The Long-Awaited New Apartment Post

Here we go, folks. I have been collecting this post for weeks now, just waiting for the Big Day when I can officially say we have completely moved and the house is completely clean. Feast your eyes on our new digs. Well, a little later on in the post. Before you are rewarded with pictures, you have to wade through our stories of moving woes.

Our first attempt at moving in to the new place was very ambitious. We decided that we could, between the two of us, move the old couch my friend Anika gave us. We were almost wrong.

The couch is about 8 feet long. Getting it down the stairs and to the car wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, it gave us a false sense of optimism about the rest of its relocation.

The Giant Couch

There is no visitor parking at Nantucket Condos, so we parked at the church across the street. We lugged the couch across the street and down the sidewalk to the base of the stairs leading to our door. It was at this point we noticed a problem.

First, the couch was getting really heavy. Second, the stairway is really narrow, with two pretty tight turns, and the landing at the top is about 3 feet square--not big enough for a couch.

The Rickety Staircase

With much hefting, heaving, straining, cursing, and bruising, the couch inched up the stairs. At the first turn, we had to lift it above the rail, resting it on the slim metal rail itself. The couch was teetering on the rail, poised to go crashing to the ground. Seth was at the top, dragging it with all his might. I was at the bottom, pushing and stabilizing so it didn't suicide itself on the pavement below.

Push, shove, bruise, curse, heave, hand smash, curse again. We made it past the second turn, and then to the landing. The couch was still resting on the rail, with about 80% of its length hanging out into space. And then it got stuck. It would not fit through the doorway the way it was currently oriented, and neither Seth nor I were in a position to gain any leverage to rotate it onto its side (while it was still precariously perched on the railing).

Pull, strain, worry, heave, panic, and we got the couch on its side. In the process, the railing lost two screws that attached it to the building. But we triumphed. The couch made it into the living room. And Seth had overexerted himself to the point of dehydration and feeling like he needed to go to the emergency room. Instead, he went to work. He's my hero. :)

Around the same time, Seth and I took an adventure to the land of Ikea and spend most of my bonus on furniture. The total came to around $800 and 366 pounds. We had this delivered. After the couch fiasco, we decided to let someone else lug hundreds of pounds of awkwardly shaped parcels up our twisting, rickety metal staircase.

A Few of the Ikea Boxes

Seth and I spent the next week assembling our new furniture. As Murphy's law dictates, we built part of each piece of furniture backward and had to disassemble and reassemble them. All except the bed. By the time we built the bed, we were Ikea pros.

After that, we just moved one carload at a time. Our Element is a moving machine! We love that car. After about a week and a half of good, solid moving time, we are officially completely moved. Hurray!

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for: Pictures!

First off, I designed an ID tag for Apollo. Here he is modeling it:


Here are a few pictures of the living room:

The Ikea furniture out of the boxes, and assembled correctly

The front door and some of the wallpaper border I finished hanging today

The view of the lovely trees outside our window

The kitchen and nook (for lack of a better word)

The vanity area

Apollo loves to jump up on the bathroom counter, and when he is really crafty, he opens the the mirror doors and climbs onto the little shelves inside the mirror, knocking all our stuff out onto the counter.

A few shots of the bedroom:



So there you have it. This is our new apartment, finally cleaned to the point that we want to maintain (fingers crossed). We like it. :)