Sunday, November 17, 2013

"All My Beautiful Things!"

We signed the lease on a Monday, and that Tuesday we were pulling up in front of our new house, bright and early with the Penske truck. We were paying an extra $50 bucks for the truck because it was technically due Monday, so we had to get the truck unloaded in time to drive it to Easton and return it. Paul's boss Alyson came over to help us unload, we put a movie on the iPad for Lucia in her new bedroom and proceeded to unload at breakneck speed.

Organized chaos


We tried to dump boxes in the appropriate general area which meant that anything for the bedrooms/office/attic had to go up stairs. After about the 10th trip up and down the stairs with boxes I started to wonder if we had made a terrible mistake. We haven't had to go up and down stairs for awhile. It's harder than it looks! I think my legs were more sore from running stairs than from lifting boxes.

This move was not sponsored by Lowe's, but might as well have been.


We were done unloading by around 1 or 2, so Alyson took off and we closed up the house to go return the truck. Walking into the house full of boxes was a little overwhelming, but our strategy was to get Lucia's room unpacked and set up so that she felt at home. From there we tried to refrain from just tearing open boxes, but to open and put away everything (or as much as possible) in a box before opening another one. This helped manage the chaos and helped contain the packing material mess.

Master bedroom in aqua. 


Lucia was absolutely ecstatic to see all of her toys that had been packed away. Some had been packed away for almost 6 months. Each time she discovered a familiar toy it was like Christmas, although I think she was more enthusiastic seeing her old toys, than I have ever seen her with new toys and birthdays or Christmas. One particular box that had just a mish-mash of random little toys and stuffed animals elicited a joyous exclaim, "All my beeeeauutiful things!" As she clapped and jumped, not able to contain her excitement. It was pretty cute.

Our little trooper.


We quickly realized that although this house is bigger than our house in Salem was, that the kitchen had A LOT less storage. We had a nice big built in hutch at our house in Salem that held all of our china, extra bowls, linens and empty mason jars. We also had lots of overhead shelves that served as our pantry. Paul quickly put his handyman hat on for a solution. There is a little alcove room by the back door right off the kitchen where we put our chest freezer. We decided to turn that into a full-blown pantry. We basically couldn't unpack half our kitchen boxes until that pantry was built. So, while I moved on to unpacking other rooms in the house, Paul took a trip to the hardware store and got to work building shelves.
Pantry construction in-process

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Home Sweet Home

We got into Cambridge on a Saturday night and barely had time to catch our breath before we were scheduled to look at 3 houses on Sunday. The first house we looked at, I had seen on Craigslist. It was located in the historic district of town and it was at the upper end of what we wanted to pay for rent. Long story short, it was dismal. I started to worry that a house of that condition might be the best thing we could afford, which was really discouraging. But, we were scheduled to look at two houses that afternoon, both with the same landlord, so, I held out hope.

Backstory: When we were in Wisconsin we started combing all of the real estate websites in detail. Several of the real estate companies in the area do rentals along with sales, but you kind of have to search for them. On a website that I hadn't ever checked before, I came across a house for sale that was also listed for rent. I emailed a quick note to the agent and within minutes I got a call from him. When I told him we were looking to rent, not buy, he referred me to his assistant who he said was handling that property. So I called his assistant, and she kind of quizzed me about our credit history, what kind of tenants we are, why we were moving to town, etc... I must have passed her test because then she said, "This house is actually owned by my parents. Here is my mom's number, give her a call and tell her you talked to me." So I called her Mom and gave our whole schpeel again about who we were and why we were moving. She also told me that they had another home for rent that wasn't listed anywhere yet that we could look at as well. So, after talking to three different people, we had two more potential houses! It was just sort of funny to us that we had to talk to three different people to find out of we could look at the house.

So Sunday afternoon we pulled up to the first house and met the landlords. This one was also in the historic district. One of the things I liked about this house immediately was the brightly colored front door. The landlords were a no-nonsense retired Police Chief from a nearby town, and his sweet wife Miss K. They had made it clear on the phone that they don't want to rent their homes to just anyone, so we hoped we were making a good impression. Having a cute 3-year old helped soften up these grandparents. As soon as we walked in it was obvious that this house was in way better condition than the house we had looked at in the morning (although the age of the house and the layout were very similar). This house had probably been better taken care of in the past, and then the Chief and Miss K had put a lot of work into it as well. Other perks were a big, fenced backyard with a really nice toolshed and a driveway. Because of how old the neighborhood is, most homes do not have driveways or garages, its all street parking. So, it was a big deal that we would have a driveway.

After looking at the colored door house, the Chief and Miss K took us to their other house. This one was on the outskirts of town on a dead end street. They had kept up this house really nicely as well but the location was really inconvenient for both of our jobs and for Lucia's preschool. We told them that we had one more house we were going to look at on Monday and we would let them know what we decided the following day.

Monday we had planned to look at one last house. We had driven by this house and really wanted to see the inside before we made a decision. It was just down the street from Lucia's pre-school and was in a neighborhood with big backyards, definitely a more suburban feel than the homes we had looked at in the historic district. The house was nice, but wasn't going to be ready to move in right away.

We went back to the Marsh House, put a movie on for Lucia and talked through all of our choices. Ultimately, we made the phone call and chose...