Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Arriving in Edmonton...
Just about three hours after leaving Calgary, we arrived at our new place and were just a tad surprised to find the previous owner still there, and loading his car on to a trailer attached to the back of a U-Haul truck. Not only that, but the grass at the front was a mess and looked like it hadn't been cut in weeks (actually I suspect that it hadn't been cut at all since the spring). Our realtor arrived to hand over the keys, and first thing she did was to call the seller's realtor and shout at him about the state of the grass! In fact, she yelled at him so much that he (i.e. the seller's realtor) came round himself at 7.30am the next morning and cut the front and back grass - how bizarre!).
Anyway, the house was actually in reasonable shape inside - it needed a bit of dusting and cleaning, but it really wasn't horrible/ (When I saw the state the garden was in, I thought that the inside was going to be awful). The carpet cleaner came as scheduled and spend about 3 hours doing the carpets... he did a great job, but boy was his van noisy...
We carted in our little survival kit, and had our first meal in Edmonton seated on camp chairs, watching world cup highlights...
Oh, by the way, the strange brown things behind us in that picture are the curtains that used to hang in this back room of the house. They're knotted up to keep them off the damp carpet. Like most of the curtains in this house, they were far too long, in fact, I think they were about two feet too long, so I took them down and the room looks much better without them.
Anyway, on Tuesday, I cleaned while J made his epic journey back to Calgary to fetch the Jeep (have I mentioned that we really need to think about getting a new car??!)., and on Wednesday, our stuff arrived. I have never seen anything like the movers - hot, hot, hot day, and they ran in and out of the house like lunatics. Of course, we didn't really have a clue where the stuff should all go. You know, when we arrived in Tuscarora, we had nothing except two suitcases, so we bought Ikea furniture that suited the house. This house is a bit different, and what suited Tuscarora, doesn't really suit all the rooms here. So, we ended up with most of the stuff (apart from the beds) in the back room and in the basement (that turned out to be a bit of a mistake, but we'll get to that).
A few days later, our stuff came from home. Imagine our surprise when most of it arrived in the boxes that had been used to store it in the roofspace! We had been assured that everything would be repacked in proper cases designed for transatlantic shipping, but that turned out not to be the case. We sort of expected to get something like teachests, but what we got were these... big plastic crates that we had bought from B&Q before we left home. Not impressed with that one...
Luckily enough, I had been paranoid and had wrapped anything breakable in yards and yards of bubblewrap, so luckily the pottery mostly came in one piece. The boxes were pretty smashed up though.... I think out of the 20 boxes that we had, only four survived intact.
It all got a little overwhelming for a while, especially when we decided that stuff that we had asked the movers to put in the basement, actually needed to be on the main floor or even upstairs. One of the biggest tasks was getting the desk back up from the basement into the family room at the back of the house. At one stage, half way up the basement stairs, I was convinced that we were going to get ourselves into serious trouble, but we made it.. All I can say is that I wasn't ever cut out to be a furniture mover!
After two years of having only 6 chairs (4 of one set, and two of another), we got to thinking that we now had a few too many chairs.....anyone need a chair?
Also, we hadn't had a wild lot in the way of kitchen stuff and then we got a whole lot...leading only to yet more chaos... where will it all go??
In the middle of all of this chaos and upheaval, we got two beautiful flower deliveries, one from my mum and dad..
And one from Denise and Roy...
Thanks folks.... they really helped in our hour of need......
Anyway, the house was actually in reasonable shape inside - it needed a bit of dusting and cleaning, but it really wasn't horrible/ (When I saw the state the garden was in, I thought that the inside was going to be awful). The carpet cleaner came as scheduled and spend about 3 hours doing the carpets... he did a great job, but boy was his van noisy...
We carted in our little survival kit, and had our first meal in Edmonton seated on camp chairs, watching world cup highlights...
Oh, by the way, the strange brown things behind us in that picture are the curtains that used to hang in this back room of the house. They're knotted up to keep them off the damp carpet. Like most of the curtains in this house, they were far too long, in fact, I think they were about two feet too long, so I took them down and the room looks much better without them.
Anyway, on Tuesday, I cleaned while J made his epic journey back to Calgary to fetch the Jeep (have I mentioned that we really need to think about getting a new car??!)., and on Wednesday, our stuff arrived. I have never seen anything like the movers - hot, hot, hot day, and they ran in and out of the house like lunatics. Of course, we didn't really have a clue where the stuff should all go. You know, when we arrived in Tuscarora, we had nothing except two suitcases, so we bought Ikea furniture that suited the house. This house is a bit different, and what suited Tuscarora, doesn't really suit all the rooms here. So, we ended up with most of the stuff (apart from the beds) in the back room and in the basement (that turned out to be a bit of a mistake, but we'll get to that).
A few days later, our stuff came from home. Imagine our surprise when most of it arrived in the boxes that had been used to store it in the roofspace! We had been assured that everything would be repacked in proper cases designed for transatlantic shipping, but that turned out not to be the case. We sort of expected to get something like teachests, but what we got were these... big plastic crates that we had bought from B&Q before we left home. Not impressed with that one...
Luckily enough, I had been paranoid and had wrapped anything breakable in yards and yards of bubblewrap, so luckily the pottery mostly came in one piece. The boxes were pretty smashed up though.... I think out of the 20 boxes that we had, only four survived intact.
It all got a little overwhelming for a while, especially when we decided that stuff that we had asked the movers to put in the basement, actually needed to be on the main floor or even upstairs. One of the biggest tasks was getting the desk back up from the basement into the family room at the back of the house. At one stage, half way up the basement stairs, I was convinced that we were going to get ourselves into serious trouble, but we made it.. All I can say is that I wasn't ever cut out to be a furniture mover!
After two years of having only 6 chairs (4 of one set, and two of another), we got to thinking that we now had a few too many chairs.....anyone need a chair?
Also, we hadn't had a wild lot in the way of kitchen stuff and then we got a whole lot...leading only to yet more chaos... where will it all go??
In the middle of all of this chaos and upheaval, we got two beautiful flower deliveries, one from my mum and dad..
And one from Denise and Roy...
Thanks folks.... they really helped in our hour of need......
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