If you go back a couple of posts, you’ll remember me talking about all the people who were supposed to help us move. There were three main contacts; the short-term housing group, the long-term housing group, and the group to move our (for lack of a better word) stuff. Though the location that the short-term housing people selected for us was great, but many of the other aspects we weren’t too impressed with. We all know the problems we had with the long-term housing. I really should tell you someday how Adam found this house. It’s a pretty amazing story.
So, my last hope of good service was our moving team. Our experience in Texas had gone really well. The team we had there were extremely polite and protective of our house. They took great care of our items in packing which is evidenced by no items being broken at the end of the move. We were also impressed by our Move Coordinator’s level of service and communications. She was very clear in her instructions as to what the timing of the move would be, the responsibilities that we had and what services she was going to (and did!) provide. So I had pretty high expectations for them when they scheduled our delivery for between noon and 2pm on July 12th. I went to work as usual and Adam stayed home to await the arrival of the moving lorry (we’re in England now, trucks have become lorries). About 2:15, Adam called me. The lorry hadn’t arrived. Nobody had called. Great. I called our coordinator who was also not aware of the delay. She said she would contact the crew and determine the status. She returned my call about 30 minutes later stating that there had been a delay at the first delivery of the day and the crew would arrive at our house between 4:30 and 5:00 that evening.
I need to interject a few more non-day of details here. I can drive over here. I’m not great at it and I’m pretty nervous about the whole ordeal. Adam loves driving and isn’t nearly as bothered by the whole left side of the road thing plus traffic plus bikers and walkers on their daily commute. So until September when he starts school, he has agreed to drive me to (and pick me up from!) work. I’m taking some driving lessons soon and he says I’m going to start driving with him in the car in August so I can get comfortable. But, at the moment, I’m quite happy with my personal chauffeur. Secondly, our office hours are 9am to 5:30pm. If I get to work at 8:45 it’s a ghost town. Maybe by 8:55 you’ll see people file in. And at about 5:20 you’ll start to hear the closing of laptops and at 5:40 it’s crickets all over again. It’s really quite amazing (and awesome!).
So, because I had no car and Adam couldn’t come pick me up at 5:30 if the movers were unloading or unpacking after having just arrived at 5, I decided to leave work early and work from home until they showed up. We got back to the house about 4pm. And waited. And waited. About 5:30, I received a call from the delivery driver that there had been further delays and they would be at our home in about 30 minutes. The crew finally arrived at 6:15. Not quite between noon & 2 or 4:30 & 5, but they were here! I was so excited. I grabbed my camera to take pictures of the process. Managed to get one of the opening of the crate then the battery died. Ug. So, enjoy the photo below, and imagine our new house from the pictures in the earlier house post, just with boxes in every room.
We’ve also purchased some IKEA furniture. For those not hip to the IKEA way of life, you have to assemble everything you purchase and there are no words on any of the instructions, just pictures. So you have to pay pretty close attention to what you’re doing. You might laugh at this next statement, because I would too if I hadn’t seen it myself. Adam is pretty good at this process. I love my husband so much and he is amazing at so many things. The following of detailed instructions and small inanimate objects are usually not his strengths. However, please see below for the meticulous nature of which he has undertaken his responsibility to assemble the furniture.
And nothing has fallen apart after I sat on it.
The one piece of furniture that we did bring made it too. I’d like to say we brought it over for purely sentimental reasons. I do love this piece, don’t get me wrong. It was made for me by Adam’s grandfather and I treasure his woodworking skills. But I also kinda wanted to see if the Earth’s axis would shift by bringing our coffee table across the ocean. I don’t think it did. I’m not sure. Does anything feel lighter over there?
The afore mentioned tardy moving company was most excited when I stated that the table was to be unloaded on the ground floor and not upstairs.
We’ve started unpacking and we have more paper than I will ever know what to do with. The picture below is just from 4 of the 6 kitchen boxes. None of the other rooms. I didn’t get a picture of the entire stack paper as Adam managed to take care of it all before I had a major nervous breakdown about the “unfinished” state of the house.
I posted this next picture on Facebook earlier this week with the note “We’ve hung some pictures on the walls”. To which I was quickly told that none of the items in the photo are pictures. Okay, point Deborah. I don’t know why I keep score anymore, you win every time. Like EVERY TIME. So I’d like to correct the statement. We’ve hung things on the wall with a very motivational placeholder for future things to be hung on the walls.
So that’s our last few weeks. More excitement to come!
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