The Houghs' LAST Move

Welcome back, America.

Most folks don't realize this, but since 2005, Kris and I have moved eight times.  That's eight times in twelve years, roughly 13 months per domicile (I think - my math sucks.)  Kinda broke down like this:

1. Sept. 2005: Ghana/Farwell to Briarwood (our first apartment, in Clare)
2. Sept. 2006: Briarwood to my Parents' House in Clare (in the few months before we moved to Florida, in order to put aside extra money for the big move south)
3. Jan. 2007: My Parents' House to Camden Landings, in Orlando (our first apartment, in a somewhat questionable neighborhood in the Conway neck of the woods)
4. April 2008: Camden Landings to Camden of Hunter's Creek (moving into a bigger apartment across town, into an upscale golf community)
5. Feb. 2010: Camden of Hunter's Creek to Sindlesham (moving a couple blocks away into our first rental house, in Southchase - an equally nice neighborhood that saved us a lot of money by not being near a golf course)
6. May 2012: Sindlesham to Majorama (moving out of our run-down rental house into our first purchased home)
7. June 2015: Majorama to Ivy (returning to Michigan after nearly a decade in Florida, back into a rental in Midland)
8. June 2017: Ivy to Whitewood (back into a home we own. . . the LAST home we ever own.)

Home owners, once again.

So yeah.  Long story short, we're funned out with moving.  Hence this being the last one.  We found our dream house, and we're hunkering down here until we die and are preferably buried in the backyard.  

Kris and I closed Friday morning, June 2nd, and spent the rest of the day moving seven car and van loads into the new house.  The following day, I would move over an additional five van-loads of stuff over while Kris, Mom, and Kris' friend, Kim, painted the new Living Room, Dining Room, Hallways, Kitchen, and Abby's Bedroom.  The rest of the weekend was spent with me moving five more van-loads of stuff over by myself while Kris put things away and cleaned up stuff at the old house.

The following weekend (last night and today), was spent moving over the big furniture, which wasn't too bad because there were three of us moving stuff (my two brothers and I), and Kris and I had thoroughly gutted the Ivy house of all the clutter that would take a lot of time loading and unloading.  All we had to move were about a dozen pieces of furniture and some of the other stuff that was too long and/or awkward to load into Kris' van.  Not too bad.

Rest assured, though, we were all sweaty and worn out before we were even close to being done.

Behold - The Last Move of the Houghs:

Following the signing of the last papers at Closing, Kris and I drove our previously-packed vehicles over to our new home and for the very first time set foot in our new home.  Coincidentally, the very first thing moved into this place happened to be my tenor ukulele (shown above, lying on the right-side built-ins of The Study.)

The Kitchen, and Dining Room beyond.

The kitchen goes off to the left, the basement stairs descend down through the door to the right.  We're going to have to paint this wall of the Study this summer, at some point - it's in rough shape.

Kitchen

The Dining Room, in its existing, not-for-very-much-longer paint scheme.

SO much nicer than our old kitchen. . .

The very, very green Living Room

The Girls' Bathroom (you can't imagine how happy we are to have our own bathroom again. . .)

Abby's Bedroom (soon to be painted grey and purple.)

Our Master Bedroom

This paint job isn't too bad, so Kris and I are keeping it as is for the time being.

The Master Bathroom

Alayna's Bedroom (we're also keeping this existing dark pink/light pink color scheme.)

Back into the hallway

The sellers were nice enough to leave all this plastic, protective wrap on the carpet for the moving process (a nice gesture, to be honest.)  You can see they took off the handrail to accommodate the moving of furniture (and refrigerators, unfortunately) up and down the stairs. 

The main area of the basement -  seems a hell of a lot bigger with all the crap moved out of there.

The side-room of the basement. . . which we're going to paint grey and turn into a hodge-podge of music instruments, more bookcases, girls' boardgames and toys, and a desk/office space.

Here we have the Workshop.  It was covered with sawdust and required a lot of deep-cleaning, but it was necessary for what I had in mind for it.  There was a lot of loose boards and leftover scrap wood/metal to be tossed out, as well.

A lot of paint, primers, cleaners, lubricants, and other such house items to be stored elsewhere, thrown away, or used throughout the moving process.  Took a LONG time to work through all of this.

Back into the side-room of the basement (that open door way straight ahead is the Storage Room.)

Storage Room

The furnace and water heater (both new, thank God.)  You'll also note the lack of refrigerator.  Damn it.

Another shot of the side room (with the Workshop, there to the right.)

At the far end of the basement.  See that Midland Loons decal on the wall, there?  I tried peeling it off, but it's stuck to the paint - we'll have to tear it off when we repaint this room eventually, and in the meantime hang another piece of wall decor over it.  That, or just lie and tell people we're big-time Loons fans.

This room served as the default storage staging area as we moved stuff into the house over the course of the next week.

The Laundry Room.  

As I decided to break in this new toilet of ours, off the back end of the Laundry Room, I noticed the vanity mirror on the wall (see previous picture) had a hinge in it.  Curious, I looked closer at the mirror and realized with surprise that the mirror itself was actually a SECRET DOOR.  Upon opening this door, I found a HUGE crawl space - completely finished and mold-free - that served as additional storage space.  Since I was a young kid, I've always wanted to find a secret room in a house, so you can imagine my delight upon finding this most-welcome surprise after purchasing the home (we weren't told of it at any point in time throughout the closing process.)  Check that one off the ol' Bucket List.

The sellers also left behind a shock-collar for the dog, as the yard was equipped with an invisible pet fence for the property (if you'll recall, the yard is unfenced at the sides.)  A bonus, for sure, but I doubt we'll ever have the need to use it - Watson doesn't stray out of the yard.

The move-in process begins. . .

I've been holding on to this 30-year anniversary imperial stout from Bell's for a special occasion.  I can think of nothing more special than for it to become the First Beer to be Consumed in the New Study of Brian J. Hough.

After a day of Kris and I moving multiple van-  and car-loads of stuff into the new house, I had over 75 flights of stairs and 35,000 steps on Fitbit, and a sore back to boot.  The next morning, Kris went into Paint Mode, and Yours Truly decided to give his back a rest by unpacking and putting things away instead of moving stuff.  While Kris started on the Living Room's dastardly green walls, Mom went to war with Abby's Bedroom (now a Dovetail Grey.)

The assembling of the Library (a long and difficult process, rest assured.)

In the afternoon, Kris' good friend, Kim, came out to lend a hand with the painting.  And, as you can see here, she brought along her daughter for company.

The Study, coming right along.  I installed some under-cabinet lighting on the top, right shelf, but had to order another set for the top left shelf (I'll post another pic when I get that up.)  These books won't necessarily stay like this - the left side looks good, but I don't like the look of the right at all - I'll have to tweak a few things.  The horde of boxes at the center, as you could probably surmise, is my ridiculous record collection.

Kris works her way into the Dining Room (note the beige walls, no longer white) and Kitchen.

The finished Living Room (so much better.)  The same beige color runs the length of the Living Room, Foyer, and Hallway, and into the Dining Room, while a darker brown serves as an accent color on the wall with the picture window.

Foyer and Hallway

Taking a break with the offspring in the backyard (I'd soon purge most of these obnoxious garden ornaments - I found them tacky.)

The basement starts to get cluttered. . .

Assembly of the IKEA Kallax shelving system begins.  This would end up taking two days to put together, but the end result was worth all the labor, worth the special trip to Canton, and worth the hefty price tag.

I'm not a handy man by any means, but I get by.

Assembling the actual compartment shelving doesn't take too long at all, really - pretty straight forward - but the door inserts are a pain in the ass to do right.  I bought two 2x4 shelving units, plus an additional 2x2 shelving unit, thinking to run them all along the one wall of the Study.  Unfortunately, I only had room for the two longer units, taking into account the sub-woofer and all, but I had more than enough space for my collection to grow with just the two.  Kris and I decided this leftover unit would serve as a Coffee Bar in the Dining Room instead.

The shelving complete (except the doors) - now comes the wiring.

. . . and this wasn't all of them, either.

All hooked up and ready to go.

After an entire morning and afternoon of deep-cleaning and de-cluttering the Workshop, I began moving in all the random crap of mine that Kris didn't want displayed anywhere upstairs:  swords, knick-knacks from my worldly travels, vintage electronics and videogame systems, lava lamps, and all other sorts of awesome that had no home otherwise.

My goal, as previously-mentioned, is to eventually convert this room into a Captain's Quarters, if you will: a retro, throw-back den that will house all things Brian that aren't otherwise classy enough to display in the Study. That space underneath the workbench is perfectly-sized to house one of my mini-fridges - we'll see if we can't make that happen.

Piles and piles of crap to sort through. . .

Storage room, slowly coming along.  Eventually I'm going to create a second row of shelving using the old steel shelving systems that were previously holding books and vintage videogame systems in our Ivy house.

Found this carved onto the board that serves as a shelf above the workbench.  I'm hoping it wasn't carved by a poltergeist. 

This morning, bright and early, Kris went out and picked up the moving truck (and I, not being capable of driving anything much bigger than a Chevy Uplander, loaded up both the car and van with more crap.)

Chris came over around 9am and helped me load up the couch (which was by NO means easy, being the heaviest item we owned - we had to take it straight out the front door, over the balcony railing, where it snagged on a ceiling hook and was subsequently stuck.)  A half-hour or so later, after we moved the couch and several other pieces of furniture, Jeff rolled up and helped us fill up the rest of the moving truck (and his pickup.)

We accomplished this in about an hour, tops - Kris and I had handled most of the moving of items ourselves.

One last moving truck for the Houghs.

After another hour or so, we were done.  Sore and sweaty, but done.  Kris bought the Borthers Subway, and I provided some much-needed ale refreshment (this Founders was a beaut.)

- Brian