All Moved In

Bob and I started moving into our little house on Sunday afternoon. It has been a long month, waiting for this day to arrive. We started, as most people do, with cleaning everything whether it needed it or not. We set up our new Sleep Number mattress. After four or five hours of work we were already tired!

Oh yeah, now I remember. Moving is hard work.

The next morning we were up bright and early, getting all the food into the refrigerator, clearing out cabinets in the motorhome, and bringing clothes over. I had naïvely assumed that, since the former owners were leaving all their kitchen stuff, that there wouldn’t be much to move. Au contraire mes amis! It took us nine hours to move most of our stuff over. And we still had more to do on day three. We spent the night in the house on Monday night and every night since, sleeping well.

On Thursday Bob and I moved the motorhome into storage. It was so hard to drive off and leave it behind, but we can go visit it if we need to. My looms, yarn, sewing machine, spinning wheel, and all my accessories are still in the motorhome, to be moved after we have finished painting. The plan is to prep walls, then paint the living room, kitchen, hallway, bathroom, and bedroom. Then we’ll add a cabinet to the kitchen and paint all cabinets. Bob will make some countertops. After which time we will move things out of the Arizona room and that will get painted.

Then I can set up my weaving studio.

We will also be replacing the sinks and maybe the bathroom cabinet, but that will happen later I think. The house needs a bit of updating to bring it into the 21st century, yet we have to restrain ourselves from over-improving it. Yesterday we moved the sofa bed from the living room out of the house, since sitting in it was aggravating Bob’s back. There was an upholstered chair in the AZ room that we brought upstairs for him to sit on instead. Bob had to disassemble the sofabed to get it through the door, and is now cutting it apart so he can dispose of it in various trash cans borrowed from empty RV sites. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and our new neighbors are getting a kick out of watching Bob’s creativity in disposing of the sofa bed. We are on a corner and are near the laundry center, so everyone heading for the washing machines stops in to say hello. We are meeting a lot of people and making new friends.

The weather here has been beautiful and today it is in the 80s with a nice breeze. We took a ride this morning to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Phoenix, coming away with a nice utility light fixture for Bob’s workshop. We also stopped into Home Depot and chose paint colors. We’ll be painting over the original vinyl-covered paneling that covers all the interior walls. I’ll post pictures when it starts to look finished.

So that’s about where we are now. I will update again when I have more news.