Moving Along - An Update Part I

Hello there!  I wanted to pop on with a post to show you the progress on our move.  This week was a big week and we close in about 10 days.  A lot happened this week, some of it not so fun.  But some other things have happened that are fun to see.  

Let's start with the not so fun stuff.  Last weekend, my washing machine bit the dust as I was trying to wash all the towels and linens before I packed them up.  This was bad timing for sure and so expensive to fix that we were better off just buying new.  So of course, for someone who is pretty matchy-matchy that also meant a new dryer.  My husband had just asked me if we needed a new washer and dryer when we moved but I had said no.  Our last washer and dryer was a Whirlpool Cabrio set and I have always loved it.  It's still a top loading machine, but High Efficiency and I never had any problems with it before.  We got it when we lived in Frisco, TX.  Now, let me say there are varying models of the Cabrio system and we had the top of the line, so that's what we wanted to replace it with. So on Monday of last week week, a new Cabrio Platinum Washer and Dryer were delivered. This particular wash is a high capacity, heavy duty washer and I didn't have this previously, but now I need a step stool to get to the bottom of the tub.  While I had the appliance guy here, we wanted him to take a look at the refrigerator in the trailer that my hubby will be living in during the week.  It wouldn't cool anything even though we left it for 48 hours and came back.  So the appliance guy went over, took a look, ran a few tests and determined that it had no free-on in it -- at all.  So somewhere there is a leak and just to track it down and find it would be about half the cost of a new refrigerator, plus whatever parts were needed on top of that, so we opted to go ahead and get a new fridge for that too. 

Fast forward to Tuesday when DH got up at the crack of dawn to take a little load of things down to the new house so they can be installed for us; my desk which is huge and our water softener which goes in the garage.  Initially we had planned to put my desk in the center of the room, but once it was put together, it didn't work that way at all. It just takes too much space.  Finally he moved it up against the wall and headed back home.  About 45 minutes before he got home, one of the new hoses on the back of the new washing machine burst and I had water all over the laundry room floor again.  Anything involving water makes my husband crazy and I knew he would pop a cork.  I had asked for stainless steel hoses with the installation but our guy didn't recommend them and put the crummiest possible rubber hoses on there.  Needless to say, when they came back to fix the problem, they brought stainless steel this time.  It was an expensive few days and stressful to boot.  

So, since I get a lot of questions about my desk, I'll share the story here.  Many years ago, I worked for a large employer in Topeka, Kansas — AmVestors Financial Corporation and it's subsidiaries one of which was American Investors Life Insurance Corporation.  My boss was the Vice President of Human Resources & Administrative Services (a.k.a. anything nobody else wants to do) and I was his Executive Assistant/Company Training Coordinator.  Clayton was in charge of overseeing the construction and day to day operations of our multi-million dollar new national headquarters and he and I had our offices in a building next door to the job site.  Because the building we were in was on the State Register of Historic Places, we were required to have furniture that was in keeping with the building and it's period.  Primarily, nothing modern at all but we still needed the space to be functional.  That's where the oak desk enters the picture. With the new building would come new office furniture once we moved into it.  It was a lot of fun to work with the design firm Andre Design Associates on those day to day operations selecting everything from the color and style of paint to the color scheme for the furnishings.  The furnishings were all new Herman Miller cubicles and when we finally moved into our new offices, my boss asked if I wanted to buy my desk from the building we were in. I was thinking there was no way we could afford to buy it, but when he offered it to us for $80.00, we were all in.  For more than 20 years now, we have moved and dragged this desk with us from each of the homes we have lived in since that time.  Then and now it was an incredible buy. Another good thing is that it comes apart so that you can move pieces.  It's still incredibly heavy and there is no way to move it once it is fully assembled so a lot of pre-planning was required for this part of our move.

The only problem with this desk is that it does take quite a bit of space. When DH got it in the room and assembled, there wasn't enough space to open the drawers of the cabinets that we had built into the room.  We had also thought we were going to have to cut a hole in the hardwood floors to bring the electrical and CAT6 wiring in.  The best part of moving the desk against the wall is that we can also bring the electrical etc. in through the wall and don't have to cut a hole in the floor.  I was really not wanting to cut a hole in the hardwood floors so I was quite happy about this.

When we originally started looking at houses and floor plans, I knew I needed to have a work space and I definitely needed something that was made with my work in mind. There are so many choices available to us in paper crafting and so many tools although most are fairly moderate in size.  Several years ago, I purchased a few clearance game tables from Target that are made in a similar fashion to the Ikea Alex Drawers that we had built in to this room. The top 4 drawers are shallow and the bottom one is about twice as deep as the top one. They are sized well for 12 x 12 Scrapbook paper and accessories, or as is the case for me now, card making supplies.  At the time I got those three tables for $25.00 each. They have been moved around with us all these years and will make their final move back to Texas next week sometime if everything goes according to plan.

There's going to be a part two for this post and I'm not sure when I will have time to write it but yesterday we decided to change things up with the studio furniture at the last minute - literally.

This desk is quite large and it's easy to see why I needed the additional studio space once it is in the room.  We don't really use formal dining so converting the dining room was the easiest thing to do without changing the actual footprint of the house.  When you start moving walls or plumbing or that kind of thing, it really adds a lot of money to the cost so we were were looking for something that that would be the simplest to do.  It meant creating the cased opening between the two rooms but I really like having that sight line. Beyond the front door is the laundry which backs up to the master closet and the door that comes from the house into the the garage.  A few months ago we decided we wanted to add the French doors with the frosted glass panes and the transom window at the top.  This gives me a way to shut out the mess that happens when I am creating and the frosted glass keeps the mess unseen.  I've mentioned it before, but my creative process is highly chaotic.  I like to clean up between projects though or I can't work. 

The single window looks out to the front porch so I can see who's there.  It was originally a wall but we added a window for this specific purpose. I designed the picture window to be my primary staging area for photos. It was a little tough to find something that was in keeping with the Craftsman style of the home but we eventually managed.  My monitor and keyboard will live on the left side you see here while the rest of the desk is my work area. Blogging is a big part of my work so I have to have space for both things. In the past, because of the lack of storage, my desk housed so much stuff that I barely had a 12 x 18 inch area to work in.  You have no idea how excited I am to move into this space and have a place for everything.

A couple of days ago, my husband mentioned that my mish-mosh of furniture was not going to look too good in our new house or really fit in with the style of the house.  Additionally, since we used the dining room space for the studio, I don't have anywhere to have one of my "Scrappy" friends to work and he knows this is really important to me.  There is an eat in area in the kitchen but I think the max it will have is a drop leaf table and two chairs.  It is very small and 99.9% of the time we sit at the breakfast bar anyway.  I started looking at my options.  I really love the stand up work stations that Carissa Wiley has but those are discontinued and I couldn't find one in white much less find two of them.  I also realized that I have a lot of trouble standing for very long so I really wanted something that was a sit down solution.  Most of the things I found were very small or else very expensive but I finally realized that Ikea was going to be my best option to find something in my budget.  And that is where I'm stopping for this particular post.

In the next post, I'll share more about my thought processes for the space planning.  We started this process 14 months ago, so I really had time to think about what I would need.

This week we are in Texas taking care of the grands while our daughter and son-in-law are in Cancun for the week.  They really never got a honeymoon to speak of so this is sort of a romantic get away.  Unfortunately, before I could finish writing and posting this our closing got moved out to Friday.  I am on the deep end of frazzled but I have to go home tomorrow morning and finish packing my house so I can't really think about it.  I don't dare stop to think about it.

My daughter just texted that they just finished going through US Customs and will be on the 7:30 flight from Houston to Dallas so I am going to wrap this up.  I hope you'll come back to see Part II of this post but it will be at least 2 weeks before I will have time to post anything.