Holla!

A big shout out to the lovely folks who joined us over the course of the past ten days. It has been a helluva ride, huh?! 

We kicked off the move by throwing our brand new gray sofa over a bannister at the old house. And when that didn't give us enough titillation before noon time, we threw an 8' tall armoire over the back deck rails. Neighbors stood on their own decks and watched in both shock and awe: will they drop it? Will it break? Will it drop and break them in half? 

Hysteria followed by raucous applause and congratulations. Just the way I like to kick off a Friday morning! 

We pulled into the new driveway with our entourage of family members and a moving truck too tall to fit up the driveway. Meaning, our wooded lot with fantastically mature trees was about to take a beating. After a couple of hours of unloading from the END of the driveway, my mom and I were both paralyzed by the sound of a chainsaw. I looked outside only to find my father standing atop the moving truck, slicing limb after branch after tree. Thank Jeebus our neighbors are not arborists. Or people who scoff at new neighbors moving in, cutting down trees, and swarming the neighborhood with rowdy, Coors Light fueled hooligans. 

But nothing can be as fantastic as moving into a new home with brand spanking new wood floors. Because that, my Intraweb friends and followers, is a real bitch of a job. The floors made it through the move relatively unscathed. Although, the front entryway did take a few dings and there are trace amounts of furniture varnish mysteriously smudged across the white walls and ceiling. In more than several places. 

We did it though. We moved in. We drank beer. We ate pizza for so many consecutive nights that I will claw the eyes out of anyone who dares mention words like "mozzarella" or "marinara" anytime soon. The boxes were not even unpacked before we took a hammer and a paintbrush to our first Reno project. I figured the 1950s vintage (read: horrid) kitchen would be the first project, but what a fool am I! Such thinking would be entirely to rational for Chris and myself. 

So without further ado, I give you Plumage House's first DIY. 

You expected more, didn't you?

Fine, fine. Stay tuned for the pictures of the actual project. Because Comcast is the only bitch bigger than wood floors on moving day and my Internet at home is yet to be connected. BUT REST ASSURED, Kilz is the word around our house and Kilz'ing the bananas out of our wood paneled, 1975 VFW basement is the name of the game. 

Sweatin' for It

The time is 6pm and the temperature is 99 degrees. Guess what we're doing right now.

MOVING! Paaaahr-tay!

Well, pre-moving anyway. This is the part of the moving process which makes perfectly backwards sense: buy a bigger house for all of your crap, but before you can move it to the house you've already paid for, pay for storage for all of your crap in the interim.

Ah, the joys of The Storage Unit. Since there are only two human beings in this house, we use the space a little differently than someone with, oh, say, three children and a normal sized dog of more than 14 pounds. So before the For Sale sign can officially be planted in the front lawn, the weight bench and treadmill must leave the spare bedroom. Because we're trying to sell a house here people, and people like bedrooms, not makeshift home gyms and coffee tables used for lightweight cardigans and seasonal coverups.

Minnesota has gone tropical as of late- I have been trapped in a house for 10 hours a day at work. In Solitary Nanny Confinement with two young children and two infants who simply cannot be taken out into the rainforest for total and complete roasting. After working an hour later than usual yesterday, I came home to an ever-eager Christopher: ya wanna move some shit? he proposed.

WELL SURE! After 11 hours at work, I most definitely want to drag that giant metal equipment out into the heat only to have it sweat humidity all over me, then schlep it over to the storage locker. Now if that isn't a party, what is?

The joke was on me because do you know what's more fun than moist fitness equipment? Moving furniture at 10pm!

Since the other mattress that would make the spare bedroom an actual bedroom is in its very own storage unit, we decided to play Furniture Refurb & Shuffle and move a rundown sofa from the living room into the bedroom. Big, bulky, and barfed on by the dog. We hoisted it up the stairs and to the doorway, where Chris explained to me in lots of geometrically descriptive terms how the couch needed to be turned, angled, and jammed through the doorway.

I was immediately reminded of this. One of my favorite evening sitcom moments of all time. I used to mimic that moment with my sister-- over, and over, and over. Immediately, I began to chuckle. And when Chris told me to quit it, I laughed harder.

The couch clipped the doorframe and we heard a loud thud. It was the wooden leg. On the floor. No longer attached to the couch frame. Which made me laugh harder yet, because what else are you going to do when you've been awake for 18 hours, you own two houses and desperately need to retrofit one of them to make someone else buy it, and your dumpy old couch just fell apart on your toes?

Oh, moving. Such a special treat.

 Someone is going to have to tell the new owners to change the light fixture, as it completely sucks balls. But here's the made over (for free. aka ZERO DOLLAS, ya'll!) couch in its new, Buy This House friendly location. We found the throws in a box in the closet. Then remembered that we put them there in the first place because Snoop wouldn't stop wrestling with them. We see that he wasted no time scoping them out again.

The Bidness of Moving

One couple, one house. Endless possibilities and unpredictable predicaments.

Chris and I met and fell instantly in love over a bucket of chocolate chip cookies at the Minnesota State Fair. I know, I know, go on ahead and feel envious of our fanciful romance. At the time, he owned a white-walled, blank canvas home in a city I had no earthy clue how to get to. In no less than 60 days, we had purchased tile saws, featherbeds, and countless buckets of paint. Zebra rugs, peacock colored paints, slate tile backsplashes. The house got a complete makeover– botoxed, lipglossed, corsetted and all. Then we thought HEY! Know what would be fun? LET'S MOVE!

After making the decision as a family– Chris, myself, and our 14 pound terror of an Eskipoo, Snoop– to pack our bags and move north of the river, we are about to embark on a brand new DIY masterpiece.

We hope.

The new digs take us closer to family, friends, and work. Snoop needed a proper yard and we needed a proper home in which we could grow our lives together. We wavered back and forth over the Real Estate Golden Ticket: after months of looking all over the Metro and at all sorts of price points, we had to make the executive decision as to whether land or house would win out.

Our hearts were set on a 1950s rambler in a quiet neighborhood with a great big lot. The basement is paneled, the closets are small, and there’s a good chance that the kitchen appliances are running on coal. But the lot! Two-thirds of an acre with a fenced area for the dog and ample outdoor space for us to live in, work on, and play with.

We made an initial offer to the sellers and, of course, were sent back a counter offer. We played back and forth and were tactfully told that the sellers wanted to wait for another open house (the property had only been on the market for 5 days when we made an offer). They were hoping for full price. So we quietly retreated and put it out of our minds, only to be called by the listing agent a week later: “Are you still interested?” he wondered.

The reno plans began even before the ink on the purchase agreement dried and we are unabashedly thrilled. T Minus 65 days. Grab your life jacket and have an emergency dingy on standby: this is going to be one hell of a river forging ride.