Moving!

I already mentioned this in a couple other recent posts, but the reason there have been less frequent posts lately is because we've been very busy moving! My husband got a job working for a non-profit in Ann Arbor, we found a house we love in a neighborhood we love, bought it, and then have spent the last few months trying to move as safely as possible during a pandemic. 

Because we wanted to avoid frequent and/or unnecessary contact with others outside our bubble, that meant 1) we couldn't live in a house while any large-scale renovations were happening on it (a.k.a. we couldn't move into our new Ann Arbor house until the projects we wanted completed were finished) and 2) we couldn't live in a house while it was on the market (a.k.a. we couldn't list our Rochester Hills house until we were fully moved out and living in Ann Arbor). Thankfully, we were able to purchase our new house before selling our old one, which made that plan possible... But it was a long, drawn-out process, which was frustrating at times. We put down our offer on the new house in September, bought it in October, had work done on it starting in December, finally moved in mid-January, and our old house is finally being listed in 5 days, on February 17.

From when we got the keys in October until we moved in mid-January, we made the 2+ hour round-trip at least once a week (usually on weekends as a family, but also several solo trips in the evenings some weekdays after our 1-year-old fell asleep). We used that time to do some painting (mainly painting yellow and orange stripes on the walls of our 1-year-old's new nursery, which turned out to be a very long and labor-intensive process when only able to be done in short bursts), and to bring down carload upon carload of stuff - furniture small enough to fit in our cars, and boxes and boxes of the random assortment of junk one accumulates over the years.

We also hired a contractor to do some work for us in the basement of our new house - to change the open floor plan into a large pantry/storage space, a guest bedroom, a playroom, and an office/studio room for me, as well as to finish a basement bathroom that the previous owners had started but not completed. Three walls had to be built, some new flooring put in - all in all, it was a rather intensive project, and it took about 5 weeks to complete. Initially, we hoped it'd be done in December and we'd be able to move before the end of 2020, but then there were some COVID-related delays that postponed our timeline... First, the contractor had to finish up another job before starting ours, and couldn't finish that job without a city inspection - and because the city inspectors were running behind, so was our contractor. Then he was possibly exposed to COVID and had to quarantine two weeks from the exposure date. But once he finally got started on our project, it went pretty quickly (even though two of the 5 weeks coincided with the holidays - Christmas week and New Year's week), and we were very happy with the work he completed, and his transparency and professionalism with regards to COVID safety protocols (something we can't say for others we've worked with on this moving process). 

Once he was finished, we finally got to move! We'd brought nearly everything we could in advance already, and had professional movers scheduled for a week later to bring the furniture that was too bring for us to bring ourselves. So on the day of our official transition from Rochester Hills residents to Ann Arbor residents, we brought the last-minute furniture essentials - such as our daughter's crib (disassembled for transit, then quickly reassembled in the new nursery in time for her next nap), rocking chair, and dresser/changing table - along with some of her books and toys (others didn't fit in the car and were picked up over the next two days as we made a couple more solo trips back-and-forth to our old house). My husband and I slept on an air mattress until the movers brought our bed the following week, but our daughter's nursery was pretty much all set immediately, which I'm so grateful we were able to achieve. It was important for me to make sure her nursery felt as much like home as possible, as soon as possible, with all of her familiar things in it, to help with the transition for her.

On the day the professional movers picked up the last of our remaining items in Rochester Hills, I stayed in Ann Arbor with our daughter and dog, while my husband went to the old house to meet the movers. They were only mildly respectful of our wishes that they wear face masks (one of the two movers kept pushing his mask down to his chin, completely defeating the purpose), but we were able to keep our distance from them, and now that three weeks have passed since that day, I think it's safe to say that we didn't catch COVID from them. I stayed in the nursery with our daughter and dog while they moved the furniture into the other rooms of our new house. Our daughter did not take her afternoon nap, and the dog was Very Upset that we wouldn't let her out to go jump on the movers, after so many months of depriving her of visitors during these Awful Pandemic Times, but we made it through the couple of hours we were stuck in the nursery. In a parallel universe where there wasn't a pandemic, I wouldn't loved to have let our daughter see the movers in action, and get the stimulation of seeing something new and exciting, but we felt it was better to be safe and hidden away from their masklessness.

We've spent the last month living in our new house finishing up some other painting projects - the en suite bathroom upstairs, the new basement bathroom, the new basement guest room, and an accent wall in the dining room - all of which I'll post about in future blog entries. It's also been, as you can imagine, a lot of unpacking and organizing, deciding where furniture and items should go, hanging things on the wall, and just generally trying to make the space ours. We've finally crossed off much of our massive to-do list now - not only does the space feel like home already, but now I'm starting to feel like I can breathe a little, and pick up on other projects again. I have plans for artwork in particular (after months of having my art supplies packed up in boxes), and hopefully that'll translate to more frequent blog posts about said artwork as well... though with a 1-year-old (and still that pesky ongoing pandemic), no guarantees I'll have time for much other than chasing her around the house!

As for our old house, there were a couple things our realtor suggested we do to get it ready to sell, so we've been focusing on getting those projects completed as well over the last month, now that we were no longer living there. We had someone come and install a new fireplace hearth, and a painter come to neutralize all the beautiful paint colors I'd picked out over the years (including the OG yellow stripes in our daughter's first nursery, which I'd painted just after my miscarriage in 2018 and meant a lot to me). We also had the kitchen countertop replaced. And this past week, my husband and I have been making more of those 2+ hour round trips (when Michigan's winter weather allows) back and forth between our houses - this time to clean the old one: removing our daughter's fingerprints from the windows, getting the kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures to shine, etc. In two days we have a stager coming to put in some furniture (now that the house is empty and boring), and a photographer taking some professional photos of the rooms for the official listing, and then the listing will go live on February 17! 

It was a wonderful house, and one that we envisioned staying in for the rest of our lives. We put a lot of work into it in the 8.5 years we've owned it - new roof, new siding, new insulation, new patio, new windows and window treatments. I love our new house - it's perfect for our family in ways the other one wasn't, which we didn't even truly realize until we found it and saw how great it was - but I will definitely miss the old house too, and all the memories. It was the house and backyard that our dog Ginny knew for the first 5.5 years of her life. It was the house our daughter was brought home to - the house where she first rolled over and sat up and crawled. She won't even remember it - it's been only a month away from it, but already I wonder if she remembers it at all. But time marches on, and this move is definitely for the better for us. I am relieved that this long moving process is finally wrapping up and that we can really start our new lives in this new house now that we're settled in and unpacked. It would've been so much easier (and quicker) of a process if we 1) hadn't decided to move during a pandemic, and while taking as many safety precautions as possible, and 2) hadn't had a baby limiting the time we could spend packing and unpacking and making trips to-and-from the houses all the time, but we made the best of it. :)