining room light fixture was sitting in a box on the counter. Then we looked up and noticed that our kitchen light fixtures were in. Then we noticed that almost all of our other light fixtures were in. It was like being a kid in a candy store. Then we went back tonight to meet with a lady to choose blinds for our house and I walked right in, past the railings without even noticing them because the lino was in and I was quite excited about that. It wasn't until I got into the kitchen and turned around to go back towards the front door that I saw the railings. The basement is also primed now. So I imagine we should be getting a coat of paint down there in the not to distant future and maybe our second coat of paint upstairs. This is all happening very fast now, and it is very exciting. I can hardly believe that we will have possession of our house in 3 1/2 weeks! Wow!

Our house

I was over at our house twice today, once with my sister and nephew and once with Jason. They have been very busy indeed since Monday. We now have a coat of coloured paint on all the walls in our upstairs. I think it looks pretty neat. I think we chose our colours well :) Also they poured our cement garage floor today and our deck is half built. I am sure by the time we get back from Swift Current on Sunday our deck with probably be pretty close to finished and the painting should be done. I know in the next couple of weeks that things are going to come together quite quickly. Two weeks from Monday our dishwasher and range hood are being delivered to the house and by then we need to have flooring and cabinets installed. What a whirlwind!

Our real estate agent is having two open houses this weekend while we are gone. Let's hope that this gets some people out to look at our place. We did get a call tonight from an agent who wants to show our place tomorrow morning. That will only be the third showing of our condo since we listed it with an agent over a week ago.

We have stucco!

It may be hard to tell because the picture is a little grainy and far away but our house has stucco now. They are also done drywalling the basement and are currently working on door frames and doors upstairs. We have also had a few calls recently from the cabinet people, so I am thinking that our cabinets may not be too far behind. I guess we'll see! Only six weeks until our planned moving day! Yay!

New Bed

We bought the foam mattress today that I had written about on the weekend. Of all the furniture and appliances that we have bought in the last month or so, I am definitely most excited about this new bed. In my life I have only regularly slept in two beds. The bed that I had at mom and dad's is the same mattress that I slept on from the time I was about 2 years old until I was 24 years old. In the last year I got a feather bed, so it was a lot more comfortable, but that was a hard bed! Then I got married and slept in the bed that Jason had had for a couple of years. It is alright, I really missed my feather bed at first because our bed is very firm. But over the last two and a half years that springs have really started poking through. They aren't actually poking through the mattress, or I don't think we would be able to sleep on it. But if you prop yourself up on an elbow when laying on your side you get a spring in your elbow. It is not very comfy! I think that our current bed has caused some of Jason's achy backs and maybe even aggravated his bad rib. Today we went back to Sleepers and Jason got on the bed and said he could feel his back relaxing already. I think the thing I am second most excited about that we have bought is our fridge. Only 53 days until we move!

House Tour

This evening I called up my parents to see if they would be interested in a tour of our new house. I was very excited to get to show it to someone else. They seemed quite impressed and were happy that I offered the tour. Now that I know what our furniture looks like I can more easily visualize where things are going to go and it is very exciting! If anyone wants a tour, please let me know, I would love to show you!

Also, I took some new interior pictures with the upstairs drywalling and downstairs framing done, so if you would like to see them I have them posted in a Facebook album. If you are not on Facebook Jay should have them loaded up on his construction page within the next short while.

We have a ramp!

Here is a picture of the front of our house from last night. Sometime on Friday they came and poured our concrete ramp to the front door. It looks really nice and is subtle enough that most people probably won't even realize that there aren't stairs at the front door. It just looks like a sidewalk up to the front door. I really need to stop by our place during the week when there are people working there so I can go in and have a look around. From what I could see through the windows yesterday they have definitely started drywalling inside!

It is only 2 months and 6 days (Sept 7th) until our possession date. We were thinking that with all the appliances and furniture that we will have delivered to our new house that we are going to arrange all of those deliveries for Saturday Sept. 8th and then arrange our movers for Monday Sept 10th. That way we can have our spare bed and couch moved downstairs by the movers and not have to worry about movers and delivery people working around eachother. I am sure that I will be anxious to start moving stuff, but we will stretch it out a little and enjoy it while we can.

Our house, as of Friday June 22nd

The back of our house. There is a lot of roof there....looks like more from the back than the front.

Good to know that the bank is doing their job...

When we got home today there was a message on the phone from President's Choice Financial to let us know that there had been some 'suspicious' activity on our Mastercard today. I called them back and they asked what we had used our Mastercard for today. I told them, we went out for supper to Earls. Oh yeah and we went to Sears and bought a new fridge, dishwasher and range hood for our new house. After I told him that, he said that was what they were concerned about and he let me go.

I am pretty excited that we bought our new fridge and dishwasher. I know it'll still be a while until we can use them, but I think they will be good ones to have. Today we also went Leon's and likely found our new bedroom furniture and kitchen table and chairs. They also had some nice living room furniture, but I would like to keep looking for that. I had never been to Leon's, but they have quite the selection for fairly reasonable prices. I was a little disappointed with the sales person's lack of knowledge about the appliances, but now we just need to go to Saskatoon Appliance to buy our stove. This is fun :)

Busy Week

It has been an eventful week!

I had 13 appointments at work this week, which is substantially better than my last few weeks so that we encouraging. I had one client who was a 27 year old woman who was also a mother of FOUR (ages 5, 3, 2 and 6 months). I can't imagine!

Our house is pretty well finished being framed. We now have a roof and doors and windows (I love our bay window and our big dining room window!). Wednesday evening we got a call from the electrician wondering if we could meet with him Thursday evening to do a walk through of the house to determine where we wanted our plug-ins, phone and cable jacks, light switches and some of our light fixtures. We weren't sure if Jay would be able to get into the house as we hadn't heard anything about someone setting up a ramp for him to use to get into the house. When we got there last night, the electrician was just finishing up building a pretty sturdy little ramp. I don't know if it will stay there during construction but maybe they will tuck it away somewhere for other times that Jay needs to get into the house. (I have to say I was pretty thrilled to walk around in our house with Jay!) The walk through took about an hour and a half but we got the whole house worked out and it was pretty neat! I thought it was cool the way that the electrician just went around drawing on the studs and the floor :) So exciting to see the progress! It sounded like he would be doing all the wiring for the house on Tuesday of next week. So I assume by then there will be some shingles on the roof to keep out the rain.

I got a call yesterday at work from my mom to let me know that she FINALLY has a surgery date (she has a problem with a disc in her back and it needs to be removed and the vertebrae fused, and she has been in a lot of pain and on a LOT of strong narcotic pain killers). She had talked to the surgeon's office earlier in the week and it sounded pretty much like it would be for sure September for her surgery, but she got a call yesterday offering her one on July 3rd because of a cancellation. She has been waiting for this surgery since last September and they kept putting it off on her. At first we thought it might be done around Christmas time, then March, then May, now it's for sure on July 3rd. It is quite an invasive and complex surgery that will take about 8 hours and my mom will be in the hospital for probably 10-14 days after the surgery. Then after that it will be at least a few months until she recovers to a fairly normal level of functioning, but she sure needs to get off of all of those pain killers!

Jay is going in for his LASIK surgery tomorrow. I can't believe how quickly the last month has flown by since he booked his appointment. I am excited to see how it goes and excited for Jay to be able to see without his thick glasses. Tonight we are going to put the driver's seat in the van and I am going to try to use the tie downs so I know how to do it for tomorrow when we drive to his appointment. Then he has a post-op appointment on Sunday that I will have to drive him to. I am kind of looking forward to driving him around. It will be the first time I have ever done that! I still want him to get into my car sometime and take him cruising around for an afternoon.

If you were in the market for a new stove and had the option of choosing a conventional oven or a convection oven, which would you choose and why?

I was not familiar with the difference between them until yesterday when we started doing a bit of shopping for our new appliances for our house. There was one stove that was a bit cheaper and is a conventional oven, but Jason didn't like the setup of the knobs as much as another one that cost a bit more, but was a convection oven. The guy at the store didn't really give us an explanation about the differences that was adequate for me so I have been doing a bit of research to see the differences. I think we did however find the perfect fridge for us! It has a water and an ice dispenser. I think that it will be nice to have a ready supply of cold water and ice all the time :)

Oh, and yesterday evening we drove by our house and I decided to go take a closer look. I actually got to go inside and it was really cool. I was sort of sad that I couldn't share it with Jay, but I took our camera and took a few pictures of it. He will probably be posting them up on his house construction website sometime soon.

Finkbeiner Residence

This picture was taken Tuesday evening around 6pm.


This picture was taken around 2pm today. Wow! It's so exciting to see my bay window and where our front door will be and our garage. I can't wait to see this house come together :)

Pull over already!

Last night on the way home from mom and dad's we were on the freeway. There was a truck pulling a livestock trailer that had a couple of cows in it. I noticed at first that he was moving quite slowly and thinking that we should change lanes, but as we got a little bit closer, we saw that he had blown out a tire. And not that he had a flat tire, he had NO tire. His rim was dragging along on the pavement throwing quite a number of sparks and smoke. To me it didn't even look like he was trying to pull over, just going about 20 or 30km/hr down the freeway. I am sure his cattle were quite unsettled about the bumpy ride and I am sure it was quite noisy.

On a happier note, they have now officially started framing our house. I drove by on Tuesday and there was a plywood floor over the foundation and I took a picture but not much to see. Last night, however, when we drove by there were at least 4 or 5 walls. We could see the outlines of our bedroom, kitchen and living room windows. I was quite thrilled to see it and I imagine we will be driving by MUCH more often in the next 2 weeks because Len (construction manager) said they will likely be done framing by the end of next week. Then we will have to stop by and actually go inside to see the changes happening. It sounds like they are right on time for finishing because they told Jay on Tuesday that we need to have our dishwasher and any gas appliances (not having any) to them by August 20th, which is about 2 1/2 weeks before we move in. Very exciting!

Oh my!

A condo in the building next to ours just sold for $250,000. It is an identical floor plan and square footage to ours. Earlier this year when we were calculating what we could afford to spend on our new house we estimated that by the summer we would probably be doing well if we could get $185,000 or $190,000 for our condo. With the way prices are going, we could have added an extra floor onto our house :P

A red couch?!

I am starting to get excited about decorating our new house. I know it's a long way off, and we would need to buy a lot of things to be able to decorate, but I would like to have some sort of vision for different rooms in our house. I have been contemplating the living room lately. Yesterday we went to a couple of furniture stores to check out some stuff. We obviously weren't planning to buy anything, but just get a feel for what is out there. We saw some nice living room furniture, but I think we may have problems finding the right bedroom furniture. I don't know why, but I seemed to be drawn to red furniture. I honestly don't think we would choose red, but I think I may use it as an accent colour for our living room. I am starting to get all these visions, and looking through the Sears catalogue I found some nice blinds and some nice decorative wall hangings. I think that decorating will be fun :) It will be our own place. Not that this isn't, but Jay lived here before me and it was pretty much decorated before I moved in. This house will truly be our place to decorate together and make our own.